Play Demo
Few slots can claim to have shaped a whole genre, but Bonanza Megaways is one of them. Big Time Gaming had just invented Megaways, and this gold-mine slot, released back in 2016, was the one that turned it into a phenomenon the rest of the industry raced to copy. The look and sound still charm today. Mine carts rattle across a track above the reels, the grid is carved into a craggy cliff face beside a turning water wheel, and a banjo-led western tune kicks in the second you spin. It is easy to see, even in a quick free play of the demo, why this one stuck around.
A row of mine carts trundles along the track above the middle reels, and each cart drops one extra symbol onto the reel beneath it across reels two to five, widening the grid and stacking on more ways with it.
The number that ticks over above the reels tells you what is going on. Each reel can change height from spin to spin, showing more or fewer symbols, and that is what resets the count of ways to win every time you press the button.
Win, and the rock reacts. The stone around each winning symbol cracks and glows yellow, then shatters, broken pieces tumbling down the screen as fresh symbols drop into the gaps from above, and along the carts from the right. If the new symbols land another win, the whole thing happens again, so a single spin can chain several reactions before the reels settle. It is the reacting-reels system the mine is built around.
Collect the four GOLD letters, one each of G, O, L and D scattered across the reels, and the mine hands over 12 free spins.
The round runs on the same reacting reels, but with one addition that makes it the real draw, an unlimited win multiplier. It starts at one and climbs by one with every reaction, and because it holds across the round rather than resetting each spin, a good streak can build it high.
Gold bar scatters landing in the mine carts during free spins can lengthen the round, so a hot streak need not end at twelve spins.
Bonanza plays across six reels, and the Megaways mechanics let each one stack anywhere from two to seven symbols, so the count overhead can run as high as 117,649 ways on a single spin. Wins pay from the leftmost reel rightwards on adjacent reels, any size of symbol counting, with the dynamite wild standing in for everything but the gold scatters. There are no paylines to follow, just matching symbols landing side by side from the left.
You can stake from $0.20 to $20 a spin. The RTP sits at 96%, and it is a high-volatility game, so the reactions and the free spins carry the bigger wins. Top wins reach 26,000 times your stake, raised over the years from the 12,000x the game first shipped with.
The cut gems carry the game, with the purple diamond worth the most by a wide margin and the only symbol that pays from two in a row. The ace and the card royals sit at the bottom.
| Symbol | 6 | 5 | 4 | 3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Purple diamond | 50x | 25x | 10x | 5x |
| Red gem | 7.5x | 2.5x | 2x | 1x |
| Blue gem | 2x | 1.5x | 1x | 0.25x |
| Green gem | 2x | 0.75x | 0.5x | 0.25x |
| A / K | 1.75x | 0.6x | 0.4x | 0.2x |
| Q | 1x | 0.6x | 0.25x | 0.2x |
| J | 1x | 0.5x | 0.25x | 0.15x |
| 10 | 0.9x | 0.5x | 0.25x | 0.15x |
| 9 | 0.8x | 0.4x | 0.2x | 0.1x |
The purple diamond also pays two of a kind at 2x.
A 4 out of 5 might look generous for a slot this old with this few features, but Bonanza earns it. The Megaways system it made famous still feels good to play, the reactions give every spin a second life, and the free spins multiplier has no cap, which is where the real excitement sits. It losesa point to its age, with graphics a step behind modern releases and little on offer beyond the one bonus, yet the charm and the variety carry it. Years on, people still load this one up, and that says plenty.
It is hard to talk about Bonanza without talking about what it started. The Wild West mining dressing is fun, but the lasting part is the engine underneath, six reels that each change height every spin, while a row of carts feeds extra symbols from the top. Together, they hand you a different board and a different number of ways on every press. It was a novel idea in 2016, and it played well enough that the whole industry followed.
The reactions are what give it momentum. A win sets the surrounding rock cracking and glowing before it bursts apart, new symbols dropping in to fill the gaps, and that single touch turns one win into the chance of two, three, four or even more in a row. Eleven spins into our session, a four-reaction chain set off a scream from deep in the mine and an explosion overhead, and four GOLD letters dropped to award 12 free spins.
The free spins are the heart of the game. A dark red glow washes over the mine, and the win multiplier begins ticking up, one step for every reaction and no limit on how far it climbs. Ours reached five by the closing spins, though the round itself stayed modest at $16.35, a fair reminder that a high multiplier still needs the symbols to land under it. We came close to a retrigger more than once, which would have kept that multiplier rising past the five we finished on.
Away from the free spins, the demo settled into a steady rhythm. Across a long run of spins, the small wins kept arriving often enough that our balance barely moved from where it started, and the reels twice teased the bonus, three GOLD letters landing while the music slowed for a fourth that never came. For an older game, it holds attention well, the variable reels alone giving each spin a slightly different shape.
What keeps Bonanza on so many screens years later is not any one feature, because it does not have many. It is the mix: the Megaways variety, the satisfying reactions and the soundtrack with genuine personality that make it a game you can come back to without tiring of it. We finished our review wanting another go, which is about the highest compliment an old slot can earn.