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New slot machines are being released almost on a weekly basis, with new features that are getting more better and advanced (as we speak!), which empowers some of you, dear iGaming lovers, to enliven your gameplay. Although slots are getting a growing number of innovative, they are still practically based upon the exact same kinds of symbols which all makes things a lot easier for all newbies out there, especially when it comes to comprehending how slots work.
It’s essential to acknowledge that there are numerous types of slot machine icons and, in this blog, we’ll chat about different types of symbols that you’re most likely to come across. We’re all interested in what occurs when certain reel symbols spin in? Now let’s learn more!
What is the Oldest Slot Symbol?
When it concerns the earliest fruit machine symbols, these really often include card symbols in 3 fits – hearts, spades and diamonds – generally from 10-card through the Ace: 10 (10 ), Jack (J), Queen (Q), King (K), and Ace (A). Now, apart from these high-paying card symbols, you’ll extremely frequently encounter the lucky number seven on the reels, but we’ll talk about that a bit later.
Then, there’s a standard fortunate symbol – horseshoe which seems among the earliest and somewhat appreciated superstition icons, especially when it comes to playing online slots. And there’s Liberty Bell, obviously. If you belong to the experienced players, you’ll understand that the very first slot machine’s name was Liberty Bell, so that’s most likely the reason it ended up being one of the evergreen symbols regularly appearing in slots. One of our favorite slots are Gonzos Quest, check it out!
Slot Machine Symbols, Bar Symbols, Number 7 and Bubble Gums
Knowing that there are millions of different slot machines out there, what strikes us the most is that they all include more or less the exact same reel symbols appearing on all of them. For instance, you’ll often discover slot machine symbols such as cherries, melons, oranges, lemons and grapes appearing on 3-reel fruit machine, no matter what slot machine title you choose to play. Some sources say the Industry Novelty Business was the very first one to use fruit symbols.
Fruit Machines slot symbols.
After a long-lasting ban in the early 1900s, fruit machine manufacturers came back with brand new symbols in the form of vibrant fruits and bubble gums. Enjoyable truth: During the time when fruit machine were prohibited by law in the United States, in order to avoid these anti-gambling constraints, some machines paid chewing gum as a benefit.
Among the leading slot machine manufacturers, Bell-Fruit Gum Business, even included its logo design as the symbol appearing on the reels. As it sorta looked like a bar of gum, the logo design gradually became the slot machine bar symbol – the one that we’re utilized to seeing today, who would have thought it originated from the business’s logo design?
Another popular symbol, the lucky number 7, found its location on the reels of slot machines. Not to mention, it has a really special connotation when it comes to online betting, primarily when playing online slots.
How Many Symbols Are on a Reel?
Now you must be wondering how lots of symbols in fact exist on a slots reel. With traditional 3-reel slot machine machines, it’s easy – typically that’s 20 symbols per reel, which suggests it’s a total of 60 symbols (20x20x20), indicating that’s more than 8000 combinations to score a prize.
Things are a bit more complicated when it comes to modern electronic video games. The reel composition is no longer developed by your exact odds of winning. Instead, it’s all up to a complicated RNG concealed deep inside every machine.
Types of Slot Machine Symbols
We’re all familiar with the fact that there’s a deep ocean of slot symbols, but there are also various kinds of slot symbols, with 3 essentials– basic symbols, wilds, and scatters. It is essential to know the difference between them, because landing particular combinations of these slot symbols (when combined with basic symbols) can cause activation of lots of various functions that will increase your payment, every time it occurs.
Cherry machine symbols
Basic Symbols
Now, what’s common for standard symbols is that they do not have any unique function however to pay a specific quantity of money when they appear in a row, on an active payline. To put it simply, if you manage to land a minimum of 3 matching symbols on an active payline, you’ll hit a winning combination and get a corresponding reward. If you’ve been questioning which “special” symbols generally appear on an online slots (or a land-based one), stick to us as we’re about to expose some more information.
Wild Symbols
Ok, wild symbols are among the most crucial ones, as they can serve as a replacement for any other symbol in a slot machine. Much like the Joker card does. So, as soon as you land them on the reels, they will act as a replacement for any other symbol, with the exception of the scatter and perk symbols, as the wild card can not act like their substitute. However, there are unique kinds of wild symbols which consist of Expanding Wilds, Sticky Wilds, Stacked Wilds, Walking Wilds, Moving Wilds and Transferring Wilds.
Broadening Wilds stretch across the reel and help you score more winning combinations.
You’ll quickly find Expanding Wild symbols as they are the ones that can normally take place on any reel position and, once they do, they can broaden upwards and downwards and sometimes from side to side, sometimes even diagonally. What they do is assist you form more gaining combinations, turning any adjacent reel placed icon beside them into the Wild one.
When Sticky Wild symbols appear, they get stuck on the reels and generally provide you another spin, while Stacked Wild symbols are stacked on top of each other. As you have actually probably discovered, none of these wild symbols are entirely the very same, they all nevertheless have something in typical– they occur arbitrarily, replacing regular gambling establishment symbols to help you score much better outcomes.
In addition, there are Skyrocketing Wild symbols, Random Wild symbols or Drifting Wild symbols and they will mostly be randomly connected to one (or more) reels, depending upon the video games’ guidelines. Just be sure to read the paytable and you’ll find out how they work.
Scatter Symbols
One of our favorites – scatter symbols – are extremely distinct for their main function is to activate Free Spins or a Bonus Game function, every time you land the required variety of scatters on an active payline. Usually, a specific variety of scatters should happen on a single spin to open an interactive feature. In some slots, these features will require landing at least 3 scatters, whilst others may just require 2. In either case, they will start Free Spin rounds (usually between 5 and 15) which can be extremely lucrative for you.
Here’s an example – if you land 3 scatters at the same time – you’ll set off 5 Free Spins. Landing 4 of them will start 10 Free Spin rounds, whereas landing 5 scatters will activate 15 Free Spins. As every slot machine game works in a different way though, you’ll find all the information about scatters (and other symbols) by clicking on a paytable.
How to win at scatter slot machines?– Land a minimum of three of them all at once to trigger Free Spins perk round.
As for another advantage of the scatter symbol– they can also provide payouts on their own. Naturally, not all scatter symbol slot machines offer that possibility, so again do make sure to examine the paytable to avoid any sort of disappointment. Often spread symbols activate complimentary spins that come with a multiplier, but we’ll get to that in a sec.
Bonus Symbols
As their name suggests, bonus offer symbols are applied to trigger different bonus games. In such a way, they are like Scatter symbols, since you often need to land at least three of them on the reels simultaneously before they set off the bonus offer round. This usually suggests you’ll have to land them on successive reels and, obviously, they have to take place on an active payline only.
Multiplier Symbols
And lastly on our list are multiplier symbols. Now, multipliers do exactly what their name indicates – they multiply your wins. They can arrive on the reel in the kind of unique symbols (with an additional icon showing the worth of their multiplier perk), but what they generally do is increase the size of your payouts, usually up to 6x times. The more valuable multipliers can also be wild cards, or appear as part of the Free Spin feature, activated by the scatters.
