Supplying gaming content to hundreds of Internet-based gambling operators, Microgaming is one of the best-known publishers of online casino software today. It stands out as a true pioneer in this industry, creating new and innovative game features for more than two decades. Its portfolio includes virtual and live table games, online slots, video poker titles, games with progressive jackpots, and many more. The company’s most loved creations, however, are its slots, which attract players with their entertaining themes, beautiful graphics, and sizable jackpots.
Microgaming’s History and Role in the Online Gambling Industry
1Company History
Microgaming was established in the early 1990s as an online casino company and is widely known for launching the first-ever Internet-based casino in 1994, the Gaming Club. Since then, it focused solely on manufacturing gaming content for other operators, supplying them with downloadable casino software and different types of games.
Today, Microgaming’s headquarters is located on the Isle of Man but it also has international offices, including in Gibraltar. The company has obtained licenses from multiple regulators and is currently present in more than 20 regulated markets, including Europe and Latin America.
2Major Achievements
Microgaming’s contributions to the online gambling industry are numerous and can hardly be listed here but thanks to them, it has gained a reputation for being the ultimate pioneer and innovator in this business. Over the years, the company has evolved from a small development firm to a major player on the global scene. It all started in 1994 with the world’s first online casino but Microgaming did not stop there – 10 years after that, in 2004, it launched the first-ever mobile casino.
1998 was another important year for the company – this is when it released the first online slot with a progressive jackpot, Cash Splash. Now, the studio has the world’s largest progressive jackpot network, which has paid out more than €1.1 billion up to date. In 2015, a casino player scooped a prize of £13,209,300 while playing Microgaming’s Mega Moolah slot, a win that set a Guinness World Record for the largest online jackpot payout. But that is not all – as a founding member of eCOGRA (the e-Commerce Online Gaming Regulation and Assurance), the company was among the first to set the standards for fair, responsible gambling.
Microgaming Company Video
3Gaming Collection
Microgaming has had an important role in the history and development of online gambling as we know it but its most impressive achievement remains its remarkable gaming collection. It still includes some of the studio’s first titles and even though they cannot compare with the modern, visually superior games created in the past few years, they are still loved by players for being incredibly rewarding and enjoyable.
Currently, Microgaming’s portfolio lists more than 800 casino games across various categories, types, and styles, along with roughly 700 titles from its partner studios. New games are being released every month and most of them are optimized for both desktop and mobile play.
Types of Slots by Microgaming
Classic Slots
Video Slots
243 Ways Slots
Licensed Slots and Microgaing’s Slot Franchises
Progressive Jackpot SlotsClassic Slots
Microgaming has one of the largest collection of classic, 3-reel slots on the Internet. Unlike some developers that tend to replace its older titles with new and modern releases, the Isle of Man-based studio has decided to keep most of the games within this category. Players can choose from several dozens of slots resembling the old-school machines that first appeared in land-based casinos more than 40 years ago.
These retro games come with different themes but there are also slots featuring fruit symbols, lucky 7s, diamonds, and bar symbols. There are no free spins, bonus rounds, and the various other special features you would normally find in a newer video slot. Still, many of the games come with multipliers and even wild symbols that help you complete a winning combo.
Video Slots
Featuring more than 300 titles, the developer’s range of video slots is massive and themes vary from action and adventure to jungle settings and Oriental legends. While the majority of slots within this group have a standard 5×3 reel structure, the studio has also created many games with unconventional designs and interesting payout systems. The number of paylines also ranges from 9 to more than 50 in certain cases, while the flexible betting limits guarantee that there would be something for everyone.
Microgaming has also been the inventor behind some of the most entertaining special features in video slots. The games come with tons of wilds and scatters, exploding symbols, cascading reels, free spins, and many more. Of course, the graphical quality is different for each game since some of them were released more than 15 years ago, while its latest slots boast stunning visuals and features.
243 Ways Slots
One of the most interesting and innovative types of slots by Microgaming is the so-called 243-way slots. Unlike standard games where symbols need to fall on specific paylines to bring a prize, here symbols simply need to appear on consecutive reels starting from the leftmost reel. As you can imagine, players here have much more opportunities to win – 243 ways to win, to be more precise.
There are also some even more eccentric variations of this idea, however, such as the so-called “all ways win” slots, in which combinations can be formed by identical symbols that fall on consecutive reels from both directions. Popular Microgaming slots with this fantastic format are Thunderstruck II, Immortal Romance, and Hot Ink.
Licensed Slots and Microgaing’s Slot Franchises
Among the most popular games by Microgaming are its “own brand” slots that have turned into famous slot franchises with several sequels. Often, those titles that prove popular with players even spawn some interesting spinoffs that feature similar themes, reel structure, or storyline. Great examples would be Avalon, Thunderstruck, Agent Jane Blonde, Dragonz, or Hot as Hades.
There is another category of video slots that possess even a greater appeal – Microgaming’s licensed slots that follow the story of popular TV and film titles, comic book superheroes, etc. Among them are Game of Thrones, Terminator 2, Jurassic World, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Playboy Gold, and more.
Progressive Jackpot Slots
As you can see, the software provider promises a lot of excitement with its varied gaming portfolio. What it is most loved in the players’ community, however, is its progressive jackpot network. It includes hit titles such as Mega Moolah and Major Millions but along with them, there are many more progressive slots, most of which offer not one but several different jackpots.
Apart from the record-breaking payouts, Microgaming’s progressives are also quite unique compared to most of the competition with the fact that the provider pays the jackpots immediately and in full.
Microgaming’s Software
Download and Instant Play Casino
Quickfire
Independent Studios
Initially, Microgaming-powered casinos offered only a casino software package that had to be downloaded on players’ computers. In 2002, the studio released an improved version of its downloadable software called Viper. For the first time, the games running on Viper had an Expert mode and Autoplay function.
Within a few years, the company started producing Flash games, which could be opened directly in the web browser without the need to download anything. Today, its primary product is still available in the Download Casino, which is compatible with Macs and PCs and offers more than 700 titles.
Of course, the software has improved immensely since the 1990s and the Instant-Play Casino has become the preferred option for most casino players. With the emergence of new technologies such as HTML5, which is actually not new at all, being around since 2004, Microgaming has released even better games. It started with 11 titles, which were reproduced in HTML5 back in 2012, and since then, Microgaming has released more than 350 games in this language due to its remarkable ability to support multimedia on all platforms, most notably mobile.
View more...Microgaming’s Quickfire platform was released in 2010 as a new and innovative alternative to the download casino. Through Quickfire, casinos that were not running on the Viper system (which required a special license) could gain access to Microgaming’s content. Moreover, along with the studio’s own creations, the platform offered browser-based games from its development partners.
Its smooth integration with Flash and mobile systems gave operators great flexibility and access to new markets. Now, Quickfire and all games that run on it are available in more than 20 languages and can be found at hundreds of online casinos. Apart from the varied gaming content, it includes invaluable back-office solutions and online casino management tools for operators.
View more...Over the years, Microgaming has worked with multiple companies and today, it constantly releases new games by its independent studios and content partners. These new titles add more variety of themes to its original selection of slots and other casino games. The majority of these games are launched on the Quickfire platform, which makes them instantly available to hundreds of online casinos.
Currently, Microgaming’s range of independent studios includes Stormcraft Studios, Alchemy Gaming, Switch Studios, Fortune Factory, Pulse8 Studios, NeonValley Studios, GameBurger Studios, All41 Studios, and Slingshot Studios. In addition, the company works with game content partners such as Just for the Win, Playson, Crazy Tooth Studio, 2By2 Gaming, Booming Games, Golden Rock Studios, Lightning Box, and more.
View more...Top Microgaming Slots by RTP
Bikini Party
Couch Potato
Dragon Dance
High 5
Hot Ink
Retro Reels
Lucky Riches Hyperspins
Lucky Twins JackpotBikini Party
With its fun beach theme, 243 ways to win, and RTP of 97.49%, Bikini Party is a fantastic video slot by Microgaming. It features 5 reels and 243 ways, which are always active and can pay up to 60,000 coins.
The game comes with wild and scatter symbols, as well as a Free Spins feature, during which all wins are tripled. Players can also trigger the Respins Feature, which allows the re-spin of one of the reels. It comes at an extra cost but it also increases the theoretical return from 96.52% to 97.49%.
Couch Potato
Couch Potato is a classic 3-reel slot with a single payline – the center line that crosses all three reels horizontally. This is not the most visually impressive slot by Microgaming, nor does it have some beautiful storyline or fun theme. Instead, it tells the story of the modern 21st-century man who has a largely sedentary lifestyle and watches a lot of TV.
The main symbol of the game is the Couch Potato, which acts as a wild substitute and a multiplier. When a winning combination includes 1 wild, the winnings are multiplied by 5, and if the combo consists of 2 wilds, players get a 25x multiplier that applies to the payout of this combination. One of the most appealing features of this game is its RTP – it is 97.43%.
Dragon Dance
Dragon Dance is another exciting video slot by Microgaming, which has 243 ways to win on its standard 5×3 reel grid. The game celebrates the Chinese New Year with beautifully designed themed symbols such as musicians, carnival dancers, and dancing dragons. The firecrackers image comes as the scatter symbol in the slot, while the game logo functions as a wild appearing only on reels 2 and 4.
This lovely video slot by Microgaming has a Free Spins feature – by getting 3 or more scatters anywhere on the reels, players can get 15 free spins that can be retriggered. In addition, they can take advantage of the Re-Spin Feature, which just like in Bikini Party increases the returns of the game to 97.49%.
High 5
High 5 is a classic slot by Microgaming that has only 3 spinning reels and a single, central payline. Players can bet up to 3 coins and get a maximum regular payout of 15,000 coins. There is nothing extraordinary about this game, except for its RTP percentage – it is 97.43%, which is incredibly high for a slot game, online or not.
There is no specific theme, no special features or interesting symbols, apart from the High 5 logo, which is wild, substituting for all other symbols in winning combinations. It also acts as a multiplier, paying either 5x or 25x the regular winnings, depending on whether we get 1 or 2 wilds on the payline.
Hot Ink
Inspired by the mysterious, yet a hot world of tattoos, Hot Ink is a wonderful video slot with 5 reels and 4 rows on each of them. The theme is represented in a really unique way with fantastic graphics and tattoo images for symbols. The slot is playable from 1 to 10 coins and players can change the coin denomination – what they cannot adjust is the paylines.
In this game, there are 1,024 ways to win, which work just like the 243 ways – this system pays for 3 or more identical symbols appearing on adjacent reels from left to right. Hot Ink comes with a wild, a scatter, and a bonus symbol, as well as with the types of Free Spins rounds, and a Re-Spin feature. Players can win up to 100,000 coins during the free spins. The RTP of the game reaches 97.50% if the Re-Spin feature is used.
Retro Reels
Retro Reels is a relatively popular video slot by Microgaming that comes in several installments, namely the original Retro Reels, which was released in 2010, as well as Retro Reels Diamond Glitz and Retro Reels Extreme Heat, which were launched in 2011. The original game can be played with up to 20 paylines and from to 1 to 10 coins per line, while the jackpot payout is 440,000 coins during the Free Spins Feature.
Here, the scatter symbol triggers the Free Spins but there are no wilds or multipliers. When 2 or more scatters appear anywhere on the reels, they activate 10 to 25 free spins, depending on the specific number of scatter symbols present on the reels. This is quite a rewarding slot with an RTP of 97.50%. The two sequels of the game are basically the same – the only exception is the addition of a wild symbol in Retro Reels Extreme Heat.
Lucky Riches Hyperspins
Launched in 2020, Lucky Riches is one of the newest releases available in Microgaming-powered casinos right now. It has 243 ways to win that are permanently active on the 5×3 reel grid of the game. The slot has a classic Vegas theme and stunning graphics, while the stakes per spin range from 0.25 to 112.50 credits.
Once again, there is a Re-Spin feature, and players can re-spin any reel individually at a cost from 0.01. There are also wilds and scatter symbols, as well as Free Spins where all wins are tripled. The wild symbol can land only on reels 2 and 4. This game has an average return of 97.49%.
Lucky Twins Jackpot
Lucky Twins Jackpot is a remake of Microgaming’s 2015 slot Lucky Twins but the new release was developed by Pulse8 Studios, which makes games for the Isle of Man-based company. This is an unconventional video slot with 3 reels, 5 paylines, and three different jackpots, namely Minor, Major, and Grand. The slot has a nice Chinese theme, wild symbols, as well as a bonus symbol that triggers the Jackpot Bonus Feature. The RTP changes, depending on the jackpot amount, but it starts at 93.92%.