Slots Wild Cards - The Fun of Online Slots
Some slots games are more fun than others. Slots wild cards are one way casinos make games more exciting and give you bigger winnings, as explained inside.
Slots game manufacturers are always looking to improve their products, and casinos, of both the on-line and the bricks-and-mortar varieties, are always looking to entice you with bigger payouts. One of the more recent developments is the addition of slots wild cards. These special symbols function as winning multipliers, and are usually accompanied with sound and/or animation, to enliven your play as well as increase the fun of winning.
Origin of the Wild Card
If you’re a card player, and especially if you’re a fan of poker, the idea of a wild card should be well known to you. It was introduced to poker around 1875. There, it’s a card which can substitute for any other card, similar to the term’s use in computing to this day. More recently, beginning with football in the 1960s, sports tournaments and playoffs allow a competitor which has otherwise not qualified to participate by placing them in a wild card berth. Since then, the term “wild card” has become firmly fixed in the public’s mind as an undeserved but welcome stroke of luck that advances game play.
In the 1990s, slots wild cards were added to early video slot machines as well as classic slots. At first, the wild card symbol was added to the slots as an extra reel symbol which could only appear in one position per spin, and which would double the winning of any other combination of symbols. Quickly the wild card was allowed to appear in multiple positions and it became a multiplier, progressively increasing the winnings, by two for the first wild card, by three when two appeared in the same payline, and so on. Around the year 2000 the wild card was promoted from being a symbol, as it’s remained in classic slots, to being an audio-visual feature of video games in its own right.
Slots Wild Cards Today
Today, the wild card images are tied in with the themes of the slot machines. For example, a treasure chest is a wild card symbol in the Atlantis slots game. In the Cleopatra game, Cleopatra herself is the wild card mixing in with other ancient Egyptian symbols; she substitutes for anything except a sphinx (which is the scatter symbol), and if you find her in your payline you win double the amount of whatever she matches. Sadly, she’s not a multiplier, so don’t look to see two or more of her in your game at one time. Double your money is still a great prize, though, just like any other slots wild cards.
Today there are also some more complicated options available. If you play Big Kahuna, for example, the Big Kahuna is a “restricted” wild card, since it’s wild when matching fruit, but not when matching other symbols. And when you play Gladiator, you hope to see both the gladiator and the maiden in the same payline, because that “mixed pay” combination is wild to match any other symbol. Are you confused, yet? But you can see how that would keep you on your toes when playing the game. Of course, that’s the purpose of slots wild cards – to add interest and excitement to your slot game. Enjoy!