Jeopardy! Pokie
Based on what’s possibly the most famous TV game show in history, Jeopardy! is a pokie from IGT that invites players to come on down to spin up wins and trigger bonus features like the Wild Rush and free spins with multipliers attached to them.
It’s all done in a style that will familiar to fans of the show, and has some of the hosts including Art Fleming and Alex Trebek on the reels, alongside some of the female presenters and symbols that represent the different categories of questions asked of contestants during the TV game.
Anyone not familiar with Jeopardy! won’t really need to know much to enjoy the pokie, but essentially, it’s a game where the hosts give out the answers and contestants need to get the right questions over a series of rounds, leading to a jackpot prize. It’s been running since 1964 and still going strong, so IGT must hope that this pokie repeats even a fraction of that success, as it would give them a big hit on their hands.
Playing Jeopardy!
Cool blues dominated the screen, which has a classic 5 reel and 4 rows of symbols layout. There’s 40 paylines and they are always activated, giving players minimum and maximum stakes per spin of 0.60 to 60.00. Behind the reels is a fairly plain backdrop, similar to the one TV viewers will be familiar with, but it doesn’t really distract from the reels at all, while the title sits at the top of the game.
Symbols need to line up on 3, 4 or 5 connected reels running from the left side across a line and the smaller wins come from the pictures of a globe, musical note, trophy, clapperboard and atomic nucleus sign. These represent the categories of questions in the show, but here they pay from just 5, 20 or 80 coins when landing across a line, to 20, 50 or 150 depending on which falls into place.
The various stars of the show are worth more, headed by Alex Trebek, who has hosted Jeopardy! since 1984. This silver-haired presenter will present prizes of 100, 500 or 2000 coins when landing on 3, 4 or 5 reels across a payline,
Jeopardy!
Unable to connect to MySQL: SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] No such file or directory
Bonus Features
There’s more to Jeopardy! than just lining up matching symbols however, as there’s plenty of bonuses to trigger along the way, starting with a wild game logo that will help to complete winning lines by acting as any other standard icon. It won’t appear on reel 1 though, so can’t make up a combination on its own, but will certainly help to increase the win to spin ratio, while also being able to extend lines of 3 or 4 matching symbols into higher-value lines of 4 or 5. On top of this, the Double Jeopardy feature will double the win and add more wilds to the reels, plus a Wild Rush can add even more wilds to the mix.
The Bonus symbol can’t be substituted by the wild, as this is a scatter that pays multiples of the triggering bet and then launches a free spins round. It can turn up only on the middle reel to be worth 2x the stake when just 2 land there, while 3 of them pays out 5x and seeing 4 scatters at once is worth a win of 25x the bet.
The number of free games and any multipliers that are in play throughout them depends on the number of bonus symbols that started the round and also on the Jeopardy! board which players need to select positions on before the spins commence. Just 2 scatters awards 11 spins with up to a 6x multiplier, 3 of them equals 13 spins and an 11x potential multiplier and 4 bonus symbols starts 19 spins with 12x. These are maximum rewards though, and first players need to reveal exactly what they will get from the board, with anyone hitting the Daily Double spot getting a further reward, while extra wilds are given to players who make it right across it.
The Verdict
Fans of the show would flock to this game even if it had no bonuses whatsoever. The iconic design, images of the hosts and connection to the show, with the Jeopardy! board, will be enough to get them interested, but fortunately this is a good pokie all-round, so even those who have never watched it should find some rewards from spinning the reels.
The Wild Rush and bonus games will hopefully boost bankrolls, but coming from IGT, this is going to be a fair and reliable game with a decent return to player ratio, so they should be able to enjoy lots of spins for relatively little risk.