Jurassic Park Gold

Jurassic Park Gold: Slot Overview

Since 1993, the multi-movie Jurassic Park franchise has grossed billions at the box office. Clearly, many moviegoers are thrilled by watching people run from dinos that have escaped their enclosures, and it seems players and game designers are too. In this instance, its Microgaming partner Stormcraft Studios letting the T-Rex's, Raptors, and Indominus Rex's out of their pens to terrify their captors. It is a classic tale of man's rush to develop technology, then losing control of their creations. Like Ian Malcolm said, 'Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.' With those thoughts in mind, let's head back to Isla Nublar and see what this dino filled slot is made of.

Things get off to a relatively calm start, all things considered. The screen is cluttered in all manner of buttons, jackpots, meters, and a colourful game grid. Initially, a lot more emphasis has been placed on the island's flora than its fauna, meaning a whole lot of benign bush sitting in the background. If it wasn't for the familiar faces on the reels, it would be hard to tell this is a Jurassic Park related slot at all. Fortunately for dino fans, plenty of the beasts rear up later to get the adrenaline spiking.

Playable on tablets, smartphones, or desktop devices, Jurassic Park Gold furnishes players with stakes of 20 p/c to $/€30 per paid game round. The RTP sits right on 96%, firing off wins at a frequency of 24.1%, in a highly volatile manner. All of this takes place on a 5-reel, 4-row game panel, with 40 fixed paylines, with winning combinations being made up of 3 to 5 matching symbols.

The symbols themselves are film-based, where we find Pteranodons, Dilophosaurus', and T-Rex's as the low pay symbols. Humans make up the highs, including John Hammond, Sarah Harding, Ian Malcolm, Ellie Sattler, and Alan Grant. Landing a full line of five premiums will fire off a reward worth 4 to 10x the bet, while lows are worth 1 to 2 times the stake. The most valuable symbol is the game logo, which is wild as well. It lands anywhere to replace any normal pay symbol and is worth up to 125x the bet for five of a kind. Wilds pay 2x or 5x when used in a win in the base game.

Jurassic Park Gold: Slot Features

Like the Gallimimus' 'flocking this way' in the original movie, Jurassic Park Gold is overrun with features. Let's break them down.

Link&Win

These trademarked Link&Wins are popping up with increasing regularity, though they often come with slight variations, so not all are the same. To trigger it, you'll need to land at least 6 bonus Powerball symbols in the base game. Powerball symbols lock to the reels, and each has a cash value or a jackpot and resets spins back to 3 whenever a new one lands. Also, landing 15, 20, 25, or 30 Powerballs unlocks rows 5, 6, 7, and 8 for extra chances to possibly win.

Jackpots

Prominently displayed at all times on the left, jackpots can only be won from the Link&Win feature. Each Powerball that lands may reveal the Mini, Minor, or Major prize, worth 15x, 30x, or 100x the bet, respectively. The fourth jackpot, the Mega pays out a reward of 8,000x the stake and is won if all positions on the panel are filled with Powerballs.

Free Spins

Landing at least 3 scatter symbols activates the free spins bonus rounds, which are unlocked after a set amount of free spins triggers have been achieved. The first three are Dilophosaurus, Velociraptor, and Spinosaurus, offering 12, 9, and 6 retriggerable free spins, respectively, where wild win multipliers of x2, x5, or x8 may appear. Max win varies in each bonus round from 3,600 to 4,000x.

The fourth is a Tyrannosaurus Rex Free Spin which is unlocked when the scatter collector is filled in the base game. Landing 15 pairs of scatters fills the meter. In this feature, 1 spin occurs with a guaranteed Wild Storm feature where up to 5 reels may turn fully wild.

Wild Chase

This feature is present in the non-T-Rex free spins rounds. When a wild symbol lands, it highlights the position it appeared in. If another wild lands in an already marked position, it expands to cover all positions on the reel for that spin. In Dilophosaurus, this could be reel 3; in Velociraptor, this could be reels 2 or 4; and in Spinosaurus, this could be reels 2, 3, or 4. Filling a whole reel with marked cells awards +4 free spins.

Jurassic Park Gold: Slot Verdict

Jurassic Park branded slots have proven hugely popular in the past, and it's easy to envisage Jurassic Park Gold being popular as well. It looks lively and jams many of the main stars of the 1993 box office smash film. When reading that, it's hard to believe the original movie is nearly 30 years old, a testament to the ongoing wonder dinosaurs have in the popular imagination and the impressive quality of the CGI at the time. It might also have something to do with Microgaming and Co. wanting to squeeze extra mileage out of the JP license, but whatever prompted a Gold version, dino-fanatics probably won't be complaining.

Those who were expecting a suite of new extras might be disappointed, though, since Jurassic Park Gold provides more or less the same gameplay as Thunderstruck Wild Lightning did – with a lower max win. Players who enjoy bonus round unlocking quests or the heroics provided by the single Tyrannosaurus Rex spin where 5,000x is possible might be satiated. The rest might not be so much. While Jurassic Park Gold offers a level of entertainment, it feels better suited to hardcore dino fans.

Strip the gloss off, weed out the dinos, and you're left with a less potentially profitable version of Thunderstruck Wild Lightning which in turn was a shadow of the iconic Microgaming version. But novelty probably wasn't the main point. Jurassic Park Gold's objective of cashing in on the dinosaur craze will no doubt pay off in attracting players who can't get enough massive, extinct reptiles in their lives. And if it doesn't pull in the punters? No biggie, it's unlikely massive amounts of effort went into developing the gameplay since it was largely recycled anyway.