Bars & Stripes Pokie
Red, white and blue dominates the reels of Bars and Stripes, which has an all-American theme featuring images of American footballs, waffles, Oreos and a bald eagle to name just a few.
While the USA may be the land of the free, Bars and Stripes is somewhat limited in extra features like free spins, but there's still a few bucks to make with a big 50,000 coin jackpot, a simple bonus game, plus multiplier payouts and Scatter wins.
Bars and Stripes is part of the Microgaming range and like all the others from this developer, it's been certified as fair, while it can also be played with no download needed on PC’s and mobile devices.
Ironically, thanks to American legislation, Microgaming pokies can’t be played from the USA, but this game is still sure to be popular in countries friendly to the States like the UK, Australia and so on. Maybe not so much in Russia or North Korea.
A huge bet range that goes from just 0.01 to 250.00 per spin makes this a great game for all budgets, although with 25 paylines across the 5 reels, it’s always best to have a stake on all lines, for a minimum wager per spin of 0.25.
All symbols are related to the US theme, with none of the playing card icons that feature in so many games. This can be a good thing or bad depending on your point of view, as it can be a bit boring to see the same old card symbols again and again, but at least you know what the lower paying ones will be.
Bars & Stripes
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The design certainly makes it an eye-catching pokie, and of course the paytable gives a detailed breakdown of expected returns and how they are triggered. The Oreo is the lowest paying one, with between 5 and 20 coins for landing 3 to 5 of them across a line, starting from the left hand reel, while the highest paying standard symbol is the eagle that brings in between 4 and 600 coins.
Microgaming are known for releasing pokies filled with extra features, and while Bars and Stripes isn’t exactly bursting at the seams with them, there are still a couple of bonus symbols that bring the game to life.
A football brightly decorated with the American flag is a scatter symbol which only needs to appear in 3 or more spots, without needing to be on a payline, to reward the players with twice the total bet amount, while getting 5 at once will result in a very nice 200x prize. Unfortunately, there’s no bonus game to follow a scatter win, but there is one triggered by 3, 4 or 5 Uncle Sam hats landing in a line at once.
It’s a pretty simple bonus round, as all the players need to do is click on up to 3 of the hats to reveal prize values hidden within them. Doing this can lead to a whopping 47,500 coins, but the biggest possible prize is reserved for those lucky players who manage to line 5 wild symbols right across a payline.
The wild is simply the Bars and Stripes logo, and it has the conventional duty of substituting for others to help complete winning combinations, but has the added bonus of doubling in a win when it does so.
It also rewards 10 times the line bet for 2 on a line, 150 if 3 land at once on a line, 1000x is paid out should 4 wilds appear and 5000 for a full line of 5 wilds. If 10 coins are being played per line, that equals the maximum 50,000 coin payout.
A Touchdown or a Turkey?
This is certainly a brightly coloured pokie, and fans of all things American will love the style. There are some good points and bad points here however, and starting with the positive, there’s a very wide bet range, and big potential jackpot prize. The downside is a basic bonus round and no free spins game, but we can’t have everything can we?