Last updated: September 12, 2023
An encounter with dangerous animals on a safari is practically inevitable, but when have you ever come across mountains of cash in the wild? Well, this is the norm in the Mega Moolah slot by Microgaming, an online slot where lions, tigers, and bears cohabit with incredible bonus prizes and enormous jackpots to hunt down.
Originally released in 2006, this jungle-themed extravaganza is recognized as the world’s highest-paying slot machine that has made more than 70 lucky individuals overnight multi-millionaires throughout the years. While the developers have given the graphics and gameplay a much-needed facelift since it first emerged, the slot continues to pump out record-breaking wins to players all over the globe, with the largest win to date ($21.7m) paid out to an anonymous player in September 2018.
With that many winners, we had to find out for ourselves whether Mega Moolah is still worthy of its prestigious title. That’s why our experts have conducted this in-depth review that covers the best ways to win Mega Moolah, how to play, the pros and cons, and some of the burning questions we get asked from our readers.
So, without further ado, let’s kick off this rumble in the jungle!
There are a few different versions of the Mega Moolah slot, which are all a twist on the original. There is the Egyptian-themed one known as Isis, the summer-themed one known as Mega Moolah Summertime, and the American version called Mega Moolah 5 Wheel Drive. This review focuses exclusively on the original game, which features 5 reels and a total of 25 fixed paylines to wager on.
Before we get into the Progressive Jackpot and all the other juicy details, let’s start by looking at the base game.
As mentioned, the base game in Mega Moolah is set on a 5×3 grid, which allows for symbols to occupy 3 positions on each reel. There are 25 individual paylines you can wager on at a minimum of $0.25 per spin and a maximum of $6.25 per spin.
There are four Progressive Jackpots that may be triggered randomly during the base game. The higher the wager, the better the chances of triggering the bonus round that could see you land one of the game’s coveted top prizes.
The Mega Moolah slot features a total of 10 standard symbols that include playing cards 10, Jack, Queen, King, and Ace, all of which offer payouts between 2 and 150 coins for combinations of three, four, and five identical symbols.
The game’s medium-paying symbols are represented by five African animals, all of which also offer payouts for combinations of three or more identical symbols ranging between 10 and 500 coins. The animals are the Giraffe, Kudu, and Zebra, plus the Elephant and the Buffalo, which both pay out 4 to 750 coins for landing only 2 of them in a winning formation.
Alongside these basic symbols, Mega Moolah features two powerful symbols that may trigger the game’s bonus rounds when they appear in multiples of 2 or more on the game grid.
The first symbol is the Wild Lion, which has two functions: it can act as a substitute for all other symbols in the game apart from the Scatter (which we’ll cover in a minute), and it can also help double your winnings if it appears in combination with other symbols to make a winning line.
What’s great about this Wild is the fact that it offers its own payout when you score 2 or more of them on a single payline. You’ll win 15 coins for 2 Wilds and up to 15,000 coins for a five-of-a-kind across a single line.
The Scatter is represented by the odd-looking purple creature with red dreadlocks. We still can’t tell if this is meant to be a monkey or an old tribal lady in makeup, but regardless, it has a superpower that unlocks the Free Games feature when 3 or more of them appear anywhere on the reels. Once the bonus round is triggered, you’ll receive 15 Free Spins and triple your winnings through a x3 multiplier with every win that occurs in the bonus round thereafter.
During the base game, the maximum you can win is 75,000 coins, and the top award during the bonus round is 225,000 coins. It just goes to show that you can win a ton of money in this slot even if you don’t manage to hit one of the Progressive Jackpots, which we’ll talk about next!
Mega Moolah isn’t home to one but four potentially huge Progressive Jackpots based on how much you’re willing to bet. These are as follows:
Mini Jackpot – Minimum value of £10 but this can vary
Minor Jackpot – Minimum value of £100 but this can vary
Major Jackpot – Minimum value of £1,000 but this could be considerably higher
Mega Jackpot – Minimum value of £1,000,000 but this could be considerably higher
As these are all Progressive Jackpots that work by deducting 2% from every wager placed, the above values are basic estimates, and naturally, they will be larger if there are a lot of people playing the slot.
As for unlocking the jackpots, you’re more likely to trigger both the Mini and Minor more often than the high-value jackpots (the Major and the Mega). The smaller jackpots can be triggered thousands of times per day, whereas the Major may be triggered only a handful of times per day. The Mega Jackpot is the least frequently paid-out prize, and the time it takes to trigger it may vary between a few weeks to months and possibly even years.
You might be able to win up to 75,000 coins during the base game with certain combinations of symbols, which is still a generous amount of money that most players would be more than satisfied with. But this is the world’s highest-paying slot machine, and like you, we’re more interested in hitting the mega bucks.
So how exactly do you get your hands on one of the game’s four Progressive Jackpots? The answer is through the Jackpot Bonus game!
The Jackpot Bonus Game is a second-screen event that occurs randomly after a spin triggers it during the base game. Once triggered, a wheel will appear on the screen, which is divided up into several colored segments. You, the player, will need to spin the wheel, and when it stops on a segment, it will correspond with a prize, aka one of the four Progressive Jackpots. Below are the segments and the jackpot that belongs to each one:
Red Segments – Mini Jackpot
Orange Segments – Minor Jackpot
Yellow Segments – Major Jackpot
Silver Segments – Mega Jackpot
As mentioned, the smaller jackpots are the most frequently won in this game, which means that the wheel is likely to stop on the red or orange sectors more than the other colors. Nevertheless, players have evidently managed to land on both the yellow and the silver segments in the past, which have granted them life-changing sums of money.
Every time you spin the reels, you stand a chance of launching the Jackpot Bonus round in this game—which is where those enormous wins occur. But you need to remember that there is no magic formula for triggering a payout in Mega Moolah because, like all slots, it runs on random number generators.
The good news is that you can maximize your chances of landing a payout by wagering the appropriate amount. Every time you spin the reels on the Mega Moolah slot, your chances of triggering the Jackpot Bonus game are higher if you’re wagering the max bet of $6.25 per spin instead of the bear $0.25 per spin minimum.
In addition, it only takes 3 Scatters to trigger the Free Spins feature, which will get you 15 free spins with a x3 multiplier. This might not trigger the Jackpot Bonus game directly, but it will give you more coins to continue playing the game for longer, which in turn, increases your winning chances.
Yes, the Mega Moolah slot was developed by one of the world’s leading and most trusted iGaming developers, and it has received positive reviews from more than 160 gambling review websites. Microgaming has granted about $1 billion in winnings to gamblers worldwide and holds licenses from the UK Gambling Commission and the Malta Gaming Authority.
The largest payout on Mega Moolah set a new Guinness world record of $21.7 million, which occurred in September 2018. While no one knows the player’s identity, what is known is that they hit the golden winning combination in less than 50 spins, with a total investment of $0.75.
Microgaming, which has been around since 1994, is widely considered one of the industry’s biggest and best slot developers. With a Guinness World Record under its belt and a wide variety of branded games, such as Jurassic World, Game of Thrones, and Playboy, it continues to maintain its reputation for innovation and excellence. At current, Microgaming’s casino software is used by over 150 brick-and-mortar casinos and more than 800 online casinos worldwide.
Mega Moolah’s RTP is around 88%, but that is to be expected for any kind of low-variance slot game that houses such colossal sums of money.
The maximum reward from spinning the reels during ordinary play is 750 coins, in addition to four jackpots that typically have values in the 10s, 100s, 1000s, and 1,000,000s. One of the reasons Mega Moolah has stayed so popular for almost two decades is that the game is recognized for handing out smaller wins more frequently. Bear in mind the word “small” is definitely an understatement here, as the majority of jackpots won averaged out at $6,046,896 on Mega Moolah in 2020.
Will is a former Grosvenor croupier who relocated to Chicago from London in 2013. Not only is he a highly skilled poker player, but he is also an expert in the art of deception, gambling cons, and the world of crypto. Now he uses his knowledge and experience to write and edit detailed reviews of online casinos in a bid to help players avoid online scams and losing their money to rogue gambling sites.
