Banana Town

Banana Town: Slot Overview

In the evolution of video games, some releases tower above others, providing inspiration, fuelling the industry, or being simply downright fun to play. One of the early video game titans was Donkey Kong, created by Shigeru Miyamoto and released in 1981. The game was a hit and went on to spawn numerous sequels, spin-offs, and franchises; and was the first time Mario appeared on screen before going on to find his own mega success. Tapping into the look and feel of an earlier Donkey Kong inspired age is an online slot called Banana Town from Relax Gaming. Banana Town is a game that uses a scatter pays system in combination with cascades, symbol specific progressive win multipliers, and free spins.

Relax Gaming has evoked the spirit of an earlier age of video gaming by using an 8-bit approach to style Banana Town. This isn’t the first time the studio has done so, so we’re guessing someone on the team has a soft spot for classic video games. Similar releases from Relax Gaming have been the Christmas slot Santa’s Stack and the outstanding celebration of all things old-school in Hellcatraz, though the game that might actually have started the trend was Thunderkick with Flame Busters. It means chunkier than normal graphics, jerkier than usual animations, and bleepy sounds. Modern gamers might find it a tad old fashioned, but perhaps not, since games like the Mr Hopp’s Playhouse trilogy, and Baldi’s Basics are popular at the time of writing, all having an old-school flavour about them.

Played on a 6-reel, 5-column panel, Banana Town uses a scatter pay system to generate wins. As long as at least 8 matching symbols are in view, anywhere on the grid, a payout is made, similar to popular games like Sweet Bonanza. Wins occur at a frequency of 18.45%, leading to a total return value of 96.12%, or 96.16%, when buying free spins. Regular bets range from 10 p/c to $/€50 per spin, which should satisfy most players.

Normal pay symbols consist of four lower value bananas coloured in blue, green, red, and yellow, plus five gangster looking monkey symbols. Landing 8-9 matching symbols is worth 0.5x for the low pays, rising to 1-4x for the high pays, while 12+ symbol wins pay 2-3x for the lows and 4-12x for the premiums. No wilds are used in Banana Town at any time.

Banana Town: Slot Features

The features in Banana Town are quite simplistic and include a progressive multiplier system in the base game, which gets a persistent factor when free spins are active. Firstly though, when a scatter win hits, the winning symbols are removed from the grid and symbols left on the reels fall down to close the gaps. If a new winning scatter is formed, the cascade feature is repeated again until no new win appears. In addition, wins are collected by a meter located on the right side of the grid. Each winning symbol type increases its corresponding win multiplier. The multipliers start at x1 and double after each symbol win, up to a maximum of x64.

Free Spins

A total of 8 free spins are triggered when 3 dollar sign symbols land, plus an extra spin is granted for each additional dollar sign in view. While free spins are active, individual dollar sign symbols may add +1 free spins to the remaining amount. One important difference in the bonus round is that each symbol’s win multiplier is persistent, so they do not reset back to x1 as they do in the bonus round.

Bonus Buy

Rather than wait for the requisite number of dollar sign bonus symbols to hit, applicable players can pay 100x the bet to trigger free spins right away. Before bought free spins begin, win multipliers can be randomly increased.

Banana Town: Slot Verdict

If you’re keen on a bit of back in the day gaming, then Banana Town should be a delight when it opens up. It doesn’t have the immediate pull Hellcatraz had, and the gameplay isn’t as in-depth either, but the bright, sunny use of the limited colour palette is pleasing to the eyes and no doubt heart-warming as well if you grew up playing video games that looked like this. Donkey Kong is an absolute legend, being a platform-based paradigm shift that boosted both Nintendo and the video game industry as a whole. He sits up there alongside luminaries like Pac-Man, Ms Pac-Man, Mario, Sonic, Pikachu, and Link, as entertainment royalty.

In many early video games, figuring out patterns can lead to glorious moments, but until then, the learning curve can be quite frustrating. Do you ever remember playing older games and feeling like they weren’t just difficult, but the console or computer was actively working against you to make you lose? How many controllers have been smashed on the ground in fits of exasperation…? We’re not saying Banana Town has much of a learning curve. On the contrary, it’s a simple game, really. Land wins, build multipliers, and hopefully land more wins to benefit from said multipliers. It can happen in the base game during better cascade sequences, though free spins are where the magic is probably more likely to happen since multipliers are persistent. Hitting the buy free spins option was where frustration was highest, as it seemed rather difficult to end a round with a positive result.

Of course, we might have hit a poor run, fair dues, and there were times when a sizable multiplier met with a decent scatter win for a satisfying payout. Banana Town is not one of Relax Gaming’s massive slots, though, with a modest (for them) max win of 10,000x the bet. It also didn’t feel as explosive as other slots they’ve done. In Banana Town, landing 12 or more of the top premium symbols at the same time as an x64 multiplier leads to 768x the bet payout. Few would say no to a hit like that, but again, it’s kind of modest by Relax Gaming standards.

The good news is that Relax Gaming standards are exceptionally high, and even if Banana Town might not be one of their key releases, it’s still an enjoyable, potentially exasperating, exploration of an earlier era of gaming with a simple yet at times thrilling set of features.