Fantastic 4 (Playtech)

The Fantastic Four made their first appearance in a comic book in November 1971 and became an instant hit. Since then they have been in countless comics, several movies and a range of other games including a slot machine. Now Playtech have released their own version of the Fantastic Four slot machine.

The game is part of the Playtech Marvel Jackpot network which means you have a chance at winning one of four progressive jackpots on every spin. The jackpot feature is triggered randomly and you do not need to play max bet to have a shot at the jackpots. If you do bet bigger then you have a bigger chance of getting the jackpot feature.

When it comes to betting options, Fantastic Four has some of the widest betting limits online with coin sizes starting at 0.01 and going up to 2.00. Max bet is 200 coins per spin so you can bet betting max for as little as 2.00 per spin or as much as 400.00.

On the reels the Fantastic 4 logo is the wild symbol. The wild substitutes for all symbols except the scattered Earth symbols. Line up five of the wild Fantastic 4 logos and you win the base games highest pay of 10,000 coins. This can be multiplied by up to 10 based on the amount of credits you play per line. At max it pays a big 100,000 coins.

After the top line win for the five wilds the second highest line win is 3,000 coins for four of the wilds. The Fantastic Four then make up the next highest pays. Five Mr Fantastic pay 2,000 coins, five Invisible Woman pay 1,500 coins, five Human Flame pay 1,000 coins and five Thing pay 750 coins.

The A, K, Q, J, 10 and 9 symbols make up the games lower line wins with five of a kind pays for these symbols coming in at 250 (A and K), 150 (Q and J) and 100 (10 and 9). In total there are 30 unique winning combination on the reels.

The scattered Earth symbols are the key to the feature on Fantastic 4. Get three or more anywhere on the screen and you win 12 free spins with four extra bonuses. Getting five of the Earth symbols pays a very handy 200X your bet or 40,000 coins at 10 coins per line.

During the free games there are stacked Fantastic Four characters on the middle reel. If you get a whole reel of a single character you win that characters special feature. Each character has a unique bonus which are as follows.

• Mr Fantastic (Preview)
  Get 4 extra spins where Mr Fantastic becomes and expanding wild on all reels. Mr Fantastic substitutes for all symbols but the wild and scatter.
   
• Invisible Woman (Preview)
  Adds 4 more spins and a starting multiplier of X1. Every time Invisible Woman appears at least once on the reels the multiplier goes up by X1. At the end of the feature all wins are multiplied by the accumulated multiplier.
   
• Human Torch (Preview)
  Awards 4 extra spins where the first reel is wild. The Mr Fantastic, The Thing and Invisible Woman symbols are removed from the reels and additional Human Torch symbols are added to the reels.
   
• The Thing (Preview)
  Gives you 3 extra spins where every time a Thing symbol appears it is held for the remaining feature spins and turned wild. The wild Thing symbols substitutes for all symbols except the wilds and the scattered Earth.

It's always great to see a slot machine that offers something unique and Fantastic 4 delivers on this. The four extra features on the free spins keep things exciting and even though you cannot re-trigger the free games you can get a lot more than just 12 spins by winning the extra bonuses.

Playtech have done a great job with Fantastic 4 and captured the theme perfectly. With some big pays on the reels and the chance to win one of four progressives every spin it is sure to be a popular pick for years to come.

Update (October 2011) : Playtech have released a 50 line version of Fantastic 4. All of the game features and jackpots are the same so if you prefer slot machines with more pay lines then the 50 line version offers another way to play.