Big Red Pokies Machine
The Big Red online pokies game is based on the famed and rugged Australian outback. With fierce symbols of this vast, untamed, and dangerous land, Big Red pokies gives you the chance to experience a long walkabout back of beyond, yet from the comfort of your home. As you will see, a real walkabout in the Outback is not for the faint of heart.
Origins
Big Red Pokies Machine was released in 2003 by Aristocrat Leisure, the home-grown Aussie pokies developer, and has been hugely popular ever since. It is an old-school pokies with five reels and three lines. Aristocrat Leisure purposely created an uncomplicated pokies with only five pay lines. It’s true that compared to today’s highly sophisticated games, you might think that Big Red pokies game is somewhat slow and dull. Well, it is as dull as the great Outback itself! And, it is a slow as the wild boar, one of the animal symbols in Big Red pokies!
Big Red pokies’ simplicity is Aristocrat Leisure’s way of enabling players with modest bankrolls to play the game at length and at their leisure. Unlike the modern extravaganzas with 243 ways to win, Big Red pokies offers five pay lines. Thus, it doesn’t cost much to cover the entire board. Furthermore, with five pay lines, the maximum payout for the highest paying symbols is higher than the highest payout when there are so many more ways to win.
Geography Lesson
Every Aussie knows that the Big Red is the Simpson Desert, marked by big, shifting sand dunes which reflect red in the sun. The Simpson Desert is only the fourth largest desert in Australia, yet it is far larger than most nations of the world! This is the immense land you will cross in the Big Red pokies.
The Symbols
In keeping with the traditional pokies motif, the Big Red Pokies Machine features the Royalty Symbols: King, Queen, and Jack. These Royals rival any Royals you might see online or in person. There are also the regular 9 and 10 spots to round out the regular symbols. These symbols represent stability and tradition but, as you are deep within the vast Australian Outback, danger lurks around every tree, rock, and sand dune.
The ferocious Crocodile with its powerful snap jaw and strong tail is one of the most feared creatures in all the land. The ever-present threat of a croc suddenly appearing as if from nowhere makes you think twice about approaching any body of water in the Outback; yet, it is also the highest paying symbol in Big Red pokies. Clearly the croc proves the claim that the higher the risk the greater the reward.
The Wild Boar comes at you snout first. It reminds you of all the tall tales and even some true tales of men and women in the Outback just missing becoming lunch to a wild boar. In Big Red pokies game, you don’t want to avoid the wild boar; it is the second highest paying symbol in the game. You just want to keep a safe distance away from it to profit from its appearance!
Contrasted to the wild boar is the Dingo. Aussies all know that the Dingo is no mere prairie dog. The Dingo combines the misleading cuteness of the jackal, the guile of the fox, and the ruthlessness of the wolf to create a desert creature that no one would relish encountering. Just as you welcome the crocodile and wild boar at safe but profitable distances, you hope the Dingo will show its face, pay you your winnings, and recede into the desert.
We never wish for anyone or any land animal for that matter to perish in the desert. It is no pleasant thought that the hungry, soaring hawk is waiting for some carrion flesh to dine on. The Eagle is another of the symbols you will encounter in your walkabout in the Outback. We love to see the Eagle but whenever it shows up we pinch ourselves, just to be reassured that the Eagle is there to win money for us, not to munch us for lunch.
Any traveler in the Outback may feel lonely at times. Every Aussie knows that it is the loneliness of the walkabout that is also its greatest feature. To symbolize the occasional loneliness of the Outback, Big Red Pokies gives you a lone Baobab tree. The baobab tree may be the greatest stationary symbol of the walkabout. Despite being alone, it is truly stately. The Baobab is also the Scatter symbol. In the regular game it facilitates nice payouts but it truly comes into its own in the free spins area.
The Australian kangaroo may not strike as much fear in travelers as the other symbols but neither would you want to box the Kangaroo in Big Red Pokies. You want the kangaroo to come checkbook in hand or at least with some nice winnings.
Wild and Scatter
The kangaroo is the Wild symbol. It appears on lines 3, 4, and 5. It has two profit-making functions. First, it substitutes for any other symbol except the scatter. More importantly, however, when the kangaroo Wild symbol helps you make a winning line, it automatically sends you to the bonus area where you receive five free spins.
Free Spins
When you reach the free spin bonus area, the scatters come fast and furious. A thunderstorm strikes whenever a baobab scatter appears in a bonus spin! This is your signal that you are winning a big payout! In the Australian Deserts, rain is always at a premium. Some locations may go completely dry for years. Then, BOOM! A huge thunderstorm will hit, rain will cascade down in sheets, and the land will come alive with vegetation. In Big Red pokies, lightning definitely can strike twice in the same spot. In fact, because of the retrigger mechanism, your payout in the free spins bonus zone can reach thousands of dollars. The bonus retriggers when a Wild symbol gives you a winning line during a free spin. This triggers five more free spins. The number of free spins you’ve collected is shown in the top right corner of the screen.
Good for the Soul
As you play Big Red Pokies and feel the power represented in each symbol, it is good to let your imagination soar with the Eagle, dive deep with the Croc, howl in the night with the Dingo, forage like a Wild Boar, stand tall and majestic like the Baobab, and run with the Kangaroo; but it is also good to know that cold pints are waiting and as close as the nearest pub. No need to tread silently to the watering hole when darts await down the way!
With every spin you hear the clompety-clomp of a kangaroo. The music in Big Red pokies is neo-pokies in the regular game. It rises and quickens when your winnings increase in the regular game; but it undergoes a dramatic transformation into the eerie hoots and howls of a desert Outback walkabout during the bonus free spins.
Gamble
After every winning spin, you will be offered the chance to gamble the amount you have just won. You can guess the color of the next randomly chosen card for a 2x multiplier. Or, you can guess the suit of the next card for a 4x multiplier. If you are lucky and keep winning your gambles, you can continue to gamble five times.
A quick mathematical calculation reveals that if you gamble a $10 win and double your money five times, you will have $320!
The minimum bet per line is one credit. You don’t have to play every line and you don’t have to bet the same amount on each line you play. Most winning payouts are based on your bet on the line that gave you the win. The Scatter payout is calculated by the wager on the winning line times the number of lines played.
Payout Multipliers
The payouts in Big Red pokies are interesting in themselves. The payouts are actually a multiplier. To read the pay table, click on “help” to the left of the screen. The numbers are the base multipliers. You multiply the number shown by the amount you bet on the winning line.
The Royals and the number cards have relatively small multipliers. You would expect Royals to be a little tight-fisted! But even they pay extremely well when you get four or five symbols. The payouts get especially interesting when the animals are involved. The croc and the wild boar pay for even one symbol. They pay small but they pay! All the animals pay modestly for two symbols. But then the multipliers jump significantly. Old Mr. Croc has a multiplier of 1250 for a five win while the snorting wild boar brings a cool 1000x multiplier for five symbols.
We acknowledge that thousands, even tens of thousands, are not the millions you hope to win at the big-money progressive pokies; yet, Big Red has a return to player rate of 97.04%! It is because of the high multipliers that Big Red pokies is categorized as a volatile pokies. You may have fewer payouts but they will be substantial. Surely, with such a high return rate, and high multipliers, you stand a good chance of finishing your Big Red walkabout in the black!
