Buffalo Gold Head Slot Machine

That’s right. The first step is admitting you have a problem. We all do, when it comes to the Buffalo slot. Why is that? As much as we may like other slot machines, the Buffalo calls to us, almost like that slot machine in the old Twilight Zone episode that calls out the hapless hero’s name (and at one point, follows him up to his hotel room). Très creepy.

This is the most incredible win! I got to play the Buffalo Xtreme Slot Machine for the first time at San Manuel Casino, and I hit a once in a lifetime win! Aristocrat Leisure Limited introduced the Buffalo slot machine game to land-based casinos in 2006. The game uses graphics matching magazine-quality illustrations and also replaces the older paylines times bet per line betting system with the innovative Xtra Reel Power system described below.

The Buffalo slot machine (in all its manifestations) has none of that creepiness. The sound effects are benign, even friendly. Buffalo seems like such a good-natured machine. And it’s generous, too. So what if the wins tend to be less than huge?

Ask anyone who’s shoveled a hundred bucks or more into a “cold” slot machine, and they’ll tell you that small-but-frequent wins are easily preferable to huge-but-rare wins. Well, they’re both nice, but in our heart of hearts, we slot players know that the pay tables eventually favor the house.

Somehow, the Buffalo slot manages to convince us we’re ahead of the game (or drawing closer to it), even when we’re clearly not. How does Aristocrat achieve this?

It’s a clever and skillful combination of those frequent small wins with bonuses inside bonuses, free spins, re-triggers, multipliers that multiply other multipliers, and at the heart of it all, Aristocrat’s own invention, Reel Power.

Reel Power (and its own spin-offs, Xtra Reel Power and Super Reel Power) is a departure from the time-tested single-line slot machine that required symbols to line up along a horizontal line etched into the glass face of the machine.

Oh, there were some innovations, such as three-line and five-line machines, but these all required a bet placed on each line to activate it as a winning option.

Other manufacturers built three-line and even five-line machines, all of which required an escalating coin-in to qualify for the full number of win-lines.

Enter Aristocrat. In the 1990s, Aristocrat developed what it called Reel Power, which did away with the “lines” concept and made the entire face (the five mechanical reels were now mere digital images on a video screen by this time) a winning field.

Instead of five pay lines (three horizontal lines for the three rows of symbols, along with the two diagonal lines), Aristocrat made a lineless screen, and five matching symbols appearing in any of the three horizontal rows resulted in a win.

Not to go all mathematical on you, but with five reels, each presenting three symbols, this gave the slot player 243 ways he or she could win.

Naturally, with this arrangement, wins would occur much more frequently, and since slot players aren’t paying for those machines — casinos are — Aristocrat had to downsize the wins.

Along with more frequent wins, Aristocrat tossed in bonus rounds, nested multipliers, and wild cards that double as win-multipliers, and you have a winning combination.

By the way, Xtra Reel Power is the addition of a fourth horizontal row of symbols to the game, which gives the player 1024 ways to win, and Super Reel Power is the addition of a fifth horizontal row of symbols (giving the player over 3000 paths to glory).

Me, I’m waiting for Aristocrat to develop Super-Duper Reel Power, in which I win without leaving the house and they just mail me a check.

But we were talking about Aristocrat, the American success story from Australia.

It took some time for the Buffalo to catch on, particularly in “destination” cities like Las Vegas and Reno.

Vegas and Reno (and even Atlantic City) weren’t the only places with casinos, as it happens. Tribal casinos were springing up in the oddest places, and — more often than not — they catered to locals much more than the “destination” casinos did.

Aristocrat put Buffalo slots in these tribal casinos, and — wouldn’t you know it? The locals liked the reality of many small wins to the fantasy of the big jackpot. They adored the cry of “Buffalooooo!” whenever even the smallest win took place. And they were enamored with the idea of “lineless” slots, where even the minimum bet could reap real rewards.

Aristocrat Leisure Limited introduced the Buffalo slot machine game to land-based casinos in 2006. The game uses graphics matching magazine-quality illustrations and also replaces the older paylines times bet per line betting system with the innovative Xtra Reel Power system described below. This new system was considered an improvement over the once popular 243-way Reel Power bettingsystem.

The symbols in the game are drawn from the North American wildlife library. The game’s titular creature is the American Bison, which everyone calls a Buffalo. Other creatures included in the gameare the Bald Eagle, the Elk, and the Puma.

It is an interesting coincidence that all of the animals featured in the game are widely known by multiple names: Buffalo (Bison), Bald Eagle (American or White Eagle), Puma (Mountain Lion orCougar or Panther), and Elk (Wapiti). Many animal species have been given multiple names but these four important North American animals are well recognized under two or more names by the generalpublic.

As an aside, the Wapiti is native to eastern Asia as well as North America and since 1998 DNA analysis has shown that Elk (once thought to be a sub-species of deer) are a distinct species withseveral sub-species. But you don’t need to know any of that if you’re just interested in gambling unless you want to pick up a few dollars in a bar bet.

Buffalo Gold Slot Machine Explained

Aristocrat released an online version of the game in 2012. This article reviews the online version of Buffalo.