Basketball Star Slot
First, there was Cricket Star, then there was Rugby Star, and now comes Basketball Star. Basketball Star is the newest release in Microgaming's range of 'sports star' slots games. It has five reels and the maximum of 243 pay lines. The symbols used in the game are all basketball related – basketball boots, drinks carriers, coach's tools and medals. There are also several scenes depiciting basketball action, in which all the players – strangely – are white. We think the graphic designer involved with this slot has never watched the world's most popular basketball league, the NBA in the USA.
You start each spin in this game by selecting your bet size from 0.50 to the maximum of 50.00. This is a straight bet, so you cannot select how many coins you wish to wager with each spin. All 243 lines are in play at all times, which makes the game very easy to play as all you need to do to secure a win is to land identical symbols in sequence from the left hand side in any position. Not only does it make the game easier to play, it also makes the game more fun to play. When you are ready to set up for the game-winning three-pointer, hit the spin button.
Payout & bonus rounds
Each spin on Basketball Star is counted as fifty coins, so if your bet is 0.50, your coin size is 0.01. The lowest winning payout is for three basketball coaching boards, at 2x your coin size, the biggest payout is for five of a player dumping a colleague on the floor, at 600x your coin size.
There are more than forty wild symbols on the reels, and they are stacked three-high on the central three reels. The wild symbols substitute for all other symbols except for the scatter. There's also the 'Wild Shot' feature in which up to two wild reels will randomly turn wild, scoring you a guaranteed win.
A basketball is the scatter symbol in this game. You need to land three or more anywhere on the reels to trigger the free spins feature. Three scatters land you fifteen three spins, four scatter lands you twenty and five lands you twenty-five.
The game also has a 'rolling reels' feature – every time you score a winning symbol combination the winning symbols disappear and new ones drop down to replace them, possibly triggering new wins. During free spins when this happens a multiplier appears, and each time you achieve a 'rolling reels win' the multiplier ups one level until it reaches a maximum of 10x.
We'd like to say 'Basketball Star' is a slam-dunk of a game, but if you've played Cricket Star or Rugby Star, you'll recognise that this is simply a re-skinning of those games. The lack of black players in the game is a bit of an unfortunate oversight as well, especially as most of the best players in the game's history – think Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and LeBron James – are black. All in all, Basketball Star is a bit of a let-down.