Games like Lightning Link and Ultimate Fire Link are quite popular, thanks in no small part to their cash on reels bonuses – the Hold and Spin and Fire Link bonuses, respectively. You’re required to hit the button for each spin.
Is there a significance? A player asked:
On Lightning Link on the ball bonus, is your bonus amount predetermined when you got the bonus, or is it based on the timing of each spin?
Edie M.
We’ve spoken with those in the know at Aristocrat (about Lightning Link and its siblings) and at Light & Wonder (for Ultimate Fire Link and its siblings). For both of those games, the outcome is determined when you press spin for each spin, as to whether any other balls will drop or not. In other words, it’s reliant on the timing of each spin and what the Random Number Generator yields at that exact moment.
This tends to correlate with the fact that most free spin bonuses are similarly driven by the Random Number Generator and aren’t predetermined in advance. The hold and spin type bonuses are, still, spins with reels inside each square of the board, so it’s effectively still using math to balance out the outcomes over time, as opposed to predetermined bonuses upfront.
What makes this sort of knowledge interesting and exciting is that theoretically a top progressive jackpot could be possible in any given bonus – it’s not already struck out through a predetermined outcome. Lightning Link and its siblings even visually display it out there in full display with how it handles the potential for another prize to land in a given square.
Lightning Link has other interesting layers to it, like the potential for bigger prizes to be emphasized in a minority of bonuses, or as Brian Christopher likes to say, Big Numbers Attract Big Numbers. We’ve talked about that elsewhere, but it really is a compelling game structure that a decade on continues to draw player interest.
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I was playing coin trio, and when I was in the bonus and got down to my last two squares, both squares had coins going around. I got one of the squares, and on all three spins of my last square there were coins going around. I did not get the last square filled in, maybe should have I stopped the reel mid spin on one of my three chances?
Hey Shari! Although the bonus is based on the random number generator, what will land is determined when you start the spin, so stopping the reel would not change whether a prize lands or not.