Ten years ago, the original Bonanza put Megaways on the map. Big Time Gaming launches Bonanza More Gold on November 24, pushing the old mine to a 100,000x max win on a 6x7 grid with very high volatility and a 96.52% RTP. You get two new bonus wheels that can triple your multiplier speed, provided your 140x feature buy dodges the one slice on the wheel that strips away every new upgrade.
Ten Years in the Mine
Watching Big Time Gaming update its most famous slot over the last decade has been a study in trial and error. The 2016 original capped out at 12,000x your stake and had no bonus buy. In 2022, Christmas Bonanza put snow on the mine carts, raised the cap to 26,000x, and let you buy the bonus for 90x. A year later, Bonanza Falls reached 93,540x, but only by bolting an arcade coin-pusher onto the top of the screen.
Bonanza More Gold ditches the coin-pusher and goes back to cascading reactions, while raising the ceiling to 100,000x your stake (with base game exposure listed at 30,000x your stake on the technical sheet). Even with a six-figure top prize, the studio kept the bet limits open: instead of capping stakes at €10 like most 100,000x slots, operators can run max bets of €8, €16, or €33 depending on whether they set their house payout cap at 250,000, 500,000, or 1,000,000.
The other big fix happens in the base game. Anyone who put hours into the 2016 original remembers the dead stretches where reels landed two symbols high, leaving you with a tiny 64-way grid while you waited for four gold bars to spell G-O-L-D. Here, toggling on Power Play for 5x your stake forces the reels to land with at least 10,000 Megaways on every single spin, giving you the same 10,000-way minimum floor we saw in Monopoly Money and Monster Quest, but for 5x per spin instead of 8x.
One Wheel Has a Catch
Landing 4 GOLD Scatters still triggers 12 Free Spins, where every cascading reaction raises an unlimited win multiplier. Instead of starting straight at 1x, you first spin an 8-slice Feature Wheel to lock in a perk for the round.
Most of these slices borrow the best upgrades from Max Megaways and Extra Chilli More Chilli:
- Multiplier Doubler and Multiplier Boost: Either starts your win multiplier at 2x and climbs by +2 after every reaction, or starts the round at a flat 5x.
- Increased Ways: Guarantees at least 4 symbols per reel, giving you a floor of 4,096 ways on every free spin.
- Wild Bomb and x2 Wild: Drops Barrel Wilds that turn nearby symbols into wilds, or puts a 2x multiplier on every wild in the top carts.
- Retrigger Surge: Pays 3, 6, or 12 extra Free Spins when just 2, 3, or 4 Scatters roll into the mine carts, rather than making you wait for three.
Then there is the catch. Sitting right next to the Super Upgrade wedge is a slice called Classic Free Spins. Land on that, and you get zero upgrades—just the plain +1 reaction rules from ten years ago. Spinning into a retro round after grinding for four scatters in the base game is one thing, but hitting Classic Free Spins after paying 140x your stake in the Bonus Buy menu stings. Remember, Christmas Bonanza sold you that exact classic bonus for 90x.
Where the 100,000x Lives
To reach the real firepower of this math model without risking the classic slice, you have to land 5 Scatters in the base game, hit the Super Upgrade wedge on the first wheel, or pay 300x your stake in the Bonus Buy menu for the 6-slice Super Wheel.
That 300x price tag matches the top high-roller buys in Outlaw and Castle of Terror 2, and every slice on the second wheel changes how the grid behaves:
- Super Increased Ways: Locks all 6 reels to at least 6 symbols high, guaranteeing a floor of 46,656 ways to win on every spin up to the 117,649 max.
- Super Multiplier Triplier: Starts your win multiplier at 3x and jumps by +3 after every single reaction. In the 2016 game, reaching a 15x multiplier took 14 reactions; here, it takes 4.
- Super Multiplier Boost: Starts your first free spin at a flat 20x multiplier.
- Super Retrigger Surge, x4 Wild, and Super Wild Bomb: Awards 1, 3, 6, or 12 extra Free Spins from 1, 2, 3, or 4 Scatters, puts 4x multipliers on all wilds, or blasts Barrel Wilds across two directions.
Final Thoughts
For years, slot studios treated the original gold mine like a museum piece they were afraid to touch. By keeping the cascading reels instead of forcing in a hold-and-spin side game, Bonanza More Gold feels like the sequel players waited a decade to spin. The 46,656-way floor and +3 reaction climbs on the Super Wheel show how hard the old engine can hit when you take the brakes off, and pricing the 10,000-way Power Play at 5x your stake makes base spins much livelier. Still, charging 140x for the entry-level Feature Wheel while leaving a plain Classic Free Spins slice on the board is a rough joke. Before you start digging, check the help file at your casino: this is one of the few Big Time Gaming releases that ships with four return tiers, meaning operators can drop the top 96.46%–96.52% RTP down to 94.22%, 91.36%, or 86.25%.
Read Next
If you love the way this sequel uses Increased Ways and Multiplier Doubler upgrades to speed up classic Megaways reactions, but you hate the idea of paying 140x and landing on a classic slice with zero perks, check out Big Time Gaming's Extra Chilli More Chilli. It takes those exact same upgrades, including 4,096-way floors, +2 reaction multipliers, and a 5x Power Play, and builds them straight into base-game respins that carry over into every bonus round, while sharing the same €33 max stake headroom.
