Description
Hilariously over-the-top and weirdly compelling, sun-drenched Baywatch was everyone’s must-watch Nineties TV programme. The so-appalling-it’s-brilliant series ran from 1989 to 1999, while Baywatch: Hawaii aired for a couple of seasons after that.
A 2017 spin-off movie sparked renewed interest in the show, which starred Pamela Anderson and David Hasselhoff as CJ Parker and Mitch Buchannon and followed the lives and loves of the scarlet swimwear-sporting LA county lifeguards as they saved drowning people from the choppy waves.
Fans can now play a five-reel, 20-Payline video slot game based on the show, Baywatch Slot, from Playtech and featuring Pammy as her character CJ in an entertaining game that’s packed with bonuses.
As you’d expect, the stunning Californian beach is the backdrop to this game, with Pammy herself placed winsomely to the left of the reels. One or two reviewers have remarked on the grating nature of the background music, but you can mute that if you prefer.
How to play
Enable all Paylines and you can play from 20p to £500 a slot, so a good range of budgets is catered for. You can reduce Paylines as much as you want to play with smaller stakes, however doing so means you will win proportionately less during the bonus features.
Three popular Baywatch characters – Caroline Holden, Neely Capshaw and Matt Brody, join a jet ski, rescue board and speedboat in making up the more lucrative symbols in this game. The standard, lower-paying playing-card icons are also here.
Baywatch Slot special features
Special symbols
The Baywatch slot logo is the Scatter, with the famous Baywatch tower; CJ Parker serves as the Wild and there’s a flashing yellow light acting as another bonus symbol.
Bonus games
Free spins
A dozen free spins are yours if you bag three of the Scatters wherever you like on the reels. Although this is essentially a fairly basic prize with no multipliers, it does serve as a gateway to some other bonus rounds.
If the middle reel is filled with lifeguards in every position, prepare to enjoy one of three fun, potentially lucrative additional bonuses:
- The Caroline Holden feature – Receive half a dozen spins with a 3x multiplier. The Caroline symbol then substitutes all the other characters.
- The Matt Brody feature – Again, bag six free whirls, but a Wild gets added to the reels before the first, fourth and sixth spins. These stay in place until the feature has ended.
- The Neely Capshaw feature – This is the most lucrative of the three lifeguard features. Again, enjoy six free spins, with an x2 multiplier, which increases by x1 each time Neely appears.
The rescue feature
Activate this one by landing the flashing yellow light rescue symbol anywhere on Reel 5. You then have the following couple of choices:
- Lifeguard mini-bonus feature — You’ll see 15 sand-covered lifeguards. Uncover three of a kind to get a prize, with CJ again the highest-paying symbol, at potentially10x your stake.
- CJ Parker respins feature — This awards a single respin, with up to four extra Wilds added to the reels. If a Scatter is covered by a Wild, it pays out as a Wild.
Return to Player (RTP)
With a Return to Player of up to 96.25%, the RTP on Baywatch Slot is on the generous side of average.
Verdict
This game is fun, and it’s nicely designed with some good bonus rounds, although it would perhaps be wrong to expect too many huge wins from it. Of course, you’ll particularly enjoy it if you loved Baywatch the TV series.
The bigger wins will tend to come from the Neely Capshaw round, which has an 8x multiplier, but one reviewer did say they found the bonus features took quite a long time to roll around.
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