Rainbow Riches Slot by Light & Wonder

The first thing to know is that there's no free spins round. Land enough scatters and you fall into one of three completely separate bonuses instead, each triggered by its own symbol and each playing out a different way. That structure is what made this title the one every later Rainbow Riches game copied. The base reels are simple: 20 fixed lines paying left to right, a Wild that fills in for everything except the three feature symbols, and a smiling leprechaun sitting at the top of the pay ladder above the chunky card royals.

The Road to Riches feature is the climb. Three of its symbols send you to a trail of rising multipliers, and you advance by spinning an eight-segment spinner marked with step numbers and two Collect stops. You keep moving up the trail until a Collect lands or you reach the top, then bank whatever multiplier you stopped on against your stake. Four trigger symbols open a Super version with a higher ceiling, five open the Mega version with the steepest trail of all.

Wishing Well works differently. Three or more of the thatched stone wells trigger a straight pick: choose one well, pull out a hidden multiplier, and it's applied to your total bet. More wells in the trigger unlock bigger multiplier values to pick from. Pots of Gold is the third, and it only fires when three pots land on the middle three reels. A wheel of three pots, bronze, silver and gold, spins until an arrow settles on one, paying that pot's multiplier.

Visually it's the luck-of-the-Irish setup that has barely changed since the 2006 cabinet. Bright emerald hills roll under a blue sky, a rainbow arcs across the left toward a distant pot of gold, and the gold-outlined rainbow wordmark sits over an ornate gold-and-wood border around the reels. Saturated greens and golds throughout, cartoon icons, nothing subtle about any of it. Light & Wonder still runs this Barcrest original largely untouched, which is fair enough, since it's one of the most recognisable slots the UK has ever put on a screen.