Cool Bananas seems to be inspired by the King Kong movies, the ones where a giant ape is loose in New York, with the army on its tails and looking to take him down. Just like in the movies, Mighty Monkey is huge and he has kidnapped a young female. He looks much cooler in Cool Bananas though, wearing sunglasses and a floral shirt, plus a gold earring in one ear. The theme is interesting, but the actual implementation is nothing special, a typical old slot machine look, with stock playing cards and a city behind the reels.
The 9 paylines provided in Cool Bananas are placed on its 5 reels. The developer of the slot is called Cryptologic, an established company with a great reputation. Having games which offer $100,000 jackpots is one of the reasons why they’re so appreciated, and this game is one of those titles that pay well. As for the features, they’re not that impressive, as only free spins and two wild symbols are offered.
Features of Cool Bananas
Despite having such a cool idea for a theme, Cool Bananas doesn’t bring much to the table when it comes to features, and it feels like the developers missed an opportunity here. You get basic wild symbols and free spins with multipliers, nothing else.
The wild symbol is the only one to have a special role in this game. There are two types of wilds you can get, one the Mighty Monkey, the other a Banana. The Banana wild is only available on the 3rd reel, while Mighty Monkey can appear on the other four reels. For the most part, the only thing you can expect from these wilds is to use their substitution powers to help you form more combinations.
However, when you get both a Banana wild on the 3rd reel, and at least one Mighty Monkey wild on the other reels, you get the free spins feature. Each Mighty Monkey wild that contributes gives you 10 free spins, with the maximum being 40. These 10 to 40 free spins all take advantage of a multiplier, which doubles all their prizes.
Betting options and jackpots
Though most slots with 9 lines tend to stop with their betting requirements at about $45, Cool Bananas can get bets of up to $180. That means a coin denomination of up to $20, the starting point being quite high as well, at $1. You can’t bet less than $1 per spin, which would be the smallest value of a single coin. If you want to cover all the lines, the smallest bet is $9.
A large bet brings with it a better payout, so the 5,000 coins of the jackpot can turn into $100,000 cash in this case. Use smaller coins, and the cash value drops accordingly.
Design and symbols
The design and the theme seem to be connected with some kind of Great Ape theme, similar to the one from King Kong. The huge ape is part of the game, as is a girl and a city where Mighty Monkey wreaks havoc in. The design is not a new one, so you don’t get a high level of quality when it comes to the graphics.
Symbols: Mighty Monkey (wild), Banana (wild), Blonde Girl (5,000x), City (2,000x), Ice Cream (1,000x), Sunglasses (1,000x), Ace/King (500x), Queen/Jack (200x) and Ten/Nine (150x).
Is It Worth Playing?
Cool Bananas does give you a good amount of free spins with multipliers, so it has that going for it, but it’s slightly disappointing when it comes to the number of features you get overall. The $100,000 jackpot is not disappointing however, so if you can afford the $180 bet, give it a shot.
This Cool Bananas slot is offered by all online casinos with Cryptologic software, playable either in practice or in real money mode.
