Hot Shot Slots

Overview

Hot Shot lives up to its name since flames are constantly rising up in the background. The graphics are pretty good overall for being in a cartoon style.

Unfortunately, much like the other flame themed games in this series, Hot Shot features some very generic symbols like 7s, BARs, bells and dollar signs. If you're somebody who's moved far beyond the classic slots period, then these symbols have nothing to offer you.

You will, however, see a couple of decent animations during winning payouts, including bells ringing back and forth, and 7s lighting up with flames.

The highest paying symbol in this game is the blazing 7, which delivers 5,000 coins if you land five of these in a pay line.

Moving to betting options, Hot Shot features 20 pay lines and you must play them all. Assuming you bet $0.01 per coin, this makes the smallest possible wager worth $0.02.

The coin size can be turned all the way up to $20.00, which makes for a maximum bet of $400.00 per spin.

Hot Shot Bonus

The best quality about Hot Shot slots is its five different mini bonus rounds.

This is where the little jackpot counters above each reel come into play. Each reel has its own specific bonus symbol / jackpot:

• Blazing 7s on reel 1
• Diamond Line on reel 2
• Double Blazing 7s on reel 3
• Triple Blazing 7s on reel 4
• Triple Blazing 7s: Seven Times Pay on reel 5

If you get three or more of these bonus symbols anywhere on the reels, you'll start the mini bonus games.

Each symbol that helped trigger the bonus round becomes a small 3 reel slot, and a pay table pops up to show you how much winning pay line combinations are worth. You won't really have time to read the pay table before the reels finish spinning, but you can view all this information on the help screen.

The goal is to hit the winning combinations that'll unlock each progressive jackpot, and the smaller ones are easier to win than the bigger ones.

For example, the second time that we triggered the bonus we won a $20 Blazing 7s jackpot. However, your odds of winning the $20,000, or higher, progressive jackpot in Triple Blazing 7s: Seven Times Pay will be significantly lower.

Once all of the mini 3 reels have stopped spinning, your wins, if any, are tallied up and you return to the main game.

We won't say that this bonus round compares to the second screen bonuses that some newer slots offer. But the mini bonuses certainly add more entertainment to the game, especially since they come up pretty frequently.

Comparison to Hot Shot Slot Machine

The original land based slot machine is essentially the same as the online version, with the same symbols and progressive jackpot bonus system. However, you'll find a couple of notable exceptions between the casino and online versions.

First off, the land based slot has 40 pay lines instead of the 20 pay lines you see online. The second difference is that the land based machine features two bonus wheels, which are easily spotted on the machine's tower.

The upper wheel is triggered when you land two or more regular bonus symbols on the reels. This gives you a spin that could win you up to 400,000 credits.

The lower wheel is triggered through two or more mixed bonus symbols. This is actually a two part wheel, with the outer ring delivering your credit prize and the inner ring determining the multiplier for this payout.

Comparisons to Blazing 7s, Diamond Line & Fireball

Blazing 7s is one of Bally's older success stories; however, it definitely feels dated when compared to Hot Shot and some of the later Bally games.

This 3 reel slot machine doesn't offer any bonus games, as is common for the time period. The top payout is 700 credits, which you get after landing three Blazing 7s in a pay line.

An updated 5 reel version was later released, and you can win up to 20,000 coins on a max bet for landing five Blazing 7s on a pay line. However, we'd hardly say that this newer version of the game stacks up to some of the other slots that we're going to cover.

Diamond Line is almost a Blazing 7s replica, with many of the same symbols and graphics. You'll also see the same mechanical 3 reel setup like any classic slot has.

The key difference is that this 3 reel game has a much bigger jackpot of 10,000 coins.

Keep mind that you won't see Diamond Line and Blazing 7s on casino floors much these days.

Fireball slots could be considered the ultimate upgrade to this series. Like the land based Hot Shot, Fireball features a tower cabinet for bonuses.

In this case, though, the tower is another video slot screen with eight different planets. These represent the different progressive jackpots that you can win after triggering the bonus.

Once the planets change to 3 reel slots, this bonus works exactly the same way as Hot Shot’s does, where the 3 reel set up determines your prize.

As far as the main game goes, Fireball is an improvement in terms of graphics and special effects. Unfortunately, you can only play it online through apps, as opposed to the online version of Hot Shot.

Fireball did so well in casinos that Bally decided to release a sequel. Fireball II is mostly the same as the original version, except that it has a few new symbols, a slightly different bonus round and bonus wheels.

Rather than showing all eight planets at once in the tower screen bonus round, Fireball II shows you one planet at a time. This makes for better graphics and animations before the 3 reel slots start spinning.

The bonus wheels are the only major change, with a credit wheel, free games wheel and jackpot wheel all available. Aside from the bonus wheels, we don’t really think there are enough differences in Fireball II to declare it much better than the first Fireball.