Are you looking to play Mega Moolah in 2024? Are you wondering if this game still pays jackpots in millions or if it has died down since its heyday? You’ve come to the right place. On this page we’ll examine Mega Moolah in detail and tell you everything you need to know, including where to play, what jackpot sizes to look forward to, and how to play to increase your chances to win.
Some of the key things you’ll find on this page include:
Mega Moolah, released in 2006, can be credited as main driving force behind the rise of the industry of online gambling. That’s how pivotal this game was to the industry, and still is. The winners of millions of dollars have frequently made the news, which made more and more people join the jackpot-hunting party, and then they moved on onto other slot games.
Mega Moolah is a simple 5×3 game with a cartoonish safari theme, a free spins bonus round, a Lion Wild that doubles wins, and a jackpot mini-game that can pop up anytime. The game doesn’t function very well as a stand-alone slot game as it has a poor RTP because a lot of it contributes to the progressive jackpot pool.
Recently, the jackpot seed has been increased from $1,000,000 to $2,000,000, and the portfolio of games in which you can win the Mega jackpot has increased to almost a dozen. That means the game is still growing, and we could even say that it’s picking up steam again, as the jackpots seem to get larger and larger!
If you’re wondering if 2023 is the right time to play Mega Moolah, and if the game still pays, it most certainly does – more than ever before. The recent jackpot wins average at about $7,000,000, and the all-time record is from 2018, a little less than $19m.
We won’t cover in much detail the basic gameplay the way we usually do in slot reviews, as this slot game is all about the jackpot. Instead, we’ll explain how the jackpot works, and how the players who win it usually approach playing this game.
Let’s just briefly mention that Mega Moolah is played on a 5×3 board with 25 paylines and an allowed range of bets between $0.25 and $6.25 per spin. You can play with less than 25 paylines, but it is not advisable to do so. The game has an RTP of 88.12% plus the 5.3% that contributes to the jackpot pool, for a total of 93.42%.
Every Mega Moolah spin has a chance to trigger the wheel of fortune mini-game that can let you win one of the four jackpots, including the main one, the Major jackpot that is millions of dollars. Once you end up in the jackpot wheel mini-game, you’ll spin the wheel, and will win one of the four jackpots: Mini, Minor, Major or Mega. That means your win will be around $10, $100, $10,000 or millions.
The Mega Moolah Jackpot Wheel is triggered completely randomly. Unrelated to the situation on your reels. It can simply happen on any given spin, without warning.
While there are some jackpot winners who didn’t play too many spins, it is generally accepted that the winner will come from a pool of most persistent players. Many people have a daily habit of pouring anything between $5 and $100 into Mega Moolah, they’ll play until their bankroll is depleted, and will repeat the same the next day.
Also, it seems that the larger bet sizes progressively affect your chances to win the jackpot, and that the $0.25 bet – the minimum allowed by the game – is the worst way to play. It is more than twice better to play for $0.50, for example. At least that’s what circumstantial evidence suggests.
So, to have the biggest chance of winning the Mega Moolah jackpot, play with bet sizes larger than the $0.25 minimum – $0.50 or $0.75 is perfectly fine – and make a habit of making as many spins per day as your budget allows, and do so every day.
The odds of winning the Mega jackpot on any given spin are guesstimated to be at around 1 in two billion, but you can cut that in half by having a bet size of $0.50 instead of $0.25. To have a one in a million chance to win, you’d have to play 1000 spins of $0.50. Consider this as a really rough guide to Mega Moolah chances to win.
It’s still far better than lottery. The odds of winning the Powerball or the Mega Millions jackpot with one ticket are roughly 1 in 300 million. Mega Moolah seemingly has worse odds, but note that after playing only 300-400 spins you’ve already reached the level of lottery jackpot odds, and can reduce it by an order of magnitude by being consistent with your play.
People usually set the game to Autoplay and only come back to it once the money wheel is triggered, to prevent boredom and burnout from playing the game.
To increase the number of spins at your disposal for your given budget, claim the deposit bonuses and other reload offers at our recommended casinos by following our links. Move around between casinos and claim every offer that can help you get more spins on the Mega Moolah slot.
Mega Moolah does have features like a normal slot game, and even has a free spins feature. The whole purpose of all this is to give you back some money so you can play the game for longer and have more attempts at winning the jackpot.
Lion is the Wild symbol, and whenever it is involved in a winning combination, it will double the payout. Monkey is the scatter that triggers the free spins game in which all prizes are tripled, and you get 15 free spins.
Symbol | Pays (5 symbols) | Pays (4 symbols) | Pays (3 symbols) | Pays (2 symbols) |
Monkey (Scatter) | 2,500 | 500 | 75 | 50 |
Lion (Wild) | 15,000 | 1,500 | 125 | 15 |
Elephant | 750 | 250 | 50 | 6 |
Buffalo | 600 | 150 | 40 | 4 |
Giraffe | 500 | 125 | 30 | – |
Zebra | 400 | 100 | 20 | – |
Kudu | 250 | 50 | 10 | – |
A | 150 | 40 | 8 | – |
K | 100 | 30 | 6 | – |
Q | 75 | 20 | 4 | – |
J | 60 | 15 | 3 | – |
10 | 40 | 10 | 2 | – |
Prizes above are denominated in coins. If you’re playing all 25 paylines, divide the above prizes by 25 to get the total win according to your total bet. For example, if you played 25 paylines for $0.25 and got 4 Giraffes, you’d win 125 coins, which is 125 / 25 = 5x your total bet, which is 5 x $0.25 = $1.25.
All the above prizes are tripled during the free spins game except for 5 Lions, and any winning combination that involves a Lion Wild will have its payout doubled.
The Mega Moolah Jackpot Wheel has 20 segments, only 1 of which will award the Mega jackpot that is around $7,000,000 in average. 10 segments will award the smallest prize, the Mini jackpot that is usually around $10, and that’s the most common epilogue of triggering the money wheel mini-game.
Six segments will award a Minor jackpot that is around $100, and 3 segments will award a really decent prize that usually ranges between $10,000 and $15,000, and sometimes exceeds $30,000. You won’t end up in the news but will be able to buy a lot of stuff!
It is unknown if the chance to win the Mega jackpot is indeed 1 in 20 when you spin the wheel, or are the segments just for show. In either case, the chances of winning the Mega jackpot are slim!
To play Mega Moolah in the US, you’ll need an online casino that will accept Americans as a player and that also has Microgaming slots, including Mega Moolah. This isn’t such a common occurrence, so we went through the trouble to find these casinos for you.
Just like all other casinos we recommend on this website, the casinos you see on this page were carefully reviewed and we have found no red flags while reviewing them. That means you can sign up with confidence and make a real money deposit.
Mega Moolah is all about the jackpot. Or, better said, the main one of the four available progressive jackpots. No one is really considering the Mini, Minor and Major jackpots as nothing more than a consolation prize if you don’t win the Mega jackpot.
Jackpot contribution from all bets placed on Mega Moolah, including the other games in the Mega Moolah family, is 5.3%. This is what builds up the jackpots that seed at these values:
All bets placed on any of the Mega Moolah slots have a chance to trigger the wheel of fortune mini-game and therefore win one of the jackpots. Size of the bet matters. Think of it this way: if you bet $0.25 you get one lottery ticket for the jackpot, if you bet $0.50 you get two, and so on. Mega Moolah is fair in this regard as it doesn’t reward only the players who place a larger number of bets, but also those whose bets are larger.
There are between six and ten Major jackpot winners every year, the record-breaking win coming in 2018 at almost 19 million dollars. The six wins in 2022 averaged at around $7m, with the largest win being $12,792,841, and two more wins toppled $10m. Almost 50% of all Mega Moolah winners are coming from Canada.
You have probably heard of Mega Moolah Isis, which is a variant of the slot game called Isis, with the Mega Moolah jackpot functionality added on top. This was the first time, in 2009, that this functionality was extended to other slots. But not the last, as in recent years this trend has picked up and now there are a number of games that belong to the Mega Moolah family.
You’ll be excited to learn that two of Microgaming’s biggest hits, Immortal Romance and Thunderstruck II, also have a Mega Moolah jackpot version since 2021 and 2022 respectively.
Some of the recent slots on this list aren’t even Microgaming slots – but are instead totally unique games, with the Mega Moolah jackpots added on top. For example, Fortunium Gold is a Stormcraft Studios game, developed for Microgaming.
Note that while the RTP values of the above slots do vary slightly, these small differences don’t matter much. The contribution to the progressive jackpot is 5.3% in all cases, and the chance to win the jackpot is the same across all games, including the original game.
💰 | Jackpot | $7m+ |
❔ | RTP | 93.42% |
📅 | Released | 2006 |
Yes, Mega Moolah is perfectly playable on all devices, including Android and iPhone smartphones, and you can win the jackpot just like the desktop players can.
Mega Moolah has a total RTP of 93.42%, or 88.12% if you only count the main game without the jackpots. This is because there is a large 5.3% contribution to the four progressive jackpots.
The biggest win on Mega Moolah was $18,915,872.81 on September 28, 2018. The winner chose to remain anonymous and to get the prize in one go. He/she was playing from an Android device with a $0.75 bet.
You can play Mega Moolah in casinos that have Microgaming games and that accept US players. We list the best ones on this page.
Yes, you can. As a matter of fact, UK is the second most common country of residence of Mega Moolah jackpot winners. 20% of all wins go to United Kingdom!