Microgaming - A top Game Provider - Mr Green Casino Canada

What you need to know about Microgaming

Since that breakthrough year of 1994 and operating out of the Isle of Man, Microgaming has gone on to supply over 150 of the world’s leading gaming brands, including, of course, Mr Green.

In addition to being responsible for the first-ever internet casino, they also released the initial Progressive Jackpot slot going by the name of Cash Splash and the first-ever mobile casino, back in 2004.

Microgaming’s casino games tend to be provided in download or Flash versions though more recently, they’ve also done so in HTML5 to ensure cross-platform compatibility. Microgaming themselves makes most of the games, but they also work in partnership with a South-African based development and software studio called Derivco, plus others such as Neon Valley Studios and Slingshot Studios.

In addition to being a hugely successful software provider who has won just about every Gaming award going over the years, they’ve left their mark on the industry in plenty of other ways. For example, they became a founding member of eCOGRA (eCommerce Online Gaming Regulation and Assurance) in 2003. This is an international agency designed to protect players in the gambling industry and maintain the standards of the industry as a whole. It is also an independent and accredited testing laboratory, which means that at any time, it can test casinos and particular games to ensure they’re all run fairly and ethically.

But on a day-to-day basis, it’s the provision of cutting-edge first-class gaming products that primarily concerns Microgaming.

Microgaming Products

Poker

MPN, formerly known by its full name of Microgaming Poker Network or Prima Poker, has been a success story since it launched in 2003. Here are several highlights:

They were the first to offer Anonymous Tables
One of the first to provide a fully integrated achievement system available in multiple languages
Offering Casino in Poker (CiP) games that poker players can take part in during or in between hands
Creating the infamous Blazing Cannon mini-game

They also revamped the Bad Beat Jackpot, where players get rewarded for having extremely high hands but still end up being beaten by a better one by another player. Their tables operate around the clock, and games are played on a widescreen-friendly Fun View table. Additionally, they offer lots of different types of tournaments – freeroll, bounty and heads-up, to name but three. Finally, they were a pioneer of Blaze Poker, where folding fast and high-speed hands are the name of the game.

The MPN even has its own Poker Tour.

However, Microgaming has announced that they’re closing the MPN in 2020 (no exact date has been given). It’s the end of Poker at Microgaming as a Network, but they’ll continue to offer Poker to clients and customers in other formats. Till they close shop, it’s business as usual in terms of bonuses, funds in your account and tournaments.

Sportsbook

Microgaming has serviced betting operators with sportsbooks since 2006. Focusing on all the prominent sports, including American football, soccer, tennis, racing, golf, darts and cricket, but also the more niche sports such as floorball, beach volleyball and Futsal. They haven’t forgotten about ‘specials’ either with their markets, including betting on Oscars, politics, X-Factor and music awards.

There’s an equally strong offering on pre-match and in-play, and it is available in multiple languages, also allowing customers the chance to play with several different currencies. It’s fully compatible with the leading devices and operating systems with extra features available such as cash-out, head-to-head (player and team) stats and real-time scores and statistics. This versatility ensures you’re never missing anything when it comes to your betting experience.

If it’s sports that you get up for in the morning, check out Mr Green’s sportsbook.

Live Casino

In Microgaming’s live casino, the pictures are in high definition for maximum enjoyment, the dealers quirky and friendly, and there is no shortage of different varieties of Live Baccarat, Live Roulette and Live Blackjack. Just as good on desktop as it is on mobile, you can also use the auto-bet functionality and enjoy multi-table play.

If you already have an account at Mr Green and love the thrill of Live Casino, you’re just a few clicks away from playing your favourite Live Casino games right here.

Slots

Now we’re talking! Microgaming has had no shortage of experience when it comes to making some of the world’s best quality and best-known slots. We’ll come to the superstars of their stable of slots, the quirky games and the big-paying ones in due course. It’s important to point out that more important than picking out individual slots for praise is the seal of quality across all their slots. It has made them one of the most successful and sought-after providers of slots on the market.

Let’s find out what made Microgaming slots one of the market leaders all those years ago and what they’ve carried on doing that’s kept them dining at the top table of slot-providers.

Microgaming Slots

Devices and Security

In addition to accessing Microgaming slots on your desktop or laptop, you can also do so on mobile and tablet Apple products, Android ones, Blackberry and Java-powered devices.

All Microgaming slots have been checked by independent agencies to ensure that they run smoothly, that they come as advertised and that their displayed RTP (Return to Player) – more on that in a minute- is on target.

Free-to-play games

There’s an old expression about not running before you can walk and another that says you should be allowed to try the merchandise before deciding to buy it. Microgaming has you covered there since you can play all Microgaming slots for free, so you can decide which are your favourites before you decide to start playing for real money.

500+ slots and counting

At the time of writing, Microgaming has released close to 500 different slots and, on average, releases four new ones a month.

Slot types and themes

When you’ve released over 500 slots on the market, it’s a pretty good guess that there is no shortage of available slot themes.

The following list isn’t exhaustive: branded slots based on movies and TV shows, Irish themes, Christmas, Vegas-inspired, retro one-arm bandit games, cars, Asian-inspired, dragons, myths and legends, mermaids, sports, circus and animals. Remember, our list gives an idea of slot themes and is just the tip of the iceberg.

RTP

Let’s just take a minute to remind ourselves of what RTP means. It’s short for Return to Player and is a number between 90 and 100 that gives you an indication of how much of the money played on a slot would be returned to the player if they played it to infinity. The higher the number, the more generous the slot.

You don’t get to be one of the biggest players in the world of slot-making by not offering decent RTPs, so it’s no surprise that all of their slots offer at the very least an average RTP compared to the industry norm. Some other slots offer very high payouts indeed. Without going through every last slot game they’ve ever made, the average RTP is around the 96% mark, which is a few ticks above the average for slots in general.

If you’re all about the numbers, like some perennial math contest winner, then these high RTP slots could be the ones for you, all available at Mr Green Casino: Cricket Star, Beautiful Bones, Jurassic Park and Jurassic World. All of them boast an RTP of 97%.

Microgaming slots features

Special Features

Microgaming was one of the first providers to have slots where there were endless ways to win during the base game. Well, maybe not ‘endless’ but 243 different ways to win. A quick reminder that this doesn’t mean you’re more likely to win because there are so many different ways, but it does mean that when you’re accumulating wins of any variety in the base game, they can come in lots of different shapes and sizes.

Immortal Romance – whose virtues we describe in detail below- was one of their first slots with the 243 different ways to win feature back in 2011 and since then, the likes of Game of Thrones, Terminator 2, Jurassic Park and more recently, Exotic Cats have all had it as well.

Microgaming was also the creator of the four-tiered Jackpot. We’ll look at the money up for grabs daily, and the record-breaking amounts won in the past, in a minute. For now, you should know that it was Microgaming that started to divide their Jackpots into Mega, Major, Mini and Minor. It represents an excellent way for the player to know what’s exactly on offer in each one. It also means that you have four shots at winning something significant rather than just the all-or-nothing approach of only having one Jackpot. The Mega and Major are where the real life-changing sums of money can be won, but the other two can have big prizes on offer as well.

Microgaming's best slots

Star slot: Immortal Romance

We thought long and hard about this one and decided to award it to Immortal Romance rather than Mega Moolah. But don’t worry, fans of MM, we’ve given it its own moment to shine under a different category.

We did that simply because we realize that jackpot slots aren’t for everyone and that many prefer the higher RTPs of slots that aren’t Progressive Jackpots. So, let’s talk about Immortal Romance.

Launched at the height of our worldwide obsession with vampires, werewolves and other equally dangerous and intriguing creatures back in 2011, it’s one of the slots that has best stood the test of time. It still doesn’t look outdated or out-of-touch despite the recent technological developments in slot-making.

The game is all about a doomed ‘love rectangle’ starring the slot’s four protagonists: Amber, Troy, Michael and Sarah. It’s one of the Microgaming slots that has 243 different ways to win, so there are unlikely to be many cases of ‘I can’t believe I won with the same winning combination yet again.’

In keeping with the theme of the game, the randomly-triggered Wild Desire feature sees between one and five of the reels turn completely Wild, and all slots-players know what that means. Yeah, big wins on their way!

Few slots are complete without free spins, and this one has not one or two, or even three, but four! That’s because when you get three Scatter symbols, you can choose which of the four free spins rounds on offer you want to play. Each round is named after a different character and varies from 10 free spins to 25 while containing various multipliers.

This slot is not going to go away anytime soon. It’s almost like it’s Immortal.

Big-Paying Slot: Mega Moolah

At first glance, a slot set in the Savannah featuring goofy-looking wild animals, including giraffes and lions, wouldn’t be the first one you’d think of in terms of paying out record-breaking sums of money.

That said, appearances can be deceptive, and Mega Moolah is synonymous with the biggest Progressive Jackpot slots in the world.

For the most part, it plays like most other slots. Some symbols are more valuable than others, and Scatters are your route to a free spins round where a minimum of 15 of them are yours, with any wins secured during the round automatically tripled. Land 5 Scatters anywhere on the reels, and you’ll automatically collect 100x your total bet.

But let’s face it. If we’re talking Mega Moolah, it’s the Progressive Jackpots you really want to hear about!

The Wheel of Fortune round is randomly triggered, and you’ll have the chance to spin the eponymous wheel when that happens. As mentioned earlier, there are four Jackpots up for grabs, and when the wheel stops, you’ll win one of them. Whichever one it lands on, is yours. The top one, the Mega Jackpot, always starts at 1 000 000 CAD, so that’s the absolute minimum you can win. The more customers around the world play the game at different casinos, the bigger each of the four Jackpots become until won.

Here’s the full offering of Progressive Jackpot slots at Mr Green Casino!

Mr Green’s favourite slot: Bridesmaids

When Bridesmaids was released in the cinemas a few years ago, it was the highest-grossing R-rated comedy to feature an all-female cast in history. With its’ frenemies’ trying to get one over each other, a mix of slapstick comedy and more emotional moments plus quirky characters everywhere you look, it quickly assembled an army of fans.

The slot version didn’t quite enjoy those levels of success, but it remains one of the more popular branded slots ever made.

There are a Friendship Free Spins round and a Flying High Free Spins round to look forward to, a Wheel Bonus with sky-high multipliers and the chance to win the slot’s Jackpot, plus a Boutique Bonus. And to round off a quintet of great bonus features, you could also activate the Magic Moments Bonus.

All the main characters are there, delivering some of their memorable lines from the film, and if you’re getting withdrawal symptoms from the movie, you’ll get to see HD clips from the film itself.

This is a must for fans of the movie.

Microgaming: Did you know?

Mega Moolah is responsible for paying out the biggest prize in history on an online slot, as per the Guinness Book of Records. Back in 2015, British online casino player Jon Heywood, a soldier, walked away with a cool 13.2 million GBP (just under 23 million Canadian dollars) after securing…you guessed it…the Mega Jackpot! And we thought that those cute little animals in the slot were only there for entertainment.
We’ve got some more fun stats about Mega Moolah. Winners of its Mega Jackpot have come from eight different countries with New Zealand, the only one that isn’t a European country; five winners of the big one were based in the UK. It would seem that a Canadian is due to win! If you’re thinking of when the best month to play it is – it’s May! It’s the only month during which someone won the Mega Jackpot twice.
Mega Moolah isn’t the only Progressive Jackpot that Microgaming has. There’s a spin-off of it called Mega Moolah Isis, with Major Millions, King Cashalot, Treasure Nile and Fruit Fiesta among the others making up their portfolio of Progressive Jackpot slots. Microgaming is pretty unique in one aspect regarding them: they’re the only provider who pays out wins of that nature as a lump sum. All the others pay in instalments.
Since 1994, Microgaming has released over 800 casino games, including slots, table games, video poker and Bingo.
Microgaming has won just about every award going in the industry. That includes EGR Awards for Poker Software (2013-2016), Poker Network (2018), Innovation in Bingo (2013) and RNG Casino Supplier (2012). Among their Global Gaming Awards, they picked up Digital Product (2014-16) and Digital Gaming Innovation (2015). They’ve also picked up numerous awards handed out by Women in Gaming, the NTA and ReB.
Their zombie-themed slot Lost Vegas, taking place in a post-Apocalyptic Las Vegas, allows you to play the game in two completely different modes: zombie or survivor. The characters are entirely different in each, as are the bonus features.

Our conclusion on Microgaming

Microgaming provider

In many ways, Microgaming is quite a unique player in the online gaming world. Very often, the pioneers of industry tend to dominate it over the first few years and then get overtaken by the competition, their products become outdated, or they merge with another big player to protect their market share. Not so with Microgaming.

They’re just as relevant now as they were in the late 90s, and managed to adapt and evolve as necessary to the extent that they’re still flying solo. They have joined forces with other high-class games studios in collaborations that allow them to carry on producing the best possible slots and other casino games. However, they still operate as a stand-alone business.

In the name of fairness and impartiality, it’s worth pointing out that Microgaming doesn’t necessarily produce the most beautiful slots out there. If it’s a sheer aesthetic delight you want, then the likes of NetEnt, Elk Studios or Quickspin can probably come up with better. That’s not to take anything away from Microgaming. They’re one of the most prolific slot-makers with regular releases hitting the market every month. They’ve made Mega Moolah the biggest Progressive Jackpot slot in history and also produced arguably the most sophisticated slot ever launched when their Castle Builder 2 hit the world’s online casinos.

It’s also remarkable that they’ve managed to branch out as they have in running casinos, making slots, operating table games, managing Live Casinos and sportsbooks and without diluting the quality of any of their products. Also, they clearly knew how to recognize and evolve with the times as they saw that Poker Networks were losing their relevance.

The betting business may be going through constant change, but this provider is clearly here to stay.

Mr Green Casino providers: Microgaming

Introduction