Original Release: Bally, 2016(?)
Yet another Quick Hit release, this one melds some features together from other titles in the series with the “Winning Times” symbols that multiply individual paylines by up to 5x
Quick Hit Winning Times (Bally, 2016?)
Review by: C. M0use
Another day, another Quick Hit variant. Also another slot whose release date I can’t pin down, but I’m going with 2016 since that’s when the first videos of it can be found and it seems to be video screen only.
So Quick Hits have never been super low volatility, like at the level of the really old IGT and Konami type games, but the farther back you go (toward their mechanical reel origins) the more moderate and fairly stable they tend to be. This one is more on the borderline of where they started being more about hitting bonus games (and thus more volatile).
Winning Times actually has three bonus feature types. First you’ve got the standard Quick Hit scatter symbols, these work as they usually do as the “core” feature of all these games, land enough in any position and you get a guaranteed win. But then you’ve also got the “Free Games Fever” symbols, where you also land three of them as scatter symbols to go to the bonus feature where you do a little “match 3” card to see what you actually get. This general concept is shared with a number of other Quick Hit titles, but in this one it determines what bonus you get with a fixed set of 10 free spins. You could get 2x pays, 3x pays, the addition of Winning Times symbols (which multiply individual paylines they’re on up to 5x) scattered into the playfield, or “Quick Hit Fever” in which any Quick Hit symbol wins are greatly multiplied (ranging up to 7500x your wager if you land all 11). Then the FINAL feature isn’t exactly a “bonus game” or what have you, but it’s just that the Winning Times symbols can also randomly appear in the playfield to enhance line wins.
So that’s a lot of different potential bonus stuff, which might sound good at first. But the central problem is that it’s all competing for the same limited real estate on the reels, so these things can negate each other – otherwise useless onesies or twosies of Quick Hit symbols cut off a Winning Times payline, you get two Free Games symbols that don’t help similarly cutting off lines, etc.
It’s also not clear what to “root for” in terms of bonuses when you first step up to the machine, at least if you don’t stop to read through the payouts disclosure screens first. It’s not as straightforward and simple as other Quick Hit games. For example, it turns out the 2x and 3x pays in the bonus spins are just the possibility of those symbols sometimes appearing, not a payout enhancer for any and all wins on those spins. In the end it turns out you’re basically rooting for a extremely unlikely chain of events to play out to get significant money: hit the Fever scatter symbols, win the Quick Hit Fever option in the scratch card, and THEN have like 8+ Quick Hit symbols pop during one of your free spins to actually get a really big win.
In the end I plowed $200 through the machine during my test run and lost $20 with a couple of 2x and 3x pay bonus games during that time with weak results; a 90% hold is far from the worst option out there, but not inspiring. I’ve never liked these games where getting anything good from the bonus feature relies on a chain of multiple rare events to hit, so I don’t think I’ll be coming back to this Quick Hit variant and I’d look to the ones older than this for value.
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