You may not think it at first, but studying gambling history is actually incredibly interesting, especially in the field of slot machines where there has been a pretty crazy amount of developments in a relatively short space of time. Seriously, it wasn’t much more than 100 years ago that Charles D. Fey was applying the finishing touches to the first commercially viable slot machine, and now they are everywhere.
One of the main developments in the field of slot gambling has got to be the discovery of the RNG – Random Number Generator. It was this that first enabled slot creators to make video slots, a version of the popular game at top10slotgames.com that didn’t have to rely on mechanical reels, and could therefore be pumped full of tantalizing bonus symbols and features. Read ahead for a lowdown on one of these – sticky wilds!
What is a wild symbol?
First things first: let’s do a little recap for those of us who are just starting their online slots journey and may not know what a wild symbol is, let alone a sticky wild symbol. In the vast majority of cases wild symbols end up being slot gamblers’ best friends, as these special bonus symbols can frequently swap with other icons on the reels in order to make winning combinations.
As you might imagine, this means wild symbols can be a bit of a god send when you are spinning those reels, especially if you happen to be on a particularly drawn out losing streak. For this reason it is always worth checking what the wild symbol is before you start playing an online slot, they are often embroidered with some kind of “Wild” slogan, although a lot of the time you would not know until you checked.
What is a sticky wild symbol?
So then, what on Earth is a sticky wild symbol? Well, a sticky wild symbol isn’t actually that much different to a normal wild symbol, its function and affect on the reels is pretty much exactly the same, however the difference here is that sticky wild symbol can end up staying in the same place for several spins.
This is why it is called a “sticky” wild symbol, as it has the ability to stick in place! This is incredibly useful because it means that there are way more possibilities to win money with a wild symbol when it appears on the reels.
A history of sticky wild symbols
As experienced slot gamblers will tell you, sticky wild icons have not been around for that long, and that is mainly because it is impossible to emulate a sticky wild symbol on a purely mechanical slot machine. It was only with the advent of video slots that developers could start playing around with sticky wild symbols, as the digital screen was so much more flexible than a mechanical set of physical reels.
As you might imagine, sticky wild symbols can now be found everywhere too, testimony to how good they are.