Fruit Machine Slots

Fruit Machine Slots

The story of the fruit slot machines began in the American bar and grocery store, took a trip around the world and came back as one of the most celebrated pastimes for thrill-seekers in casinos across the United States.

When Charles Fey built the “Liberty Bell” in 1884, he set off a revolution. “Fruit machines” defined an entire era of slots before evolving into electric-powered machines and eventually the online slots that we all love playing today.

But why was the fruit slot machine called by that name for such a long time and why are fruit slots still popular even though the technology has advanced so much?

Unlike modern slots, the fruit machines of the early 1900s had real mechanical devices inside that took a random swing at which of the plates on the drum should fall in a straight line. The symbols on these slot machines were fruits because the players got a fruit candy or a piece of gum if they won.

Can you imagine being paid in candy in exchange for a big win? Neither can we. Thankfully, fruit machine slots have come a long way and are no longer the clunky mechanical devices they once were.

Unlike fruit machines in the past, most games with a fruit slot theme today have a variety of extras: free spins feature, multiple winning lines, wild symbols, reel modifiers and appetizing winning outcomes.

Although you can still find classical fruit machines at casino resorts, it is modern fruit-themed slots that steal the spotlight. So let’s dive into some of the best digital fruit machines that you can play at US casinos online.

Fruit Slot Machines List at US Online Casinos

If you are looking for the most exciting fruit slots, look no further than our comprehensive list. You can pick your game by RTP or volatility level, or you can just choose the title you like the most. These are the best fruit machine slots available at US casinos, so every choice guarantees a real casino experience when you use our links to play for free or with real money.

7 Best Fruit Machine Slots

We’ve carved out a special selection from a fruit salad mix made of the best fruit-themed slots you can play in US online casinos. Behold some of the most captivating online slot game titles from recent years, as well as classics whose winning events are for the books.

#1 Sweet Bonanza (Pragmatic Play)

• Pay Anywhere mechanic
• Win multipliers
• Free Spins bonus
• RTP: 96.48%
• Max Win: 21,100x

Who says you can’t have candy and fruit at the same time? Both are good for you, as long as the mix is part of your best slots diet. Sweet Bonanza is a top-ranking game by Pragmatic Play that puts you in a candy-colored universe with a unique payout rule. To land a win, you only need eight symbols on a grid of 5×6. Doesn’t sound right? Well, the payout rule is that you need at least eight symbols anywhere on the screen – so, no pay line wins required!

The best part about Sweet Bonanza is not the free spins bonus. Yes, this is where you can land the biggest wins, but only with the help of the tumble/cascading wins feature. The deadly combination is compounded by the jawbreaker bomb candy which makes the fruits pop with random win multipliers between 2x and 100x. If you get enough of all of this, you may get a bit out of the max win exposure of your bet.

#2 Diamond Fruits (Big Time Gaming)

• Megaclusters payout mechanic
• Free Spins
• Reel-modifying symbols
• RTP: 96.23%
• Max Win: 6,650x

BTG has done it again with another incredibly complex payout mechanic, this time based on cluster pays. The game represents the pinnacle in the evolution of the fruit slot theme. Its reel set is dynamic and each spin creates a lively onslaught of lush fruit symbols that can combine for payouts of up to 6,650x bet.

The main feature is a free spins bonus with unlimited win multipliers and the ability to retrigger the rounds. Talking about fruits, this game can add icing on the cake. It’s called Wild Cannon and it can add between 5 and 15 Wilds in random positions. Just imagine the megaclusters that form with those. You can play Diamond Fruits at US online casinos with low bets of $0.20 per spin.

#3 Melon Madness Deluxe (Bwin Party)

• Five jackpots
• 30 paylines
• Free Spins
• Bonus Retrigger
• RTP: 94.00%
• Max Win: 30,000x

This game has the true grit of classical fruit slots, but with a deluxe twist: it offers a progressive jackpot that can drop randomly to award one or more millions of dollars. Upon first impression, Melon Madness Deluxe isn’t going to titillate your palate. The graphics are below mediocre, but who’s counting if your idea is to push for one of the five jackpots. The flimsy bananas and pears fade into the woodwork because Bwin Party graced the game with a much-needed free spins bonus.

The only bonus feature makes the game work like a regular online slot, meaning, you can land a decent win even if you don’t win one of the big pots. A couple more interesting details about Melon Madness Deluxe. You can change the number of paylines which lets you approach the game as a penny slot. Next, there are 30 lines which gives the Wilds more room to work. And last but not least, the cap on winnings from a single bet is a healthy 30,000x your bet.

#4 Reel Rush (NetEnt)

• Penny slot (10c per spin)
• 3125 max paylines
• Respins
• Free spins
• RTP: 96.96%
• Max Win: 962.4x

Slots pros know that you won’t find another fruit slot machine with a diamond-shaped reel set – at least not from a world-famous provider. Thanks to NetEnt ingenuity, the initial layout of Reel Rush can expand to five reels and five rows and you can have winning combinations on up to 3125 lines.

Over to the features, the game at hand wins us over every day, any day. Each winning spin triggers a respin and these expand the reel set. After five successful respins, Reel Rush awards you with eight free spins and 1875 guaranteed paylines. Getting more fruit symbols is better, because these are the high-paying kind.

The graphic design on the original Reel Rush is just as cool – as everything reminds of a fruit shop in the Super Mario universe. Overall, the game is a breeze to play and you can bet as little as 10c per spin.

#5 Wild Hot Chilli Reels (Red Tiger)

• Two-Way Pay
• Stacked Wilds
• RTP: 95.75%
• Max Win: 500x

Of the top seven fruit-themed slots, Wild Hot Chilli Reels is the one that most closely resembles the classical fruit slot of the ages. The game has three rows and five reels and seven classical symbols. The eighth, and most valuable one, is the chilli Wild which always lands stacked on the full reel. The graphic design might be familiar, but it does come with neat nuances, like the crystalline finish on each symbol.

On the other hand, Wild Hot Chilli Reels is indeed as straightforward as any fruit machine from back in the day. To land a win you need three, four or five symbols. No modifiers, no free spins, no hoopla. Just pure modern-classical slots action.

But it all makes sense when you consider the hard specs: A decent 95.75% for the RTP and, more importantly, a low to medium volatility level for a game that has a max win of 500x bet and 10 two-way paylines.

#6 Extra Chilli Megaways (Big Time Gaming)

• Megaways
• Free Spins
• Win multipliers
• RTP: 96.92%
• Max Win: 20,000x

We have another BTG game on the list and not by coincidence. This is the top 3 game by RTP value on the list and can pay up to 20000x your bet from a single fateful spin. The volatility level is high and you can start playing with 20p per spin.

The premise of the game is a country fair where delicious chillies are made in exchange for cash prizes. They say peppers are fruits so we dutifully included the game on our list. The real reason for this is, of course, the absolutely bonkers Megaways mechanic that can trigger cascading reactions and rising win multipliers

One of the best details on Extra Chilli Megaways is the unique Feature Drop. Essentially, this is a bonus buy option, but the twist is that the price varies and sometimes you can get a really good deal to initiate the free rounds immediately.

#7 Triple Red Hot 7s (IGT)

• Modern-Classical
• 5 paylines
• Win multipliers
• Free spins
• RTP: 94.91%
• MAx Win: 20,000x

You know that you have a classical fruit slot on your hands when there are burning sevens in sight. In fact, this game is all about the sevens and combinations of the multiplier symbol.

Thankfully, the game isn’t bare bones and has more than one feature in it. The Triple Red Hot 3x is a win multiplier and a Wild at the same time. You can get three on a line win to pay 9x the win amount plus substitute and multiply for other paylines. The game has awarded five possible combinations, which is where its advantage lies.

Surprisingly, the Free Spins bonus awards the so-called Spitfire Multipliers between 2x and 7x. The in-game jackpot of Triple Red Hot 7s is worth 20,000x your line bet when you land three 3x multiplier symbols – making this classical game a diamond in the rough.

What Makes a Slot Game Fruit Machine?

Although much has changed in the world of casino gaming since the advent of the internet, the classical fruit slots of today still possess characteristics that are only unique to the originating style.

For starters, you aren’t going to find a digital fruit machine without the quintessential fruit symbols: cherries, strawberries, lemons, plums, watermelons and the like as these provide the basis of the theme. However, there are few more classic symbols that don’t grow on a tree (or a vine) but are often part of the paytable: BARs, sevens, bells and stars.

Second, the graphics are usually simpler and often try to replicate the style in which the fruits used to be drawn in the early 1900s. In fact, more or less, a similar graphic style has prevailed over the decades. Enter modern online fruit machines. These games still cycle fruits on the reels, but embellish on the design profusely with eye candy, sharp graphics and animated details.

The main feature distinguishing fruit casino games from any other kind of online slot are the extra features. The classical games in the true sense of the word have a very simple gameplay and a Wild symbol at best. Thankfully, developers like Microgaming, Play’n GO, Red Tiger, NetEnt and others release classical fruit slots with free spins bonuses, modifiers, win multipliers and some even offer jackpots.

Although those truly classical fruit slot machines retain the one to three paylines system, you can play fruit slot games with different payout mechanics, ranging from cluster pays to Megaways.

And another point of comparison between the old and the new. In the past, mechanical machines didn’t really have volatility levels. Modern fruit slots can range from tame to furiously volatile. As it goes, the higher the volatility the more massive the win, and likely sparser.

Why Are Fruit Machine Themed Slots Still Popular?

The reason why fruit slot machines remain popular is because they mix the unmistakably classical character with all the modern slots concepts.

You don’t have to hail back from some past era to know that slot machines were synonymous with fruits, diamonds, sevens and the such. This is somehow common knowledge even to people who don’t play slots.

When you give the classical premise an upgrade with liquid graphics and interactive extra features, the combo is just too good to resist and companies will continue making excellent games because these are always in demand.

Pros and Cons of Fruit Machine Slots

If we are talking truly classical fruit slot games you can’t evade the obvious cons. Old-school slots in that category mostly consisted of three reels and had up to five paylines. Sometimes the payouts were decent, but the games generally had a lower prize cap. And what’s there to say about the fuzzy graphics?

On the other hand, if we drop the purist hat and have a clear view of the fruit slots genre today, the pros far outweigh the cons. Today you’ll find spectacular fruit machines that contain the essence of the classical games, yet they throw in a bonus feature or two, a reel modifier, wilds, and a bigger payout potential.

Fruit Machine Slots Features

Back in the day fruit machines could only boast a wild symbol, at best. Today, you can sample from an oval of exciting features. As a general rule, online slots get at least a free rounds bonus. The same is true about fruit slots, even those that try to mimic the classical look and feel of the genre. But there is more. These are the features that you can expect to find on popular fruit slots:

• Free Spins: the epitome of bonus features, usually triggered with three scatters in exchange for a fixed or fluid number of free spins, plus other big-win boosting extras.
• Trail or Pick Me bonus: These are as simple as they come. You need to choose an object in exchange for a prize or land in certain positions to earn more and advance further.
• Win multipliers: can be factored-in by a multiplier symbol or when a rule is met, like one or more cascading wins.
• Modifying wilds: these are supercharged wilds that can stand in for the standard paying symbols and do a trick, like move between positions, clone, stick to the reels or multiply wins.
• Meters/Collectors: some games come with a charge that gets filled when you collect specific symbols or for every winning combination. Upon release, the charge typically adds a serious booster to your chances.
• Colossal Symbols: symbols occupy one position on the grid, unless they are colossal, in which case they can take up greater proportions, like in the fruit-themed Jammin’ Jars.