High 5 Games Buffalo Slots: The Thundering Buffalo Series in Detail

A diamond-shaped grid from 2011

Thundering Buffalo does not look like other buffalo slots, and that is most of its appeal. The reels are 3-4-5-4-3, a diamond of three to five rows per reel, for 720 ways, and BetMGM says they pay both left to right and right to left. Stacked wilds can fill entire reels. The free spins are simple to trigger in principle and hard in practice: the free spins symbol has to land on all five reels for eight spins. Retriggers can then build the round up to 240 free spins, according to BetMGM and VegasSlotsOnline.

High 5 Games publishes the layout, the ways count and the year on its own page, and nothing else. The RTP comes from BetMGM, 94.9%, which reviewers round to 94.91%, and BetMGM also supplies the volatility label, high. The max win is 1,000x by the primary figure, with 1,500x and 1,904x quoted by other sources.

High 5 builds for land-based partners as well as its own online channels. One directory says the game appears on casino floors through IGT or Bally distribution, but no primary page confirms it, so the review does not claim it.

Availability is its strongest card

BetMGM carries Thundering Buffalo in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan and West Virginia. Only two other buffalo slots in this guide reach all four states: Buffalo Gold Max Power and Buffalo Chief. For a player in West Virginia, those three are the whole confirmed list. That four-state reach, plus the long free spins ceiling, puts it sixth in the best buffalo slots ranking despite an RTP below 95%.

Golden Stampede and Jackpot Dash

The series moved away from the diamond grid quickly. Thundering Buffalo: Golden Stampede (2017) switched to 243 ways and is not reviewed here. Thundering Buffalo Jackpot Dash, launched in January 2020 on High 5’s Oracle engine, keeps 243 ways on a plain 5x3 grid. The 720-ways figure that some listings give for it belongs to the original.

Jackpot Dash is a collection game. Five symbols each feed a meter: Trophy, Crown, Gold Star, Gold Medal and Eagle. Ten of one symbol pays that meter’s fixed multiplier, from 15x for the Trophy (VegasSlotsOnline) to 1,500x for the Eagle (High 5 Games). These are not progressives. Three Gold Buffalo Coins on reels two, three and four award ten free games, and the game uses split symbols, a High 5 feature.

Slotcatalog and VegasSlotsOnline give 96% RTP, about a point higher than the original, though High 5 publishes no figure. No max win is stated, and no regulated US casino page lists the game. The Thundering Buffalo vs Jackpot Dash comparison sets the two side by side.

How the two compare in feel

The original is a free spins game with a long tail: the five-reel trigger is demanding, and a round that retriggers can run to 240 spins. Jackpot Dash gives the base game something to build toward instead, with five meters that fill as symbols are collected. Players who dislike long dry spells will prefer the sequel. Players chasing one long feature will prefer the original, and only the original is available at US casinos. Both games have a free demo on their review pages, which is the quickest way to see how demanding that five-reel trigger is.

Measured against the Aristocrat original

The obvious yardstick is Aristocrat’s Buffalo, the 2008 cabinet that set the genre’s shape: five reels of four symbols, 1,024 ways, coin scatters that award 8, 15 or 20 free games, and wilds that become 2x or 3x multipliers once the feature starts. Thundering Buffalo arrived three years later and departs from almost every part of that recipe. Its reels are uneven, its 720 ways pay in both directions, and its free spins want the bonus symbol on every reel, where Buffalo is content with three coins anywhere.

The feature is where the two designs split most. Buffalo multiplies inside its free games; no source describes a multiplier in Thundering Buffalo’s spins at all. What the High 5 game offers is length, eight spins that can stretch to 240. A long run of plain spins and a short run of multiplied ones can finish in similar places, but they feel nothing alike while they play out.

On the published numbers the High 5 game holds up well. Its 94.9% at BetMGM sits just above the 94.72% that OLG and BetMGM list for the online Buffalo, and its 1,000x top figure is more than three times Buffalo’s 300x. Availability tilts the same way. The Aristocrat original is confirmed online only in New Jersey, while Thundering Buffalo is at BetMGM in all four states, so a player in Michigan or Pennsylvania who wants an older-style buffalo game on a licensed site has the High 5 title and not the Aristocrat one.

Jackpot Dash compares less directly. Aristocrat keeps its jackpots on the floor, where the prize depends on how each cabinet is linked, as on Buffalo Link. The five Jackpot Dash prizes are fixed multiples written into the game and identical on every screen that runs it.

Before a session on either game

Three details deserve a look in the lobby. The first is the game itself. FanDuel lists Thundering Buffalo: Golden Stampede, the 2017 instalment with 243 ways, and a Tropicana snippet in New Jersey described Jackpot Dash using the original’s 720 ways. The grid on the screen identifies the game faster than the tile name.

The second is the stake range, which High 5 publishes for neither title. BetMGM’s review puts the original’s top bet at 200 a spin and slotcatalog lists $0.50 to $50, while the two review sites covering Jackpot Dash quote $0.15 to $15 and $0.30 to $450. Those are far enough apart that only the casino’s bet selector is worth trusting.

The third is the RTP in the help screen. None of the return figures on this page comes from the studio, so the casino’s own number is the one that applies. The licensed sites in each state, all open to players 21 and over, are on the real-money pages.