Silver Surfer

For those of you who haven't read the Marvel comic books, you may have encountered the Silver Surfer in the recent Fantasic Four movie, which was, incidentally, called Rise of the Silver Surfer.

The surfer's back story goes something like this. There is this very naughty creature called Galactus who likes to eat planets. He hijacked this nice young lad called Norrin Radd from some arbitrary place and made him his herald, giving him superpowers and giving him the job of zooming through the galaxy to seek out lunch (edible planets).

Only when he arrives at earth, he meets the Fantastic Four, they have a group hug, and he decides he doesn't want to be evil any more. So he quits his job as an evil henchman and stays here forever. Yay!

Cryptologic's adaptation of the Silver Surfer story chooses to focus on this early origin story rather than his subsequent adventures on earth. I imagine they did this because of the opportunities it presented them for graphical exploration – and I have to say, wow, the graphics are beautiful.

The reels are adorned with lots and lots of delicious looking planets for Galactus to eat, as well as many other cool symbols such as the Silver Surfer logo, the silver board (obviously), what looks to be a big meteor, the evil Galactus himself, stars, a supernova of some kind, and other cool stuff.

Down to the technical stuff. So, Cryptologic's Silver Surfer is a five reel video slot game. You can play it old school style on a single pay line, or you can increase your changes by activating up to 8 additional pay lines using handy controls at the bottom of the screen.

Coin sizes range from 5c up to $5, with the top end bet (depending on how many lines you have activated at a given time) being 9 coins for a spin. The top winning combination pays out 3,000 coins, which at maximum bet turns into $15,000 in the real world – nice!

This being a Cryptologic / Marvel slot, that's not the only way to win – there are three progressive jackpots attached to this game – and they all trigger completely randomly. They're being fed by Silver Surfer games around the world – will the next progressive winner be you?

The Hero jackpot seeds from $50 after a win, the Super Hero Jackpot from $500. The largest, the Marvel Hero Jackpot, seeds from $5,000. No one knows when or how these jackpots triggers, but they tend to pay out every few hours, so the action is thick and fast.