Konami is a widely recognized brand among video game enthusiasts and gamblers alike. Established in 1969, the company started manufacturing gambling devices in the 1980s and began making slots for the U.S. market in the 2000s.
Finally, you can access the games themselves through Konami’s free-to-play casino site, MyKonami Games. This free site is available for both major types of mobile devices. This free site is available for. Play Free Konami Slots - No Download Required - No Spam Pop-ups. Top free slot machine games made by Konami Gaming, including Lotus Land, Heart of Romance, Fortune Stacks, China Shores, Wings of the Phoenix and China Mystery.
Konami slots aren’t very innovative, and their online versions won’t impress you with their special effects; however, there’s no denying that over the years, the Japanese developers became the masters of fast-paced games revolving around symbol stacks and free spins.
Slot name | RTP | Paylines | Reels | Theme |
---|---|---|---|---|
China Mystery | 96.1% | 30 | 5 | Cultural, Chinese |
Chili Chili Fire | 96.09% | 30 | 5 | Cultural, Mexican |
Lion Festival Boosted Celebration | 96.08% | 30 | 5 | Cultural, Chinese |
Jumpin' Jalapenos | 96.04% | 30 | 5 | Mexican |
Rawhide | 96.03% | 30 | 5 | Wild West |
Solstice Celebration | 96.03% | 30 | 5 | Spiritual, Seasonal |
Great Moai | 96.01% | 30 | 5 | Pacific, Polynesian |
Gypsy Fire | 96% | 30 | 5 | Mystical |
Dragon's Law | 96% | 30 | 5 | Asian, Oriental |
Sparkling Roses | 95.92% | 30 | 5 | Beauty, Luxury |
China Shores | 94.09% | 30 | 5 | Cultural, Chinese |
African Diamond | 94.01% | 30 | 5 | Cultural, African |
Konami prioritizes smooth, fast-paced gameplay over eye candy, so their games don’t include many disruptive animations. Their visual appeal relies mostly on the symbol and reel designs, which are aesthetically pleasing. This style of slots won’t appeal to everyone. If you aren’t a graphics hound, you should definitely give Konami games a try.
Konami games may be similar to one another, but fans tend to have their favorites. Below you’ll find a short overview of three modern Konami slots that are hot in internet casinos in 2019:
Konami slots’ action-stacked symbols mechanic makes them very popular among all kinds of gamblers. This mechanic can fill the reels with multiple copies of the same symbol, although this usually doesn’t apply to all symbols.
Konami also offers an easily recognizable take on free spins bonuses. The number of scatter symbols typically determines the number of awarded spins, the bonus can be retriggered for more free games, and all payouts are doubled. This formula is very satisfying and is sometimes copied by other slot manufacturers.
Konami slots may be more about gameplay than graphics, but that doesn’t mean they don’t include any special effects. The land-based games tend to play a satisfying animation if you line up several high-paying symbol stacks to score a big payout.
Unfortunately, these animations are either toned down or missing in their online counterparts. Symbol animations in the online games are simplified, too. For example, the mysterious woman symbol in the land-based version of China Mystery is fully animated, but in the online slot, it is completely static.
Obviously, this isn’t done out of laziness. After all, modern computers and mobile devices are more than capable of handling even the most sophisticated 2D animations. The problem lies in the bandwidth, as browser-based slot games are expected to work well even on slow internet connections. Simply put, Konami is still forced to cram games with 100+ megabytes (MB) into a three- to five-MB package.
The RTP for Konami games can range from 92% to 96.1%. In general, the 30+ payline slots with the action-stacked symbols mechanic tend to offer better returns and higher volatility. Examples:
Name | Konami Holdings Corporation |
Founded | 1969 |
Top slot | China Shores |
Special slot feature | Action Stacked Symbols |
Land-based games | Yes |
Online games | Yes |
Kagemasa Kozuki, Konami’s current chairman, founded the company in 1969 as a jukebox repair business. In the second half of the 1970s, Kozuki noticed the potential in the fledgling video game industry and transformed his company into a manufacturer of video arcade machines.
The first Konami coin-operated video game was ready in 1978. The company’s first breakthrough hit came in 1981 with the release of Frogger, which was followed by Scramble and Super Cobra.
Throughout the 1980s, the company established many of its franchises, including Metal Gear, Contra, Castlevania, Gradius, and Twin Bee. It also expanded to the United States and Europe and was listed in the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange and the Osaka Securities Exchange. By the end of the decade, Konami’s capital increased to 8.095 billion yen.
In 1992, Konami expanded into the pachislot and pachinko industry and began creating liquid-crystal display (LCD) games for the Japanese pachinko market. In 1997, it began developing Western-style gambling machines for the Australian slot market. On the video games front, the company released many smash hits for Sony PlayStation, including Metal Gear Solid and Silent Hill.
In 2000, Konami became the first Japanese company to enter the slot machines market in the United States. By 2002, it was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Konami continued developing games for next-generation consoles but also expanded to the sports industry, which was facilitated by the purchase of People Co., Ltd. (currently Konami Sports Club).
Konami’s capital has almost quadrupled since the 1990s. In 2005, the company opened a new office and production facility for gaming machines in Las Vegas, Nevada. Konami also signed a licensing agreement with the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) to produce soccer video games.
In 2012, Takuya Kozuki replaced Kagemasa as the head of the company. As a result, Konami began to move away from developing high-quality games for home computers and consoles. Instead, they focused on mobile gaming, pachinko, and slot machines.
This led to a conflict between Hideo Kojima, the man behind the Metal Gear series, and Konami’s corporate leadership, which ultimately resulted in Kojima Productions being closed in 2015. When Kojima left the company, Konami delisted itself from New York Stock Exchange and stopped producing AAA games, focusing on mobile gaming and low-budget console titles instead.
On the casino side, Konami developers came up with a very engaging slot formula involving stacked symbols and re-triggerable free spins, which is used to this day. The success of this formula allowed the company to open a new slot machine manufacturing facility in Nevada. This second facility became operational in 2015.
Konami Holdings Corporation is a publicly traded company listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TYO: 9766).
As of September 2018, the principal shareholders in Konami included The Master Trust Bank of Japan, Ltd. (17.30% stake), Kozuki Foundation (12.50%), Kozuki Holding (11.61%), Japan Trustee Services Bank Ltd. (Trust Account, 7.39%), Kozuki Capital Corporation (5.21%), Trust & Custody Services Bank Ltd. (2.01%), Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (1.49%), and Japan Trustee Services Bank, Ltd. (Trust Account 5, 1.16%).
Konami is headed by its board of directors, which are elected by the shareholders. The current president of the company is Takuya Kozuki. He is the son of Kagemasa Kozuki, who is now the chairman of the company. Both the president and the chairman are also acting as representative directors.
The remaining members of the board of directors are Osamu Nakano, Kimihiko Higashio, Satoshi Sakamoto, Yoshihiro Matsuura, Akira Gemma, Kaori Yamaguchi, and Kimito Kubo. The shareholders also elect the audit and supervisory board, which currently consists of Shinichi Furukawa, Minoru Maruoka, Nobuaki Usui, Setsuo Tanaka, and Hisamitsu Arai.
While many slot machine games incorporate neat artwork or flashy settings, the Solstice Celebration slot offers a refreshingly cute environment with light, sunny gameplay to warm players’ hearts. Everyone should feel their tensions ease as the colorful, enchanting symbols move across the screen.
It’s not all about looks though. The included “sparkle” feature potentially provides extra wins and loaded reels on any spin, and it can potentially send players to a free spin bonus round.
Anyone looking for a little summer break should take a look at this sunny-themed machine.
Software | Konami |
Type of Slot | Video Slot |
Paylines | 30 |
Reels | 5 |
Min. Bet | $0.45 |
Max. Bet | $450 |
Max. RTP | 96.03% |
Max. Jackpot | 1500 x Bet |
Features | Scatters, Wilds, Free Spins |
Mobile App | Yes |
Solstice Celebration uses a mixture of light fantasy and summer themes for the design. The background is a lovely field of flowers in front of distant mountains. The symbols are what really stand out though.
The higher tier symbols look like something off of a Lisa Frank notebook. Everything has an extra layer of fun detail. It doesn’t just use a butterfly; it uses e a sparkling, gold butterfly perched on a branch.
The horse has flowers in its braided mane, the wild space is a bright, dancing sun and the bonus space is a nymph that animates to welcome players to the bonus round. There’s also a shining diamond and a warm, golden flower.
There are a few small disappointments in the design. The game does feature a lot of standard card symbols, with a full set of “A, K, Q, J, 10 and 9” in fairly basic colors on the board.
It would have been nice to see a few more unique symbols in the game. This is especially true because the sparkle mechanic replaces stacks of three symbols with unique variants, except for the card spaces, which just become slightly strange, stretched versions of themselves.
There’s also not too much music. The little chimes and cheerful tunes that play to announce winning paylines are nice, but it could have used a little more sound design to draw players into the game.
The setup for the slots is a five-reel game with three rows. There are 30 paylines available, and the player has to play all 30 for each game. There is also an additional 15 credit bet to pay for the included features. The paylines are fairly standard, with most requiring a set of three running from left to right.
There are wild spaces on the board, and they can appear in any reel. They also tend to come in stacks, which is great for getting a few winning paylines in one game.
Konami slot machines tend to feature some form of its action-stacked symbols system. Solstice Celebration’s version is the sparkle feature. On any spin, the reels will be set with certain spaces that have golden borders that may appear for that game. The game picks a random symbol, which can be anything except for the bonus or wild symbols, and overwrites all bordered spaces to have it.
This helps fill different reels with similar symbols to give a few extra wins, but the sparkle mechanic really shines when two reels are completely filled.
If two separate reels are filled with three sparkle spaces, then this triggers a special sparkle mode. After any winning lines are paid out, the sparkle spaces pick a symbol again. This time, there’s a chance that it can be a wild space or even the special bonus symbol.
Also, if any other reels have even a single sparkle space on them, the reels will be nudged until the sparkle spaces fill the whole reel. While this doesn’t guarantee a win, it does provide a decent opportunity to fill the board with a lot of one specific symbol. There’s a chance for a big payout, and this is the only way to unlock the free spin bonus game.
During the sparkle feature, when the reels reset, there is a chance that it will change to the bonus symbol. This grants the player a scatter win and a set of free spins based on the number of spaces that change.
Two, three, four and five bonus reels respectively give 10, 15, 20 and 40 spins. The scatter wins range from 60x to 1,500x the line bet.
The free spin round is fairly similar to the main game. The biggest difference is that if a single wild space appears on any reel during a free spin, then the reel is nudged until the whole reel is wild. This really helps set up bigger combinations.
The sparkle feature is still active, and it will work the same as it does in the regular spins. This includes the potential to award more free spins if the bonus symbols appear again.
While this game may not offer particularly unique gameplay when compared against other Konami machines, the style helps it stand out from the crowd.
Solstice Celebration is a cute, warm and easy-to-play game. It’s perfect for players who want to see some light, fuzzy drawing and dancing suns while they hope for the sparkle feature.
Thanks to the wilds, there are also a lot of small wins to make the wait more bearable, and with a 96.03% RTP, it’s a fine machine for experienced players looking for a better return on their bankroll. Any player that likes the look of it should give this machine a try.