When a game has the widespread distribution of Microgamming, there are lots of players playing at any given time. Each and every bet they place contributes to the climbing jackpot. To date, that jackpot has gotten as high as a half of a million dollars. There were nine winners in April 2006, for a total of $636,043 for an average jackpot of $70K. Treasure Nile has nine paylines, five reels and takes up to nine coins. For each coin you bet, you activate another payline. The game follows and Egyptian theme with symbols such as cobras, the Sphinx, scrolls and gold jewelry. The game also includes a wild Pyramid symbol that completes winning combinations (except the jackpot or the scatter symbols).

The Pharoah symbol is the important one, since five of them on the ninth payline win you the jackpot. Once again, on the slots, play the max coins! The main reason for this is that unless you’ve bet that last coin, the ninth line won’t be active. If those five pharaohs show up on the ninth line and it’s not an active line, you’ll have missed out on the jackpot. That’d be a real bummer, huh?

I like the scatter symbol feature of this game too. It seems to raise the hit rate. In this case, the scatter is a Scarab (that’s a bug in my world!). Scarabs pay wherever they show up, and do not have to be found in a row across a payline to be a winning combo.

There is no choice of coin size. You’ll always be playing with a .50 coin. So, when you bet all nine lines (which you’re always going to do, right?) they spin will cost you $4.50.

The machine has payed out in excess of a quarter million dollars. Real money, to a real happy player. Of course other players have settled for as "little" as $40,000. This machine can hit at any time. There are too many Microgamming casinos to mention here, and they all feature the progressive games. With so many places to play, there are always lots of people clicking on the spin button.

Each of those spins contributes to the jackpot, so it’s always on the rise… well except at the very moment when you win! The higher the jackpot gets, the more people want to play, so it tends to climb more rapidly as a build up to a win.