Pinup Girls

Pinup girls or pinup models is a fairly retro term which required some online research to pinpoint its exact meaning. No, seriously, it was all above-board research conducted in the pursuit of knowledge. Anyway, the term refers to pictures taken of glamorous models that were literally pinned up on the wall. They were also called 'cheesecake photos', 'cheesecake' being slang for raunchy pics, while the male equivalent was the 'beefcake'. Thank you, Wikipedia. Pinup modelling is strongly associated with the 1950s and WW2, though subcultures still exist today, and Pragmatic Play's online slot Pinup Girls explores the phenomenon in a gambling form.

Pinup Girls is one of those games that you kind of know is your cup of tea, or not, right away. It's loud, confident, and the ladies here appear to wear Cyndi Lauper Girls Just Want to Have Fun ethos proudly on their sleeves. No judgements here, by the way; if this is an area of interest, more power to you. On the other hand, if leggy, busty 'babes' doing 'babe things' makes your blood curdle, then Pinup Girls probably isn't the right match. In its defence, the name is a bit of a giveaway as to what to expect. What you can expect, as well as the pinup models, are pinup model-related objects, loads of pink colouration, flashing lights, and a jazzy bring it on soundtrack.

Pinup Girls slot - base game

If it sounds alright so far, then bet selection is up next. Pinup Girls is one of those slots that plays in batches of 10 spins where on the tenth spin, something special may occur. Progression is saved at each bet level, so changing the bet means you start a new round of 10 spins, but going back to the previous levels picks up where you left off. Choices range from 20 p/c to £/€100 per spin, and any device may be used. With three RTP models available, return values vary from 94.43% to 96.44%, marked as highly volatility by Pragmatic (5/5).

A 5-reel, 4-row game panel is where the action goes down, and players are provided with 20 paylines to land winning combinations of three to five of a kind on. Five symbol winning lines payout 2-3x the bet when consisting of 10-A card symbols, or 5-37.5x the bet for five shoes, perfume bottles, or the four pinup models. Rolling Stones-style lips appear on the wild symbols which appear on reels 2, 3, or 4. Wilds substitute for all symbols except the scatter.

Pinup Girls: Slot Features

So how Pinup Girls works is like this. All positions on the middle three reels can have a potential multiplier. On each spin in a 10-spin batch, random positions have their multiplier value increased by +1. These values remain this way until the 10th spin. On the 10th spin, all wild symbols that land on the middle three reels take the multiplier indicated at their respective position. Multipliers are applied to any win which passes through them, and if more than one wild with a multiplier is part of a win, the multipliers are added together. At the end of the ten spins, the multipliers are reset.

Free Spins

When 3, 4, or 5 scatter symbols land, 10, 15, or 20 free spins are respectively awarded. In free spins, multipliers are activated every 5 spins rather than every 10, and when wilds land, they mark the position they landed in. Then, on every 5th free spin, the positions that were marked by wilds transform into wilds and take on the positions' multiplier. Multipliers remain until the round ends as well; they do not reset after each fifth free spin. Free spins cannot be retriggered.

Lastly, where available, free spins can be bought for 100x the bet. When buying them, free spins are triggered randomly by 3, 4, or 5 scatters and have a top theoretical return of 96.33%.

Pinup Girls slot - free spins

Pinup Girls: Slot Verdict

Not every day a slot built around pinup girls comes along, so Pinup Girls might elicit a certain amount of curiosity. It might also elicit one or two suspicions about how the game will look, and its appearance is possibly the overriding factor in choosing whether to actually play it or not. Pinup Girls has one of those self-assured personalities that seems like it'll be the sort of thing players either love or loathe. Perhaps there are enough gamblers interested in the pinup scene to make this a hit?

Or maybe not, since some of the gaming aspects might be just as polarising. The batch of 10 spins concept isn't outrageously common, but there are options. Pinup Girls' version of the spin cycle has its ups and downs. The way these cycles often go tends to be that wilds mark spaces on the first 9 spins, then get added on the tenth spin in the marked positions or something along those lines. In Pinup Girls, wilds are completely random on the tenth spin. There is no guarantee any will land at all. At least in the base game. What's good is those wilds which do hit take on whatever multiplier happens to be associated with the specific position.

Free spins are where the feature gets a chance to soar a little higher, though. Not only because multipliers are persistent but because the game pops wild symbols onto positions that were marked in previous free spins - then they get multipliers. There was a suspicion the game could have soared fairly high, though a relatively modest 3,000x the bet win cap prevents the pinups from going stratospheric. Mathematically speaking, Pinup Girl does not impress as much as its visual appearance.

Pinup Girls is what it is, and it makes no apologies for the fact. If glamorous, retro ladies appeal, and cool if they do, then Pinup Girls could be a barrel of laughs. Those less enamoured by the scene might be harder to win over because the gameplay, while possessing merits, felt a little straitjacketed at the end of the day.