Tapatio Introduction
Let’s start with the name. Tapatio is the name for a very hot sauce made in California, that features a Mexican in a sombrero on the front of the bottle. You’ll see the bottles of sauce featured on the reels. Apparently, it’s also the name of a very high-quality tequila for which the ingredients are mixed in a barrel by foot (yes!) before the tequila is distilled. So this particular pokie has quite a lot to live up to!
Unusual combo of video and reels
The game has three mechanical reels and two video ones which makes it pretty much unique in the current pokies world. The gameplay is fairly straightforward - but it just looks different because of the different types of reels. And the theme is, of course, Mexicana, with graphics and music to match to spice up your play.
Paylines
This Aristocrat game has five reels and the display consists of 25 lines. So far, so usual. But then it starts going a bit tequila. The first two reels display fully realised video images. However, the next three reels don’t - they are mechanical-looking. True, video is overlaid to display the results and paylines but the combination gives a unique look and feel to the game.
As well as the sauce bottles mentioned above, there are various symbols that need to be matched to trigger a payout. The Mexican theme is much in evidence, as the symbols include maracas, hot sauce, cacti, bowls of nachos, tacos and chillies. Along with the more usual bars and sevens.
The bottles of sauce score the highest payouts of course, and anyone lucky enough to get five of these in a row is looking at discovering serious treasure - 1000 gold coins which must be Mexican reals. Chillies are down at the bottom of the paytable with only 40 coins and wilds are just the word “Wild!” so they’re easy to spot. And three Nacho Pick signs trigger the Nacho Pick bonus spin.
So does this hybrid game work? Players are intrigued but not sure - have a go and see what you reckon! You can play on desktop, mobile and tablet, and if it makes you peckish, you can always send out for tacos!