Microgaming vs Nolimit City: a broad catalogue and a narrow, deep one

Size and format mix

This site carries 138 Nolimit City slots and 295 Microgaming slots (plus 58 live tables). Nolimit City has no live tables here.

Nolimit City has 86 standard, 49 ways and 3 cluster-pays slots. Its catalogue fills the format field with its own mechanic names such as xSplit, xNudge and xWays, and the site's classifier reads only xWays as ways and leaves the rest as standard. That is why Fire in the Hole 3 and Tombstone R.I.P land in standard.

Microgaming has 147 standard, 71 fixed-payline, 54 ways, 16 cluster pays, 4 Link & Merge, 2 Maxways and 1 cascading-reel slot. Both have a high standard share for different reasons: Microgaming's entries are short, while Nolimit City's use names the classifier does not know.

Volatility: word grade versus a wide index

Nolimit City publishes volatility as an index, and all 138 slots here have a value: from 5.26 on Tesla Jolt to 168.72 on San Quentin 2: Death Row, with a median of 18.74.

Microgaming uses word grades: 115 High, 74 Medium, 59 Very high, 20 Low, 7 Medium-high, 1 Low-medium and 19 unlisted. Nolimit City publishes no rule for dividing its index into words, so this site carries the index unchanged.

NetEnt also uses an index, but on a different scale, so even setting NetEnt's median of 6.8 next to Nolimit City's 18.74 means nothing, let alone translating either into Microgaming's grades. Nolimit City's index is a number for comparing Nolimit City games with each other.

RTP and win caps

Nolimit City publishes RTP for all 138, with a median of 96.07% and a range of less than a point, from 95.91% (Pixies vs Pirates) to 96.77% (Kitchen Drama: Sushi Mania). Microgaming publishes RTP for 240, median 96.12%, ranging over more than five points from 91.89% (Froot Loot) to 97.49% (Dragon Dance).

Nolimit City publishes a cap for all 138, median 20,000×, with a top of 500,000× on Tombstone Slaughter: El Gordo's Revenge. Microgaming has caps on only 37 (12.5%), median 10,000×, top 50,000×.

Nolimit City's median cap coming out twice as high does not mean the two catalogues were measured alike: one is complete, the other a partial sample. And a cap is a rule stating the most a game can pay, not a statement of how often that happens.

Release years, demos and themes

All 138 Nolimit City slots are dated, running from 2016 to 2026, with 22 before 2020 and 58 from 2024 to 2026. Microgaming's 235 dated slots run from 2004 to 2026, with 60 before 2020 and 92 from 2024 to 2026.

Demos run for all 138 Nolimit City slots and 265 of Microgaming's 295. Themes are detected from words in titles and descriptions, and only 40 of Nolimit City's 138 match (Adventure 9, Music & party 7, Wealth 6), because its titles rarely overlap the usual theme words. Microgaming matches 239 of 295, led by Wealth (99) and East Asia (52).

For examples, Nolimit City's Fire in the Hole 3 is 96.05%, index 30.93, 70,000×; Tombstone R.I.P is 96.08%, index 66.85, 300,000×; and Mental is 96.08%, index 29.93, 66,666×. On the Microgaming side there are K-POP Hunter Zeus (95.91%, Very high, 50,000×) and Luna Princess Link&Merge (96.23%, Medium-high, 10,000×).

The difference is shape and publishing, not quality

Nolimit City's catalogue is small, its RTPs cluster almost at a single point, and it publishes every cap and index. Microgaming's is large and older, spans a wider RTP range, grades volatility in words and lists caps for only some games.

That contrast is one of character, not rank. There is no standard by which a narrow, deep catalogue beats a broad one or the reverse; this piece simply lays out what the two studios published, the way they published it.