Buffalo

Provider

Aristocrat

Volatility

High

Layout

5x4, up to 1,024 ways

Buffalo is the most recognisable poker machine Aristocrat has ever built, and it is also the game that introduced a mechanic now used by half the industry.

Aristocrat invented ways-pays, and this is where you met it

Before Buffalo, almost every slot paid on fixed paylines running left to right through specific positions. Aristocrat's Xtra Reel Power replaced that: symbols pay for appearing on adjacent reels regardless of vertical position, producing up to 1,024 ways on a 5x4 grid.

Every "1,024 ways" and "243 ways" game you have played descends from this idea. Big Time Gaming's Megaways engine is a variable-row extension of the same principle.

The commercial consequence mattered too. Ways-pays games let a player buy coverage of the whole grid in one action rather than selecting lines, which suits a fast venue session far better than a 25-line configuration.

Why the game feels the way it does

Two design choices drive everything:

Stacked buffalo symbols. The buffalo appears in tall stacks that can fill a reel. On a ways-pays grid, a filled reel multiplies the number of live combinations rather than adding to a single line — which is why Buffalo produces occasional very large base-game hits between long quiet stretches.

Scatter-triggered free spins with multipliers. The free games round is where the high-volatility reputation comes from. Buffalo is classified high volatility, and unlike most of Aristocrat's catalogue that label is doing real work.

The maximum win figure needs care

Published as around 7,600x for online conversions. Treat it cautiously.

Older reviews of this game express top awards per symbol or per line, in credits, rather than as a multiple of total bet. Those are different units, and converting between them requires knowing the line count and denomination. A "2,000 credit" award and a "2,000x total bet" award are not the same thing and can differ by two orders of magnitude.

We have flagged this on several Aristocrat pages because it is the single most common way legacy pokie data gets misreported.

The Buffalo family

Aristocrat has extended this into one of the largest game families in the industry — Buffalo Gold, Buffalo Link, Buffalo Diamond, Buffalo Chief, Buffalo Ascension and others.

They share the artwork and the ways-pays foundation. They do not share maths. Buffalo Gold's free games work on a gold-collection mechanic entirely absent from the original. Do not carry assumptions between them.

Two versions of this game, two different sets of numbers

Aristocrat games exist in two forms with genuinely different mathematics, and almost every site conflates them.

	Australian venue pokie	Online conversion
Where you play it	Clubs, pubs, casinos	Overseas licensed casinos
Legal for AU residents	Yes, in venue	No — prohibited under the Interactive Gambling Act 2001
Return	Set by operator configuration within state minimum	94.85% reported
Is the return displayed?	Usually not	Yes, in the info screen
Maximum bet	$5–$10 per spin depending on state	0.40–1,200, operator-dependent
Maximum win	Denomination and config dependent	~7,600x reported

The venue version

The figure that matters in a club is the configured return, chosen by the venue operator within the statutory minimum for your state or territory — not by Aristocrat, and not by the game's design.

Jurisdiction	Minimum RTP	Max bet per spin
Victoria, ACT	87%	$5
South Australia	87.5%	$5
NSW	85%	$10
Queensland, Tasmania, NT	85%	$5 (sources vary)

Minimums per the Australian Gambling Research Centre; Victoria's $5 cap is set by the VGCCC under the Australian/New Zealand Gaming Machine National Standard. Casino machines generally sit above these club and pub floors.

The configured return is usually not displayed on the machine. You can press the information button for the paytable, but the actual RTP setting normally is not shown. There is no consumer-facing fix for this.

Other venue rules worth knowing: in NSW, prize money above $2,000 must be paid by cheque or electronic transfer rather than cash, ATMs are banned from gaming areas, and there is a mandatory shutdown between 4am and 10am. Queensland club and hotel machines carry reported win limits of $10,000, or $25,000 on a jackpot.

The online version

The online Buffalo runs 5x4 with up to 1,024 ways and a scatter-triggered free games round with multipliers, at a reported 94.85% return. The bet range is far wider than any venue permits — up to 1,200 per spin against a $10 statutory maximum in NSW.

Online builds are deployed to regulated markets overseas, mainly North America. They are not legal for Australian residents to play for real money. We cover their figures because they are the only published per-game numbers that exist for this catalogue, and because they tell you something real about the game's design — but they do not describe the machine on your local floor.

The practical gap is large. An online build at 94.85% against a venue machine configured near its state minimum of 85–87% is a difference of roughly eight to ten percentage points of turnover. Same artwork, same features, materially different product.

See our Aristocrat provider page for the full comparison across the catalogue.

Also on this site

• Buffalo Gold — the same family, different feature maths
• 5 Dragons — Aristocrat's other major ways-pays release
• Aristocrat — how venue configuration determines what you actually play

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Sources: third-party slot databases. Not confirmed against Aristocrat's own technical documentation — see our provider page for why first-party data on this catalogue is difficult to obtain. Release lineage dates to around 2008. Reviewed 29 August 2026.

Reviewed by SlotzKilla Editorial · Published 29 August 2026 · Last updated 29 August 2026 · How we source figures