Software and licensing

One of the first things to check out when investigating a new online casino that you've never heard of before is their licensing situation, and who provides their software. In this case, everything was above board. Royal Aces has a license to operate issued to it by the government of Costa Rica, and in case you were worried about the financial side of things, this is handled by a company based in the UK called Emoney Processing Ltd.

The software itself is supplied by Real Time Gaming (RTG) and is a good piece of coding. It doesn't require a very powerful machine to run, and overall the games look extremely good with nice, realistic sound where appropriate, and zoomy fantasy noises where the games head off into territories that real land-based slot machines could never replicate.

Unfortunately, it's download only, and only for Windows computers. There's a link on their site for an Instant Play version of the casino, but it doesn't go anywhere. I got errors from it in Safari, and Internet Explorer, and Firefox, and Opera (I'm persistent).

This means that for the meantime Mac users will have to look elsewhere, or use Boot Camp, which runs the download version without a hitch.

The Games

The games are of the quality you have come to expect from Real Time Gaming – extremely slick and somewhat addictive. There's a roughly even split here between video slot titles and the more traditional casino table games, with a slight bias towards the slots.

Personally, I have to recommend the Face Up 21 game – it's like Blackjack, but with a few neat twists all of its own. I spent a happy afternoon playing it, as well as a few games of Pai Gow and the totally fabulous Vegas Three Card Rummy.

Bonuses

Royal Ace Casino hands out a free $7 bonus just for signing up – this is free money that you can do with as you will. If you win something while playing through it, you even get to keep it.

There is, however, an extremely generous first deposit bonus on offer – they will match anything you deposit, all the way up to $1,000. How cool is that?

Banking

You can transfer funds into your casino account in one of a few major ways. Royal Aces will accept deposits from Moneybookers, Click2Pay, NETeller, EcoCard and UseMyWallet. Failing that, you can always resort to trying a credit card – they'll happily take Visa, Mastercard, Diners Club and American Express.

Royal Ace supports banking methods in their casino for both deposits and withdrawals by Reverse Withdrawal, Click2Pay and Neteller and only deposits by MasterCard, Visa, JCB, American Express and Diners and only withdrawals by QuickTender, Wire Transfer and FedEx.

The currencies that Royal Ace allows to be used in casino accounts are U.S. Dollars. The casinos only language that is currently supported is English.

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