As slot machines get ever glitzier, ever more feature-rich, ever more fun to play, the pattern is clear — innovation leads to innovation, creativity to creativity. Every time WMS Gaming introduces a breakthrough such as Transmissive Reels or Sensory Immersion Gaming, or International Game Technology brings a true 3-D look to video slots, it seems every competitor is spurred to find its own ways to catch players’ eyes. After all, the first thing a slot machine has to do is put on a display that shouts to the player, “Look at me!â€

After that mission is accomplished comes the rugged task of delivering on the promise, giving us the good times that keep us in our seats and keep us coming back. 
In the coming months, a whole new crop of marquee games will be screaming for our attention. Let’s take a sneak preview:

One of the biggest, flashiest new titles around, “Sex and the City†is IGT’s first Megajackpots game to feature the Multiplay system that was introduced a year ago. Four sets of video reels are displayed on the same screen, so you are actually playing four games at once. And for a full multimedia experience, there is a new MEGAfx Surround Chair with five audio channels in the wraparound head section and a subwoofer in the seat.

With video clips, reel symbols and bonus rounds featuring all four of the TV hit’s females as well as “Mr. Big†Chris Noth providing voiceovers and essentially acting as a host for the game, fans of the show no doubt will love the game. But there is enough entertainment with nine bonus rounds and a five-level progressive jackpot that non-watchers can enjoy, too.

In a run-through of the game, I triggered a free-spin bonus event that locked in place a certain style of shoe every time that symbol occurred. By the end, there were shoes forming winning combinations everywhere.

“If you were a woman, right now you’d be screaming, ‘I got the shoe bonus!’†IGT director of marketing Julie Brown said, adding that “early returns show that with so much going on, men are having a good time at the game, too.â€

Center Stage, IGT: This is a system, rather than a specific game — one that figures to be adding entertainment with new titles under the Center Stage big screen for years to come. It is definitely an eye-catcher as a 103-inch screen above a bank of machines draws attention to the prime-time product. A second version features a 70-inch screen. IGT’s hope is that casinos will install both versions, with the latest and greatest production going on the big screen while the previous game moves over to the 70-inch stage.

The first Center Stage game to be released is followed by IGT is rolling out the heavy hitters early in this lineup. “The Wheel of Fortune†Experience was created by Leading Edge Design, the same company that created Multi-Strike Poker and Gems Wild Tiles for IGT. I sampled both games. The latest in IGT’s highly successful line based on the long-running TV game show features a community bonus that has three players choosing letters to complete a puzzle. The player who fills in the most puzzle spaces gets the biggest bonus. The player who triggers the bonus event goes to the game board along with two other players randomly selected by the game, among all playing at the bank of five machines, mirroring the three-player experience of TV contestants.

Video of Vanna White invites players to choose letters from among those displayed at the individual machine. All the letters are part of the puzzle — there are no misses. The trick is to try to solve the puzzle mentally so that on your turn, you can pick the letter that occurs the most times in the puzzle. Pick an “O,†and four “Os†will bring you four bonus awards. The player who collects the most puzzle letters gets the biggest bonus. And all bonuses are multiplied one to four times, depending on both bet size and speed of play.

“American Idol†uses five sets of video reels per screen along with personalities Ryan Seacrest, Simon Cowell, Kara DioGuardi and Randy Jackson. Its community bonus on the big screen involves auditions from the TV show. Each player picks one of three judges. After video of the audition, each judge in turn gives assessment of the performance, with bonus meters rising and falling with the judges’ comments. A really strong performance can lead to a bonus round within a bonus round — the Golden Ticket to Hollywood — and a disaster of a performance brings out judge Simon at his snarky best.

“It goes into the bonus round every two minutes, so it’s high energy and lots of fun,†Brown said.

Blood Life, IGT: The Goth crowd among us will like the graphics on this one, with three-dimensional coffins and skull-7 symbols popping out through IGT’s Multi-Layer Display. Video screens layered on each other bring out a 3-D image without the need for special glasses. Blood Life is just one game in a new Reel Edge series in which you can stop the reels and actually have an impact on the outcome of your spin. You actually affect where they land, as opposed to past symbol stoppers that just gave the illusion of skill. Symbols move so fast that I couldn’t make them stop on any particular symbol, but perhaps someone younger with better reflexes can take advantage.

By the way, you don’t have to be in a graveyard mood to enjoy either the 3-D effects or the chance to stop the reels where you please. IGT has dozens of MLD games, and several in the initial release of Reel Edge.

The Amazing Race, IGT:  Back on the TV beat, IGT will have you racing around the world in a community-style game with a four-level progressive jackpot. Group bonus events can be competitive. One “Ticket Challenge†gives you a mound of sand on the screen. You tap the screen to dig away and try to find a buried travel ticket — the first to find the ticket gets the bigger bonus. A free-spin bonus is combined with a race to a travel destination. When a Mileage Meter lands on the reels, you want to tap away to collect miles faster. If you’re first to collect miles to reach the destination, you collect the biggest bonus, and just might move on to a bonus within the bonus.

The Wizard of OZ: Follow the Yellow Brick Road: The original “Wizard of Oz†game has been such a megahit for WMS that it brought out two more titles in the line. Follow the Yellow Brick Road uses Transmissive Reels in Dorothy’s journey along the yellow brick road as she meets the Tin Man, Scarecrow and Cowardly Lion. Transmissive Reels, used on a number of WMS games in recent years, uses mechanical reels with special glass in front that can transmit a video image either for bonus rounds or just for graphics that jazz up the base game. On Follow the Yellow Brick Road, there is a four-level progressive with a mystery launch — it’s not symbol driven, so you never know when a progressive event is going to turn up.

Ruby Slippers is a video Sensory Immersion extravaganza where each of the four main movie characters trigger a different bonus event. With Munchkins singing, the Wicked Witch bringing thunder and lightning to the screen and, in the best of times, Dorothy enthusing, “It’s too wonderful to be true!†— Ruby Slippers will bring extra slot enjoyment to those who enjoyed the first game in the series.

“Those games are not coming off the floor,†said Candace Lucas, WMS executive director of marketing operations, referring to the original “Wizard of Oz†games that remain among player favorites. “I can imagine these (new) games will be going onto the floor along with the games that players have come to love. Players absolutely love the graphics and the color of ‘Wizard of Oz.’ The movie is nostalgic, it warms your heart, and we’ve definitely tried to take advantage of that, to take what they’ve loved about the movie and love about the theme, and bring it into the game as best we could.
Monopoly Planet Go; WMS Gaming: “The classic board game has been a winner from WMS ever since players took their first walks on the Boardwalk a decade ago. WMS continues to build on the brand with a couple of new Monopoly titles. One is Monopoly Big Money Spin Bigger Event, which takes Community Gaming to a new level. For the first time, players not only win together, they work together at building their bonuses — “collaborative gaming,†as WMS puts it. There’s a 104-inch plasma display up top. You can’t miss it.

Monopoly Planet Go is a real eye-catcher, taking Monopoly into space with Mr. Monopoly and Scotty the dog trekking through a dozen bonus destinations. Take a good look at the aliens you encounter as they look suspiciously like earthly Monopoly icons.
Goldfish Race for the Gold, WMS Gaming: The popular Goldfish game, with all its different colored fish and bonus fun, moves to a Community Gaming format in this new version. The main event is a competitive seahorse race played out on the plasma screen overhead. Everyone wins a bonus, but the winner of the race gets the biggest prize. And there’s a shot at a four-level progressive jackpot.

In addition to the community play, players can collect individual bonuses on the base game. Fishes of different colors bring different extras — a blue fish turns a symbol wild, a red fish can turn up to 15 symbols wild, a green fish can multiply winnings up to 10 times, a purple fish can turn whole reels wild, and a gold fish can upgrade symbols in winning combination for bigger payoffs.

Beat the Bandits, Aristocrat Technologies: Beat the Bandits is a Wild West experience, down to the woodgrain-like laminate on the sides of each machine suggesting a saloon door, to the curtains opening and closing in the windows in the display above. The button panel is gold rather than silver, and bonus rounds all are keeping with the theme. You might start with a roll of the dice against Madam Red. If either of you roll doubles, it’s on to a secondary bonus — perhaps a shooting contest against Grandma, gunning bottles and cans off the rails. A mystery progressive jackpot starts at $1,000 and must hit by $1,199.

There’s a choose-your-volatilty aspect to a three-level secondary bonus round, as players choose whether to go for a bigger progressive prize, or whether to give themselves a better chance of winning.

“You can go for the big one if you want more risk, or you can go for a safer one,†said director of marketing Doug Fallon. “If you don’t succeed, we’ve added a bulk increment that goes into the jackpot itself. So everyone can see, ‘Wow, somebody just missed that one.’ The jackpot jumps and everyone says, ‘Wow, I want to win that one.’â€

Kiss My Cash, Aristocrat Technologies: The follow-up to Aristocrat’s Jeff Foxworthy game is an attention-grabber with its brand of country fun. A Backyard Beer Hunt sends the player searching through junk in the backyard — an old refrigerator, a doghouse, broken-down cars — to find beer for bonuses. In a truck pull, trucks are linked and sent driving in opposite directions, with a bigger bonus when your truck wins.

“The game’s just funny,†Fallon said. “It makes you laugh.â€

Cash Spin, Bally Technologies: I had a blast testing Cash Spin, which uses Bally’s new U-Spin technology.

“The player actually spins the wheel, adding that whole element of interactivity that really doesn’t exist today,†said Laura Olson-Reyes, Bally’s director of corporate communications. “It also has what we call iReel (for Interactive Reels) technology.â€

In the bonus event, the image of a wheel sectioned off in bonus amounts popped up on the screen, and as I touched it, I found it would move forward or back, depending on which direction I moved my finger. Finally, keeping contact with the wheel image, I rapidly and sharply pulled my finger down the screen and let fly. That gave the wheel a good, long spin before it finally landed on 2,500 credits. Success!

Bally’s iReel technology overlays a video touchscreen image on the glass in front of mechanical reels, giving animation and touchscreen bonus possibilities to reel-spinning games. For Cash Spin, it’s in the V32 slot cabinet, with its elongated screen space — the same deep screen that’s used in Bally’s Roulette games.

It’s fun, but it has to be. After all, innovation leads to innovation, creativity to creativity, and there’s a whole lot of fun on its way for slot players.

 

 

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By John Grochowski

Posted March 3rd, 2010 under Features Articles, In this Issue. RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback.