Slot Machines: From Charles Fey to Leonardo Da Vinci

Slot machines were created over a hundred years ago by Charles Fey, an unemployed car mechanic in San Francisco. Since then we've seen thousands of different reel games, from the biggest slot games of all time, such as Big Bertha, a slot that became a Las Vegas phenomenon with its huge bank of reels, which needed a two stroke engine to get them spinning, to Bell Fruit's penny one arm bandit that paid fruit flavoured bubblegum to winners.

 Two of the biggest developments in the evolution of the slot machine have to be the invention of the bottomless hopper on the slot game Money Honey by Bally in the mid 1960s and the creation of the computer powered virtual reel by Inge Telnaes in the early 1980s. Before the bottomless hopper, slot machines would require an attendant to be on stand by to actually cash out the player's big wins (he would even have to look at the reels to verify the win). This new specialised hopper allowed slots to store a huge amount of coins in their cabinets, which in turn gave players the ability to receive automatic pay-outs, speeding up the play. The virtual reel allowed slot games to list all the combinations available on the reels as simple stops on a computerised model of a large single reel. This allowed developers to precisely balance and manage a slot games payout percentages. The virtual reel is the development that allowed slot machines to offer players progressive jackpots, where a little of each credit is set aside as part of an ever growing monster prize. The first progressive slots that hit Las Vegas were the legendary Megabucks machines, introduced by IGT in the mid-1980s.

The most recent evolutionary step in the story of the slot machine is the arrival of the reel game on the online stage. We saw the first inklings of the possibilities of online casinos and slot games way back in 1994, when computers and the internet were the hiding places of geeks and the socially unsure. Since then, ADSL broadband has bought high speed internet connections into almost every home in the western world and with it a whole host of different casino platforms and operators. This advance in communications has bought the world of slot games out of casinos and clubs and straight into people's homes, where they can play their favourite slot machines whilst relaxing at their own leisure.

 

Whilst slot machines have always enjoyed massive popularity stateside, the UK has always preferred a particular type of slot known as a fruit machine. These games have always operated in a slightly different manner to their American cousins, providing players with nudges, holds and trail games where you can lose it all as well as win a big prize; it's all a matter of when you decide to cash out. As a result, it took a time for UK based fruity fans to adjust to the five reel, multi-pay-line Vegas style slots. It was the WagerWorks' slot, Rainbow Riches Pots of Gold, which really helped break US style slots with UK audiences, with it's clever design that incorporated classic fruit machine mechanisms (such as the Road to Riches trail game and a Wishing Well 'pick me' scatter symbol reel bonus)  into a standard casino slot set up.  Pots of Gold became an instant overnight UK classic as British reel game fans instantly warmed to the game's set up (cabinet versions even had a helpful meter that displayed the game's current payout percentage) introducing them to a whole new world of multi-pay-line big reel games.

In recent years, developers have become even more creative with slot machine design. A real high point has to be Da Vinci Diamonds, a renaissance themed slot that's based around the life and work of the esteemed artist and polymath, Leonardo Da Vinci. The game has a clever 'Tumbling Reels' system, inspired by block breaking arcade classics such as Sega's Columns or Tetris. When you stop in a winning combination on Da Vinci Diamonds it explodes, leaving spaces on the reels for the symbols above to drop into, a process which can of course create new combinations, which in turn can explode again and again as you rack up the prizes.

Many believe that we've only seen a glimpse of the possibilities that computers and the internet have bought to the world of slots. Developers are now starting to really embrace the dynamics of game space, graphics and multiplayer capabilities that the internet has bought to the world of slots. Over the next decade we predict that there's going to be even more exciting developments that are going to bring even bigger jackpots, crazier game play and more heart-stopping moments straight to your home PC.