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Trends in slot machine design are typically started by one ingenious idea, “emulated” by other designers

By Frank Legato, CDC Gaming Reports

No one can deny that the modern history of the slot machine is one of imitation. Good ideas developed by one slot manufacturer are copied, refurbished and reintroduced under another name by other manufacturers.

It’s one reason slot-machine patent litigation is a career path for lawyers. However, even discounting alleged patent infringements, a good idea is a good idea. For slot machines, those ideas eventually are found in the games of many different manufacturers. Sometimes, they are changed enough so as not to infringe on patents, or the idea is so generic as to not be patentable. Other times, they are licensed from the patent owners until the patents expire.

The latter path can be applied to the technology that is the basis of the modern slot machine—the patent issued to Inge Telnaes establishing the method by which a random number generator determines reel results. However, the tradition of copying elements of slot machine design goes back way before the 1984 Telnaes patent.

In fact, it goes back to the first modern slot machine, the three-reel Liberty Bell, invented in the 1890s by Charles Fey. In those days, a gambling device was not considered as patentable. Fey, a German immigrant who sold his three-reel “nickel-in-the-slot machine” to San Francisco saloons, tried to keep close tabs on every machine he sold, but eventually, the exact design turned up in the Chicago workshop of Herbert Mills, who released his own version of the slot machine using the specifications of Fey’s Liberty Bell — three reels bearing fruit and other symbols, spring-loaded by cranking and releasing a handle, a coin chute spitting out nickels to pay off jackpots.

In plain evidence of the absence of patent and copyright laws, Mills even copied the name, calling his own machine the Operator Bell, with the jackpot, as in Fey’s Liberty Bell, hit by lining up three bell symbols.

For the purposes of our evaluation, we will here concentrate on the modern era of slot machines, which, arguably, can be traced to two milestones — the 1964 debut of Bally’s Money Honey, and the development of the virtual-reel system patented by Telnaes. These two developments, naturally, should be the first two in any list of the most-copied features of modern slot machine design.

Before we get into the list, some important points: First, we started with the intention of creating a “Top 10 List,” but it was quickly obvious that wouldn’t accommodate all the features that have been “emulated” repeatedly in the design of modern slot machines. This will be the first of two installments.

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Secondly, this list is completely subjective. It is based on the author’s 34 years of studying and writing about slot machines, a career that began the same year as the Telnaes patent. Therefore, after publication next month of Part Two of this list, please feel free to write in to remind us of what we may have missed. I’m sure the other “Frank” in our newsletter, Buddy Frank, will have substantial input on this front. His own career in slot operations spanned most of the innovations listed here. It’s altogether possible there could be a Part Three to the list.

But for now, here is Part One.

Most-Copied Modern-Era Slot Machine Features

1. Money Honey: Lights, Action
The introduction by Bally in 1964 of the electro-mechanical three-reel Money Honey machine changed the way manufacturers built slot machines. It is recognized as the first plug-in slot machine, with electricity initiating the servo contact that sent the mechanical reels spinning. Electricity did other things that transformed the slot floor. Earlier slot machines were basically big metal boxes. Money Honey had back-lit glass, with silkscreened artwork and brightly lit pay tables. The effect of rows of these devices made the slot floor come alive with illumination.

Other Money Honey innovations that would be copied by just about every other slot manufacturer included the coin hopper, which replaced the coin tube and chute that marked payouts in earlier machines (think of those old comedy films where men would put their hats under the chute to catch the coins). First, the coin hopper enabled more coins to be held in the machines, which in turn enabled larger jackpots. Second, the coins fell into a large metal tray, which infused new excitement to the casino floor as coins clanged into the trays, accompanied by ringing bells, buzzes and other sounds —the other benefit of electricity.

2. The Virtual Reel
In the late 1970s, while working for Bally, Inge Telnaes developed the virtual-reel system, which determines reel results through use of a random number generator. By the time he was issued the patent for the system in 1984, the method was already being used by Bally, Universal and other manufacturers. Bally’s Series E1000 was the first major slot series to use the RNG method, but the technology was perfected by Universal, which introduced the stepper motor. The motor was essential to stopping each reel exactly where the computer told it to stop.

The virtual-reel stepper slot is the reason slot machines ballooned in popularity during the 1980s. The mechanical method of determining reel results was limited to the physical makeup of the slot machine — three reels, 20 symbols, 20 spaces, with odds of lining up the top jackpot symbol on the pay line typically around one in 64,000. Jackpots, thus, were limited to a few hundred dollars in the quarter slots. Manufacturers got the jackpots as high as they could by increasing the number of reels to four and increasing the denomination to dollars, but eventually, the limit was reached as to what casinos could offer as jackpots and still maintain a game that turned a profit.

With the virtual reel system, each possible result on a reel — symbols or blanks — could be assigned as many numbers as the engineer desired, meaning odds of hitting a jackpot were limited only by state law. With the chances of a top jackpot rising to one in a million, more jackpots in the tens of thousands could be offered. The virtual-reel system was copied and copied again. International Game Technology would ultimately purchase the rights to the Telnaes patent, and until the patent expired in 2002, rights to computerized reel-spinners went through IGT. Other manufacturers had to pay royalties to produce successful reel-spinning slot machines.

Bally and Universal were grandfathered from having to pay licensing fees since they had offered the technology previously. That enabled Bally to produce its most legendary games in Blazing 7s, Black & White and others. Once the patent expired, the virtual reel system became perhaps the most copied slot machine feature in history.

3. Megabucks and the Wide-Area Progressive
Progressive slot machines — where a pari-mutuel jackpot grows through contributions from a portion of coin-in — had been a popular game style since the early 1970s. Many of the machines featured sports cars or other physical prizes as the top jackpot. In 1986, IGT introduced the game that would change the landscape not only of the progressive slot, but of the slot machine itself: Megabucks.

Megabucks, a four-reel, dollar slot game, was the first wide-area progressive machine. The jackpot was incremented by a portion of coin-in from every machine in a network that included casinos across the state of Nevada. (It was extended to multi-state in 2014.) At the time, casinos were looking for ways to offer the kinds of life-changing prizes that were the hallmark of state lotteries, which were viewed as the main competition for the gambling dollar. Megabucks offered a jackpot starting at $1 million.

IGT patented the idea and would expand the concept to other denominations with game links such as Quartermania, Nevada Nickels and, Wheel of Fortune. As with the virtual-reel system, other manufacturers would have to pay IGT licensing fees to offer wide-area progressives until the early 2000s. And like the Telnaes patent, once IGT’s patent expired, the floodgates were opened, and the wide-area progressives became a staple of slot libraries everywhere.

4. Bonus Rounds: Games Within Games
Certainly, the most popular bonus round in slot machines is the bonus wheel, which we will cover later. However, the first “game within a game” features to eventually be copied by multiple manufactures came before the widespread use of the bonus wheel.

The game-within-a-game bonus can be traced to the early-to-mid 1990s introduction of multi-line video slots. The so-called “Australian style” slot game was brought to the U.S. by Aristocrat Leisure Limited, and picked up by Williams, later WMS Gaming (now part of Scientific Games). Early Aristocrat video slots featured animated sequences triggered by certain reel results that enacted what was usually a simple animated picking bonus. Williams picked up the game-within-game feature first on its mid-1990s reel-spinning series. The bonus features included a car race in the game High Speed and “breaking the piggy bank” to enact the “Dotmation” dot-matrix video display in the game Piggy Bankin’.

That stepper game series would end as WMS turned to video. WMS would continue to create game-within-game bonuses in its groundbreaking video series that began with the game Reel ‘Em In — a funny cartoon bonus that had fishermen “fishing” for bonuses. A patent lawsuit brought by IGT in 1999 was the main reason WMS turned to video slots, which transformed the slot business.

5. Those Blazing 7s
Bally was not the first manufacturer to produce a game centered around the lucky number 7, but its Blazing 7s three-reel machine was certainly the most famous version. It is one of the most copied games of all time. The fiery 7 symbols — single, double and triple — made up the entire top portion of the game’s pay table, returning winning combinations for each, plus mixed 7s, and the game’s top jackpot for three of the top 7 combination.

Developed by Bally legend Robert Manz and introduced in 1987, Blazing 7s led to games from other manufacturers that copied the format and mechanics as far as they could. Fiery 7s and multiple 7 combinations ended up in the game library of just about every manufacturer that produced a mechanical reel-spinner. The game setup appeared in Asian casinos with a different lucky number at the core — 8s. These days, the theme shows up in Bally slots from Scientific Games that include modern versions of the original theme and new multi-line versions in the “Hot Shot” series.

6. Double Diamond: The Multiplying Wild Symbol
Not long after Bally’s launch of Blazing 7s, IGT broke ground of its own in the reel-spinning genre with a feature the company has grown into a multi-game library of its own. The game with the multiplying wild symbol has been copied by every manufacturer.

It first appeared in 1989 in Double Diamond, a simple traditional three-reel, single line slot machine. The game had one special feature: A line win including a wild symbol paid double the pay-table amount. Two wild symbols in a win paid four times the jackpot. Three of the symbols on the pay line returned the game’s top jackpot.

Double Diamond was an instant hit. IGT quickly moved to capitalize on the gimmick with Triple Diamond, which had wild symbols that tripled the pay with one or multiplied it by nine with two. Soon to follow were Five Times Pay, Ten Times Pay, 2X3X4X Pay, and others.

These days, manufacturers from across the spectrum employ the multiplying wild symbol, particularly in the mechanical stepper genre. Players still love it, so don’t expect the game to disappear as long as spinning reels are still used.

7. Multi-Line Video Slots
Aristocrat’s multi-line video slots count as an innovation that was copied by all other manufacturers. The first games that went beyond the five pay lines – generally the maximum on reel-spinners – was developed for the private clubs in New South Wales, Australia, to spice up the games for members who played several times a week. Aristocrat brought them to the U.S. in the mid-1990s, debuting first in Atlantic City.

The unheard-of nine pay lines – which continued to grow – and encyclopedic pay tables were a curiosity to U.S. players at first. The genre caught on, prompting WMS Gaming to be the first U.S. manufacturer to copy the multi-line format with Reel ‘Em In. IGT would soon follow with a complete new generation of multi-line video slots.

8. Multi-Game Machines: The Game Maker
Bally is credited for creating the first multi-game slot machine to gain widespread use in the United States. The company was first founded in 1932 and carried the names Bally Manufacturing, Bally Gaming and Bally Technologies before being folded through merger into Scientific Games. The machine, known as Bally Game Maker, offered players a choice between video slots, video poker, video keno and other games at the touch of a button. It was the forerunner of today’s multi-game, multi-denomination slots.

9. The Wheel
The bonus wheel as a slot machine feature was not invented by the game that would make it the most famous. It is one of the most copied bonus features of all time. Then Bally Manufacturing initiated a wheel backed by flashing lights for bonus rewards in a reel-spinner in the 1970s.

The wheel-style bonus would gain national fame in the mid-1990s when the former Anchor Gaming styled a roulette-style wheel for bonus awards and placed it atop a Bally reel-spinning slot called Wheel of Gold. But, the most famous application of the wheel would come later from IGT, which eventually acquired Anchor Gaming. Introduced In 1996, Wheel of Fortune would go on to become perhaps the most popular slot games in history, and a title that spawns new versions to this day.

Wheel of Fortune also pumped up the wide-area progressive genre, as the wheel-spinning bonus, set to the theme music and audience sound of the Wheel of Fortune game show, provided a welcome break from the long periods of fruitless reel-spinning so characteristic of the Megabucks-style game.

10. Themed Slot Machines
Wheel of Fortune brought one more innovation to the industry that was copied by everyone: the entertainment-based theme. After Wheel of Fortune was introduced, other slot manufacturers quickly followed with themes of their own—from WMS’ Monopoly series to Bally’s Betty Boop.

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By framing the wheel bonus in a popular game show and licensing the sights and sounds of that show, a precedent was set in licensed themes that continues to this day. It also marked IGT’s dominance of the slot market in the early 2000s, as the company employed its own multi-line video slots using themes from movies (Creature from the Black Lagoon), TV (The Beverly Hillbillies) and popular music (Elvis).

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Today’s Michael Jackson, The Walking Dead, Seinfeld, Avatar and other slot games trace their roots to the big wheel with its audience chant, “Wheel… of… FORTUNE!”

Bally Slot Machine E1000 Code 41

We will stop at 10 examples for Part One. Next month, we’ll look at multi-progressive slots, scatter-pay formats, mystery jackpots and more.