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Gamers here at Everygame Casino Red know that we offer over 400 games of which about 200 are slots. Most gamers also know that slots began as a single machine back before the turn of the last century.
Gamers are well aware of the fact that modern slots are digital, have themes, wild symbols, scatter symbols that take you to the free spins bonus round, great symbols and characters, and so much more. The themes, scatter, and wild symbols engage gamers in new and modern ways.
To some large degree, gamers play slots for their modern accoutrements.
The question is, how did that single, boring slot machine evolve into the highly entertaining slot machines we all love to play these days?
The First Slot Machine Was Just a Machine
The slot machine was invented in San Fransico by Charles Fey, a German immigrant of Bavarian descent. Fey was still in his early 20’s but had already travelled from Bavaria to France and then to San Francisco, where he had a small electric works business.
The classic slot machine, as it was developed by Charles Fey, was a mechanical device with an arm that players pulled to move the reels. The first slot machine had three reels and one payline.
He called his invention the Liberty Bell. He did so because he had added a symbol of the Liberty Bell and a horseshoe to the original playing cards' symbols.
The familiar fruits and bars came along only in 1907. Before that, the symbols were all playing cards with numbers, faces, and suits. The fruits and bars added some color to the games. Today, color is possibly the most prominent trend in slots.
Interestingly, the fruits added color not specifically for color’s sake but to get around gambling laws. A lot of payouts came in the form of colorful candies and chewing gum.
How Many Liberty Bell Slot Machines Have Survived?
Actually, there were once about 100 such machines in its heyday, but most perished in the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Only four were thought to have survived the quake and its fiery aftermath, but a few others were found, and today there are thought to be seven of the original 100.
One of the surviving original slot machines is on display at the Liberty Belle Saloon in Reno.
When was the First Digital Slot Developed?
Bally developed an electric slot that they called Money Honey. This was the progenitor of today’s fully digital slots. Money Honey was digital in almost all aspects, but gamers still had to pull the arm to get things started, even though the inner workings were electrical.
The first fully digital slot was developed in 1976. It made its way to land-based casinos since online casinos started up only in 1994. So much has happened in slots and in casino gaming since that wonderful day in 1994 when the first online casino came aboard!
The digital slots were called video slots in those early days. Some online sites that talk about slots in a modern context still use the term digital slots but most sites and gamers just say slots. Such is the pervasiveness of digital slots in casino gaming today.
Another interesting factoid about modern digital slots is that at first, players didn’t like the digital aspect; they wanted to pull that arm down! But the new type of slot machine caught on with less traditionalist players and has become the industry standard.
The Themes of Modern Slots
Here we have to make a mental leap from the hardware of the mechanical slot machines to the software that powers modern slots and has made engrossing themes an ongoing trend in slots.
The themes in the slots at Everygame Casino Red run the gamut from old cultures to new cultures; from the ancient to the modern and post-modern; from Egypt and Greece and many other older cultures to space travel and science fiction themes.
Our game provider, SpinLogic, brings out a new slot every month. It takes some months for SpinLogic to go from an idea to the symbols and characters that will “tell the story” of that idea, to actually drawing all of the symbols and characters. So, the “new” slots of summer and fall are already on the drawing board at SpinLogic!
Wild Symbols are Truly Wild
A wild symbol is like a joker in cards; it can stand for any other symbol. In modern slots, the exception is that the wild symbol usually doesn’t become a scatter symbol.
But the wild symbols have gone fully wild. Some might say that the wild symbols were born to be wild!
Thus, today, we have stacked wilds which usually stack three high but sometimes occupy an entire reel; sticky wilds that have a sort of super glue on them that makes it next to impossible to get them off the screen; to moving wilds that move about the reels until, in the manner that people thought would happen to ships sailing the high seas, they simply fall off the screen; to expanding wilds that really need to go on a diet but serve a vital function, namely, to help you win; to exploding wilds that send out little wilds that occupy many places on the reels and make winning so much easier.
Along with the scatter symbols, the wilds are the epitome of modernity in slots!
Well, What About the Scatter Symbols?
The scatters have three functions. First, they pay out a lot when you get three, four, or five scatters on a single spin. Second, they work in any configuration, even aside from the paylines already set for that slot. Third, they take you to the free spins bonus rounds.
Free spins are exactly that: free spins. You might get a few free spins or a dozen or more. You can often retrigger the free spins. Free spins are the best way to win big at a slot aside from the really gigantic progressive jackpots.
What is a Progressive Jackpot?
Before we talk about the wonderful progressive jackpots, we should point out that a lot of slots now have embedded random jackpots. The most common set of random jackpots has three such wins; some slots have four random jackpots.
The payouts for a random jackpot are not nearly as high as in a big progressive jackpot, but very few gamers would scoff at winning a few tens of thousands of dollars!
Now, the random jackpots are covered financially by the casino running a slot with these jackpots. A progressive jackpot is sponsored by the game provider since the payouts are almost always more than a million dollars, and the providers have a much wider reach than even the biggest online casino.
Everygame Casino Red Invites You to Play All of our Slots
This is one of the many, many reasons why so many casino players have gone over to the online version of casinos, and so many have chosen the Everygame Casino Red brand. Simply put, there are so many advantages to playing casino games online that land-based casinos are feeling the pinch.
At Everygame Casino Red, in addition to a couple of hundred great slots, you can play blackjack, video poker, European Roulette, craps, Banana Jones, and many other great games.
We run many top bonus promotions, offer secure banking, and generally provide a great casino gaming experience. If slots have become the casino symbol of modernity, then a top UX is the casino version of customer satisfaction, and Everygame Casino Red excels at UX!