| Another manufacturer I'd not mentioned yet is A.C. Coin, which players know largely through its Slotto games. A.C. Coin also makes a line of Mix and Match slots. In the Chicago area, Trump Casino in Gary has some Mix and Match games on the lower level. Mix and Match games are three-reel slots that include a bonus round in the top box. There, sideways-spinning reels stacked atop each other form images that may or may not match for a bonus. One new Mix and Match slot is The Honeymooners, with images of Ralph, Alice, Ed and Trixie. In testing the game, one round with multiple spins brought me bonus for forming all of Alice and all of Ed, but also brought me the incongruous image of Alice's top, Ralph's middle and Trixie's legs. With sound including lines from the TV show, The Honeymooners Mix and Match game is worth a chuckle or two. Also new from A.C. Coin is Bowzer's Rock & Roll Party. A.C. Coin put on the full-court press promoting this one. Former Sha Na Na voice Bowzer sang a little of that old-time rock 'n' roll on a stage at the company's expo booth. The game itself is a Slotto variation, with a bonus round that plays a '50s rocker of the player's choice while the Slotto balls are being dropped. * * * * * Each year about this time, I look forward to receiving Steve Bourie's annual American Casino Guide ($14.95, Casino Vacations), which seems to get more informative with every edition. Working state by state, the 2003 Guide lists every casino in the United States, along with phone numbers, addresses, Web sites, games offered, casino size, number of rooms, restaurants, prices for buffets and valet parking, senior citizen discounts and special features. IGT has games with big, bright top boxes, with the wheel atop Wheel of Fortune or the 3-D figures of Jed and Granny designed to draw attention from across the casino. IGT has video slots on its I-game platform, multiline games such as Cops and Donuts, Tabasco, Dragon's Gold and the Great Turkey Shoot. IGT has reel-spinning games, more than any other manufacturer, with Diamond Luck, Double Diamond Run, Super Wild Sizzling 7 and Ten Times Pay Red White and Blue building on a successful line of games. IGT has the hottest video poker line in the business, with Trade Up Poker ready to augment a collection of multiple-hand games that already includes Triple Play, Five Play, Ten Play, Fifty Play and Hundred Play Poker. But most of all, IGT has themes, games recognizable at a glance that are based on pop culture icons--That Girl, Uno, Magic 8 Ball, Family Feud, Sale of the Century, The Price Is Right, Frank Sinatra, James Dean, Austin Powers, Young Frankenstein, MASH, Harley-Davidson, Beetle Bailey, Othello--even Spam. At the Global Gaming Expo in Las Vegas, IGT had the biggest, busiest booth, as it does every year at the annual fall gaming industry conference and trade show. Based in Reno, Nev., IGT is the world's leading manufacturer of slot machines. The number of challengers has grown exponentially in recent years, but IGT keeps meeting the challenge. I spent much of the third day of the expo exploring IGT games, and found two of my favorites in the latest models of what has become a standard brand on casino slot floors--Wheel of Fortune. The new games are called Wheel of Fortune Triple Action and Wheel of Fortune Money Spin. Both are 15-line video slots, with wheel-spinning bonuses. The top box of Triple Action includes a wheel with three pointers--red, yellow and blue. In the bonus round, the player selects letter tiles from the bottom of the screen. At the start, the tiles are face down, but when the player touches them they are turned over to reveal letters that the machine then places in one of three word puzzles. Each word puzzle is associated with a color, and when the player selects a tile that reveals a color rather than a letter, the wheel spins. If the selected color is blue, for example, then the blue pointer on the wheel indicates the base amount of the bonus. That bonus is multiplied by an amount determined by the number of letters that have been revealed in that color's puzzle. |
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