When San Francisco mechanic Charles Fey introduced the world to the first ever slot machine back in the late 19th century, little did he know what massive success his invention would notch up. But it did not end there. Throughout the years, slot manufacturers and software developers have introduced multiple improvements on Fey’s original design.

Mar 10, 2017  The slot machine was invented by a mechanic named Charles Fey in California in the 1890s. He called his slot machine the Liberty Bell, but the slot machine became popularly known as the One-Armed Bandit. Over time, the slot machine developed with more reels and paylines, more interesting themes and symbols, and more sophisticated technology as the random number generator eventually.

In recent years, fans of spinning the reels are provided with an extensive range of slot types to choose from. The gaming libraries of all reliable online casino operators feature hundreds of slot titles that come in all shapes and forms. Today, players get to spin the reels of video slots that come with spectacular graphics and animations, impress with a wider range of features like special bonus games, and offer multiple paylines to make bets and win on.

As technology constantly continues to improve, software suppliers are looking for new ways to enhance the experience of slot fans. The latter get to choose from hundreds of online video slots, with 3D and iSlot titles being the latest craze among players. Fans of the game can bet on their preferred titles from all locations, at all times, since many respected software developers have optimized their most popular video slots for mobile play. Read on if you are interested to find out more about how video slots work, how they pay out, and what extra features they can potentially offer to reel lovers.

Video Slots and Random Number Generators

Let us begin by explaining how video slots actually work and how the outcome of each spin is decided. For the most part, video slots resemble the regular slot machines one can find in landbased gambling establishments. They are referred to as “video slots” because they sort of resemble video games – the graphics are enhanced, the sounds are immersive, and the gameplay is rather dynamic. Unlike video games, however, video slots provide players with the opportunity of collecting actual cash prizes while having a good deal of fun at the same time.

In contrast to classic slots, however, video slots have five reels or five cylinders that rotate vertically when the Spin button is pressed. Logically, it follows that the greater number of reels results in a greater number of symbols, which on its own translates in more winning combinations players can potentially hit.

What is interesting to know is that the video slots at online casinos and those in landbased venues operate on the same principle and the spins’ outcome is determined in the same way. Video slots utilize software (or computer chips in landbased casinos) that are called Random Number Generators or RNGs. All the RNGs require to determine whether you win or lose on the next spin is a seed number and a complex, rather long algorithm.

The video slots’ RNGs spew brand new seed numbers each and every millisecond. This is achieved by taking the last number produced by the software and completing a mathematical operation, such as division, subtraction, addition or multiplication, to render a new random seed or outcome. Every single symbol on the video slot’s reels is assigned a specific value. Furthermore, it is absolutely impossible to “cheat” the video slots’ RNGs because players have no way of knowing what the initial seed number and algorithms the software employs are.

Furthermore, when players hit the Spin button, they are left with the impression the outcome is yet to be decided because the reels are set in motion. This is far from the truth. The outcome of each spin is determined by the RNG the millisecond the Spin button has been clicked and is based on the number sequence that was produced at that particular moment.

On that note, it is important to mention, there is nothing players can do to predict the outcome of the spins. Each spin is neither related, nor is it affected by the spins that precede or follow it. That is to say, one can never tell when a bad streak would end. Because the outcome is random, it practically does not matter whether you bet on a slot that has just paid out or on a slot that has not rendered a payout in a while.

Video Slots’ Paytable and Paylines

If you are used to playing classic slots with a single payline, you will surely notice a staggering difference as soon as you load a video slot. As was mentioned above, video slots have five reels (although one can find 7-reel variations on rare occasions), which enables them to support a greater number of paylines. The number of paylines usually ranges between 9 and 100, although video slots utilizing the so-called 243 Ways to Win format offer even more winning opportunities.

In order for players to win on a spin, a given number of matching symbols need to fall on one (or more) paylines. Note that there is a direct correlation between the paylines and the cost of the spins. This is so because the winning lines pay only when a bet had been placed on them.

You may also notice a vast difference between the paytables of video slots and those of their classic 3-reel cousins. With video slots, you will see there are several payouts per symbol, depending on how many matches the player hits. The paytable also contains information on the direction in which the lines pay.

In most cases, the requirement is that winning combinations of symbols are read from left to right although there are video slots which pay both ways. As video slots typically come with a number of extra features, their paytables can also inform the player on the available wild and scatter symbols as well as on how the bonus games and free spins are unlocked.

It is important to remember that the payouts of video slots are not based on the overall amount you have bet on the spin. How much you collect on a winning spin depends on the number of identical symbols players land on the payline(s) as well as on the coin denomination and bet level. Because of this, some winning spins tend to earn player less than they have originally bet.

Video Slots Themes and Graphics

Players who make a transition from 3-reel games to video slots are usually floored by the difference in terms of visuals. The graphics are typically far more elaborate than those of classic slots as they are clearer and more vivid. Many video slots feature animated symbols when winning combinations fall on the activated paylines. The immersive, high-quality sound effects further compliment the games.

Contemporary pop culture has served as the inspiration for numerous video slots so players are likely to find various titles that are based on their favorite fairy tales, novels, TV shows and movies. Some software developers, like NetEnt, have released video slots inspired by legendary bands and musicians, such as Guns’n’Roses, Jimi Hendrix, and Motörhead.

Video Slots Additional Features

As far as extra features are concerned, advanced video slots have plenty to offer in that department. The first thing players will notice when they open their preferred video slot’s paytable is that there are additional symbols which work in a different way than regular ones.

Most video slots feature the so-called wild and scatter symbols which work to the advantage of players. Scatters are a favorite of slot fans because they have the power to unlock additional features like free spins, for instance. What is more, they do not have to align on activated paylines in order to pay – the only requirement for the scatters is to appear anywhere on the reels.

Wild symbols are just as lucrative but are game-specific and come in all shapes and sizes. Those who opt for betting on video slots are likely to come across stacked, shifting, sticky, walking and expanding wilds, among others. Each type of wild functions in a slightly different manner but generally, the purpose of these useful symbols is to help players complete more winning combinations. The wilds spare players the frustration of near-misses as they can substitute for almost all other symbols on the reels, the scatters being the only exception.

Many video slots have multipliers attached to the wild or scatter symbols which further boost the profits players generate on winning spins. The rounds of free spins are a common feature most advanced video slots share. These are usually unlocked whenever you manage to line up several wilds or scatters on the reels, after which you are rewarded with a given number of spins you do not have to pay for. Sometimes, there are multipliers on the winnings players generate during the round of free spins.

Many players prefer video slots because the latter allow for greater interaction. This is so because many slots from this category feature extra bonus games that call for some decision-making on behalf of players. Such bonus games are usually unlocked randomly and tend to load in a separate screen than that of the base game.

Bonus games differ wildly from one video slot variation to another, but usually no particular skills are required in order to collect an additional prize. In most instances, players are either asked to make a pick from different hidden icons or need to spin a wheel which features different prizes.

Video Slots Gameplay and Interface

Players, who have previous experience on 3-reel slots are unlikely to face any issues when they transition to video slots. The only difference that will probably strike them is how the paytables look. The gameplay of video slots, for the most part, resembles that of classic slots, not to mention the intuitive interface furthers the quick and hassle-free navigation.

Of course, the first thing players need to do is inspect the paytable as this will enable them to gain a better understanding of their preferred video slot. What follows next is deciding how much to bet per spin. The buttons you can adjust your bet size with are usually located directly below the five reels. Using the button that reads “Coin Value” or “Choose Coin”, the players get to adjust their coin denomination. The next thing to do is adjust your bet level or how many coins you bet per payline. This is typically achieved by clicking the plus and minus on the button that says “Bet per Line” or “Bet Level”.

If the paylines are not fixed, you also get to choose which ones to activate and bet on. It is recommended to cover as many paylines as your budget allows you since this will increase the probability of hitting winning combinations.

Most video slots have a Max Bet button which enables players to bet the maximum amount allowed in the game with a single click. Hitting the button will not only adjust the size of your wager but will automatically set the reels in motion.

Next to the Spin button, you are likely to see a button that reads “Autoplay”. It facilitates a preset number of spins that are played automatically without the player having to hit Spin after every single round. If you have a smaller bankroll at your disposal, it would be best to avoid this feature. If you do decide to activate it, make sure the video slot of your choice allows you to set a loss limit or a win goal during Autoplay.

Some slots, developed by Microgaming and Betsoft have a “Double Up” or “Gamble” buttons. This feature gets activated only after the player has already landed a combination of winning symbols on the reels. Players who opt for it can potentially double or even quadruple the profits they have accrued on the last spin by playing a side game, usually of heads or tails.

The player’s credits and current balance are displayed below the reels. The good news is you will not have to calculate the amount you have won on the spins since the video slot will do it for you. The winnings on lucky spins are added automatically to your balance.

Video slots are wildly popular in both brick-and-mortar and online casinos. They come with outstanding graphics, engaging animations, and realistic sounds which make them extremely exciting and fun to play. If Charles Fey was still among us today, he surely would have been proud of how far technological progress has taken his original Liberty Bell slot machine.

For several reasons, slot machines seem to hold a special place in hearts of many casino gambling enthusiasts. To begin with, many casual players consider the slots to be the perfect place to test the proverbial waters. You can play alone, shielded from the pressure-packed environment of the table game pit where dealers and fellow gamblers are watching your every move. And while most Las Vegas table games like blackjack, roulette, and craps require a minimum wager of $5, slot machines can typically be played for $0.25 per spin – or even lower on the penny slots.

As a matter of fact, the slot machine itself fits that bill to a tee…

The first slot machine, as we know them today anyhow, was invented way back in 1895 by Charles Fey – who was originally born in Bavaria as August Fey. After emigrating to the United States as a young man, the aspiring inventor wound up settling in San Francisco, where he sought to improve on existing slots of the day.

At the time, the most prevalent automated gambling device was the “Horseshoe Machine” pioneered by Gustav Friedrich Wilhelm Schultze in 1893. Schultze’s slot machine was the first to provide an automatic payout, but the Horseshoe was designed to dispense tickets or tokens which players could then redeem for prizes.

Fey’s concept for the Liberty Bell slot was deceptively simple. After depositing a coin and pulling the level, players watched three reels outfitted with basic symbols – diamonds, spades, hearts, horseshoes, and liberty bells – revolve before coming to rest at random. When the three reels lined up to show matching symbols across the single horizontal payline, the lucky player collected one of five prizes up to the “jackpot” of $0.50. It’s been more than 100 years since happy gamblers put their first spins in on the Liberty Bell slot, and naturally, the game has evolved by leaps and bounds since then.

The modern crop of video slots incorporates sound effects and animated clips to spice up the onscreen action. In addition to basic payline payouts, players can also win free spins or trigger bonus rounds where larger prizes await. Speaking of those paylines, 21st century slots are built around an ever increasing selection of paylines, with the standard being 25 or 30 and many games upping the ante to 50 or 100 ways to win. And thanks to the introduction of wide-area progressive jackpots in the 1980s, slot enthusiasts today can try their luck with millions of dollars on the line. All things considered, a gambler of Fey’s vintage would hardly recognize a slot machine pit within a modern casino.

On that note, check out the list below to learn more about three old school slot machines that players everywhere still love to play:

1 – Megabucks by IGT

The mother of all progressive slot games, Megabucks was first released in 1986 by International Game Technology (IGT). At first glance, Megabucks is a slot machine that would seem to make Fey proud. Eschewing multiple paylines, video clips, and other bells and whistles Megabucks is a basic three-reel game using just a single payline. For a hefty price of $3 per spin – technically $1 but with a $3 minimum in order to qualify for the jackpot – players cause classic symbols like the 7 and cherry, along with single-, double-, and triple BARs to revolve around the reels.

But it’s the Golden Eagle Megabucks logo symbol that everybody is hoping to hit. If you can line three Golden Eagle logos up along the payline – no small feat at an absurd 1 in 49,836,032 win rate – Megabucks triggers its massive multi-million dollar progressive jackpot. When it first hit casino floors back in 1986, the Megabucks game transformed how slot machines played forever afterward. Before then, a machine’s topline jackpot amount was limited based on how many bets had been previously placed. In other words, when you sat down to spin a slot, the most you could win on a jackpot was equal to the amount of coins deposited by losing players.

Rather than limit a game’s jackpot total to coins deposited on a particular machine, wide area progressive networks link multiple machines together. In the case of Megabucks, machines located in various casinos throughout Las Vegas, Reno, and the rest of Nevada were all linked with one another. Every time a player put in $3 on a losing spin, a small fraction of that amount was redirected into a single jackpot pool.

Throw in the huge odds against winning – which ensure that a Megabucks jackpot only hits once every year or two – and millions of players putting in thousands of spins can add up in a hurry.

Don’t believe me? Just check out the table below to see how the Megabucks jackpot stacked up over the course of an entire decade:

What Did Charles Fey Originally Call Slot Machines On Sale

Megabucks Jackpot History (2010 – 2017)

Of course, those enormous payouts are only the tip of the iceberg, as Megabucks holds the world record for largest slot machine jackpot ever paid. In 2003, a lucky player at the Excalibur casino in Las Vegas needed only a handful of spins to parlay his $100 stake into an astounding $39.7 million jackpot.

More recently, a player calling himself only “Roger” started with $20 and a dream playing Megabucks at the Fiesta Henderson casino. Four spins later, he watched three Golden Eagle symbols line up one after the other. As he later told the Las Vegas Review Journal, “Roger” didn’t even know what the fortuitous symbol arrangement really meant at the time:

Without a doubt, Megabucks is by far the most popular slot on the planet for jackpot hunters to enjoy because of “lightning strike” stories like this.

Nonetheless, players should be aware that Megabucks isn’t exactly a bargain in terms of the game’s return to player (RTP). As you can see using this data provided by the Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB), via the regulator’s annual slot machine survey, Megabucks falls well behind standard $1 slots in terms of RTP:

$1 Slot Machines

• The Strip – 93.03 percent
• Downtown – 94.78 percent
• Boulder Strip – 95.60 percent
• N. Las Vegas – 95.74 percent

$1 Megabucks Machines

• The Strip – 87.10 percent
• Downtown – 87.55 percent
• Boulder Strip – 88.91 percent
• N. Las Vegas – 87.53 percent

But for folks who don’t mind a little extra risk in exchange for a chance to earn the ultimate reward, Megabucks is the gold standard for old-school slot machines.

What Did Charles Fey Originally Call Slot Machines 2017

2 – Buffalo by Aristocrat

While not exactly a classic in terms of age – this game was released by Aristocrat in 2009 – the Buffalo slot has become ubiquitous within the world of casino gambling. If you’ve ever strolled through the casino floor, chances are good you’ve heard the Buffalo machine’s distinctive Red Tail Hawk cry.

Buffalo fans seem to love how the game blends modern technology with an Old West theme. Along with the basic “card rank” symbols (9, 10, J, Q, K, and A), themed reel symbols include the elk with a crown of antlers, the white wolf, the cougar, the bald eagle, and of course, the massive buffalo in all its glory. Among the 13 total symbols, the sunset lit mountaintop is designated as a “Wild,” which means it can substitute for any other symbol to help create winning combinations.

The primary Buffalo symbol is designed as a “stacked” symbol, which means it will usually fill an entire reel at one time, thereby generating a slew of winners across the screen. If you hit three or more of the gold coin “scatter” symbols, you’ll trigger the Buffalo bonus game which awards free spins, multipliers on wins, and other treats to extend your session.

And while Buffalo isn’t connected to any progressive jackpots, players can compete for the topline payout of 300 credits by landing five of the Buffalo symbols in a row. But thanks to the game’s clever use of free spin bonus rounds – which can continue to rack up over and over again if you’re running hot – Buffalo is known to pay out huge returns when the stars align.

And one final word of warning for Buffalo rookies – be sure to activate all five reels in order to extract the game’s maximum value. This costs 40 credits in your chosen coin denomination, meaning a penny slot player will need $0.40 per spin to get the most bang for their buck. When you put all five reels into play, Buffalo offers an RTP rate of 94.85 percent, putting in the higher end of the slot machine spectrum when it comes to player friendliness.

3 – Wheel of Fortune by IGT

The original “Wheel of Fortune” game show debuted on the NBC network in 1975, and 21 years later, IGT rolled out its eponymous slot game.

Fast forward to today, and IGT now has more than 200 variations on the Wheel of Fortune theme out there for slot specialists to enjoy. Take a look below to find a few of the most popular Wheel of Fortune machines:

Although this sheer variety gives gamblers of every stripe a game of choice, the beating heart that makes these machines tick is the famous prize wheel. Modeled after Pat Sajak and Vanna White’s beloved TV show, the classic Wheel of Fortune slot is a simple three-reel game featuring a lone payline. Players hope to line up matching 7s or BARs to trigger the game’s base payouts – which vary based on coin denomination and maximum bet size – but the real fun begins when you see a “SPIN” symbol appear.

You can watch how this prize wheel process plays out here – be sure to stick around until the end of the short clip – as a lucky player turns a few bucks into $4,000 courtesy of the Wheel. But the real draw offered by Wheel of Fortune slots is IGT’s wide area progressive jackpot networks. Depending on the make and model of the machine you find, you’ll be linked to one of IGT’s “MegaJackpot” progressive kitties. Land three of the “Wheel of Fortune” logo symbols in a row and the game will light up with the ultimate hand pay.

Head here to IGT’s “Jackpot Tracker” to get a glimpse of what this game has in store for lucky winners. But sufficed to say, slot spinners won’t find progressive scores this sizable outside of the Megabucks machines.

Back in 2009, a player at the Hard Rock Casino in Biloxi, Mississippi made it rain for $14.3 million after hitting a Wheel of Fortune jackpot. Joe Farruggio – who serves as senior vice president of gambling operations for Hard Rock Biloxi – told the Las Vegas Review Journal that Wheel of Fortune might just be the best slot game ever devised:

We like to call them ‘lifetime changing events’ when it’s over $1 million.

Wheel of Fortune probably is the greatest slot machine ever invented to date.

For such a long time, it’s kept people’s interest.”

Farruggio might just be onto something too, especially when you consider Wheel of Fortune’s generous RTP rate of 96.6 percent. That equates to a house edge of only 3.4 percent, putting this slot on par with more mainstream casino wagers like single-zero roulette (2.70 percent), Three Card Poker (3.37 percent), and Let It Ride (3.51 percent).

Put another way, players can expect a return of nearly 10 percent more playing Wheel of Fortune than they would on a Megabucks machine. It’s no wonder then why so many slot aficionados consider Wheel of Fortune to be the only game in town. Players like Theresa P., who hails from Ossining in upstate New York, have even managed to beat the jackpot odds on more than one occasion.

In March of last year, Theresa hit for $2.9 million playing Wheel of Fortune at her local Empire City Casino. A few months later, playing alongside her husband Matthew, she watched lightning strike twice as three of the logo symbols landed perfectly along the payline – triggering another $1.4 million in winnings.

Speaking to the New York Daily News, an ecstatic Theresa described her emotions at winning not one but two Wheel of Fortune jackpots:

Slot machine success stories like that of Theresa P. are certainly outliers, but as you’ll see when you scan IGT’s Jackpot Tracker, the Wheel of Fortune game is definitely prone to paying out seven-figure scores with alarming regularity.

Conclusion

Casinos are near and dear to the hearts of gamblers because they don’t succumb to progress as easily as the rest of society. The times may be changing, and in a hurry, but games like blackjack, roulette, and craps play out almost identically today as they did during Sin City’s “Rat Pack” heyday in the 1950s.

Slot machines, on the other hand, are constantly being gussied up and updated in the name of progress. Video effects, side-screen bonus games, branded themes using pop culture icons, and even movable chairs designed to offer a virtual reality effect are all fair game for modern slot designers.

But while improvement is always a necessity in any industry, many casino regulars still find themselves drawn to old school slot machines like moths to a flame. If you’re one of them, hopefully your favorite slot made the list above – but if not, get out there and try classics like Megabucks and Buffalo the first chance you find.