The overwhelming number of slot machines in San Francisco led to a citywide ban in 1909. The law was ignored for two years and the machines were then outlawed statewide. The Volstead Act of 1919 resulted in a nationwide ban on gambling devices that lasted until the repeal of Prohibition in 1933. Trademark Gameroom Slot Machine Coin Bank – Realistic Mini Table Top Novelty Las Vegas Casino Style Toy with Lever for Kids & Adults (Lucky 7S) 3.5 out of 5 stars 11 $21.24 $ 21.
Bally Technologies has done it again! The sixth annual Slot Floor Technology Awards in Las Vegas saw Bally Technologies win an incredible five places out of the top Ten. All That Jazz won the fifth place. Interestingly, no other manufacturer of slot games had more than one game on the list.
All That Jazz is a revolutionary product from the house of Bally Technologies. It is featured on the Pro V32 Cabinet, which is a new innovation. The Pro V32 cabinet comes with the U-Play iDeck, where players press down on a virtual piano to try and recreate a popular tune.
In U-Play, players have to follow a familiar melody with the aid of the piano keys. Every note that the player presses is converted into a number. These numbers then populate the four bonus reels on the screen. When the song ends, the reels will be spun to reveal a base game prize.
The iDeck on All That Jazz Slots
The iDeck is the first of its kind, player interface system. It turns the point of contact between a slot machine and a player into an interactive system, effectively making it a fourth screen. A special feature of the iDeck is that whenever new content is installed into the system, the iDeck will instantly match the change.
Additionally, the iDeck can adapt to reflect virtual wheels and in case of the All That Jazz video slot machine, a piano keyboard. The top surface of the iDeck is both leak-proof and spill-proof. There is seamless integration between the main screen and the iDeck display on the All That Jazz machine. This makes possible amazing game play features which are absent on decks with physical buttons.
Because of the iDeck, a fantastic user experience can now be delivered on the All That Jazz video slot machine.
About All That Jazz Slot Machine Game
The game is made up of five reels. It is a 40-line combination progressive slot. On the second/fourth reels, there are four symbols, whereas the others have three symbols each. The game play is shown on the large LCD monitor.
Bonus symbols are present on the first, third, and the fifth reels which lead to the Grand Piano Bonus. When this bonus begins, the iDeck touch screen shows a set of piano keys. This bonus is not unlike the player interaction on the ‘Guitar Hero’, ‘Rock Band’, and other similar musical simulation games. There as well, the player has to match a tune by pressing on a virtual musical instrument.
Players can choose from several tunes. The novice tune list contains – ‘Twinkle Twinkle’, ‘Spring’, ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’, ‘Green Sleeves’, and ‘Ode to Joy’. The intermediate list contains Beethoven’s ‘Fur Elise’, ‘Star Spangled Banner’, ‘Drunken Sailor’, and ‘Entertainer’. Dots begin flashing on the piano keys and the player has to press them quickly to make a tune. Players can also play their own tune if they have the confidence.
Every time a player presses a correct key, the corresponding note on the screen transforms into a number. The number floats into the four reels on the screen. When the tune ends, the reels spin and reveal the base game credit won by the player. The game has an overall hit frequency of 52.70% and has a top award of 100,000 x denomination x total bet.
All That Jazz – The Film
The All That Jazz video slot game is based on the hit Broadway musical, Chicago. The musical is set in the city of Chicago (during the Prohibition era) and introduces the characters of Velma Kelly, a vaudevillian and Roxie Hart, an aspiring Broadway artist. The video slot machine gets its name from the Kander and Ebb tune called All That Jazz used in the musical.
The original musical opened in 1975 and was choreographed by Bob Fosse. Bob Fosse also directed a film called All That Jazz based to an extent on his own life/career as a choreographer, director, and dancer. Bob Fosse’s feature film won the Palm d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1980.
The musical was revived on Broadway in 1996. As of 2012, it is still running. Till date the musical has had more than 6600 performance. It has seen many international performances as well. In London’s West End, the musical ran for 15 years.
A silver screen adaption also called Chicago hit the silver screen in 2002. This movie starred Richard Gere, Catherine Zeta Jones, and Renee Zellweger in leading roles. It was nominated for thirteen Academy awards, finally winning six including Best Picture for Martin Richards, Best Supporting Actress for Catherine Zeta Jones, Best Art Direction for John Myhre. The film was also nominated for eleven BAFTA awards and seven Golden Globes.
The musical was actually adapted from a play by Maurine Dallas Watkins called Chicago. Maureen was a reporter and she based her play on a series of homicides, with similar overtones that she covered in 1924. Interestingly, while she was alive, Maureen wouldn’t sell the rights of the play to Bob Fosse. It was only after her death that her estate sold the rights.
About Bally Technologies
Bally Technologies is the market leader in video machines, slot games, interactive applications, server based and networked systems. Aside from selling gaming systems, the company offers lease and purchase options. Bally Technologies has been manufacturing slot machines from a long time, in fact it it is the oldest in this business. The company began by manufacturing a small pinball machine called ‘Ballyhoo’. Before it started the production of slot machines, the company used to manufacture coin operated devices.
Bally Technologies is known for many milestones like the first slot machine spinning reels to be fully electronic (called the ‘Bottomless Hopper’). The company is also the first in the gaming industry to trade on the NYSE. The company has received praise for the iView Display Manager, which is a marketing tool that can perform cross promotions and the GameMaker, capable of offering a number of game titles. The gaming systems and products created at Bally Technologies are found at 600 locations and more worldwide. The company employs people who market or develop slots in South Africa, India, Mexico, and the U.S.
List of Bally Slots
- Havana Cubana Slots
- Quick Hit Pro Slots
- Quick Hit Las Vegas Slot Machine
- Quick Hits Platinum Slot
- Hot Shot Slot Machine
- Cash Spin Slots
- Chimney Stacks
Before the 19th century drew to a close, inventors came up with a great number of mechanical gadgets to test players’ luck and skill. Among there was a pistol-like device intended to shoot coins into a hole forming the bulls-eye of a target, a punching bag that rewarded strong blows, and a coin-based poker-playing machine manufactured in Brooklyn. The latter would flip cards randomly in five windows. Depending on the strength of hands dealt, winnings were paid out.
However, the very first “coin-in-the-slot” wheel mechanism was born in San Francisco. It was called “Horseshoes,” the brainchild of a trio of German mechanics working together in an electrical shop. They created a game that paid out two nickels any time one of ten horseshoes out of 25 possible symbols appeared on a specially marked horizontal line.
By 1898, one of the three inventors, Charles Fey, had retooled the device. He lined up three separate wheels side by side. In place of horseshoes, he applied card suits and a cracked bell to trigger payouts when the spinning “reels” came to staggered stops in a winning combination. He called this invention the “Card Bell.”
Then, in 1899, stars and horseshoes were added to the three reels as winning symbols. The resulting version was renamed the “Liberty Bell,” and this is the “slot machine” widely recognized today as the forefather of all slot games.
An American Odyssey
By the time of the Great Earthquake of 1906, San Francisco had established itself as the center of the burgeoning machine gaming industry. Some 3,200 slot games had been installed around the city, which depended on them for taxes on slot revenues to the tune of six figures annually. Soon, these slot machines were a mainstay of gambling halls all across America.
Unfortunately, San Francisco’s heyday as the country’s slot capital was short-lived. In 1909, anti-gambling legislation was passed in California. That’s when production shifted to Chicago, where a slot game manufacturer named Herbert Mills replaced the symbols on the reels with cherries, oranges, plums, and lemons, which represented the various flavors of chewing gum that could be won. Exports of these reached England, where slots would be known as “fruit machines” ever after.
During America’s Prohibition years, slot machines survived in private clubs—so-called “speakeasies”—that offering gambling along with bootleg liquor. Developers of the machines hid their activities by masquerading as arcade game and vending machine makers under the banner of the National Association of Coin Operated Machine Manufacturers.
One estimate put the number of illegal machines in New York City alone at over 25,000 by 1931. That year, Nevada became the first and only state to legalize slot machines and other forms of gambling. It didn’t take long for the small southwestern railroad town of Las Vegas to adopt “one-armed bandits” and transform itself into the slot capital of the world. Bally Gaming, founded in 1931, was one of the first Las Vegas manufacturers of slot games. Its inaugural product—The Ballyhoo—offered seven plays for only a penny.
The Modern Era
By the late 1960s, Bally slots were all the rage. Their 1964 “Money Honey” game was the first to combine mechanical play with electric circuitry. To alert everyone of a jackpot, bells would ring and loud noises would be heard, drawing plenty of attention. Bally later developed the first computerized system for data control, aimed at preventing players from cheating the machines. By the 1970s, Bally ranked as the world’s leading slot manufacturer.
Meanwhile in Chicago, WMS Gaming graduated from its pinball business established in 1943 to video lotteries and then slots. Its contribution to the industry was a series of multi-line, multi-coin secondary bonus video slots, starting in 1996 with a fishing themed game called “Reel ‘Em In.” This success was followed by Jackpot Party, Boom, and Filthy Rich, all games still seen on casino floors today.
Elsewhere in the world, game manufacturers began developing slots for the markets in their own regions. Worthy of note are Australia’s Aristocrat Slots (1953), Konami Slots of Japan (1969), and Germany’s Atronic Slots (1993). Soon their exports began showing up in American casinos as well.
The world’s most successful of all slot makers, however, is International Game Technology (IGT). The company was founded in the 1950s, but didn’t dominate the markets until it went public in 1981 to introduce the most important component in any modern electronic slot machine—the “random number generator” (RNG). This technology is what allowed electronics to replace mechanics, linking computers and a video screens to simulate spinning reels.
Prohibition Era Tabletop Nickel Slot Machines
IGT’s first major game was not actually a slot machine, however. It was something radically new—the game known today as “Video Poker.” Then, IGT rocked the industry again by introducing the world’s first progressive slot machine—Megabucks. And by acquiring Electronic Data Technologies in 1984, IGT added yet another milestone to slot history with computerized tracking of players’ actions, the foundation of all slot customer loyalty clubs.
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