Booth 1141
My husband and I play a lot of Aristocrat games. We like the old Legacy games in the cabinets that let us choose to play either an old favorite or an updated revision: the Timberwolf Games, Five Dragons, Wicked Winnings II or IV, and on and on. We like to revisit our old favorites, games we played five or six or even more years ago - so many titles to choose from, so much fun to play, and most still in the casinos we visit. But we don't just play the old familiar titles from years ago. We also like the newer games from Buffalo Gold to Brittany to Big Bang Theory. With Aristocrat there is no limit of games we like to play.
Aristocrat ranks number three in the North American market now and aspires to climb even higher. To reach that goal, they are testing some new design concepts that they claim really stand out. The first, called the Flame, is a completely new take on the curved-monitor cabinet. There are actually two curves in the format. The vertical monitor is formed in the shape of an S with the bottom and top monitor both tilted toward the player. YouTube videographers will probably hate it.
The second, unnamed at press time for Global Gaming Business Magazine, the source of most of this information, is a shorter and wider version of the Arc Double - optimized for a single player, but large enough that two players could play at once. The new cabinet is equipped with a "sound bench" and an optional set-up with two buttons will be launched at the show. It will contain a new version of Game of Thrones and also with a game featuring Mariah Carey and her music.
Pop culture and razzle-dazzle will abound. Besides old favorites, Aristocrat is showing a bevy of new games based on films, music, television, and other aspects of pop culture. Aristocrat broke the mold when it introduced The Walking Dead. The game was a trend setter opening the entire industry to a whole new group of licensed brands: Tarzan, The Sons of Anarchy, Walking Dead 2. This coming year you can expect to see more of these licensed slots. My Cousin Vinny, based on the 1992 comedy, is expected to appeal to the film's cult following. Another film being brought to life on the Arc Double is the Big Lebowski, a 1998 comedy about a laid back aging LA hippie and avid bowler, another film with a cult following.
Other branded titles include Sharknado, based on the TV disaster film series, Downton Abbey a British TV hit that was previewed last year at G2E and has been refined and is ready to release, and Tim McGraw with country songs that hopefully will not cause copyright problems for the YouTube filmers.
We're all familiar with Progressive slots, especially the ones with the large million dollar payouts. Aristocrat is bringing out Fast Cash, a quick-hitting multi-site progressive. Most MultiStateProgressives have million dollar + jackpots that hardly ever hit. Fast Cash will have an average jackpot of $40,000, and the company says it will hit every two or three days -- a very different concept than most MSP games.
For you Class II slot players, Aristocrat's core video games will be joined by Aristocrat's first line of stepper slots made possible by the company's acquisition of Tennessee based Class II supplier Video Gaming Technologies (VGT).
A final note about a series of my favorite Aristocrat games in recent months: the Lightning Link progressive games. These Class III games are designed for players who enjoy frequent jackpots. Available on the technologically advanced Helix cabinet, you may have played one of the four versions of the game in casinos this past year: Magic Pearl, Happy Lantern, High Stakes, and Sahara Gold. Each has player selectable denominations, 1 cent or 2 cent for a 50 line game and 5 cents or 10 cents for a 25-line game. Bonuses are proportional to the denomination, but progressive jackpots remain the same.
What you might not know is that there are not 4 Lightning Link games - there are 8. Two of them are at Harrah's SoCal (Rincon) and recently at Pala: Moon Race with a space theme and Best Bet with a theme of horse racing. The other two I have not seen, but I feel they are being tested somewhere: Tiki Fire and Heart Throb. I'm hoping they will be at Aristocrat's booth for us all to see.
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