IGT had an absolutely massive booth at G2E 2021, and the general trend from them was leveraging core brands to extend to new cabinets and new variations on popular games.
This spread across the aboard from popular brands like Wheel of Fortune slots, celebrating 25 years as an offering, through to revivals in new formats of classic games like Pinball and Top Dollar, to new brand extensions like Wolf Run Eclipse and Haywire Link.
They had a LOT of link game types, as they continue to hunt for a winner; many of their competitors have established brands that are being extended and getting a lot of attention, so I can see why IGT would continue to hunt for ones that could work. Some of their earlier attempts disappeared quickly from casino floors, so the attempts continue.
They scored a major coup with the presence of Vanna White, who was there to help announce a new Wheel of Fortune Slot Tournament product. Getting within 10 feet of an icon like Vanna White was quite fun!
The booth was honestly too big to cover everything they’re offering, but here are some of what caught my eye during my stroll through their booth, as well as what they themselves were showcasing.
Wolf Run Eclipse
Wolf Run’s popularity with the stacked wilds has been a consistent favorite, and more recent brand extensions like Wolf Run Gold has done well, so it’s no surprise that Wolf Run Eclipse is now being added to the line-up.
This game merges in Progressive Free Games, and as you move up the progressives, you get guaranteed more stacks of wilds, not unlike what you’d see on games like Golden Egypt. It’s an interesting mixing of ideas from other games, while keeping the stacks of wilds as the thing to covet as with other Wolf Run games.
You can trigger the various free games similarly to other progressive free games offerings by getting two standard bonus symbols and a progressive bonus symbol. Or you can get a wheel bonus as the third symbol, where the wheel has the various progressive free games, regular free games or the grand jackpot as options to win on the wheel. In the bonus you have the ability to retrigger with two bonus symbols.
Wolf Run Eclipse Video
New Stepper Cabinet
IGT announced a new stepper cabinet, which they use for mechanical reel slots. The cabinet was designed to allow familiarity with classic games like Top Dollar and Pinball, while modernizing the technology.
Casinos (or players, depending on configuration) can choose 1 line, 5 lines or 9 line versions of these classic games, and instead of backlit glass modern LED technology that can update the information on screen automatically, while replicating the look and feel of the classic machinery.
This is a shrewd move by IGT to create some continuity and familiarity with the older games, vs. what they had been putting out a few years ago, and should help these games thrive for decades to come. It looked absolutely gorgeous in person, and I like the idea of a 9-line variant.
All of the games were showcased with a multi-denom setup that went from quarters to $5, covering a good wide range of bets, like many slots on the floor today.
This cabinet is expected to be out next year.
Samurai 888
This series is IGT’s take on Fu Dai Lian Lian, with three bags and three colored coins appearing on reels for your chance to spin one or more of the bags around to initiate a bonus.
For their three bonuses they have a Coin Boost (win the coins when they land), a Reel Boost (taller reels), and a Jackpot, which has you collecting diamonds (instead of letters) to try to get at those jackpots (although the chests could include credits instead). You can win a combination of the three different bags turning, just like on The Bag Game, to mix features together, and of course you can get all three in a single bonus.
The bet panel has smaller steps for the smaller bets, but still starts at 88 credits, and betting higher can increase many of the jackpots.
In the videos at the bottom you can see Slot500Club’s video previewing the game.
Megabucks Mega Vault
Take a difficult to win massive jackpot (Megabucks), and pair it with a hypervolatile slot experience (Mega Vault), and you get Megabucks Mega Vault. This isn’t the standard Mega Vault though, as there’s new elements like a pick bonus that can award a jackpot whenever a Megabucks symbol appears.
There’s also now four different symbol types that can hold and lock, and in two formats as some multipliers have that Megabucks symbol on it, which also ties in to the ability to win the Megabucks bonus.
This is one of the new games showcases on IGT’s new giant cabinet, and I’m sure it will make an impression on the casino floor.
King of Olympus Link
One of the link style games shown off at their booth was King of Olympus Link, which has the Dragon Link style denomination options (with the line counts going down as the denomination goes up). Overall it’s a standard link game, but they did introduce a twist.
The wrinkle in this version of the hold and respin is that you get a frame that offers a multiplier. Land a prize in that space, it will multiply that prize and then move the frame to another open space. In this way you can multiple multiplied prizes, upping the ante a bit in terms of the potential of the bonus.
The free games features a pick bonus where you get three spins and get to pick a square to determine what will be the oversized symbol in reels 2-4 (which looks an awful lot like another link bonus otherwise).
Check out the Slot500Club video at the conclusion of this article for a look.
Super Times Pay Super Stacks
A number of variations of Video Poker were on display. As a fan of Super Times Pay, I was intrigued by Super Times Pay Super Stacks, which increases the bet to 10 credits per hand vs. 6 on STP, but adds a second element when you get a multiplier, adding extra hands.
Now, when you get a multiplier, the extra hands are also in play, using the top screen to showcase the additional hands (which can be up to triple the number of hands you have as a starting point, for a total of 4x the normal amount of hands at the top end).
This can give you the ability to further amplify the value of the multipliers, but obviously the game has a more expensive coin-in per hand, so each time you don’t get a multiplier you’re paying double for a standard hand. This pushes the volatility up accordingly.
Other Video Poker Launches
They also showcased the All Star III, their latest multi-game video poker option, which features more variations, including things like Ocean Magic Poker. IGT is clearly not resting on their laurels and continuing to evolve the video poker options out there.
All Star III still features a lot of the classic and commonly played multi-hand combinations as well, so you don’t lose out on the more classic video poker options as these new variations come to light. To make room for more game options, the game styles on the left can now scroll, so there is more room to add variations.
DaVinci Diamonds Masterpiece
I also saw a new version of DaVinci Diamonds and Renoir Riches called Masterpiece, which uses a Megaways-type setup of reels with different size symbol heights each spin to shake things up, but the classic cascading reels taking place.
Multipliers increase with each cascade to build the pay potential. If you reach 10x in the base game, you win the jackpot at the top of the screen.
During the free spins bonus, the multiplier grows with each cascade, but does not reset at any point during the bonus. You can also retrigger during the bonus with as little as 2 symbols. During the bonus you can achieve up to a 40x multiplier.
This is a nice leveraging of a classic cascading game with a more modern megaways format. The end result will be much more volatile than the original, but also have lots of potential.
DaVinci Diamonds Masterpiece Video
Here is a video from RandomSlots on the game:
WuWu Coins
Another link style series that IGT introduced, which seems to have a similar mechanic to an IT game, is called WuWu Coins.
WuWu Coins uses a persistent state feature to hold coins for three spins when they land. Land more, the counter resets. Get to six coins, and you’ve got a hold and respin bonus.
For some variety they’ve got a treasure chest that can give you a random number as a coin prize.
Land the hold and respin, and not only can you collect additional prizes like normal, the frog can send coins down, multiplying prizes already landed on the board.
Slot500Club’s video has a preview of this game as well.
Wheel of Fortune Slots
There were a lot of Wheel of Fortune games on display, not surprising given the 25th anniversary. This included:
- A Wheel of Fortune themed slot tournament software, which includes getting wheel spins and spelling out puzzles when you touch envelopes on the screen. It has some similarities to their previous Cleopatra slot tournament product.
- Another Wheel of Fortune themed game, High Roller, which looks to adapt the Hexbreak3r model, similar to how previous Wheel of Fortune games adapted Golden Egypt and Scarab.
- Wheel of Fortune Diamond Spins, which has multipliers and wilds on the wheel of fortune spin symbols on reels 1 and 2, shaking up the Gold Spin type format
- Wheel of Fortune Cash Link 2, which looked an awful lot like Cash Link Deluxe to me.
IGT at G2E 2021 Videos
This is the video I referenced from Slot500Club throughout the article, with previews of a number of games, including some I didn’t write up here:
Here is an overview from the IGT booth, including a couple of new games, from Fantini Research:
