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Surely when Charles Fey built his first slot machine in 1896 he never
could have envisioned where the contraption would travel and how it would
transmogrify. In fact, for a hundred years his innovation hardly changed
at all, except cosmetically. The external design, consisting of an ornate
metal box was wrapped around the mechanism and became fancier or plainer,
larger or smaller, in attempt to attract the eye. But as always, when
a player primed the machine with coins and pulled the handle, the reels
spun randomly and, governed by stoppers eventually came to a halt. Each
reel was decorated with a variety of symbols that, when matched according
to a pay schedule (printed somewhere on the face of the machine), the
player won; when no matching symbols appeared, the player lost.
Though Fey is given credit as the Father of the Slot Machine, prototypes
existed years before he came up with the idea of converting them into
gambling device--which he believed would enhance the profits on his sales
routes. These early "amusement devices" could be found in saloons where
polite society would not be exposed to them and where proprietors stood
on the edge of breaking the law.
These first apparatuses had a major drawback. They were designed in
such a way that after a certain number of coins were inserted the weight
of these coins would tip the scales and some of the stored coins from
previous play would spill out, thus providing a winner. It didn't take
long for street-smart players and wise guys to figure out that the coins
would come out automatically with a little pushing and shoving and slamming
the machine around. So it was back to the drawing board where clever
builders devised first a metal bar to help prevent "tilting," and then
came up with smaller devices that could be bolted to a counter top or
wall.
Meanwhile, in dignified establishments such as grocery stores and mercantiles,
a similar piece of equipment began popping up and being played by even
the snootiest of patrons. Called the trade simulator, this machine operated
much like other contemporary devices except that the winners produced
could be exchanged or traded for goods within the establishment--thus
the name "trade," perhaps a forerunner to the modern cents-off coupon.
Playing slots was (and is) both a tactile and sensory experience involving
the feel of the coins and the touch and pull of the handle. It involved
the sense of vision, the sense of hearing, and the innate sensation of
anticipation.
Winning and losing depended on a simple mechanism that included symbols
(usually fruit of some kind, perhaps bars and/or sevens, and of course
hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades, Fey's original choice) affixed to
the three reels and a shaft. With ten symbols per reel, the machine was
capable of a thousand possible combinations.
Orient Express
is a five reel, Twenty-one pay-line slot machine that you can
win multiple times on with each spin. Orient Express slots has
an auto play feature where you can set the slot to play up to
500 spins and select the number of seconds between spins. When
the reels stop spinning the symbol combinations along the pay-lines
are checked. You get paid out for all winning combinations falling
on all enabled pay-lines. For every coin that you put in an additional
pay-line is enabled. For example, 3 coins enables the first,
second and third pay-lines. The fourth through twenty-first pay-lines
are disabled.
Elementals is a five reel, twenty payline, and two hundred coin slot machine. with a wild, multiplier symbol, a scatter symbol, a Free Spins bonus game, and a Gamble bonus game. The Wild symbol is a wild, multiplier symbol. This means that it substitutes for other symbols to complete winning combinations and doubles the payout of any combination it completes. The Wild symbol does not substitute for the Sun symbol to activate the Free Spins bonus game. And it does not substitute for the Scatter symbol to complete scatter winning combinations. A two Sun symbols combination activates the Free Spins bonus game, provided one symbol is displayed on reel 1, and one symbol is displayed on reel 5. You are awarded twenty free spins. All wins during the twenty free spins are doubled.
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