Famous Slots

The most famous slot machine of all time has to be the one that started the trend. The Liberty Bell was invented by Charles Fey, a mechanic from San Francisco over 100 years ago. The original idea Fey had been toying with was to create a machine which would have five reels to spin in poker hands, however, he was having trouble creating a machine which could interpret the great many winning combinations available at poker. So, throwing away his card based model Fey instead decided to opt for a 3 reel game with 5 symbols (horseshoes, diamonds, spades, hearts and a 'liberty bell') on each reel giving the machine so many less winning combinations. The slot machine went on to be a winner and has spawned the millions of variants now available all over the world today, many of which have become quite well known.

Money Honey was another ground breaking slot, made by those clever developers at Bally, one of the biggest gaming equipment manufacturers in the world. At it's time of development in the 1960's the machine was a evolution of the massively popular video poker machines that had just been introduced to an amazed public. Featuring the first 'bottomless hopper' together with an automated payout function of up to five hundred coins without the need for an attendant, the slot soon took Vegas by storm.

Megabucks is now the biggest and probably most famous slot machine in the world. Featuring a network of over 650 machines this behemoth progressive slot is apple in the eye of Las Vegas paying out over $425 million during its lifespan. The machine is also responsible for delivering the biggest slot win in Vegas (and world) history when an unknown 25 year old software programmer slotted $100 in the machine and hit play. Looking away from the reels imagine his surprise when he looked up and saw the jackpot symbols resting in place, he walked away that day some $39m richer.

The first game to feature a bonus screen was the popular 'Reel 'em in' slot by WMS technologies, released in 1996. The original machine had 9 pay lines with the added feature where if you hit 3 'lure' symbols (the game is based around fishing) then you'd go to a bonus round screen where you get to pick one of a number of fishermen who'll then dip their rod in the video water to see what prizes they can fish out for you. This slot game is still incredibly popular today and is now available in 15 and 20 line versions. Developers have also added more levels to the bonus game in later versions of the machine as your fisherman can hook out a 'lucky bottle' from the bottom of the river taking you into an even more generously paying bonus round.

All these slots still to this day (with the exception perhaps of the simplistic Liberty Bell but then all slots owe a homage to this ancestor) have clones or are available in casinos to play today. If you do see one of these classic machines as listed above then we'd recommend you arm yourself with some coins and go off to spin yourself some history.