By Louisa Heath.
Few casino games have undergone as significant an evolution as slot machines. In the space of a little over a century, Slots managed to go from mechanical to almost entirely digital, expanding with hundreds of different themes and designs.
The original Liberty Bell design looks quite different compared to a modern slot game like Luck o the Irish Fortune Spins 2, but they still share the same core concept. To understand how modern slots got to where they are, we’re taking a look back at the evolution of slot machines over the course of the 20th century.
Moving from mechanical to digital
The first slot machine designs were naturally all mechanical, working through a combination of gears and levers. Even by the time Charles Fey debuted the Liberty Bell in 1895, there had already been some evolution from the older designs, allowing for the game to automatically pay out.
Mechanical Slots remained for the first half of the 20th century, although later developers continued to expand on the basics of the older game designs.
By the 1960s, electronic components started to make their way into Slots. Electro-mechanical designs only had a couple of decades as the principal format before the next evolution arrived.
Video Slots first debuted in the 1970s when designers replaced the physical reels with a TV screen. This removed the need for any internal mechanical elements, as the reels were instead shown in digital format on the game’s screen.
It wasn’t long before video Slots almost entirely replaced mechanical and electro-mechanical designs, with developers able to create games with even more theming and new gameplay mechanics. The removal of physical reels also allowed for Slots with a greater number of reels, expanding to as many as seven reels in some designs.
The rise of online Slots
As Slots had already gone almost entirely digital well before the 1990s this paved the way for online slot games. It was far simpler to translate already digital games over to online casino platforms, allowing Slots to make the jump to online play almost straight away.
The earliest online Slots were limited in their graphics and gameplay, given the technological constraints of 90s broadband and home computers. But it wouldn’t take long for them to start catching back up to the games available in land-based casino venues.
Graphics and animations quickly improved in the following decades, with plenty of developers creating new Slots designed for online platforms. With no need to consider a physical game cabinet, games could evolve even further and incorporate new mechanics like cascading reels and expanding wilds.
Mobile platforms
Online Slots have continued to evolve in the 2000s. One big factor has been the introduction of mobile platforms on smartphones and tablets, which allow players to access games as long as they have a solid internet connection.
The move to mobile platforms required some adaptation, with platforms having to optimize themselves to work on these smaller devices. Now, online casinos even offer dedicated apps for mobile play.
Slots look set to evolve further as technology continues to change, but it’s unlikely to be quite as big a leap as that first shift from mechanical to digital.
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