More New Games from IGT

IGT has games with big, bright top boxes, with the wheel atop Wheel of Fortune or the 3-D figures of Jed and Granny designed to draw attention from across the casino.

IGT has video slots on its I-game platform, multiline games such as Cops and Donuts, Tabasco, Dragon's Gold and the Great Turkey Shoot. IGT has reel-spinning games, more than any other manufacturer, with Diamond Luck, Double Diamond Run, Super Wild Sizzling 7 and Ten Times Pay Red White and Blue building on a successful line of games.

IGT has the hottest video poker line in the business, with Trade Up Poker ready to augment a collection of multiple-hand games that already includes Triple Play, Five Play, Ten Play, Fifty Play and Hundred Play Poker.

But most of all, IGT has themes, games recognizable at a glance that are based on pop culture icons--That Girl, Uno, Magic 8 Ball, Family Feud, Sale of the Century, The Price Is Right, Frank Sinatra, James Dean, Austin Powers, Young Frankenstein, MASH, Harley-Davidson, Beetle Bailey, Othello--even Spam.

At the Global Gaming Expo in Las Vegas, IGT had the biggest, busiest booth, as it does every year at the annual fall gaming industry conference and trade show. Based in Reno, Nev., IGT is the world's leading manufacturer of slot machines. The number of challengers has grown exponentially in recent years, but IGT keeps meeting the challenge.

I spent much of the third day of the expo exploring IGT games, and found two of my favorites in the latest models of what has become a standard brand on casino slot floors--Wheel of Fortune.

The new games are called Wheel of Fortune Triple Action and Wheel of Fortune Money Spin. Both are 15-line video slots, with wheel-spinning bonuses.

The top box of Triple Action includes a wheel with three pointers--red, yellow and blue. In the bonus round, the player selects letter tiles from the bottom of the screen. At the start, the tiles are face down, but when the player touches them they are turned over to reveal letters that the machine then places in one of three word puzzles. Each word puzzle is associated with a color, and when the player selects a tile that reveals a color rather than a letter, the wheel spins.

If the selected color is blue, for example, then the blue pointer on the wheel indicates the base amount of the bonus. That bonus is multiplied by an amount determined by the number of letters that have been revealed in that color's puzzle.

In Money Spin, a spin of the wheel can give the player a bonus payoff, just as in earlier Wheel of Fortune games. But it also can yield both a bonus and an extra spin of the wheel, or free spins of the video reels. On the free spins on the video screen, the scene changes from the standard five reels and 15 paylines to six reels and 20 paylines. At the end of it all, animation of TV host Pat Sajak appears on the screen to spin a wheel for a multiplier value.

For me, no trip to the IGT booth would be complete without a thorough look at new video poker games. A few weeks ago I wrote about Multi-Strike Poker and Big Split Poker, fun new games that were designed for IGT by Wheeling-based Leading Edge Design. That's not all that's new in video poker. IGT distributed games designed by Action Gaming, the company that pioneered the multiple-hand games. And Action looks like it has another winner in Trade Up Poker.

Trade Up starts out as Triple Play or Five Play Poker, but the player has the opportunity to increase the number of hands whenever you're dealt three of a kind. Just as in Triple Play/Five Play, the initial deal is a single hand. And just as in Triple Play/Five Play, once the player decides which cards to hold, the hand is played out with either three (Triple Play) or five (Five Play) different draws.

However, when the initial hand includes three of a kind, the player is offered the chance to play at least twice as many hands as usual. In Triple Play, a player who starts with three of a kind can get 10 hands instead of three in Jacks or Better or Bonus Poker, or six hands in Double Bonus, Double Double Bonus or Bonus Poker Deluxe.

The player can decline to trade up, and just play out the hand as usual. However, if the trade up is accepted, the player receives payoffs only on hands that improve on the draw--there is no payoff on hands that remain at three of a kind. That leaves a decision of whether to play it safe or take the plunge and go for the bigger full house and four of a kind payoffs.

That's just a small taste of what IGT has to offer--I can't begin to do the sheer volume of variety of games justice in one column. Players have plenty to look forward to as the new games make their way onto casino floors in the coming months.