Holding and Spinning
Slot suppliers continue to make a wildly popular slot game mechanic their own
By Frank Legato
Slot game mechanics come and go, but a few stay around to become almost a requirement for any slot game to become popular.
The multiplying wild symbol was like that. Three decades after IGT’s Double Diamond was introduced, it’s still a mainstay in slot games. In fact, Double Diamond itself is still a mainstay. IGT uses it as the base game in multiple configurations of Wheel of Fortune and other progressive slots.
A win with a wild symbol doubles the pay. A win with two wilds quadruples the award, and three wilds return the top jackpot. It’s a simple and ingenious game mechanic that has been duplicated using just about every number as the basis, from Triple Diamond to Ten Times Pay. (The latter is my absolute favorite slot game of all time, incidentally.)
When it comes to staying power, though, multiplying wild symbols are at least matched by the bonus wheel. First patented by the former Anchor Gaming and first used by Bally in the 1995 game Wheel of Gold, the original invention was a slot machine with what looked like a roulette wheel on top, its slices displaying credit amounts. But when IGT licensed the invention and tied it to the Wheel of Fortune theme, it became an icon of the slot floor.
Not to mention an icon of slot games. IGT bought the patent (and Anchor Gaming) not long after Wheel of Fortune’s 1996 release. Other manufacturers licensed the wheel concept at first, but when the patent expired, the floodgates opened. The bonus wheel ushered in the age of the slot bonus, and the wheel is still everywhere.
What we’re witnessing right now on the slot floor, though, is the early rise of what arguably is the bonus wheel’s successor as the most popular slot-machine feature: hold and spin.
Aristocrat Gaming introduced the game Lightning Link, and its signature “Hold & Spin” game mechanic, in 2014. Hold & Spin, the central feature of the game, was repeated in Aristocrat’s sequels to Lighting Link, notably Dragon Link. But as a game feature, Hold & Spin proved phenomenally popular with players.
Now, it’s featured on the majority of all new video slots, particularly multiple-progressives, from every manufacturer. Players look for this feature when they choose a game, and all the manufacturers know it, most paying into a patent pool for the right to offer their own versions of what is now generically referred to as the hold-and-spin feature.
We all know the basic version of hold-and-spin: The player is given a certain number of free spins in which to collect icons of some value, the prizes for which accumulate. Usually, the symbols involved are so-called “cash-on-reels” symbols—a symbol that simply displays a credit award.
Triggering the feature, either through landing a threshold of cash-on-reels symbols—or, typically these days, through a pot collection feature—locks all cash symbols in place for three free spins. Every time another cash symbol appears, it locks in place on that reel spot and the free-spin meter goes back to three. The rest of the reels spin, and every time an additional cash symbol appears, it locks in place for the accumulating award and the spin meter returns to three.
This type of bonus ends when either three spins yield none of the cash symbols, or the entire screen is filled with them. Filling the entire screen with cash symbols has become known as a “blackout,” and for many games, it results in the game’s top progressive jackpot.
These days, the lower-level jackpots normally appear and lock in place along with the cash symbols during the feature. But the new trend among manufacturers is to tweak the hold-and-spin formula to make it their own.
This often involves adding various enhancements to the bonus through a pot-collection feature in the primary game. Pots fill and trigger the bonus with one or more enhancements like multipliers, coin boosts and extra spins.
The new crop of games launched at Global Gaming Expo last fall show how the hold-and-spin feature itself is evolving. The feature’s originator, Aristocrat, launched Firecracker Fortunes, in which a special symbol triggers up to three reel sets for the hold-and-spin feature.
There also is a feature within the feature, another rising hold-and-spin trend. Landing a special symbol triggers a secondary three-by-three grid on which a mini hold-and-spin feature plays out, with higher cash amounts than the main feature. Once that plays out, the game returns to the main hold-and-spin bonus.
This feature-within-a-feature innovation shows up in slots from several manufacturers. IGT’s Eternal Link offers up a secondary jackpot for the secondary hold-and-spin feature. Other innovations from IGT include Wheel of Fortune High Roller Respin, in which pointer symbols land during the hold-and-spin feature that add pointers to the familiar wheel for a wheel spin with multiple awards.
Other variations on hold-and-spin can be found in games from most suppliers. In Ultra Werewolf Fury & Strike from AGS, the hold-and-spin feature plays out on the first four reels. If symbols fill those four reels, a fifth reel is unlocked that spins to award either a multiplier applied to the accumulated cash (including minor jackpots) or the top Grand Jackpot.
The hold-and-spin feature isn’t going anywhere. Players still love it, casinos still demand it, and slot manufacturers are obliged to provide it.
Slot-makers, meanwhile, will continue to make the feature their own with unique twists.
That’s what makes it fun.
