FRANKLYSPEAKING The Big Show
S
o, how did you like the Sands Expo Center? Some vendors may not like the new setup of the Global Gaming Expo trade show, but
from my perspective, it was great. The booths of all the smaller exhibitors—umm, like magazines— had to be passed to get to the slot manufacturers, which everybody was inevitably going to gravitate toward in any event. It was like setting up a hot dog stand at an Overeaters Anonymous meeting. Well, maybe not that good, but the traffic
flow past our outpost was better than it ever has been, except for that one year when, by sheer fluke, our booth ended up in the entry corridor to the whole trade show. That was classic placement. From that location, we could have sold flies to a blind spider, as Shemp used to say. I often quote Shemp. Many feel he was the least
quotable Stooge, but I disagree. And since some of you in Asia and Europe who are unfamiliar with the Three Stooges have no idea what I’m talking about, I’ll return to gaming. The focus of the Global Gaming Expo has always been
the slot manufacturers. When you did get to the rear of the hall where they were all set up—providing you managed to crawl away from that remarkable food-and-beverage feast, “F&B at G2E”—there was some really cool stuff indeed. After a few various gizmo demonstrations along the
way (there were great gizmos this year), I stumbled across Dan Aykroyd at the IGT booth. (I apologized for stumbling across him.) Dan had joined the AGA brass to cut the rib- bon on the whole G2E shebang, to celebrate IGT’s release of the great new “Ghostbusters” slot machine. In fact, “Ecto 1” itself, the car used in the original Ghostbusters,was actually at the entrance to the show. Besides “Ghostbusters: Who You Gonna Call,” IGT
impressed me with “Big Buck Hunter Pro.” It’s a replica of the arcade game Big Buck Hunter in a slot machine fully equipped with plastic rifles. You use the said plastic rifles to take aim at woodland creatures on a big high-definition bonus screen, and blast them for big bonus money. Great fun, although I think they need to make some of the targets a little less cute. I felt horrible. On to Bally and “Michael Jackson: King of Pop.” It has an amaz-
ing surround-sound chair synchronized with a light show to simulate the feeling of one of Jackson’s famous pyrotechnic displays. It’s incredibly authentic. My hair actually caught on fire. There also was a Bally game called “All That Jazz” where you use a the
56 Global Gaming Business • November 2011
by Frank Legato
iDeck pad as a piano, and follow along on “playing” a song like in Rock Band or Guitar Hero. I’ve played in a real band, but I couldn’t even do “Mary Had A Little Lamb” on this. My version sounded more like “Inna Gadda Da Vida.” After Bally, it was off to the F&B
Section. Then, the next day, on to WMS. (I’m kidding. I was only at F&B for 12 hours, tops.) WMS had tons of great stuff, but I
gravitated right to that pirate game. “Pirate Battle” has four long LCD screens in front that look like a window to the sea from your machine to two opposing pirate ships. The bank splits into two “teams,” Team Red and Team Blue. In the bonus round, you participate in a raging battle until one of the two combatant ships
sinks, its occupants giving way to a horrible, fiery death and watery grave. OK, I added the last bit for effect. It’s real-
ly just until you hit the other team’s ship three times. It bursts into fire on the second hit (very cool, by the way), but you don’t see occupants. They’re obviously remote-controlled pirate ships. If you sink the other pirate ship, you and your teammate split the winnings, and get to do a victory dance in front of your vanquished foes. (Just kidding. Be nice.) I loved Aristocrat’s Mission: Impossible and
Tarzan, Konami’s KP3 platform, and every- thing by Multimedia Games, Cadillac Jack, Spielo International and all the rest of our wonderful advertisers. By the way, lest anyone think I’m not up
on my Stooges, the Shemp quote to which I referred was actually, “He’d steal flies from a blind spider,” in reference to an uncle he thought was “a louse and a weasel.” I bent it for my own purposes. It’s still a better quote than anything from
Joe Besser. Joe was the “New Curly” they put in when Shemp died, and he... Oh, never mind.
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