Whether it was the poker craze or the rapidly developing Internet technology that created the online casino boom, nobody is quite certain…but the elements came together with a vengeance at the turn of the century, and suddenly the Internet landscape was riddled with new casinos.
Speed and safety had always been a concern — for the Internet as a whole, and especially for online gambling, which dealt with personal information and bank accounts on a regular basis. Notable attempts had been made during the first big Internet boom of the 1990s, but the perfect solution always seemed to be a few months away…for several years straight.
When Texas Hold’em started to catch on, however, there was the sense that This Must Happen. The world got its first bona fide Internet gambler celebrity in the person of Chris Moneymaker, who started as an avatar in an online poker room and ended up World Poker Champion.
Well, the slot machine was not about to ignore that sort of a challenge. All the Internet did for poker was make it accessible; for slots, it created an entirely new palette of possibilities. Why stop at five reels when you can have as many (or as few) as you like? Why stop at one payline when you can have one hundred? Why limit yourself to nickels and quarters when you can bet with a penny or a hundred dollars?
And that was just the beginning. Soon enough, talented software designers and artists created veritable adventures in slot machines…games with actual stories and characters, with levels and objectives, with unique twists that one could only experience online. From the cartoonish to the gritty, modern slot machines provide the entire spectrum of gaming — the long competition with video games became almost moot, as the new slot machine ARE video games, in every sense.
Iconic video game titles such as Tomb Raider, Hitman, and Street Fighter have been successfully adapted to slot machines, as well as more abstract puzzle classics like Tetris and Bejeweled. Once the addictive fun of video gaming was combined with the potential jackpots of slot machines, the perfect pairing had been achieved.