Colliding worlds

8 September 2016

By John Grochowski

In this age of multitasking, I will admit to moments of mutli-time wasting, checking out free online slots while watching baseball, football, basketball or hockey.

Tens of millions of players flock to sites including Slotomania, Jackpot Party Casino, Heart of Vegas, Caesars, DoubleDown Casino, High 5 Casino and others. As I’ve played around on these sites, I’ve found more and more that they intersect the live casino world.

That colliding of worlds provided a bright spot in August when my wife Marcy and I did an end-of-summer getaway, taking one last opportunity for an overnight before she had to go back to work.

As usual when we play together, we stuck to penny slots. On most of my casino visits, I’m on my own, and I reserve my play on other games for those trips.

When I sat down at Wild 70s, a game I’d played at Caesars online, I told Marcy, “This is just like old home week.” She didn’t recognize the machine at first – her most frequent online play comes at Goldfish Casino.

As it happened, Wild 70s provided me one of the highlights of the trip.

The feel is very 1970s, of course, with hints of the ’60s. Video reel symbols include a glittering disco ball, big red lips with a cherry stem between the shiny white teeth, and a red, white and blue, flag-style “J” accompanied by a star-spangled hand flashing a peace sign.
There’s both a free-spin feature and a pick’em bonus, but my big win of the day came on a fun first-screen feature.

At random times, the reels spin a bit longer than you’d expect until a purple mist starts billowing up from the bottom. It builds up and up until the fill screen is a purple haze.

Across the haze, a pulsing, rainbow colored rectangle that says “Wild” flips side over side and top over bottom across the screen. Wherever it stops, it leaves wild symbols.

The haze subsides, the spin finishes and, if you’re lucky, the wild symbols are in position to create big wins.

It was during the rise of the purple haze that Marcy said, “OK, I’ve seen that before. Win something big.”

Not this time. The haze left behind only two wilds and they weren’t in particularly good positions. My win was less than my bet – the common video slot player’s lament.

My credit meter hadn’t reached the “time to move on” stage, and Marcy was doing well at her game, so I kept plugging. About 15 spins later, the purple haze started to rise again.

“Wish me better luck this time,” I told Marcy.

This time, one card flipped and flopped across the screen and left three wild symbols. Then a second card appeared and after its flips, there were three more wilds. Two wilds on the second reel and two on third had the potential to share multiple paylines, and with a little luck this could be a big pay.

The first reel symbols were relatively low payers – A, J, 10 – but there were matching symbols elsewhere, and even a couple of more wilds. I got the “big win” sign on the screen, and the credit meter rolled up 3,500-plus credits.

Even on a penny machine, that’s a nice win at $35, and my meter that had been down to $35 after a $50 first buy-in a couple of machines earlier, now topped $70.

I had far colder sessions for the rest of the trip, but for this moment, the live casino/online slots crossover was a success.


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