Digital Nation by Gary Dretzka

Star Wars, Men in Black, Terminator, Chicago, Wayne's World, Animal House, Young Frankenstein … all coming to a casino near you!

As evidenced by the movie-themed slot machines on display at last week's Global Gaming Expo, Hollywood's assault on Las Vegas has begun in earnest. If they prove to be as successful as the TV-themed slots already on casino floors, Tinseltown's annexation of Sin City will be a fait accompli before next summer's blockbusters are released in DVD.

Although mobster Bugsy Siegel and publisher Billy Wilkerson both envisioned a day when the Flamingo Hotel would become the playground for Hollywood's elite, the studios and networks have pretty much held casino moguls at arm's length for most of the last 50 years. The stars, entertainers and MGM boss Kirk Kerkorian all would come, go and return, of course, but it wasn't until very recently that the studios considered tapping into the city's bedrock business as a source of ancillary revenues in the form of branded slot machines.

Now, the Vegas marketplace is simply too rich to ignore.

The same computer chips that allowed such digitally enhanced games as Elvis, Wheel of Fortune, Monopoly and Jeopardy to prosper, in the mid-'90s, now are allowing manufacturers of slot machines to turn box-office hits into games. Characters, clips and other images from popular films - as well as dozens of TV shows - are being added to machines already streaming their way through Nevada's rigid approval process.

Also on display at G2E were slot machines themed to such TV shows as Saturday Night Live, M*A*S*H, That Girl, Let's Make a Deal, I Spy, Twilight Zone, I Love Lucy, Beverly Hillbillies, The Honeymooners, Match Game, Hollywood Squares, The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game, Laverne & Shirley and Bewitched. Such personalities as Drew Carey, Jeff Foxworthy, Regis Philbin, Rodney Dangerfield, Dick Clark, Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Steve McQueen and Elizabeth Taylor also were represented. Among the licensed cartoon characters were Felix the Cat, the Amazing Spider-Man, Blondie, Garfield and Li'l Abner.

Seemingly, Atronic Americas couldn't cut a deal with the creators of "The Phantom of the Opera", so it simply tweaked the iconography. The machine, tentatively referred to as Mystery Mask, employs "disguised" characters and a 3-D trip through the "catacombs" of an opera house on its bonus round.

There are several routes to partnerships between Hollywood interests and game manufacturers, depending on who owns the property or brand.

Playboy, for example, was a no-brainer, while That Girl required a bit of digging. Bill Cosby controls the licensing rights to I Spy, while the estates of Presley, Monroe, Mantle and Sinatra benefit from the use of those stars' names and images. Taylor's machine awards winners with trinkets from her jewelry collection - which can be traded for cash - but doesn't, yet, spritz them with her perfume.

After seeing the movie version of Chicago, last winter, Shuffle Master contacted licensing experts at Brand Central, who put the firm together with Miramax. The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce has also licensed some of its trademark symbols - including the Walk of Fame -- to the company for its Hollywood machine.

These days, gaming goliath IGT - with Terminator, Star Wars, M*A*S*H and a dozen other branded slots - pretty much can count on studios to beat a path to its doors. It has the technology necessary to make the games come alive, and the clout to get them onto already-crowded casino floors. Because of a lawsuit filed by the Man Who Would Be Governor, its Terminator machines don't feature Arnold Schwarzenneger's voice or his image, but other iconography remains.

"The development of the Star Wars video slot will be a significant gaming event," said Joe Kaminkow, IGT's vice president of game design. "Those who stood in line in 1977 to see the first 'Star Wars' movie are now about 50 years old. Exactly the demographic of core slot players.

"Our first game will be themed around Star Wars: A New Hope. I'm happy to be working with Lucasfilm."

Executives from several studios and production companies scouted the exhibition floor at G2E for potential partners.

We spotted execs from Spyglass Entertainment at the Shuffle Master booth. Although no one wanted to be quoted for this article, they clearly were considering ancillary opportunities for such properties as Seabiscuit, The Sixth Sense and Shanghai Knights, although a Bruce Almighty slot might be a bit of a stretch.

Lara Croft's handlers spoke with officials of IGT.

At WMS Gaming, which has introduced several generations of Monopoly slots in the last seven years, actor Rip Torn was being kept busy signing autographs in support of the new, five-reel Men in Black game. The symbols on the reels include worm aliens, sunglasses, satellite dishes, Frank the Pug and Agent Zed, while full-screen animation allows bonus-round players to uncover aliens for cash.

Just as in Hollywood, focus groups now play an essential role in the development of new games.

WMS' focus-group experience told the Chicago-based company that 80 percent of those in its key gaming demographic had seen one or both Men in Black movies. They were drawn to the humorous characters and stars, as well as the colorful presentation of the slots themselves. Once the machines were introduced into a casino, brand awareness - along with some digitally enhanced sound and video effects - would propel the marketing campaign.

The whole idea these days is to keep slot players in their seats, by entertaining them as they're winning or losing money … at a brisk, but not breakneck speed. While the games themselves can't be skill-based, the interactive elements often give the impression that they are.

Just to give you an idea of how far the manufacturers now are willing to go to attract new generations of players, consider these slots.

IGT has a surprise hit in a game based on Spam, and not that of the e-mail variety, either.

Atronic is betting that one sure way to a gambler's heart is through his stomach. To this end, it is introducing a machine that looks very much like a popcorn popper, complete with a cooker that dispenses bingo balls when a bonus round is earned.

Still to be added to the technology, though, is an aromatic gizmo that will spread the smell of boiling palm oil into the already oxygenated air of the casino. As anyone who attended movies before the great-cholesterol scare of the mid-'90s can attest, the scent associated with the popping of kernels of corn is nothing short of intoxicating.

Think I'm kidding? Last year, IGT introduced an I Love Lucy game that gave off a chocolate aroma during one of the bonus rounds, as a scene from the show's famous cake-conveyor-belt episode played on-screen.

After 43 years, Mike Todd Jr.'s dream of Smell-O-Vision had arrived. Let's prey that no one decides to add it - or John Waters' scratch-and-sniff Odorama cards -- to the Spam slots.

Vegas, baby!

- September 23, 2003