If you’re interested in iGaming today, then you already know that there’s an online slot for every setting and theme. As the industry continues to explore genres like sci-fi or world mythology, other slots prefer to transport players to worlds that already exist through novels, movies, or TV. Some tie-in slots make a lot of sense, but here are three examples that you wouldn’t expect.
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The CSI Slot
The CSI media franchise dominated television in the mid-2000s, starting with CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and spawning multiple spin-offs that tackled iconic American cities like Miami and New York. Of course, the original series took place in Las Vegas, and that’s the only thing Atlantic Digital’s CSI slot has in common with other slot games.
Made in the UK by a London-based studio, this slot is inspired by the now-finished TV show. Given CSI’s international audience, this slot has also found its way into Paddy Power’s selection of new games alongside other fantastically themed slots. The game wisely stays away from the grisly details of the job, instead preferring high-tech aesthetics and widely recognised practices like fingerprint matching.
The Lost Boys Rapid Fire
Joel Schumacher’s The Lost Boys was a success when it was first released in 1987, but no one could predict the cultural impact it’d have decades later. Like CSI, it spawned its own multimedia franchise spanning sequels, books, and even a musical - though a lot of its influence comes from mainstreaming the modern, slick interpretation of vampires that other franchises carry through the ‘90s and 2000s. Today’s vampires have come a long way from their roots in classical literature, and they may have originated from a real disorder, according to Canada’s Queens University.
Besides its status as a cult classic, very little links The Lost Boys to the world of iGaming. The movie is set in a place that doesn’t exist, and the slot, made by Blueprint Gaming, takes place on a simple dark waterfront under a giant moon. While there are slots inspired by vampire lore and other horror settings, a tie-in for an almost 40-year-old movie was much less predictable.
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Slingo Shark Week
The Slingo brand is no stranger to collaborating with high-profile IPs from pop culture, including the classic TV show Deal or No Deal. They even have a Deadliest Catch tie-in, which may seem odd but fits with fishing as a popular slot theme. Fishing has elements of mystery and randomness – you don’t know what you’re going to pull out of the water.
That can’t be said for Slingo Shark Week, inspired by Discovery Channel’s annual ritual where they run non-stop shark shows for a whole week. It may seem quaint, but this is a tradition that goes back to 1988 and is the longest-running programming event in history. It was also started for noble, positive reasons, as explained here by People Magazine. The result is an unlikely marriage between iGaming and informational shark TV, with bonuses themed around contextual activities like cage diving or x-raying the ocean’s apex predator.
Those are just three examples of tie-in slots that we probably couldn’t have predicted. As more media franchises rise and fall and slot developers continue to innovate on new and existing themes, we can expect more unlikely collaborations in the future.
