Aristocrat Gaming – Staying on Top

Aristocrat Gaming has spent years at the top of the slot market. You can always find the company’s name at or near the top of the lists of top-performing games published by Eilers & Krejcik Gaming, and in February, Aristocrat claimed its seventh nod as Best Overall Supplier in the EKG Slot Awards. That’s seven in the seven years of the awards.

However, the competition for the slot crown has heated up as of late, with Aristocrat’s rivals increasingly vying for the top spots in the EKG slot performance reports. Aristocrat, though, has repeatedly responded to the competition. Never one to sit on the laurels of its past success, the company each year unveils a barrage of new game styles, new hardware and a mind-blowing number of new titles in all categories.

This year is no different. As usual, Aristocrat has opened its game development spigot for a remarkable flow of new games. At Global Gaming Expo, Aristocrat will present more than 200 games for all verticals—Class III, Class II, historical horse racing, VLTs and COAM.

Much of the new content is designed to exploit the strengths of Aristocrat’s newest hardware family, The Baron cabinets. A dual-screen version was launched last year, with The Baron Upright and The Baron Portrait added this year. All feature groundbreaking technological innovations including never-before-seen integrated dynamic lighting, advanced display monitors and sleek design elements.

“The Baron Upright was launched late last year, and a few months ago we launched The Baron Portrait in game sales,” notes Cody Herrick, Aristocrat’s vice president of commercial strategy. “Also a few months ago, we launched The Baron Upright for gaming operations with Cash Express Legend. Both of those have been tremendous launches for us.”

Herrick says customer feedback shows strong demand for Aristocrat’s proprietary game families to fill those new cabinets. “With what we’re hearing from our customers and with feedback on the products, a key focus is on our proprietary brands,” Herrick says. “Buffalo is a household name in the industry, but games like Spooky Link from the Mo’ Mummy family do just as well. We’re building up some of those proprietary brands into these legacy products from Aristocrat—Bao Zhu Zhao Fu is another series we’ve added more titles to, with great success.”

Aristocrat has applied a winning game plan across multiple verticals this year. The company’s footprint is spreading to historical horse racing, VLTs, Class II and elsewhere.

“We’ve done a great job of bringing over some of our historically well-performing Class III products to the HHR market,” says Herrick. “We’re successful in historical horse racing, and some of that goes to our (VLT) lottery product as well.”

Meanwhile, the Aristocrat Interactive division, created through last year’s acquisition of NeoGames, is making significant inroads in online real-money gaming markets. “The growing market in North America with real-money online gaming has been phenomenal,” Herrick says. “We’ll continue to expand Aristocrat Interactive as we continue to grow in that space and as the market grows as well.”

All of these growing assets of Aristocrat’s business will be visible at the company’s G2E booth in the form of hundreds of games the company plans to display. As usual, a ton of new content will be split between the for-sale and gaming operations sides, as the company seeks to demonstrate a mastery of all gaming channels.

Sailing For-Sale

As Herrick notes, many of Aristocrat’s best-performing games are proprietary brands, and many of those are in the for-sale category. According to Jared Terry, senior director of commercial strategy, game sales for Aristocrat, the successful for-sale launch of The Baron Portrait in May has already resulted in a monster hit with Spooky Link, an addition to the Mo’ Mummy game family that he says “is one of the buzz titles of the industry” right now.

“We’re excited about that, and we’re equally excited by some of the follow-up titles,” Terry says.

One of those follow-up games that will be prominent at G2E is the newest entry in the Whisker Wheels family, Whisker Wheels: Triple Karma and Triple Tricky on The Baron Portrait. “It’s from the same studio that created the original Whisker Wheels, with Kismet Kat and Karma Kat,” Terry says. “Karma Kat was the favored of those titles, so we kept the same cat and added a Halloween-themed kitty.”

The new version adds a fourth metamorphic pot to the original three. Instead of only triggering an enhanced free game or Hold & Spin feature, the pots also enhance spins on the bonus wheels that are central to the game.

The original pots survive from the first Whisker Wheels game: “Wheel Boost” increases the credit prizes on the Cheddar Spins wheel and the number of free games awarded on the Triple Kash wheel. “Cheddar Spins” unlocks the middle wheel with larger credit prizes and jackpots. “Extra Pointers” triggers a picking bonus that adds pointers to the Cheddar Spins and Triple Kash wheels.

The new pot triggers the Triple Kash Wheel, which determines how many free spins occur, during which three additional reel sets can be unlocked, with a reel set that awards additional free games, a reel set that has stacks of cash-on-reels values, an another that multiplies the cash-on-reels values awarded.

In other for-sale highlights for Aristocrat at G2E, the company is bringing Firecracker Fortunes from the MarsX cabinet to The Baron Portrait. This is an extension of the Bao Zhu Zhao Fu game math, presented in an Americanized theme. The three collection pots are strings of firecrackers, each enhancing Aristocrat’s trademark Hold & Spin bonus feature.

The Hold & Spin feature unlocks up to three additional reel sets when the Strike feature is triggered. There also is a feature within the feature called the Fortune Express Hold & Spin, on a three-by-three grid with higher cash symbols than the main feature.

Also on The Baron Portrait is the hilarious Crazy Chickens in Space, a brand extension of the popular Crazy Chickens. The three pots are represented by different-colored cartoon chickens, each in its own flying saucer. As the cash-on-reels symbols land in the primary game, stacks of eggs pile up underneath each chicken’s spaceship. When one or more pots bursts, an enhanced Hold & Spin bonus is triggered.

The green chicken triggers “Instant Win,” which pays the sum of cash-on-reels symbols on the grid instantly. The red chicken triggers “Boosters,” which increases the value of the cash-on-reels symbols. The purple chicken triggers “Multipliers,” applying multipliers to the cash values on the screen.

“Crazy Chickens has been a successful brand for us,” says Terry, “and now we’re looking to expand that to Crazy Chickens in Space and Crazy Dragons as well. One of the things players loved about the first Crazy Chickens was the characters’ interactions with the player. They do really cute things—they’re taking selfies, pulling out phones. With those eggs growing, they get close to the line and they try to reach up and get there. A lot of that fun entertainment style has been continued with Crazy Chickens in Space.”

Also on The Baron Portrait is Thunder Empire, another game featuring a secondary Hold & Spin feature within the main feature. This title was a hit in Australia. There are four titles in the game family. “It’s performing very well in Australia right now, so we are excited to be able to bring it to the U.S.,” Terry says, “and take some of what’s working in Australia, and add some of the mechanics that are popular over here in Class III.

“We’ve had some success in the past with games that worked in Australia. We’re excited because we’ve taken some of those learnings, like adding that metamorphic bar that they’re not able to offer in Australia and putting it on a Class III game. We think that is going to set this game up for success. We’re hoping it’s the next Crazy Chickens, the next Whisker Wheels or Spooky Link kind of brand.”

Aristocrat also will launch for-sale titles on The Baron Upright in the Bao Zhu Zhao Fu and Buffalo game families.

Bao Zhu Zhao Fu Ignite, Jade & Purple presents the popular game with new features active in the Hold & Spin round. Two of the four Hold & Spin features are replaced by “Strike” and “Split.” Strike boosts the credit values of Strike symbols on the reels. Split is just that—it splits cash-on-reels symbols to create up to four awards in a single Hold & Spin position.The Buffalo and Timber Wolf game families come together in Buffalo Mega Power and Timber Wolf Mega Power. Here, the classic themes are enhanced by a new “Flame” feature that allows the player to upgrade reel positions to pay the winning combinations that landed and substitute as Buffalo or Timber Wolf symbols for large Buffalo and Timber Wolf wins.

Millioni$er and More

Aristocrat’s lineup of gaming operations launches for G2E reads much like the for-sale games—another collection of proprietary brands, with no big licensed game announcements, at least prior to G2E.

At the top of the list, Aristocrat is bringing back the classic Millioni$er brand, which took the industry by storm in 2001 with its million-dollar-plus multi-site progressive. This new version places the familiar theme in a modern format, with the most popular game mechanics of the day.

The new Millioni$er is a multi-game product, with a choice of three base games—Buffalo, Louie’s Gold and Outback Jack, all popular Aristocrat home-grown brands—that feature three metamorphic pots that trigger an enhanced free-spin round. “Extra Feature” allows extension of the free-spin round—three or more Top Hat symbols trigger three extra free games.

“Mystery Feature” randomly adds Top Hat symbols or upgrades the frames on the reels for larger free-game prizes.

The “Yellow Repeat” pot repeats wins by transforming some of the cash-on-reels symbols” into different prize amounts. The repeat cash-on-reels prizes are added up, followed by a wheel spin for a multiplier up to 10X being applied to the repeat amount.”

“This will start hitting casino floors here just before G2E,” says Herrick. “We’re excited about that first gaming ops product on The Baron Portrait, and that comes with all the fanfare as well, too—a beautiful sign package and all that goes with it. Then, we’re following that up with Buffalo Mega Stampede as the first single-site progressive title on The Baron Portrait.”

Buffalo Mega Stampede builds on on the successful game Buffalo Ultimate Stampede. Like the original, it features cash-on-reels prizes, the Hold & Spin feature, and the classic Buffalo Free Games. The new version adds a “Golden Buffalo” symbol that unlocks higher-value prizes, and stacked metamorphic bars that can multiply cash-on-reels symbols. In Buffalo Mega Stampede three are 3 different bonus meters that unlock additional features in the hold-and-spin. At the Super level unlocking a buffalo stampede that adds more cash-on-reels symbols and the mega level unlocking a buffalo that runs horizontally to award a multiplier.

“Buffalo Ultimate Stampede has been one of the best games in the industry for the past couple of years,” Herrick says, “so this takes the mechanic that was created with Buffalo Ultimate Stampede to multiple levels.”

Another revival of a classic brand on The Baron Upright is Cash Express Legend. It revives the classic second-screen train bonus in a new multi-game, with base games Buffalo, Choy Sun Doa and Joyful Panda. The lead-up to the train bonus is the metamorphic Bonus Meter. Special symbols fill the meter until the train bonus is triggered. A train then chugs across the screen, dropping accumulating bonus credits from its cars. The train can make several runs. There is a gold carriage that triggers repeat wins.

“This is leveraging that Bonus Meter mechanic to get you into the train feature,” says Herrick. “The players love Cash Express Luxury Line, and having a metamorphic trigger rather than a symbol-based trigger adds to the excitement. Additionally, within it we’ve added the gold carriage, which gives you a repeat win value, as well as the Legend Carriage, which on any of your trains can show up and unlock a three-by-three Hold & Spin. That carriage can show up to four times throughout the bonus.”

The follow-up to Cash Express Legend on The Baron Portrait is Double Buffalo, an extension of last year’s Jackpot Buffalo game including a Hold & Spin feature, a wheel bonus, a free-spin bonus and a multi-site progressive starting at $50,000; and Safe Buster, a multi-game family (Buffalo, Shark Fury and Chief Inferno) that includes the Bonus Meter and unlocking rows of Buffalo Ultimate Stampede.

“Double Buffalo is fairly similar in structure to Jackpot Buffalo, which we debuted at the IGA show, but here, we’re bringing it to The Baron Portrait on the fast-hitting $50,000 link,” Herrick says.

On the giant King Max cabinet, Aristocrat is featuring Jackpot Buffalo, a Hold & Spin game that features a multi-site jackpot starting at $1 million and a bonus wheel. Also on the King Max is Bao Zhu Zhao Fu Firecracker Express, which adds five overlapping bonus features to the popular brand, for the first time in Gaming Operations. The MarsX Flex features Chief, which adds Fireball symbols and stacked multipliers to the Buffalo-themed game.

Finally, the Buffalo brand goes over to the stepper side with Buffalo Eclipse, on the Marquis stepper cabinet. This three-reel stepper includes cash-on-reels symbols with a chance to multiply winnings up to 100X.

Many of these games, of course, are now porting over to the online side. “We’re excited about G2E this year,” says Herrick. “We continue to bring popular Aristocrat content both to land-based and online to meet players where they are. We’re excited to showcase a comprehensive suite of offering between Aristocrat Gaming and Aristocrat Interactive, and we are looking forward to a successful show.”