Eclipse Gaming Systems – Ramping Up

Few companies have been involved in as many different activities as Georgia-based Class II supplier Eclipse Gaming Systems.

Under CEO Tim Minard, the company has been involved in a wealth of charitable activities aimed at improving the communities of its main tribal customers, and improving life in its own community—Duluth, Georgia and the larger Atlanta metropolitan area. Last year, Minard was knighted by the Principality of Cappadocia in recognition of his entrepreneurial and philanthropic efforts. But none of those laudable efforts have distracted Minard and his team from its primary mission of growing the Eclipse footprint in Class II markets across the U.S., with an ever-growing library of high-performing games.

“It’s been a very successful year for us,” Minard says. “We’re going to take that success and invest in our company, which will mean more titles, more often. We’re looking into external studios, and different things next year to increase the rapidity of our game releases. We can start expanding our floors, not just with replacements, but with new titles. It’s important to me that we start this year and grow that into next year.”

“We’re continuing to grow our Class II footprint,” says Robert Visintainer, president and chief operating officer of Eclipse. “What we want to do is really expand our product offerings, content-wise. So we’ve got two studios internally, and we’re adding a third.”

Minard adds that the combination of Eclipse R&D moving to the Unity platform and the creation of a game development kit “makes it a lot easier for us to work with third-party studios, who can work off of our back end. We’ve been working on that for years, and now we’re ready to launch. Doing more content from a variety of resources is exciting to me. And I think you’ll see a lot more titles at the next Global Gaming Expo even than we have this year.

“We’ll need a bigger booth, and we’ll need more people. We continue to expand our internal staff, and I’ve been excited about the people we’ve been able to attract.”

The ramping up of content output has already begun. “We are releasing in the neighborhood of 15 or 16 games a year, and we’re trying to get that up to a couple of dozen,” Visintainer says. “We are looking at content from both internal and external sources. We’re looking at studios outside of Georgia, because we currently have most of our internal game development inside Georgia.

“We obviously get really good tax breaks here in Georgia, but we’re looking at other states. We have a number of people outside of Georgia currently who are with the company, so we are trying to determine where the best footprint for that next studio is outside of Georgia.”

Meanwhile, the R&D staff at Eclipse is expanding on successful game families and creating new games that feature the game mechanics the players are demanding. “We’re looking at how can we develop games that are more interactive with the players, to keep them engaged longer,” Visintainer says.

New Directions

The Eclipse lineup at Global Gaming Expo will show inventive variations of those features that have been keeping players engaged, says Minard. The supplier started off the year releasing variations on games to provide fresh content to longstanding customers at casinos “where we know these games do well,” Minard says. “Then, in Q2, we started supplying some of our bigger hitters.”

Those include many Eclipse games that provide the hottest game mechanics of the day, like the supplier’s first three-pot game, Gem Link Deluxe.

An extension of the Gem Link series, the game features glowing blue, green and red gems above the reels that serve as the pots, growing and becoming brighter as gems land on the reels and travel up to the top box. The gems are marked “Upgrade,” “Collect” and “Double,” each representing an enhancement to another popular feature Eclipse is now deploying, the hold-and-spin feature.

When one or more of the pots burst, or when four or more diamonds land on the reels, the hold-and-spin feature is triggered. Diamond symbols lock in place as cash-on-reels awards, and the feature begins with three spins, returning the spins to three when each subsequent diamond lands.

When one, two or all three of the gem/pots burst to trigger the feature, those enhancements are applied to the hold-and-spin awards. The blue “Upgrade” diamond adds a value to all cash-on-reels diamonds on the screen. When the Green Emerald “Collect” pot is active, every green emerald landing in the hold-and-spin feature absorbs all diamond values on the screen into one new symbol, while leaving the original values in place. The Red Ruby “Double” pot doubles the value of all diamonds on the screen.

There also is a free-spin bonus, with all lower-paying royal symbols removed.

Another new hold-and-spin game, Xingyun San, deploys a unique interplay between a three-by-three base game screen and a five-by-three grid above the reels. Dragon symbols on the primary game screen are what populate the grid above the reels.

Three non-matching dragons on the reels send one coin up to the grid, flashing until it rests in one of the five rows, where it becomes either a cash-on-reels symbol or one of the two lower jackpots. Landing three like-colored dragons triggers the Dragon Flash Bonus, adding coins to one (blue dragons), two (red dragons) or three (gold dragons) of the five rows on the grid, paying double the value of the coins.

Landing a lucky coin symbol on the third reel in the base game triggers the hold-and-spin bonus, locking values on the screen above in place for a three-spin cycle, with spins returning to three when each additional value or jackpot lands. Filling each row lights up letters above the grid: G-R-A-N-D at max bet, or P-R-I-Z-E for a lower prize, which changes with the bet. Filling all 15 spots wins that prize or Grand progressive.

Other new games on display will include Treasures of Teo, with one of the most novel wheel-spin bonuses to be found anywhere. “At first glance, it looks like a normal wheel-spin game, but it’s also a cash-on-reels game,” Minard says.

Three free-spin symbols trigger an “unlimited” free-spin bonus. With each spin, the wheel spins to one of the two jackpots or a multiplier, applied to winning spins or cash-on-reels awards. When a multiplier is granted (up to 20X), that slice becomes an “End Feature” slice.

The spins continue until the end slice lands. Randomly, a “second chance” slice will extend the feature.

There also is a cash-on-reels wheel spin. When cash-on-reels symbols land on the first four reels with a wheel symbol on the fifth reel, the big wheel spins to multiply the cash-on-reels awards.

Treasures of Teo will be released just before G2E, with a clone, Snow Goddess, being launched in the fourth quarter.

Encore Performances

The new games in the Eclipse G2E display will be accompanied by extensions of the company’s two most popular brands. Big Shake 2 extends the Cash Arcade series with a sequel to one of the company’s biggest hits.

Like the original, the new game uses a simulated physics engine to replicate piles of coins being pushed toward the player from a shelf of a video replica of a coin-pusher arcade game.

“Big Shake was probably the best game we’ve ever released in the past six years,” says Minard. “Big Shake 2 follows similar play mechanics with updated graphics, and we’ve added a mascot.”

The mascot is “Jackpot the Gopher.”

At the center of the screen is a three-by-three reel set. At max bet, a special symbol sends six coins to the shelf, which may push coins off the ledge for credit awards.

When symbols trigger the Rapid Fire Bonus, Jackpot the Gopher appears to set a time clock for a feature in which coins rapidly fly to the shelf from a mechanical hose. For a period of five to 25 seconds, the player operates a “press and slide” lever to direct the flow of coins, aiming for three “mini-gems” which can award big prizes if pushed off the coin deck.

Coin symbols on the first two reels with a Gold Rush symbol on the third triggers the Gold Rush Bonus. A gate above the reels opens to release a flood of coins to the lower deck, including gems representing the Major and Minor jackpots, which are only awarded through this feature.

The other sequel to be featured at G2E is the latest in the “Big and Bad” game family, Big and Bad Howling Wilds. This game finds multiple ways of awarding wilds and paying cash and jackpot awards.

The main werewolf character stands above five reels. Behind the wolf is a haunted mansion in a fun animated scene. At the beginning of any spin, the “Random Wilds” feature can trigger, causing bats to fly out of the mansion and land on the reels, changing any symbol into a wild symbol.

Free-spin symbols on two, three or five adjacent reels trigger five, 10 or 50 free spins, respectively. All wins are doubled during the free spins, and when bats fly out of the mansion, they become sticky wilds, remaining in place for the remainder of the feature. Any “Wild with Teeth” symbol also is a sticky wild.

Any “Wild with Eyes” symbols on the reels trigger the Howling Wilds Feature. The wolf howls at the moon, changing the wilds into cash or jackpot symbols.

The Eclipse G2E display will be rounded out with what the company calls the Hall of Fame Series. “It consists of games that were developed 13 or 14 years ago,” Minard says. “We’re keeping the math models that appeal to several different regional markets, and adding features that are popular in the market right now.”

Next up on the Eclipse roadmap will be a new partnership with electronic table game leader Interblock to develop ETGs for the Class II market. In fact, one of the first Eclipse ETGs will be located in Interblock’s booth at G2E.

While building its game library, Eclipse has not slowed on the charitable efforts that make up its “Go Beyond the Game” program. One recent effort worked with tribal customers to address special educational needs. “It was a campaign to help them build a new school,” says Minard. “We participated by donating, and then getting our people involved in the programs they’ve initiated.”

It’s all part of the Eclipse dedication to the Class II market, and Minard notes there is still a lot of green space in Class II, while acknowledging that at some point in the future, a Class III launch is inevitable.

“We still have so much room to grow in Class II , but we’re moving in that (Class III) direction every year,” Minard says. “We’re hitting our marks and we’re doing the things we need to do.”