Incredible Technologies – 40 and Counting

Two years ago, supplier Incredible Technologies started work on what it called a “rebuild” of its gaming playbook. The company, founded as a video game developer in 1985, had made significant inroads into the casino slot market since introducing its first slots in 2010, achieving 3-5 percent market share where its games were placed.

That was quite respectable for a company only a dozen years removed from its first casino slot placement, but Dan Schrementi, the company’s president of gaming, announced that IT was revamping its product roadmap in an effort to keep and improve upon that 3-5 percent share.

New product management talent was brought in. New talent and procedures were applied in R&D, sales, finance and just about every other division of the company.

The new catalog concentrates more on the game mechanics that are currently a hit with players—pot-collection games, hold-and-spin features, more volatile game programs—but creatives at IT were still committed to producing never-before-seen game elements and adding their twists on trending features.

Last year, the company launched new hardware, the Prism Element cabinet, that shot to No. 1 in upright portrait cabinet performance as recorded by the Eilers-Fantini Game Performance Report. In the 2024 Eilers & Krejcik Gaming Slot Awards, IT took the award for Most Improved Supplier-Core.

At the same time, last year the company began to reflect on its own identity—not only celebrating Golden Tee Golf, the tavern golf simulation machine that has constituted much of the company’s identity since its 1989 introduction, but its identity as the only slot supplier sill privately owned by its founders (Elaine Hodgson, now president and CEO; and Richard Ditton, now executive vice president), and the last game supplier based in the Chicago area, traditional home to industry giants like Bally and Williams.

Last year, IT’s Global Gaming Expo booth was made up like a Chicago sports bar, complete with Golden Tee Golf machines (classic and new) and faux-brick walls adorned with pictures from the company’s history. It was all a lead-up to this year—a yearlong celebration of the company’s 40th anniversary.

“Two years ago, we were talking about our rebuild, and last year, we were firmly back with the Element, which ended up being a top cabinet in the industry,” Schrementi says. “We were the comeback story of the year, with the Most Improved Supplier award. This year’s message is a little different. We’ve had a very stable, successful year, introducing new products to the industry while at the same time celebrating our 40th anniversary.”

IT has been all over social media this year telling its story, and that will continue at its G2E booth, along with the fruits of its reboot the past couple of years. “What you’re going to see from us at the show is a visualization of the fact that whether we’re making slot machines or arcade games, everybody comes here to work to create games,” says Schrementi.

“Our founders began this company because they love making games. We’ve hired a very special group of people who live here in the Midwest. They don’t live in Las Vegas; they’re not in studios spread across the U.S. They live here in Chicago because this is where gaming started. They come here to make good games.”

Schrementi has been with IT 22 years, and he says a large portion of the company’s employees have similarly long tenures. “All that time, Elaine (Hodgson) has had slogans on the walls that say, ‘It’s all about the game.’ She’s always emphasized the game, the game, the game. It’s like our mantra here. We realize you need a great game to have a successful business, so that’s our talking point this year: It’s always about the game.”

G2E ‘Barcade’

Schrementi is calling IT’s booth at G2E this year a “barcade,” meaning a bar with an arcade. “It’s a retro arcade with a bar that’s going to be a throwback to the 1980s, when we were founded. A lot of our successful arcade games will be in the back of the booth, alongside all our history that’s going to be on the walls once again, like last year, with all our new products sitting in front. It’s symbolic—here’s 40 years of old pixel-y arcade cabinets, and here’s a very bright future of our new games, plus some surprises we’re bringing to the show.”

Some of those surprises will be in the area of hardware. While the Prism Element will be well represented, there also will be a focus on the new Prism Skybox, previewed at last year’s show but just rolling out to the market this summer. Additionally, the company will debut all-new hardware at the show— a “surprise” product, says Schrementi.

The main focus, though, will be on new content for the Prism Skybox, which Schrementi calls a “platform for the future” for IT.

“There’s a large catalog coming out, but rollout of the Skybox is now well under way,” he says. “Most of the orders going out of the building right now are for this product.”

Included in the Prism Skybox games will be the inaugural title for the cabinet released this summer, Crazy Money Break ‘N’ Bank, which brings a pot-filler bonus to the long-running brand. The collection pots are golden piggy banks that also are caricatures of the two greatest U.S. presidents—George Washington, whose piggy version is called “Gorge Washington;” and Abraham Lincoln, aka “Baberaham Lincoln.” It also features the familiar “Money Catch” bonus, in which players touch the screen to grab bills flying around presidential statues.

The reel symbols are cash bills displaying cartoon Founding Fathers in various denominations, with bills falling on the payline adding up for the pays.

One of the Prism Skybox games to be showcased at G2E will be Boost Blast Dynamite Daisy, a gold mine-themed slot that features IT’s new Persistence Filter, which allows operators to select their preferred persistence display, allowing either an “on” accumulated awards view, a “partial” view, or an “off” option that completely removes any indication of collected prizes or potential, with simply an attractive graphic visible to the player.

In this case, the persistence feature involves two wagons piled with gold nuggets that can lead to one of two free-spin bonuses. Wagons on the reels travel to one of the piles, making them grow larger until triggering either the Symbol Boost Free Spins or the Prize Blast Free Spins.

The Symbol Boost Free Spins play out on a lower reel array with additional reel arrays locked. There are two special gold-bar symbols. One unlocks an additional row on the reels above, and the other serves as the highest-paying symbol and replaces lower-paying symbols as players progress higher up the reel arrays. Since it is a 1,024-ways-to-win game, each row unlocked means more ways to win.

Prize Blast Free Spins feature seven rows of gold nuggets, wheels and diamonds with five pots underneath. The goal is to land dynamite symbols that blast to cascade the nuggets down into the pots to award the credits. When players land a wheel symbol in one of the pots, it triggers a side-view wheel spin for one of the four jackpots, including the top SuperSync Progressive—a progressive that links among up to 100 IT games on a floor—with an operator-adjustable reset value spanning from $4,000 to $100,000.

Another new Prism Skybox game is Treasure Burst Lamp of Luxury, featuring a female genie character that interacts with the game to initiate bonus events and give players a boost during a hold-and-spin bonus. During the Lock and Spin bonus, a win zone appears in a random location on the screen, and any cash-on-reels symbols that land within the frame are awarded.

There are five different-colored feature gems that can land to enhance the Lock and Spin bonus. There are jackpot gems, upgrades that boost prizes, “grow” gems that increase the win zone, “expand” gems that unlock rows, and +1 spin gems that can land. Treasure Burst is also SuperSync Progressive-compatible, available to players at any bet.

IT also will feature new games for the Prism Element cabinet at the show. Highlighted games include Combo Craze, featuring a cash-on-reels mechanic. Coins in the base game must land on the first two or more reels to initiate the cash-on-reels connection, which can span across all five reels. The game also features five different free-spin enhancements, triggered individually or in combination.

The free spins are triggered by any of five different-colored wild coin symbols, initiating free spins with combinations of multipliers, extra spins, extra coins, credit upgrades or added jackpot coins to the spins.

IT will also showcase a sequel to one of its most successful titles, Stack Up Pays. The debut title Double Stack Up Pays Island Riches looks strikingly similar to the original theme at a glance, but devoted fans of the original will immediately recognize the company’s additions to the game. The newest version features jackpots and the SuperSync Progressive, neither of which was present on the original theme. The added chase for high-value jackpots raises the stakes on the sequel. But why call this one “Double?”

Players are still working to collect expansions for the free games feature throughout game play, but the bonus potential is where IT says “double” comes into play. Players may trigger two bonus events at once, or win two prizes with a single pick ’em game. Two golden surfboards and one colored surfboard trigger its respective bonus event, but “double” scatters representing two Free Spins pots are on the reels as well. Players can play a combined game with all the accumulations of two pots and double the amount of free spins.

A pick ’em bonus initiated by a randomly triggered volcano begins as a standard “match three to win” feature. Players who reveal a “double” symbol are then prompted to pick until they’ve completed two matches—awarding any combination of two jackpots, free spins, or progressive awards.

Schrementi says IT recognizes the success of Stack Up Pays and its devoted fan base, so they looked at ways to enhance the playing experience while retaining the familiarity of the original theme. Double Stack Up Pays will also implement the Persistence Filter, allowing operators to select the accumulation display they are comfortable with on their floor.

Other new Prism Element games include the Crazy Lock game family, featuring an IT-classic Money brand, as well as the beloved King of Bling brand, complete with a DJ character and club-thumping music.

Both feature a Money Catch bonus combined with a Lock and Spin feature—players can trigger a bonus-within-a-bonus from either feature. Luxury Link will also be on display, in which mystery symbols revolve to reveal high credit values, jackpots or the SuperSync progressive as a focused “Link” game, highlighting bonus frequency and scaling jackpots for core players. IT will bring additional games for its core portrait hardware catalog which are yet to be announced.

All the games are compatible with IT’s Big Win Leaderboard, allowing properties to easily showcase big winners on a game with three unique lists, each displaying win amount, date won, and bet/denom amount. As Monthly and Recent Winner lists reset, the Hall of Fame list celebrates all-time winners on a game.

That Chicago Company

Schrementi says this year’s G2E lineup reflects the identity of Incredible Technologies. “We’re not one of the big giant companies,” he says. “Customers work with us because we’re special—we’re this company from Chicago that makes video games and has a lot of really passionate, authentic people. We’re going to show that by bringing all those old games to our booth.”

The older games also are there to emphasize that IT has been in business for 40 years. Schrementi says he researched the facts. “I wanted to find out how many companies actually stay in business for 40 years without any giant transaction, without any change in ownership, and it was well under 1 percent that have made it for 40 years. We’ve done it by always trying to be the company that was easy to work with.

“This has been a record year of growth for us. We’re in the middle of a rebuild, and what you’ll see at the show this year are the fruits of all that.”