Hey there, guys, girls and others! Stanley Wilson here once again to share with you my vast (and mostly very, very useless) knowledge about all kinds of nerdy things! You know me – I love gambling, comic books, games, roleplaying, all that jazz. But you know what I love even more? When my favourite things cross over! We’re talking superhero games (Go, “Arkham”!), roleplaying as beloved characters (in other words: a slightly more grown-up version of what I did on the playground at age 8) and all kinds of crossovers! Sadly, this happens a lot more rarely than I’d like (I mean, how many videogames based on comic books are actually good? That’s actually a good question, I should make a list about it sometime), but when it does happen it’s always a huge treat. Since gaming and gambling are so similar already, a lot of videogames tend to use certain mechanics from gambling, slots in particular. I thought it’d be interesting to take a look at a few games and see how they incorporate slots into their mechanics!

For the most part, slots are used as a minigames in quite a lot of titles. The open world first person shooter “Borderlands 2” and its sequel/prequel, appropriately titled “The Pre-Sequel”, have slots in several venues which can earn you various prizes, including money, rare Eridium (which is the only thing you can buy upgrades for your inventory with) and even legendary weapons, if you manage to be lucky enough to strike a jackpot. It’s a really cool mechanic that, while completely optional, gives you a chance to test your luck and earn prizes that actually matter, some of which you can’t really find anywhere else. If you’re not into shooters and prefer more family-friendly games, though, you can never go wrong with “Pokemon”. Often dismissed as a mere children’s game, “Pokemon” actually contains a lot of very adult themes, such as fanaticism, mass graveyards, and yes, even casino games. In earlier “Pokemon” titles you’re able to win up to 300 coins while playing slots, which isn’t a gigantic amount (just for reference, a Master Ball usually costs around 600 coins), but you can maximize your odds by stopping the reels at exactly the right time, meaning that, unlike with real life slots, you can actually win almost every time provided that you have a good enough sense of timing. Games set in Las Vegas, or a fictionalized equivalent of it, are also nearly guaranteed to have playable slots in them. I can immediately think of “Fallout: New Vegas” and “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas”, but as a rule of thumb, Sin City always has slots.

Minigames aside, there’s also plenty of games that use slots as a mechanic essential to their gameplay. While free-to-play games aren’t exactly my thing, I hear that a whole lot of them incorporate slot machines to represent their more random elements, such as what rewards you receive when you open a chest. Which actually makes perfect sense – real life slots are pretty much random anyway, so what better way to illustrate the fact to the player than to use something that they know for a fact is random? But really, if we’re talking about slots as major gameplay mechanics, we just have to mention “Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII”. This oddly named game is a prequel to the mind-blowingly popular “Final Fantasy VII” (hence why its subtitle, “Crisis Core”, comes first rather than last, as you’d expect) and is truly one of the best games I’ve ever played. It is an action-RPG where pretty much everything is dependent on the slot – when you perform a special attack (and what that special attack is), when you level up, when you gain new skills, etc. Just like in an action game, you are free to strike against opponents in real time (unlike the turn-based gameplay of “Final Fantasy VII”), and every few strikes cause the rolls to start spinning. And while sometimes the results are predetermined (such as when you level up, which is dependent on a hidden experience bar rather than on luck, to keep leveling up satisfying for gamers who aren’t that enthusiastic about casino), most are not, bringing a really well designed element of chance to an otherwise very skill-based game. If you ever wanted to play a slots game with gameplay that’s more than “pull the lever and see what happens”, then I absolutely recommend “Crisis Core”! Trust me, you won’t be disappointed!