How do they do it?

[Eddiie]

In the movies, TV shows, etc.   I've seen sometimes in a tv show or movie someone is playing a slot machine and it hits the jackpot.
How do they make a slot hit the jackpot on demand?  I'd like to try it out at my local casino...  lol

Really, though?  Are there ROMs out there that are programmed to hit every three pulls or something like that?

[rickhunter]

They are not real machines, they are props designed to do that specific thing.

[cowboygames]

They might even be putting that image on the film digitally after the fact

[Ken]

Do a reel strip / paytable test.

[jay]

I am not sure how it is done in the movies specifically but the reels are controlled by stepper motors.
A stepper motor uses a digital signal to tell it to go to position xx.

When you see your reels spinning there is a control program that is playing a control sequence of  1,2,3,4,5,6... and so on.
It could easily say 1, 18, 4, 19,7 and you would see your reels jump around pretty wildly.

So when the slot RNG picks 3 numbers - those are what the slot stops on.

You could easily connect up the reels to a small circuit and write a small program to say to move the reels to 1,6,2 and then 3,5,8 and finally 0,0,0 to simulate some one hitting the big one. 

There is also movie magic --- show someone playing the slot, then do a cut scene to the reel test as Ken provided or even just manually move the reels into place and take a shot of the screen.......

[cowboygames]

Actually, considering most of these commercials are done by local casinos in smaller markets, i would bet they probably use clips collected from past real winners. Not sure the manufacturers would allow casinos access to software that could control their machines that way

[jay]

I was not thinking about commercials - I was thinking more Oceans 13 where they show the reels stopping one at a time on a particular winning sequence.


I also was not thinking that IGT, WMS etc would have any say as you were not actually modifying their software. You basically have a gutted machine with stepper motors connected to some control box and some dude presses 1 to Losing spin A and button 2 to Winning spin B and the machine is otherwise just a shell.


You will also note that most of these movies still have people inserting coins.... with very few exception that was so 1990's - everything is now TITO and bill based.


 In Oceans 13 they had a themed machine - like Lucky Treasure in a non existent Asian themed casino basically it was a mocked up machine never seen in the wild before where the top box opened and thousands of gold coins came pouring out in an uncontrolled (uncounted ?) fashion.

[cowboygames]

My bad, was just addressing the TV commercial aspect of it. Like the Lodge Casino commercials we see locally

[shortrackskater]

This subject reminded me of the old Twilight Zone.

! No longer available

Even with the old Rol a Top, they don't show a reel "line up" with a win.