IT proves it has staying power

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3-12-2008 New headshot of John Grochowski. Photo by Dom Najolia, Chicago Sun-Times

Updated: January 23, 2012 4:15AM

In the last three years, Incredible Technologies has captured the casino industry’s attention with its Magic Touch line of creative games with a difference. Now the Arlington Heights-based slot machine manufacturer is working to show it’s here for the long haul.

“We worked very hard to have a deep catalog, because that was the concern people had about us,” CEO Elaine Hodgson said when I stopped by the IT booth at the Global Gaming Expo at the Sands Expo and Convention Center in Las Vegas. “‘Oh, yeah, you have a few games, but are you in this to stay, can you keep supporting a unit on the floor?’ So the last year was about deep catalog. We’re showing that we can do it.”

At the expo, IT was showcasing its take on traditional-type video slot games, as well as walking on the wild side with its Innovation Collection. Among the more traditional five-reel video games are a matched set, Girls Day Out and Guys Night Out. Girls Day Out reel symbols are shopping icons such as dresses, purses and shoes, while Guys Night Out goes for cigars, steaks and Golden Tee Golf units — a nice product placement for the non-casino game that put Incredible on the map. Both games have free spin bonuses and scatter pays.

Goat Cheese is about as different as it gets. Designed for IT by the Chicago firm GCT, it features a cheese drop bonus where you roll wheels of cheese down a mountain, collecting credits whenever the wheel hits a goat instead of bouncing over, all with yodeling in the background. In a topsy-turvy feature, the play field is flipped around, rotated 180 degrees, some symbols become wild and you get a chance at extra wins.

“It’s as quirky as they come,” said Dan Schrementi, IT’s director of gaming marketing and new media.

Then there’s King of Bling, with a hip-hop soundtrack, drop-in characters and symbols sharing a diamond-encrusted look. On winners, paylines don’t light up. Instead, winning symbols enlarge and pop out on the screen.

“Guys from all the other manufacturers are crawling over this game,” Schrementi said. “I think they’re shocked we made something like this.”

Schrementi said IT is maturing as a slotmaker.

To which Hodgson added, “But not getting old.”

John Grochowski is a local free-lance writer. His “Casino Answer Man” tips air at
5:18 p.m. Tuesday-Friday on WLS-AM (890).