Slot games have come a long way since their precursors in the 1890s and the Las Vegas machines of the 1970s. Now, they commonly feature characters, sounds, and music recognizable from pop culture. Classic films and much-loved TV series have been constant sources of inspiration.
The Dark Knight
Both Playtech and Microgaming, two of the biggest iGaming providers, turned to Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight for inspiration. The 2008 Batman film was hailed by many critics as the greatest superhero movie ever and featured an inspired performance by Heath Ledger as the Joker.
The cast also included Christian Bale as Batman (a role he first played in 2005’s Batman Begins and revisited for 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises), Michael Caine as Alfred, Gary Oldman as Officer Gordon, Maggie Gyllenhaal as Gotham’s assistant district attorney, and Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox.
Nolan collaborated for three months with David S. Goyer to develop the main story, then with his brother Jonathan to finalize the screenplay.
The soundtrack by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard won a Grammy and built much of the atmosphere that inspired online slot games. Many tracks reprise “Molossus”, the main Batman action theme that was also used in the prequel and sequel films. Zimmer’s works also include The Da Vinci Code (2006) and Inception (2010), another of Nolan’s films.
The Sopranos
The Sopranos helped establish TV as an art form to rival film. Its many catchphrases and quote-worthy lines, not least “Bada bing!”, gave slot developers plenty of material to attract fans of the show. The Sopranos, for anyone who has had the displeasure of missing out, follows a New Jersey mob boss who has panic attacks and attends therapy sessions.
Almost two decades after the show’s finale, it’s still held up as one of the greatest TV series of all time. Creator and showrunner David Chase returned to the Sopranos world for his film The Many Saints of Newark, a prequel that starred James Gandolfini’s son, Michael Gandolfini, as a young Tony Soprano.
The elder Gandolfini, who sadly passed away in 2013, won several Emmys, Golden Globes, and Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Despite the show’s huge success, some cast members had doubts about the first script. Michael Imperioli, who played Christopher Moltisanti, was unsure whether it was primarily a comedy. He took the job more out of practicality than inspiration. Years later, he was so inspired by the series’ writing and depth that he ran a 92-episode podcast, Talking Sopranos, with co-star Steve Schirripa, who played Bobby Baccalieri.
Jumanji
NetEnt looked at Robin Williams for inspiration. Jumanji has since been rebooted and starred the likes of Jack Black, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and Kevin Hart, but it was Williams’ and director Joe Johnston’s original 1995 film that put Jumanji on the map.
The film follows Alan Parrish (Williams), a middle schooler who finds a board game at a construction site. It was buried 100 years earlier. Parrish takes it home and discovers it has mysterious powers: he’s sucked into the game’s jungle and disappears from the town. 26 years later, two siblings find the game and Alan, who has aged within it.
Jumanji was not considered a classic by the critics; it holds a 56% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes. But those who love it really love it, and the film won acclaim at its 30th-anniversary rerelease. The Guardian writer Peter Bradshaw praised Williams’ performance as “exuberant, winning but notably controlled”.
Breaking Bad
Back to TV, Breaking Bad inspired a Playtech 5×3 reel slot game. Vince Gilligan’s series was not a megahit during its run from 2008 to 2013, but it gained legions of fans in the streaming era. Gilligan created the series knowing that the protagonist – Bryan Cranston as Walter White – would become the villain. He told The New York Times that the main lesson of the series was that “actions have consequences”. Breaking Bad sparked a wave of TV shows featuring antiheroes.
Gilligan described it as a “modern Western,” and scholar Amanda Knopf has written that the show exemplifies how Western tropes continue to influence modern American identity.
Cranston had, until then, had a slightly more modest career; his biggest hit was Malcolm in the Middle, where he played an altogether different character. He was nominated for an Emmy for a comedy series during that time, but few would have predicted he could make the transition to drama so successfully. Gilligan knew – he had been the writer of “Drive”, an episode of The X-Files that guest-starred Cranston in a tense car journey. Cranston only appeared in that one episode, but Gilligan saw enough to cast him in what turned out to be one of the biggest TV series ever.
Have you played any of these games? What are your thoughts on TV and movie-inspired online slot games? Let us know what you think in the comment section below.