Shuffle Master Slot Machines

The story behind Shuffle Master is one of those rare stories where one man’s
idea leads to the creation of a successful business venture. Shuffle Master
was formed in the early 80s by a man who’d read about the impact of card
counting in casino blackjack and wanted to invent a device that would help
casinos fight back against card counting. John Breeding’s card-shuffling
device caught on, and the company he founded soon moved into the game design
business. The casino game Let It Ride was an early creation of Shuffle
Master, the success of which led to the company getting into the slot
machine business.

Now known as SHFL Entertainment, Inc., Shuffle Master didn’t start
producing and marketing slots until the late 1990s. Early on in Shuffle
Master’s slot design history, the company realized the potential of
marketing tie-ins, and games like Let’s Make a Deal and The Honeymooners
were among their earliest slot titles, incorporating aspects of those
popular television shows. These days, licensed slot machines are produced by
every major player in the industry, but Shuffle Master was an early adopter
of this practice.

Shuffle Master is better known as a producer of automatic shuffling
machines and other casino games than it is as a producer of slot machine
titles, though the company still releases multiple slot games worldwide
every year. Licensed slots seem to be the company’s focus, even as it
produces new versions of its popular automatic card shufflers.

The success of the company’s early licensed slots no doubt contributed to
the explosion in licensed slots – walk into any casino and you’ll see aisle
after aisle of games built around pop culture icons, from Wheel of Fortune
to The Three Stooges. Shuffle Master continues to produce slot games built
on popular themes, most recently a game based on The Flintstones. Featuring
three interactive bonus games based on scenes from the original cartoon
series, Shuffle Master’s Flintstones slot is a low-denomination game that
shows off the company’s latest slot game innovation, a mini-reel side game
triggered when the player spins a specific combination of symbols.

Shuffle Master’s Press Your Luck slot is yet another example of the
company’s big library of slot games based on popular TV shows, movies, and
characters. Press Your Luck was a popular game show in the 80s, brought back
for a brief time in the 2000s. Shuffle Master’s slot game is based closely
on the major themes of that show, a five-reel machine with a max bet of 45
credits and a bonus game that mimics the TV games how the slot is named
after.

An announcement in the third quarter of 2012 that Shuffle Master’s
electronic game sales revenue was up 11% from the previous year, and news
that Shuffle Master will be part of Nevada’s push to provide legal online
poker to its citizens, are both signs that this slot designer is still a
major player in the industry. What began as one man’s pitch to casinos to
help them prevent losses at the blackjack table is now a worldwide leader in
slot and casino game design.