Betsafe, a Betsson Group-owned brand, has announced a new project that will seek to discover old mechanical slot machines and restore them to their former glory. The project is dubbed simply “The Slot Restoration Project,” and will take on any machines produced over the past 100 years in a bid to restore and refit their mechanisms and make them good as new.
What Is the Slot Restoration Project?
The project will focus exclusively on mechanical slot machines, which are powered by various mechanisms inside the cabinet and do not rely on software to dictate the rules of their gameplay. For their first project, Betsafe Canada has decided to try their hand at a three-reeled Baromat “B” slot machine that was produced over 70 years ago.
This particular system operates via a mechanism called “magneto-mechanical hand” and can function as a standalone machine that does not need to be plugged into the wall. The cabinet series was developed by Wulff Apparatebau GmbH in 1950 and was inspired by European slot machines.
Machines such as the Beromat “B” were available at various locations in the 1970s and could be found in cafes, restaurants and, on occasion, in homes. Cabinet machines were popular because of their straightforward gaming nature. All that players needed to do was to insert a few coins and pull the lever to activate the mechanism that, in turn, powered the reels.
Commenting on this initiative and the machines themselves, Betsafe Canada’s head of marketing for emerging markets, Mattia Busuttil, had this to say:
“What amazes me about these mechanical machines isn’t only the craftsmanship that went into them, but also the fact that they do not require any electricity to work. Just take a look at the disassembly; it’s fascinating how simple yet effective the whole machine was built.”
Betsafe admitted that acquiring and transporting the machines was not an easy task, but was definitely a worthwhile one. The entire project is explained in detail on Betsafe’s blog.
We are currently negotiating an exclusive interview with the suppliers and project owners for one of our Behind the Scenes articles, stay tuned!
8th of January Update: We managed to get hold of the project owners and dissect the slot restoration project in our BTS series. You can check out the article here: Behind the Scenes: Betsafe’s Slot Restoration Project.
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