SEGA is well-known for its video games and consoles, but few people are aware of their involvement with slot machines. They were produced in the early days of the company, back in the days when its name was “Service Games”. Although its involvement with slot machines is a thing of the past for the Japanese gaming giant, the company did make a lot of money during this period. In fact, slots boosted the growth of the company in the 1950s, helping it generate enough profit for subsequent projects, including those that defined SEGA in the 1980s such as SEGA Mega Drive and the game Sonic the Hedgehog.

Slot Machines Shaped the Early History of SEGA

The first slot machine in history was the brainchild of American car mechanic Charles Fey who created The Liberty Bell in 1894. It was the most basic slot game, with just three reels and one pay line. The game is considered to be the classic slot and today can be found at almost every online casino.

After becoming an instant hit in US casinos, the popularity of these games started spreading around the world. Among the people most responsible for taking slots overseas are Irving Bromberg and his son Martin Bromley, the founders of Service Games.

The company was founded in Hawaii and operated as a distributor of amusement games throughout the Pacific Ocean region – Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines – for the first few years. The corporation then revised its stance and began dealing almost entirely with slots in 1958. There are two reasons for this. The first was that the Japanese Slot games were extremely popular. The other reason was that lawmakers in the United States started working on outlawing gambling around that time. The father-son duo from Service Games had no other option but to start shipping slot machines from America to Japan.

The (Controversial) History of Sega Bell

The word “SEGA” is an abbreviation for Service Games, the original company name. The corporation changed its name to SEGA in the mid-1960s, but the first time it was used was a decade earlier. It was used for the Sega Bell series of slot machines.

There are stories regarding how these games came to be, albeit they are unsubstantiated. One of the most common is that the corporation obtained broken High Top slots manufactured by a competitor, the Mills Novelty Company. The faulty games were subsequently repaired by Service Games before being repackaged as the Sega Bell and marketed in Japan.

When Mills discovered what was going on, the firm started a massive discrediting effort against Sega Bell, which motivated Service Games to create their own original game.

The Birth of Star Series Slots

Following the controversy surrounding the Sega Bell slots, the company decided to design its own slot machine. It was 1960 when the Star series of slots was launched, consisting of more than a dozen different machines, each with a unique set of rules.

The new games proved to be even more popular than the rebranded Mills slots. It boosted Service Games’ revenues, prompting the company to develop a few other slot machine series over the next few years, including the Continental and Windsor series. Service Games designers gained important experience working on slot machines at a time when they were experimenting with electro-mechanical arcades.

The Switch to Arcades

Despite the fact that the manufacture of slots appeared to be a ‘golden goose’ for the company, Service Games chose a different path in the early 1970s. Service Games realized that if it continued to focus solely on gambling games, it would reach a plateau shortly.

SEGA built its first arcade center in Sapporo, Japan, in 1970. After a few years, the company had multiple arcade facilities in Japan, and in 1975, it purchased a 50% stake in California’s largest arcade company, Kingdom of Oz, which operated arcade games in malls around the state.

SEGA became one of the world’s richest firms during the arcade game boom of the 1970s and 1980s. Then, in 1988, SEGA released the Mega Drive (known as the SEGA Genesis in the United States), which went on to become one of the most popular home game consoles over the next decade. At this point, SEGA had become a household name all over the world, thus there was no reason for the corporation to get involved with gambling.

By 2023, SEGA is almost exclusively known as a video game corporation. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, the firm has mostly focused on the development of games for non-SEGA systems (Windows, PlayStation, Xbox, etc).

Final Thoughts

SEGA’s involvement with slot machines may come as a surprise to many people who are only familiar with the company’s video games and consoles. However, the history of SEGA’s success is deeply rooted in the popularity of these machines, which helped to fuel the company’s growth in the 1950s. While SEGA’s involvement with slot machines is now a thing of the past, it was an important step in the company’s evolution and contributed to its eventual dominance in the gaming industry. Today, SEGA continues to be a leader in the gaming industry, with a strong focus on producing high-quality video games that are enjoyed by millions of people around the world. As the gaming landscape continues to evolve, it will be interesting to see what the future holds for this iconic company and how it will continue to innovate and lead the industry forward.

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Betty Bugle
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