The average pokie machine makes some very distinctive noises – when in a movie, there is a scene in a casino, the sounds make it very clear that someone in the background is playing them. Online pokies, in turn, are very different from the classic electromechanical machines you’ll stumble upon in a casino resort. Many of the games you can play at Grand Rush Pokies have elaborate soundtracks (then again, more than enough of them have little more than ‘elevator music’ playing in the background).
In recent years, in turn, online pokie developers have found a brand new source of inspiration that appeals to their music-loving players: musicians and bands. This habit became mainstream in 2016 when a Swedish developer called NetEnt released a Guns N’ Roses-themed slot machine around the time the American rock band reunited on stage. Since then, music has invaded online casinos, giving players countless pokies to play with while listening to their favourite tunes.
NetEnt’s Guns N’ Roses stood out of the crowd at the time of its release by using several of the band’s greatest hits, including Paradise City and Chinese Democracy, among others. The game became the first in a series of rock music-inspired slot machines – NetEnt Rocks – along with further games based on the work of Jimi Hendrix, Motörhead, and Ozzy Osbourne.
NetEnt set the tone for similar games, so to speak – music-based slot machines have somewhat become a trend, with many other game developers choosing this direction for their games ever since.
One of the game providers to stand out of the crowd is
Another Swedish developer that takes its role as an entertainer seriously. Unlike the game provider we mentioned above that stayed on the mainstream side, Play’n GO covers a much wider range of genres and doesn’t stick to established bands – over the years, they’ve covered everything from emerging bands like The Crypt and Swedish metal bands like Sabaton to big names in the rock scene like Saxon, Helloween, ZZ Top, and Alice Cooper.
How about the fans of other genres, say, EDM, you might ask? Well, EDM fans are not exactly the demographic pokies developers are looking at – there are many more classic rock fans among them – but EDM-based pokies are not unheard of either.
On the one hand, there is DJ Wïld, a slot machine built by ELK Studios a few years ago, that came with its own EDM song written by a mainstream Stockholm-based DJ (it was later released as a single on Spotify). On the other hand, there’s industry veteran Microgaming that released its first EDM slot machine last year, in collaboration with none other than Joel Thomas Zimmerman, better known by his stage name Deadmau5.
Microgaming has partnered with Eurostar Studios and the DJ himself to release the game last October. The visuals of the game are based on the DJ’s Cube v3 Tour from 2019 and, of course, his work behind the decks.
