Odds and Ends of Real Online Casino Games

Ask a large group of people their favorite gambling game, and you’re likely to hear the same responses over and over. Slot machines, blackjack and poker will top the list, followed by baccarat, roulette, craps and maybe pai gow. These are all common favorites. But there are a few real online casino games you probably never knew existed.

I’m talking about games that software developers came up with, but for whatever reason, never really caught on. This happens in land-based casinos all the time, but they toss out these types of games to make space for new and/or more popular varieties. Online casinos have unlimited space, so these games stick around, just in case someone wants to give them a go.

Three Wheeler

Chances are you’ve never heard of this one. Three Wheeler, found in most Microgaming casinos under the ‘Casual Games‘ section, is a mish-mash of several popular games. Imagine if you threw roulette, craps and a big money wheel into a big mixing pot. This is what you’d get – something very similar to sic bo, minus the dice.

Three wheeler has a large wheel with 6 sections. Each section has three numbers, ranging from 1-6 (like on dice). Players can bet on single numbers, doubles, triples, totals and combinations of two.

Spingo

Spingo is, for all intents and purposes, a simplified repeat of European roulette. This real online casino game should appeal to anyone who has trouble counting past the number 10. Kidding aside though, I’m not really sure what Microgaming was thinking when they produced it, although I suppose a roulette player looking to mix things up might find it intriguing.

Instead of using numbers 1-36, this version uses the numbers 1-10, each displayed on three different colored lines. So there’s a blue 1, yellow 1 and red 1, a blue 2, yellow 2 and red 2, and so forth, all the way through 10. Of course, there’s also a green 0 to keep the house happy.

Players simply bet on a number, color, or specific color and number. There’s also odd/even bets, and high/low bets (1-5 or 6-10), just like roulette.

Arcade Style Slots

With all the talk of skill-based slot machines coming to land-based casinos (to attract video gaming millennials, of course), I think it’s fascinating that such games have existed online for years, yet no one talks about them. Microgaming came out with a skill-based, arcade-style slot back in 2012 called Max Damage and the Alien Attack.

It’s not really a slot machine at all though. Max Damage is 100% arcade, where the star character, Max, hops in a space ship and blasts away at alien ships as they make their way towards Earth. Like any other shoot’em-up video game, players can earn stronger weapons, heat seeking missiles, shields, health boosts, ship upgrades, extra lives, etc.

Triangulation

Here’s another odd title that falls in among the oddest of real online casinos games. Triangulation is a slot machine, but unlike any you’ve seen before. It doesn’t have 3, 5 or even 7 reels across. As the name suggests, the reels are patterned on a triangle. Within the big triangle-shaped play area are 16 smaller triangles.

When the reels “spin”, each of the 16 spaces becomes one of 8 possible colored triangles. The object of the game is to line up 4+ same-color triangles in any adjacent positions (akin to all-ways pays). Imagine Boggle, if the boxes were colors instead of letters.

Real Online Casino Games Unknown For A Reason

These are all real online casino games that never took off, and with good reason. It’s not that they are bad games. It’s because they either mimic something that’s already more popular, or they don’t fit into the normal scheme of gambling. In essence, they are either too familiar, or not familiar enough.

Triangulation was a unique idea, but it only confuses people who are accustomed to traditional slot machines. Max Damage is improperly categorized, since there’s nothing slots-like about it. Spingo is like a kiddie version of roulette, and Three Wheeler is just another way to play sic bo, but with a wheel in place of dice.