IGT and Megabucks

IGT’s Basic History

The Video Slots were in a full effect during late 80s. The first to produce video slot was the Fortune Coin Company. Their first attempts didn’t bring much success: players didn’t trust the first video slots. Soon International Game Technology Company (IGT) bought Fortune Coin Company.

IGT’s history starts from 1975. It was founded by William S. Redd. The year of 1981 was marked to be the beginning of success for IGT in the slots machine industry business. The company started to use the random number generator in the production of their slots.

Megajackpot System

In 1982 IGT launched its most successive invention by that time – a slot machine called Megabucks, a dollar slot game. Same year there in Nevada there was created a wide-area progressive or Megajackpot system. It debuted together with Megabucks and in a very short time became extremely popular. All the slot machines throughout the state were connected in one system in order to  grow Jackpot  constantly. The longer nobody was winning a jackpot, the bigger it grew. When a jackpot was won the progressive meter was reset to a predetermined base amount. The process started all over again. The concept of Megabucks is similar to Megamillion and Powerball lotteries all over the United States.

A huge success of IGT Megabucks, or MegaJackpot system, to be more exact, led to the adoption of the concept of jackpots by other systems in a wide range of denomination such as The Beverly Hillbilllies or the Wheel of Fortune. By the year 1988 IGT dominated on the Nevada slot machine marked.

Megabucks Pay-Off History

1. $4,988,842 was won by Terry Williams from Los Gatos, California, 1987
2. $39,713,982 was won by 25-year-old software engineer from Los Angeles, California, 2003
3. $4,600,000 (1989) and $21,100,000 (2005) were won by Elmer Sherwin