Raymond Moloney founded the Bally Manufacturing Company at the height of the Great Depression in 1932 to manufacture pinball machines. The name comes from his first game, which he called Bally-Hoo. From his Chicago factory Moloney started building gambling equipment and concentrated on improving the mechanical slot machines that were fuelling the newly legalised gambling business in Las Vegas. Bally machines were so entrenched in casinos around the world that there were decades in the 1900s when 90% of all cabinets in the world’s casinos were built by Bally’s. In 1975 Bally became the first gaming company that everyone could bet on legally when it became the first to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
In the 1970s when Atlantic City legalised gambling Bally moved into the casino business. At the same time an outfit called Advanced Patent, which built a business around innovations such as an ultrasonic meat tenderizer and an ultrasonic dry cleaning machine, sashayed into the gaming industry by buying up the United Coin Machine Company. By the 1990s the two companies were Bally Gaming and Alliance Gaming when they merged and eventually became Bally Technologies.
From more than two-dozen offices around the world the oldest slot machine manufacturer in existence now dishes out a diversified laundry basket of services that include design, manufacturing and distribution. Bally has taken dead aim at the heartland of America by building slot machines such as Hee Haw, NASCAR, Grease Pink Ladies, TITANIC, and ZZ Top Live from Texas. Some of its most iconic slots games have taken their inspiration from the very definition of middlebrow entertainment: Playboy and Michael Jackson – King of Pop.
Bally’s Online Games
Bally’s has always followed the philosophy that online slots players are looking for more than gambling and seek an entertainment experience. The Bally’s iGaming Platform brings players an online gaming portal with open architecture that allows operators to select the most desirable content and bounce back and forth between play-for-free and wager-based gaming.
The biggest name in land-based casino slots took its time bringing its vast expertise to the online gaming market. Its debut finally arrived in June of 2013 with Wild Huskies that brought stacked wilds and pick-me bonus rounds to the chase for 50 Free Spins. The Las Vegas-based behemoth once again pounded the entertainment angle with its follow-up release, Mayan Treasures and its pursuit of free games. Bally games, both on the casino floor and in your pocket, are typified by five-reels and between 25 and 50 pay lines.
Once in the arena Bally rolled out some two-dozen video slots games in its first year. The sure-footed veterans stuck to its winning formula of fast and simple game play with an emphasis on wilds and bonus rounds. Displays were crafted around standard, non-jarring graphic presentations and familiar themes: animals, Vegas (no company knows it better than Bally), treasure, the Far East, Egypt and fantasy.
A company as big as Bally can afford to also indulge in category-defiant themes such as its Chimney Stacks online slots game that could be an homage to Dick Van Dyke and Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins or a game for home improvement enthusiasts or a paean to Victorian England. Bubble Time, set in a tiled bathroom, is another offering that resists easy categorisation. Look for more adventurous game choices from Bally as it moves forward.
To date Bally has only trafficked in casino slots games and does not offer table games or poker variants.