The King of Pop is looking a lot like slot machine royalty, too, if the crowds at October’s Global Gaming Expo in Las Vegas were anything to go by. And it wasn’t just Michael Jackson’s music that kept casino industry professional swarming around the Michael Jackson: King of Pop games at Bally Technologies’ booth.
Loaded with special features, the game is on a new 22-32 cabinet, with a 22-inch video monitor on the main game and a 32-inch vertical screen up top for musical bonus fun. On top of that, there’s a wheel, and when you qualify for the bonus round, you get to spin to see what just what you’re going to get. You could just get bonus credits, or you could get into one of six bonus rounds themed after Michael Jackson songs, including “Bad,” “Beat It,” and “Billie Jean.”
”You’ll see a lot of big pictures of him, clips, videos, things like that,” Jean Venneman, Bally’s vice president of product marketing and licensing, said in showing off the game. “The base game uses a lot of scenes from videos.”
Jacko’s dance moves are integrated into game play. In the “Smooth Criminal” bonus, the music video is overlaid on the reels, and at a cymbal clash 
Jackson will halt, point — and the indicated symbol will turn wild. At the end of a bonus event, a bandolier-laden Michael Jackson statue image rises in the top box., as golden as your bonus award.
The crowds didn’t want to leave.
“After we demo it they say, ‘OK, that’s great. Can we just stay here a while?’” Venneman said.
There was plenty more music at the Bally booth with the new Grease slots, themed after the hit movie. Venneman enjoyed watching people play the “You’re the One That I Want” bonus, where John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John cavort musically in a top-box video while bonus credits mount in free spins on the main screen.
“They seem to be more focused on the video than on the actual game,” Venneman said, noticing that I was doing just that — watching Olivia rather than the reels.
