Alright, folks, I have a confession to make, and it’s a doozy – I do other things besides watch movies all day. Shocking, I know, but please don’t lynch me! Aside from the standard stuff that literally everyone and their mother does, such as going to work, preparing food, going to work and all that, I also like to play a whole lot of videogames. I read quite a lot of books (I set myself a goal of 50 books read per year, and surpass it every time), and have even dabbled into creative writing a couple of times, in case it didn’t seem obvious. Well, there’s another activity I really enjoy, and while to a lot of people it may not seem like much, it’s my own guilty pleasure AND a source of income. I’m talking, of course, about online gambling, which is—YOU SIT BACK DOWN!

Online gambling has this really, really undeserved stigma attached to it, with a lot of people mistaking what it is with what it potentially could be. “Oh, it’s fake, it doesn’t give you any money, it’s rigged in its favor”, blab la bla. Well, not really. I mean, of course it’s rigged in its favor, but then again, so is literally every other casino game ever, online or not – that’s how casinos make profit. It doesn’t mean that you can’t either, though. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but the point is to make sure your wins outweigh your losses, right? And trust me, there’s puh-lenty of organizations looking into casinos to make damn sure that they’re not fake.

Still, it’s hard to convince people of that, especially those living with the old misconceptions about slots, bearing the relatively inappropriate nickname “One-Armed Bandits”. Sure, while slots used to be cheating, simplistic scumbags 50 years ago, today’s slots are actually pretty great. Did you know that a whole lot of your favorite movies and TV shows have slots based on them? The rights owners wouldn’t just give permission to anyone – imagine a bad, cheating slot based on, say, “Inception” was discovered, and it got embroiled in a conflict and a lawsuit. That would sully the name of the movie, and would make the brand less popular because of the stigma. Does that make sense?

Sadly, there is no slot based on “Inception”, but there’s a whole lot of others, instead. “Basic Instinct”, “Bridesmaids”, “Scarface”, “Forrest Gump”, even “The Wizard of Oz” have all received adaptations in the form of slot machines, where not only the symbols are adorned with the faces of the characters, but the bonus games are based on scenes in the movie. For example, the bonus round in “King Kong” involves you taking down airplanes from the sky, with each plane granting you a bonus to your winnings. Similarly, “Gladiator” has a ‘gamble’ feature which is meant to represent the fate of gladiators as decided by the Emperor. Whenever you win, you have a 50/50 chances of doubling your winnings or losing them all.

Some slots have gone even further into being meta. You know how the Marvel Cinematic Universe is this gigantic, shared world inhabited by dozens of characters? Well, the Marvel Slot Universe is also a thing – roughly a dozen slots not only based on the MCU properties, but also on previous movies such as “Blade” and “Daredevil” (which is an underrated classic and I don’t care if you think otherwise). And the best part is that all of those slots share a common jackpot. A progressive jackpot is generally accumulated from a percentage of all money bet on the slot, and in this case, the jackpot is gathered from money bet on ALL Marvel slots, and subsequently can be won by playing any of them. It’s a great system, truly!

All I can tell you is this – don’t believe the stigma attached to slots, because it’s simply not true. Tell you what – why don’t you try some slots on your own in your spare time? You can try the overwhelming majority of slots for absolutely free, in what is called practice mode, and most of the time it doesn’t even require a registration. Go on Google, play some slots and see if they’re going to be your thing! If so, have at it! And who knows, maybe I’ll write some more articles about slots in the future, perhaps looking into individual movie-based slots. We’ll see!