Williams Mermaid's Treasure Slot Machine Dotmation

Description: Williams Mermaid's Treasure Dotmations Slot Machine, WMS, 1996. Mermaids Treasure slot machine has a 192x64 dot matrix display (DMD) in addition to the three spinning reels. Originally designed by Steve Ritchie and Lyman Sheets as Williams Mermaids Treasure, but got caught up in the IGT/Wms Telnaes patent regarding virtual reel stops. Steve Ritchie left Wms before the project was even started, so Lyman Sheets because the designer and game programmer. Mermaid's Treasure used 72 virtual reel stops, and IGT sued Williams because they owned the Telnaes patent. Then Larry Demar and and Erica Frohm redesigned Lyman Sheet's Mermaids Treasure into Mermaids Gold (which used 22 reel stops, which was the number of symbols on a reel). This decreased the maximum payout from 5000 coins for Mermaids Treasure to 1000 coins for Mermaids Gold (for 2 coins). This made Mermaid's Gold a bit less appealing, and the only way to give a big payout in MG was to do it in the bonus game. The graphics on Mermaid's Gold is more refined than Mermaid's Treasure (there's more "black" on the screen in MT, where in Mermaids Gold the background graphics are more orange.) Also the sound implementation is better on MG, and Mermaid's Gold goes to bonus round more often. But the really big payouts can only happen on Mermaid's treasure because of the Telneas virtual reel stops.

On either game when the correct reel symbols hit the payline, treasure chests of gold, silver and bronze with random coin amounts appear on the DMD. The chests hinge close and swirl through the sea. The player selects one treasure chest hoping to choose the most valuable. And with just the right combination of mermaids and treasure symbols, multipliers splash in. It's sort of a classic shell game that the player gets to pick the shell. Available in 2 and 3 coin versions.

If you have a Williams Mermaid's Treasure slot machine for sale (working or not), please contact me at cfh@provide.net

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Williams Mermaid's Treasure dotmation slot machine with 9" top glass.
Note the additional set of player buttons. In the bonus game, the patron plays a
"shell game" with their additional winnings using these buttons. Really nice animations
of three treasure chests filled with additional coins for the patron, which are sweeped
out to sea. Then the player must pick which chest they want, hoping to get the highest
additional winnings.


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