The Sopranos Slot Machine
Produced by Aristocrat, The Sopranos is a 5 reel, 20 pay line slot machine based on the HBO television series of the same name.
The TV series revolves around a fictional mobster named Tony Soprano, James Gandolfini, and his New Jersey based crime family. The series is loosely based on the real life Decavalcante crimefamily, which has operated in Elizabeth, New Jersey since the 1920s.
The Sopranos is critically acclaimed because it goes beyond just typical mafia violence by including problems in Tony’s personal life, which are highlighted in his therapy sessions. Most episodeplots revolve around his wife Carmela, Edie Falco, protégé Christopher Moltsanti, Michael Imperioli, rivals, and mafia colleagues.
Spanning six seasons from 1999 to 2007, The Sopranos won numerous awards, including 21 Primetime Emmy Awards and five Golden Globes.
Find out as we cover this game’s cabinet, graphics, symbols, animations, and music. We’ll also compare it to Aristocrat’s Sopranos Top Boss slot machine and Playtech’s online slot.
Overview
Released in 2007, The Sopranos slot machine is a landmark game for Aristocrat in many ways.
First off, it is one of the first times that Aristocrat licensed a major TV franchise. They’ve done so many times in recent years, but Sopranos was one of their earliest entries into this space.
Another way that The Sopranos broke the mold for Aristocrat was by including real life characters and lines from a show. Again, this is nothing new for Aristocrat today, but this game helped thecompany advance their slot technology.
Finally, the graphics marked a move into better quality for Aristocrat, which had previously been known for low quality slot machines with poor graphics. The Sopranos’ graphics are average bymodern standards, but they were impressive for the mid to late 2000s.
Below you can read about individual qualities of The Sopranos slot machine.
Cabinet Design
The Sopranos features a MavStepper cabinet, with 5 reels, an LCD upper screen, fast game speed, and comfortable seating.
The Cabinet that we played features two progressive jackpot amounts up top. The bottom section of the cabinet reads Respect The Bing, a reference to the fictional Bada Bing! strip club owned byTony’s consigliere, Silvio Dante, Steven Van Zandt.
Graphics and Symbols
Symbols feature several main characters from The Sopranos, including Tony, Silvio, Paulie Gualtieri, Tony Sirico, and Christopher, Michael Imperioli. These are real life pictures of thecharacters, which helps bring the TV show to the reels.
Other symbols include:
- Sopranos icon
- VIP Room icon
- cash filled briefcase
- A
- K
- Q
- J
This is a low number of unique symbols in comparison to other Aristocrat slots based on TV shows. We also don’t like how generic letters are used instead of objects/characters from the show.
Tony is the highest paying symbol, and he also substitutes for everything except The Sopranos scatter icon. Paulie, Silvio, and Christopher also offer nice payouts when appearing five times in apay line.
As for the graphics, the characters look like they’re from an older show, while the briefcase, icons, and letters don’t have the greatest detail. But this is a game from the mid-2000s, so it’sunderstandable why the graphics aren’t excellent by today’s standards.
Betting Options
Pay lines are fixed at 20, but you can change your coin denomination from $0.01 to $1.00. These betting options make for a minimum bet of $0.20 and a max wager of $20.00 per spin.
The 20 cent minimum is a reasonable amount for low rollers, while the $20 max is enough to satisfy most high rollers. Overall we’d say that the betting options are a positive to The Sopranos.
Animations and Sound Effects
The animations revolve around characters saying lines when they appear in winning combinations. You’ll also see clips from the show play when you trigger bonus rounds.
The animations and show clips help make up for the lack of original symbols.
Sound effects consist of upbeat sounds that play whenever you form a winning combination with the icons and briefcase. The other sound effects, which play when letters make up winningcombinations, are completely generic and sound like what you hear in far older slots.
The Sopranos Slot Bonus Features
The Sopranos offers multiple bonus features, most of which center on free spins, wilds, and multipliers. Below you can see the most notable bonuses from the game.
Bada Bing!
In the spirit of the Soprano crime family’s favorite hangout, the Bada Bing! Bonus features a pole over the reels, with the shadow of a stripper dancing on it. The more that she dances, the morewild symbols appear on the reels. These extra wilds give you an excellent chance at forming big wins.
Capo Bonus
Named after a mob capo, which is a high ranking crime family member who heads a crew, the Capo bonus sees you choose numbers on a casino table. These numbers correspond to chip stacks, whichreveal prizes.
The prizes are then transferred to a wheel, which spins and comes to a stop on either a credit or free spins prize.
Comparison to Playtech’s The Sopranos Slot
Available in online casinos, Playtech’s The Sopranos is a 5 reel, 25 pay line slot that was released in 2012.
Based on the release date, it’s no surprise that the graphics are better in this game. The real life character depictions look like they’re taken straight off the TV, which is an upgrade fromAristocrat’s version.
What else differs between these two games? Find out as we cover Playtech’s slot with regard to symbols, betting options, and bonuses.
Overview
The Sopranos online plays a traditional mafia beat throughout the main game, and you’ll hear a different beat every time you spin the reels. Right away, we like the music better in Playtech’sversion.
The game’s background is a city scene, with the Hudson River in the foreground. This also looks much better than the generic background that Aristocrat’s Sopranos uses.
Just like Aristocrat’s game, this slot features animations whenever you land major characters in a winning pay line.
Animations include: Chris telling somebody to show him some respect, Johnny Sack discussing a deal, and Tony saying that most legit people don’t make eye contact with him.
Like any good slots game based on a movie, The Sopranos has enough animations and lines to keep one satisfied.
Symbols
The Sopranos characters who are depicted by real life symbols include Tony, Paulie, Chris, Johnny Sack, Bobby Baccalieri, Steve Schirripa, and Artie Bucco, John Ventimiglia.
Tony acts as the wild symbol, substituting for everything except the Bada Bing!, Sopranos icon, and storage container icon. Tony is also the highest paying symbol, offering 3,000 credits when heappears 3 or more times in a winning pay line.
Other symbols include an A, K, Q, J, and 10. These are less generic than Aristocrat’s version because they at least have different items underneath the letters, including a wine bottle, cigar,gold watch, scotch, and poker chips.
Betting Options
You can adjust pay lines from 1 20, and change your coin denomination from $0.01 to $10.00. This makes the minimum bet worth $0.01 and the max wager $250.00 per spin.
If you’d like to play all of the pay lines immediately, you can do so by selecting the Bet Max button. Unfortunately, there’s no auto spin option to keep the reels spinning like you see in manyother online slots.
One more option that you have includes the ability to turn volume on and off.
Bonus Features
Bada Bing!
This bonus is triggered by 3 or more Bada Bing! icons on the reels. You select whether Artie, Bobby, Chris, Johnny, or Paulie will meet Tony next.
Once your selection goes to meet Tony, you’ll either have a chance to send another guy in, or the bonus round ends and you collect your credits.
Crime Family Free Games
Free spins are triggered by landing 3 or more Sopranos icons anywhere on the reels. Crime Family Free Games start you off by choosing whether you want the Solider, Capo, Boss, or Family mode. Youbegin at Soldier, which offers 25 free spins and an extra wild, and you must unlock the other levels.
You unlock the other three modes by filling three bars underneath each rank. Once you unlock a mode, it stays unlocked even after you exit and re enter the game.
Hide The Envelopes
Cops show up outside Tony’s house, and he must choose spots to hide his ill gotten money. You must pick all four spots by default, including the ceiling, closet, container, and floor, with onlytwo of these being safe hiding spots.
Every time that you pick a hiding spot, you see a clip of Tony hiding money there. You’re then asked whether or not your money is safe; if you choose yes, you see the police raid two spots andcollect credits from the non-raided spots.
If you choose no, then you get to re hide the money again. But since this bonus is completely random, we don’t see any point in re hiding it all.
Stolen Goods – This is triggered by 3 or more storage containers on reels 1 and 5. When the stolen goods bonus starts, a semi pulls up outside a warehouse, then you’re taken to a map with variouscontainers on it. Each time that you select a container, you’ll see a TV scene and be shown your cash prize.
You can either choose to keep this payout, or try for a larger prize. You can make up to three picks, and you must keep the third prize if you make all three selections.
Which Game is Better?
In many areas, Playtech and Aristocrat’s Sopranos slot machines are similar. We think that they tie in terms of symbols, betting options, and animations.
But where Playtech’s version really shines are the bonus rounds and graphics.
It’s no surprise that Playtech’s Sopranos offers superior graphics because it was made five years later than Aristocrat’s version. Nevertheless, it looks better visually, especially with regardto the characters.
The Sopranos online offers multiple bonuses, which are all detailed and related to the show. The only complaint we have here is that the Hide The Envelopes bonus comes up far more frequently thanthe others.
But this is a minor complaint in what’s otherwise a really good online slot.
Comparison to Aristocrat’s The Sopranos Top Boss Slot
Several years before making The Sopranos slot machine in 2007, Aristocrat released The Sopranos Top Boss.
This 5 reel, 20 pay line slot is rather uncomplicated and runs on reels. Symbols include Tony, Johnny Sack, Bada Bing! Icon, cigar, scotch, pile of cash, and generic letters.
The 20 pay lines are fixed, but you can bet as little as one cent per spin, making the minimum bet $0.20. Based on the high payout frequency and cheap spin costs, low rollers should appreciatethis game.
Speaking of features, you can win free spins by getting Johnny Sack three times or more anywhere on the reels. This is it regarding bonuses, but at least you can look forward to one feature.
Overall, The Sopranos Top Boss is very basic by today’s standards and doesn’t stack up to either the land based or online Sopranos game.
Conclusion
Aristocrat can thank The Sopranos slot machine for leading to what’s become a successful line of licensed slots, including Game of Thrones, Dumb and Dumber, Elvira Mistress of the Dark, Ted, TheBig Bang Theory, and The Walking Dead.
Aspects to like about The Sopranos include a good cabinet design, real characters, animations, and clips from the show. We also appreciate how you have some betting options, and that there are acouple of nice bonus rounds.
What we don’t like are the graphics and lack of unique symbols. Regarding the latter, you’ll only see a few characters from the show, a couple of objects, and generic letters.
As for graphics, this game definitely resembles when it was created. The real life depictions of the characters don’t even look crisp, which is a disappointment.
If you’re a huge Sopranos fan, then we recommend that you try this game if you see it in a casino. Otherwise, don’t go out of your way just to play Aristocrat’s The Sopranos, especially sincePlaytech offers a better version online.