Little Green Men Slot Machine

International Gaming Technology (IGT) launched the Little Green Men series of video slot games in 2003 with the eponymous video slot game. Players fell in love with the game and IGT responded tothat adoration by developing more games in the series, including Ms Little Green Men, Little Green Men Cosmic Blasters, Little Green Men Attack, Little Green Men Family Reunion, and Little GreenMen Heroes.

The game features space aliens with green skin and three eyes. They have a penchant for arriving in flying saucers when you least expect it and abducting humans from Earth or attacking in swarms.

The “little green men” trope has been traced back at least to the 12^th Century CE in European folklore, although the association with space aliens (and specifically visitors from Mars)became fixed in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The expression became popular in the mainstream news media during the flying saucer scare of the 1950s. By the 1960s, however, little green men hadbecome a joke and the expression was used to dismiss claims of extraterrestrial sightings and abductions. The most famous little green man is probably the cartoon character The Great Gazoo, whofirst appeared on The Flintstones in 1965.

Little Green Men now appear in comedy productions, spoofs, parodies, and the occasional children’s cartoon.  Stuffed toys shaped like little green men with three eyes were featured in themovies “Toy Story” and “Toy Story 2”. The aliens in IGT’s slot game bear a noticeable resemblance to the Toy Story dolls.

In addition to releasing multiple games using the Little Green Men name IGT also bundled the original game into a PC software release for home use in 2008 through Masque Games. The slot games inthat product are only intended for personal entertainment and do not allow players to gamble for real money. This article reviews the original game as it was designed for land based casinos.Another slot company, SGS Universal, released an online game called Little Green Man but this is not the same game.

Little Green Men is a 5 reel, 3 row video slot game with 9 pay lines. All prizes pay from left to right and are multiplied by bet per line, except for the Scatter wins which pay on any positionand are multiplied by the total bet amount.

The Laughing Moon symbol is the game’s Wild symbol. It substitutes for all other symbols in the game except the Scatter and the Bonus symbols.

The Keep Out Sign symbol is the game’s Scatter symbol. Two or more Scatter symbols occurring on any position on the screen pay a prize.

The Newspaper symbol triggers the Alien Abduction bonus game. See details below. At least three Newspaper symbols must appear in a winning combination on a pay line to trigger the bonus.

The Little Green Man symbol (an alien in a flying saucer with a fist full of cash) triggers the Flying Saucer Attack bonus game. See details below. At least three Little Green Men must appear ina winning combination on a pay line to trigger the bonus.

Other Symbols and Icons

• The Little Green Men game logo is a badge in the shape of a triangle and circle with the letters “LGM” overlaid on them. This is a normal game symbol.
• The Desert Landscape is a normal symbol in the game. It features a Saguarro cactus standing in the pale moonlight with a flying saucer in the background.
• The Apple is a normal symbol in the game.
• The Purple Fruit is a normal symbol in the game.
• The Orange Fruit is a normal symbol in the game.
• The Watermelon is a normal symbol in the game.
• The Slice of Lime (shaped like a crescent moon) is a normal symbol in the game.
• The Bundle of Grapes is a normal symbol in the game.

Little Green Men was distributed on IGT’s iGame-Plus gaming cabinets. There are two rows of physical buttons on the console dashboard.

The top row consists of six buttons for choosing how many pay lines are active or viewing the pay table screen. There are buttons for 1 pay line, 3 pay lines, 5 pay lines, 7 pay lines, and 9 paylines. The pay table button is at the end of the right side of the row.

The bottom row consists of eight buttons. The Cash Out button begins the row on the left side of the dashboard. The next five buttons set the bet per line amount to 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 coinsrespectively.

The Bet Max button activates all pay lines and sets the Bet Per Line to 5 coins.

The Repeat Bet button is essentially a Spin button.

A virtual dashboard is displayed at the bottom of the video screen, which is touch sensitive.

Your available credits are displayed in the lower left corner of the video screen.

There are three buttons below the available credits window. The first button is the Cash Out button. The second button is the Paytable button. The third button is the Help button (for calling anattendant).

The denomination of the machine is displayed to the right of these virtual buttons.

Two virtual digital buttons are positioned in the middle of the screen dashboard. These buttons control the number of active pay lines and the Bet Per Line amount.

The total bet amount is displayed in a little window to the right of the Bet Per Line button. Just below the total bet is a Max Bet button.

Finally on the right is a small window that displays the total of the prizes you won on the last spin and just below that window is a large Spin button.

When three or more Newspaper symbols form a winning combination on a pay line you are taken to a second screen to play the Alien Abduction bonus game.

Five cartoon characters are sitting at a bus stop in front of a lonely gas station somewhere out in the desert. The characters are, from left to right, a Dog, an Old Cowboy, a Little Girl, aMechanic, and a Waitress.

You are prompted to choose a character.  Once you have done so a flying saucer comes up and beams that character aboard before flying off.

The screen then goes dark and a newspaper starts “spinning up” from the background to the foreground like in old movies from the 1930s and 1940s. The newspaper is the Desert Times and it has aheadline on the left side of the page that reads: Abductee Returned!

Each character has a secondary headline that quotes the character. For example, the Little Girl says, “Aliens are cool!”   The Mechanic’s secondary headline may say, “Local man ‘livinglarge’ after abduction”.

A picture of the character is prominently featured in the middle of the page and just below the picture is another headline that reads: “Abductee returned from space with …” followed by thenumber of credits you are awarded in large yellow letters.

Normal game play then resumes.

When three or more Little Green Man symbols (the alien in the flying saucer) form a winning combination on a pay line you are taken to a second screen for the attack bonus.

Here a fleet of flying saucers hovers over the desert landscape in the middle of the night. Your task is to zap as many of the flying saucers as you can before the bonus game ends.

Under each flying saucer is either a prize or the word “collect”. When you uncover “Collect” the game ends.

You should win a consolation prize if you collect your winnings too soon so the bonus game always pays you something. The word “collect” may be hidden under more than one ship so you cannotassume you’ll always have a chance to zap every space ship.

For a game from the 2003 era Little Green Men is really a fun, interesting game to play. Slot enthusiasts flocked to the games when they were first available and they remain popular amongcollectors and older slot enthusiasts.

The fact so many derivative games have been spawned is a great testimonial to the quality of the gaming experience. Nonetheless this is a land-based slot game and the theoretical return to playeris lower than what you can expect from modern online slot games, many of which are now pushing 98% RTP, which is close to what Blackjack plays.

And despite the interactive nature of the two bonus rounds there is no real skill involved in playing this game. Some modern games have bonus rounds that play just like interactive shooter games,where you can miss targets as they move around the screen and you need some eye and hand coordination. But that may enhance the appeal of this game to people who are not good at real shootergames.