Step into Dr. Emmett Brown’s DeLorean time machine and travel back to 1991 and you’ll probably see advertisements for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The NES took the video gaming world by storm with its 8-bit video games setting a new standard for home entertainment worldwide.
One of the available NES titles you are unlikely to remember is the slot machine simulation game titled Hot Slots. Developed by Idea-Tek and published by Panesian in 1991, this game courted a little controversy for its inclusion of scantily-clad women within the game’s three slot machine variants: Cutie Bunny, Las Vegas, and Juicy Fruits. Each individual slot game had its own unique visual design and a different musical soundtrack to complement it. However, there were no in-game bonus features like today’s leading slot titles. When you play Net Entertainment’s, Gonzo’s Quest, on Magical Vegas slots online, for example, there is the Free Fall feature that can generate win multipliers to enhance your winnings and gameplay.
There are no such win multipliers in Hot Slots, however, with players simply required to buy “medallions” or tokens for use on the machines. Players could use up to five medallions in a machine at once for any lever pull. It was then up to you to stop each reel by hitting the direction button on the NES D-pad. Between each spin on the reels, it was possible to change slot machines to try your luck elsewhere.
For each slot machine, there was a casino hostess, dressed up to the nines and looking somewhat alluringly into the computer screen. It caused a lot of hilarity among Nintendo gamers, with the hostesses appearing at regular intervals when a player’s slot machine winnings surpassed a set threshold. Players win money towards their bankrolls by landing 7’s on the reels, three BAR symbols, as well as colour-coded JACS.
Once a player won a minimum of $210 on a machine, a cartoon image of the hostess would appear in full-screen mode with her only partially clothed. Players that netted more than $300 profit would see the hostess lose more of her clothing and as for those that won $450 or more, well, you can imagine what comes next.
The hilarity ensues when these scantily-clad hostesses start speaking to you on-screen in poorly-translated English. Interestingly, Hot Slots is one of three video game titles released on the NES that were designed to feature nudity. They remain highly sought-after by collectors, primarily for their rarity and by no means for their gameplay. The other “erotic” NES games were Bubble Bath Babes and Peek-A-Boo Poker – yes, the titles really were that cheesy in the early 1990s!
Bubble Bath Babes can actually be found available to buy on auction sites such as eBay for as much as $1,000, with many people preferring this game to Hot Slots due to its Tetris-like gameplay. Meanwhile, Peek-A-Boo Poker was another of Idea-Tek’s bright ideas consisting of a strip poker simulator. Most leading national chains refused to sell this game too, so the distribution of it was somewhat limited, making it another collectors’ item for NES enthusiasts.
