Merkur Gaming impressed visitors to ICE with its new Avantgarde Max cabinet, featuring up to three 31.5” full HD monitors, while the company also demonstrated the Allegro Trio, along with a wide range of new content in London this February.
Merkur Gaming was exhibiting on its largest ICE floorspace yet, an appropriate venue for the company to debut its new Avantgarde Max cabinet, which looks set to be big in every sense of the word. “This has been another strong edition of ICE for Merkur Gaming, said Athanasios ‘Sakis’ Isaakidis, Merkur’s CEO, International.
“We have had an excellent show exhibiting on our newly redesigned stand, with our success due in large part to the new cabinets and content we presented, together with the hard work of our entire team who I’d like to thank for all their efforts.”
The Avantgarde Max features between two and three 31.5” full HD monitors, while its loudspeakers are mounted at console height, ensuring an even more intensive gaming experience thanks to their improved transmission angle.
Merkur’s theme for this year’s ICE was “Opposites Attract” and in line with this, the Allegro Trio provided a perfect counterpoint to the Avantgarde Max. The cabinet’s 9mm deep screens are practically frameless, allowing almost seamless transitions between its three 27” full HD resolution monitors.
The company also demonstrated its linked progressive jackpot Treasure Link, which combines five brand-new games - African Glory, Dragon Marbles, Golden Silk, Joker Buffalo and Temple of the Nile - with an exciting entertainment concept. Each of the basic games has an individual bonus feature called Cash Games that gives the player the chance to win the Treasure Link’s Mini, Midi, Maxi and Mega jackpots.
Merkur’s bonus feature innovation Rapid Thunder attracted significant attention from visitors to the company’s stand. The non-progressive jackpot allows big prizes to be won on five levels and takes popular titles Taco Tuesday, Land of Charms, Immortal Emperor, Immortal Princess, Baozang and Amulet of the Pharaoh to an entirely new level.
“2020 will be a significant year for Merkur Gaming as we look to make further inroads in both commercial and tribal government gaming in the United States,” said Charles Hiten, CEO of Merkur Gaming Americas.
“We’ve carried out our market entry into the US step-by-step but over the last few years we’ve been steadily picking up momentum and we are now well on track towards our end goal of taking our place as one of the country’s top suppliers.
“We debuted our Rapid Thunder bonus feature last year and the response has been extremely positive, while it’s rewarding to see the influence of our US game design studio Sunshine Games making its way to Europe,” he continued.
“Based on the feedback we’ve received here at ICE, I’m confident that it will continue gaining traction in 2020.” The company debuted its latest multi-game package featuring 12 new titles, including Wild Adventure Big 5 with The Lion King feature and Deep Forest, at the show.
Continuing the multi-game theme, Merkur presented its Neon collection HD multi-game which is now available in Purple, Yellow, Green, Blue and Red flavours, while the game pack’s menus have undergone a visual redesign.
For the electronic table games segment, the company presented its Merkur Roulette solution in both theatre and hybrid configurations. Developed in collaboration with Slovenia-based Spintec, the product has lead the Gauselmann Group’s entry into the ETG space during the past year.
Alongside its gaming innovations, Merkur Gaming’s ICE presentation also included a range of technical solutions. The company unveiled its new Mars monitoring and accounting system, which is able to meet the needs of the most diverse operations in the segment.
With the issue of player protection taking on increasing prominence in European regulatory discussions, Merkur demonstrated a range of youth and player protection solutions, ranging from the player-friendly Pin-Center De Luxe terminal solution with ID scanner and the convenient Pin 2 Play variant directly on the machine to mobile activation with Smart-PIN.
Meanwhile, Play Safe and Easy Plus offers machine activation with biometric youth protection check capability.
This system utilises a two-stage verification procedure, whereby the player’s age is determined with the aid of a camera and biometric face recognition. Play Safe combines biometric face recognition with blacklists/whitelists both for player and youth protection.
As always, Merkur was joined at ICE by its fellow Gauselmann Group companies. The teams from the UK’s Blueprint Gaming, Merkur Dosniha from Spain, GeWeTe, edict e-gaming and Euro Payment Group were on hand to welcome visitors at the show.
