Throughout the history of gambling, people have used a wide array of things to play with. For the longest time, dice were the standard in a variety of forms, with playing cards coming later and becoming synonymous with all of the ins and outs of the casino world.

The latest to enter common use was the wheel, but it has quickly become a favorite. With a wide range of games now out there, what exactly is it that makes wheel games so enduringly popular?

Starting With Roulette

It’s safe to say that roulette is the earliest wheel game to make a big impression on the gambling world. Dating back hundreds of years with origins in multiple European countries, it became a staple of the Old West, and it grew into one of the highlights of the Vegas Strip in the sordid early days of Las Vegas and its rapid development.

What set roulette aside from those other games was a few simple things. For a start, the game had one thing no other game did: movement. Dice may have rolled a bit but they didn’t have the spectacle of the spinning wheel and the bouncing metal ball. It’s a feature that modern casinos have leaned into, with wheels now having multiple moving parts for decoration, and even the table hosts putting some flair into their deliveries.

Beyond that, roulette also provides an incredible amount of excitement through suspense. Poker and blackjack also have a level of suspense to them but watching the roulette ball bobble through the number spaces is many times tenser. It’s the reason that the game crops up in some of the most famous gambling scenes in movie history, like James Bond’s famous moment at the roulette table in Diamonds Are Forever.

The Wide World of Prize Wheel Games

Roulette isn’t the only wheel-based game out there though, and it’s rare to see a major casino without at least some kind of big prize wheel available. While there are a variety of producers for the wheels found in brick-and-mortar casinos, the developer Evolution Gaming is the biggest name in prize wheel games online.

The company runs multiple wheel games live with hosts via video, with various titles based on their original platform, the Crazy Time wheel. Each game has its own specific layout and win conditions, so a Crazy Time strategy guide would work well for the original, while a Monopoly Live guide would be better suited to cover that game. However, the games in general are simple enough that they are often some of the most popular games amongst the libraries of online casinos.

Speaking of Monopoly Live, the game has gone to show where these games could go next. It features advanced animations and graphics and even integrates augmented reality into the production. It has all the style of a professionally produced game show, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see the same being applied to more games in the future, including their line-up of roulette games as well.

Wheel games seem to be going from strength to strength in casinos as a whole, so don’t expect them to be going away any time soon.

NCS
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