What makes a casino game unforgettable? Is it the thrill of a win, the unique design, or the generous in-game bonuses unlocking hidden levels and additional prizes you didn’t even know existed? The answer is different for every player, but some games belong in the field between innovation and craze.
Humans are inventors, but some inventions are bizarre, eccentric, and different from the classic slots and roulette games you’ve played. The expert team of gamblers and gaming enthusiasts at CasinoOnlineCA triggers a topic that digs deeper than rating bonuses, reviewing top platforms like Golden Tiger Casino and various payment methods.
Join our CasinoOnlineCA experts as we take you on a journey through time, discovering the hidden, forgotten, and bizarre gems of the gambling (and online gambling) industry.
Sigma Derby: Mechanical Horse Racing
Long before video horse racing and digital RNG games, casinos had a mechanical marvel introduced in the 1980s. This game is a tiny horse racing track encased in a table with miniature metal horses galloping around a loop. It’s designed for a maximum of 10 players who sit around the machine, each inserting coins and betting on which horse (or combination of two horses) will finish first in the next race.
Once all bets are taken, the toy horses spring to life, and the mechanical race begins. Understandably, technological advances have made this once-famous game obsolete.
The D casino in Downtown Vegas kept the once popular Sigma Derby machine running until the 2010s as a “vintage Vegas” attraction for devoted and nostalgic fans, even as newer digital replacements, like Konami’s modern Fortune Cup machine, started taking over the market.
Tic-Tac-Toe Chicken (Chicken Challenge): Man vs. Hen
An absolute legend of the casino midway lore is the tic-tac-toe playing chicken, often known as the “Chicken Challenge”. In this game, gamblers would attempt to beat a live chicken at tic-tac-toe (noughts and crosses) played on a little electronic board. It might sound like a joke, but throughout the 1980s and the 1990s, casinos from Las Vegas to Atlantic City featured a famous hen named Ginger that could allegedly play a perfect game of tic-tac-toe.
The chicken sat in a glass box and would peck at the board to make her move. If a challenger somehow outsmarted the bird and won, a hefty prize, often quoted as $10,000, was up for grabs.
Of course, nearly no one ever won. The secret was that Ginger (and her fellow trained hens) weren’t chess masters, but they responded to subtle cues. A light would flash on the board to guide the chicken’s peck, ensuring she played the optimal move; the casino operator controlled these lights from behind the scenes, so it was merely a show and a luring attraction for visitors. Eventually, animal rights protests clucked the act out of existence.
Rodent Roulette: Spinning Mice on a Wheel
“Nowadays, we keep mice on a wheel as pets, but Rodent Roulette was something else,” James Segrest, one of our gambling experts and gaming enthusiasts at CasinoOnlineCA, claims. “It is perhaps one of the cruellest and most bizarre gambling inventions on the classic roulette game using live rats,” he continues.
The game first emerged in the mid-20th century in America. It featured a flat, spinning wheel (an octagon-shaped one) with numbered or coloured holes around the edge. Instead of a ball, a couple of live rodents were placed in the centre of the wheel. When the wheel spun and stopped, the dizzy creatures would scramble for shelter, each diving into one of the numbered holes, thereby “selecting” the winning number or section for bettors.
“As you might think, the game followed a similar destiny like the Chicken Challenge, becoming the main target of animal welfare groups,” Segrest points out.
In 1964, two promoters in California (Logan Champ and Vivian Gorman) were arrested for running a rat roulette game (because gambling activities were restricted). This incited many more arrests and protests, eventually banning the game altogether, placing it in the section of non-forgotten, bizarre and strange footnotes in gambling history.
Pachinko: Japan’s Pinball Gambling Obsession
In Japan, the dominant form of gambling isn’t cards or traditional slots; it’s pachinko, a game that looks like a vertical pinball machine on steroids.
A pachinko player sits before a brightly flashing upright cabinet and fires small steel balls into a maze of pins and cups. The goal is to get balls into specific catchers that trigger a higher payout. Most balls fall through and disappear, making it a game of rapid-fire chance.
Pachinko parlours are also very loud and smoky, with rows of players transfixed by bouncing balls and electronic animations.
Because direct cash gambling is restricted in Japan, pachinko winners exchange their balls for prizes or tokens, which can be legally swapped for cash at a nearby shop. Despite these obvious restrictions, pachinko’s popularity is still intact, with 17 million Japanese players wagering around $200 billion on pachinko every year, far exceeding the annual gambling revenue of Las Vegas.
Chicken Drop (Online slot Game): Farmyard Craziness on Screen
Not all weird gambling games are old. Some are modern but don’t fit the bracket of most games in their category. Such is Chicken Drop, a peculiar online slot machine released in 2021 by Pragmatic Play.
It’s a 7×7 grid cluster-pay slot, but instead of the traditional reels, cymbals like acorns, corn, and strawberries drop into place, and winning clusters trigger cascades.
The most popular feature is the Progressive Egg bonus. When combined with special watering can and clover symbols, a cartoon chicken lays huge eggs on the grid, turning all the spots into the same symbol and boosting your chances of a big win. Compared to other slots, this cartoonish slot experience, where a chicken hatches your prizes, is as creative as it is weird.
Fan-Tan: An Ancient Chinese Counting Game
Though you might have never heard of it before, Fan-Tan was one of the most popular gambling games in the world. It originated in China and is more than 1000 years old!
The rules are straightforward: players bet on a pile of small random objects, like coins, beads, or buttons, in an uncommon way.
A dealer places a random heap of these objects under a metal cup, and players bet on the remainder when that heap is divided by four. So, basically, players can place bets on numbers 1, 2, 3, or 4. After that, the dealer removes the cup and the objects, four at a time, with a stick until only a final group of one to four pieces is left. That remainder is the winning number.
“If you think about this game through the spectre of modern casino games, it’s a guessing game of 4 module outcomes,” James explains.
Although it originated from Eastern culture, the game was also played in America, specifically in early California Chinatown casinos. Chinese immigrants made the game popular. However, it soon engaged a broader population. That said, at the time, more popular and rewarding games like baccarat and lottery took over the gambling scene, eventually pushing Fan-Tan out of casinos.
Conclusion
From ancient counting games to modern slots in online casinos, one thing’s sure: people love to gamble but love to be creative with it. “The most memorable games aren’t always the ones with the biggest jackpots; rather, the ones that make us feel something new,” James Segrest from CasinoOnlineCA summarizes. “Weirdness, and just the right dose of bizarre, when done right, leave a mark in our memory,” he concludes. What lies underneath is the very human urge to discover and seek new experiences, new stories, and new games.