Slot Machines and Player’s Memories
9
entertainment as comedies did. For example, for every IL o ve Lucy, there
was a Twilight Zone ; for every Happy Days, there was a Star Trek.
Sometimes the two genres were combined, as with My Favorite Martian
and I Dream o f Jeannie. Every one o f these television shows have been
used as themes in slot machines.
W hat is notable, however, about the comedies is the extent to
which they appealed to children as much or more than they appealed to
adults. The Beverly Hillbillies had its satirical elements, playing off dass
differences and the mythology o f the Outsider; but what kids liked was
the way Jethro spoke and dressed and the fact that Ellie Mae had as many
pets as she could handle. Adolescents and pre-adolescents loved The
Monkees, and little girls, and some boys, developed crushes on Micky,
Peter, Mike, or Davy, and little boys, and some girls, asked for guitar or
drum lessons after seeing and hearing The Monkees play.
The shows devoted to Science fiction or speculative fiction tied
into educational themes explored during school hours. The Twilight
Zone, at first consideration, seems to be an adult show; but Rod Serling
derived many o f his ideas ffom much o f what passed for current events
in a Baby Boomer’s elementary school classroom, and in particular, the
things that fascinated and sometimes scared kids— the M ercury and
Apollo programs and the idea o f going to outer space, the possibility o f
life on other planets, robots and early versions o f Artificial Intelligence,
and early on, the drills during which children rehearsed “dodging”
radiation during the Cold W ar by descending into the basement or hiding
under their desks. To Baby Boomer children, The Twilight Zone was a
Contemporary Version o f one o f Grimm’s fairy tales, as discussed by
Bruno Bettelheim— an entertaining show which allowed children to feel
and express fear in a safe environment. It’s not surprising that slot
designers would tum to The Twilight Zone in asking the player’s “inner
child” to come out and play.
If these are the types o f games which appeal to the inner child,
what games then target the Puer Aeternusl The answer is, those games
which either reduce recent historical or political events to cartoonish
levels, deflecting the serious and sometimes tragic elements o f a game in
favor o f ridiculous characters and humorous images— or target those
elements o f the player’s personality which might be regarded as
“arrested” in development. For example, in IGT’s Texas Tea, the kind o f
activity that interests adults alone— oil drilling and acquisition— is given
a decidedly immature treatment. Icons include boldly drawn cactus
flowers; a cartoon bull, big, blue, and snorting whenever he gets a