JACKPOT!: Most A.C. slots come from one smart area company

PLEASANTVILLE, N.J. - Mac and Kay Seelig had only run their company, Globe Vending, for a few years when they noticed a new type of business coming into the area that might be able to use their nascent expertise.

"The casino people all seemed to be from somewhere else and really needed some local people to guide them around here," said Mac Seelig. "I looked at our machines and at slot machines. One dropped Coke bottles and candy bars. The other dropped coins. Looked pretty much the same to me."

Seelig sits comfortably in his windowless office on a side street in this otherwise nondescript Atlantic City exurb. Even his company's name, AC Coin & Slot, is utilitarian. In the back warehouse-like area, though, the bells, whistles, gongs and other manufactured sounds blare constantly.

AC Coin & Slot is the go-to firm for everything slot-machine. From Seelig's initial idea, which was the distribution of slots and their technology in Atlantic City, AC Coin & Slot now does everything from invent new slot games and build the machines to designing the signage on casino floors, recording the music that blares from the slots, and even developing seating at the machines so that customers can lose their money in swaddling comfort.

When the Tropicana Hotel Casino decided it needed to update its slot machine area, it called in AC Coin & Slot. Seelig's company created Havana Rooftop Slots, named because it hovers a flight above the main casino floor. Though AC came up with some custom slots with the Cuban theme - like the Havana Gold progressive machine - the bigger idea was to have a holistic slot area, something few casinos have deigned to do thus far.

There are murals of Old Havana on the wall, palm trees aside the slots, Cuban music pulsing around the players, even smells of cigars, hibiscus, citrus and coffee wafting in the air.

"You don't want to make a dull slot area," said AC's vice president of sales and marketing, Chris Strano. "Slot players can be fickle. You have to create an atmosphere, and that is what we can do for a casino."

While AC can do the soup-to-nuts thing, the guts of the business is still creating and producing slot machines. AC has 60 percent of the Atlantic City casino market in slot leasing - casinos lease machines rather than buy them - and is currently in 240 casinos in the United States, Canada and the Caribbean.

In the mid-1990s, AC's executive vice president, Jerry Seelig - one of Mac's three sons, who are all in the business - was watching two of his favorite shows, "Jeopardy!" and "Wheel of Fortune," when he began to notice what was on in between: the state lottery. Both "Jeopardy!" and "Wheel of Fortune" were themes of popular television shows, so Jerry Seelig figured that the same people watching those two shows might like a game based on the lottery.

Voila! "Slotto."

Slotto machines have lottery-ball-style hoppers on the top that start popping and dropping down balls when a player hits. The balls determine how much of a bonus the player gets.

"In our business now, the thing is how exciting the top box can be," said Strano. "The more dimensions we can provide, the better the overall experience the player will have."

AC Coin & Slot generally creates its own characters, mostly somewhat anonymous types with wild faces and colorful costumes. On occasion, they will buy licensed figures - they have used "Bewitched" characters from the old TV show, for instance, and the ubiquitous "Wheel of Fortune" - but Strano said that those kinds of things often have short shelf lives.

"You never know when a TV show will become unpopular, and it could come quite quickly," he said.

What is most popular right now, said Mac Seelig, are multiple-player games.

"You used to go in and sit behind your wife while she pulled the lever," said Seelig. "Now you can sit next to her, compete with her, or try to get a mutual bonus. The technology we can use makes even playing slots a communal experience. You will see more and more of that."

Machines now also talk back to the players. The payouts, for instance, are often complex, so AC uses voice-over announcers in a New York studio to explain to players, right at the machine, what to do and how to win. Those same announcers, generally anonymous (though Pat Sajak himself often voices "Wheel of Fortune" machines), are the villains and leprechauns and clowns and whatever other kinds of characters are on the machines.

"There is a lot of noise, that is for sure," said Strano, "but that is what a slot player comes for - the noise and the excitement. It is not a quiet table game."

Though Seelig is clearly happy with the multimillion-dollar business he has built in Pleasantville, he remembers 30 years ago, when the casinos opened, that he figured AC Coin & Slot would just be a good side business for his vending company.

"If you used the word 'chaotic' for those first few months, that would have given what was going on dignity and grace," said Seelig. "It was just nutty and wonderful. It was Woodstock and more.

"We all thought this would be something good, but it has been the Super Bowl times ten." *