Barcrest casinos & slots 2024

A Brief History of Barcrest

Barcrest was founded in Manchester. Its original MO was centred around the design and manufacture of analogue fruit machines. Serving the UK leisure gaming industry, the company forged a reputation for developing playable and addictive gambling games. Such was Barcrest’s success that it soon branched out into the amusements sector for the UK and European markets. The 1980s, 90s and 00s saw continued growth as Barcrest expanded into digital gaming. By 1997, the North England outfit had become a market leader with its presence entrenched in Britain’s public social establishments. At this point, the company had produced and sold over 35,000 terminals.

Despite the continuous strides made in casino gaming, there have been a number of behind-the-scene changes. In 1998, gaming behemoth International Gaming Technology (IGT) bought out the company for a sum of around $50m, to increase their European exposure.

The most iconic online slot released during this period was Rainbow Riches. Produced by the company’s talented in-house production team, this legendary title helped increase the brand’s notoriety even further.

Then, in 2011 IGT sold Barcest to Light & Wonder (previously known as Scientific Games) company for around $60m. Barcrest continues to operate as part of the Scientific Games network, which includes other highly visible slot developers like WMS (Williams Interactive) and Bally Technologies.

Popular Barcrest Slot Games

The Barcrest slots portfolio is, for the most part, made up of games that the developer has produced for physical Barcrest slot machines installed on casinos that are owned or otherwise supplied by their parent company. That being said, these online versions of their slot games are not to be considered shadows of their original land-based counterparts by any means.

Rainbow Riches, Barcrest’s primary cash cow, has now been spun into a variety of different slots and games. The original Rainbow Riches slot remains unaltered but it now shares the limelight with numerous variants of the game. A couple of other big hits from their slots library include the following.

Barcrest on Mobile

All of the current Barcrest games have been designed, with mobile casino play in mind. With the recent widespread adoption of the HTML5 platform, Barcrest recognized the benefits of consolidating the development processes early on. They have now integrated support for multiple devices onto a single platform.

Our Final Thoughts on Barcrest

Barcrest has gone through a rich and interesting history in its over 40 years of operation. Despite their primary expertise in developing slot games for physical machines at land-based casinos, their game-making chops are more than good enough for the digital market. And with the mighty corporate backing of Light & Wonder, the team at Barcrest has their path laid out for them to achieve serious contention among the top casinos online in Canada.

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Article by:Dale Shelabarger

Dale is an author for InsideCasino and an expert in the iGaming sector, with his specialist areas in online casinos, iGaming and slot games. Dale has written hundreds of casino reviews and expert iGaming articles over the last 15 years.

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