Innovative Concepts in Entertainment has released its newest skill redemption game, Hoop it Up.
The original version of the machine was first shown four years ago as Wham-O, but has since transformed into this finished product. Joe Coppola, president of ICE, stated: “This project has been in our development pipeline for five years. We had some early struggles and then we stepped away from it, but we have been fully focused the past two years on getting it mechanically solid and we completely re-did the original software.
“Since February of this year we have been testing minimally, three units on location at a time and more recently we had as many as five units out, all performing reliably and hitting some very good rankings in very good FEC locations around the US and Canada. We are now 100 per cent confident that we have a really great game here!”
Coppola added: “At the first couple of trade shows, years ago, we displayed this game as Wham-O, but in our initial testing in the early part of 2019 we found lots of players did not initially understand the game play. At that point we took a step back and made the decision to re-theme the game. The basketball theme very quickly caught on with the players and made the game much more intuitive. They immediately understood the game and were mesmerised with the ball launch, trying to time it to get the ball through the moving hoop.”
Hoop It Up will be offered in two different versions. The full ticket redemption version as well as a unique ball merchandiser/ticket redemption version that allows for those players that hit the Mega Bonus to either receive tickets or win a unique ball.
On both versions, if the player misses the hoop and/or the mega bonus they still win tickets depending on where the ball lands on the rotating playfield.
“The testing of this game over the last few months has seen some excellent results. The repeat play has been very strong which is always a great indicator on a new game and we’re very excited to now be in production and shipping games,” said Coppola.
