History of Australian Pokies

Pokies in Australia

In 1953 an Australian company called Aristocrat developed the first indigenous pokie machine. It was designed by Joe Heywood and was given the name the Clubman. In 1955 the Clubman was replaced with an upgraded version called the Clubmaster. The Australian pokie industry took off in 1956 when the government of New South Wales legalised gaming machines in registered clubs. In 1973 casinos were legalised in Tasmania. The first legal pokies were simple affairs without any frills. Later lights were added to the pokie machines. These pokies were electromechanical devices that had three spinning reels. There were one, three or five paylines. All you had to do was pull the handle to start the reels spinning. Then you had to wait for the reels to stop and could collect your coins if you won. The payouts were also considerably small compared to present standards.

Video Pokie Machines

The next big fillip came in 1994, about 100 years after Fey’s invention. The first online casinos went live. Among the first ones to offer services to Australian players was The Gaming Club, which is still in operation today. You could play online pokies sitting at home, with the software located at a remote server. Any number of players could access and play on the same online pokie at the same time. Online pokies developed at a much faster rate. Progressive jackpot pokies could cater to a much larger player base and the increased liquidity gave rise to some high payout jackpots, in excess of a million dollars. Different online pokies were linked to the same progressive network. Microgaming, a popular software provider to Australian online casinos, introduced branded pokies with Tomb Raider. Today both Microgaming and Playtech online casinos offer a number of branded pokies in their portfolio.

Mobile Pokie Machines

The latest development in the history of pokies is mobile pokies. Starting about a decade ago you could play pokies on your mobile phones and tablets. With the development in mobile hardware and software technology and the proliferation of smartphones in Australia, the quality and number of mobile pokies has shown improvement. You get general HTML5 mobile pokies as well as apps for different operating systems like iOS, Android, Windows and Blackberry.