Team Play Inc. Reveals Carnival Wheel

Today’s bit of news that breaks our dry spell comes to us from the world of redemption/videmption – something that we don’t always focus on here but will dabble with every now and then. Team Play is a name that often shows up on the videmption scene, although they have done the occasional video game with the last one being Family Guy Bowling.

While I’m not an expert on redemption gaming, even I know what the hottest games have been in this regard – wheel games and ticket cranes. If you’re an operator reading this, then you very likely own one or several Big Bass Wheels by BayTek, a game that’s been around for well over a decade and has long been a dominating force in the industry. While there have been a number of clones to the concept out there (either from China or Bay Tek themselves, where they have variations like Ticket Monster), nothing has taken the crown from Big Bass in the genre over all these years. Could that change though with this new piece from Team Play?

Called Carnival Wheel, Team Play’s new concept maintains the basic idea from Big Bass (which in itself is an arcadified version of the iconic wheel spinning game in the Price Is Right TV game show) but ups the ante by integrating a display of RGB LEDs into the wheel. It’s rather impressive to look at and it’s one of those technological things that arcades can do that a console or phone can’t:

Oddly enough, these videos were posted by US distributor Betson as opposed to Team Play themselves; They do have a YouTube channel although it hasn’t seen an upload since 2018.

The theme takes inspiration from a carnival barker, with the wheel itself representing Ferris wheel . Unlike games like Big Bass, you can see the display from both sides, where it incentivizes a location to put it out onto the floor in a central location instead of up against a wall, as that video above shows.

Another interesting thing that sets this apart is that with the display, they are able to make the gameplay a little more varied than your typical wheel game. As you can see above, it has a Fishbowl Frenzy bonus (referring to their hit game of the same name), a Popcorn bonus, Soda bonus, Triple bonus and more. It also has the classic replay incentive of spelling out something (CARNY BONUS in this case) to unlock the biggest bonus. It even allows up to 16 games to be linked at once to further increase those bonuses. That’s certainly the magic word for redemption players, apart from Winner!

The game isn’t listed on Team Play’s website yet but it is over at Betson right now. No price is listed although they are running a financing special putting it at almost $800/mo with a $9k residual, which by my hunch puts it into the $28k-32k range (as always, contact your distributor to find out for sure. Financing can also add on interest costs to what it would be for purchasing outright).

It’s obviously been on test but overall it’s looking like it’s pretty much ready to ship to be in arcades in time for the summer. If I hear anything otherwise I’ll update this space but what do you think about this one?