This was still back in the day when people bragged about shaking hands with a one-armed bandit. The original slot machine symbols had a different theme, which would probably be quite familiar to video slot fans. Fruit machines are old, but they actually appeared a few decades after the inception of the first slots. However, the first slot machines looked quite different than the play for fun free slots, for example. Even if you haven’t played a retro slot in your life, the colourful fruits appear on TV, on the internet, and even in computer games. Fruit Machine Symbols: How It All BeganĪt some point in your life, you have surely caught a glimpse of the classic fruit machine symbols. We will also talk about the plethora of special symbols that have appeared nowadays – some of them are exclusive to online games, while others can appear in land-based machines as well. By studying slot machines’ original designs, we will find some important clues about modern slots gameplay. We will take you on a journey through time, to the roots of a tradition that has become an integral part of modern culture. Many people have wondered why so many classic slots display the same symbols – the cherry, the bar, the bell, the lucky seven, and so on.