A lot of the games you can play in online casinos today look very different from when they were in physical casinos back in the day.
In just the last couple of decades, some games have seen a massive shift in both how they look and play, but even so, a lot of them are still very similar to their old selves at their core.
Bingo has certainly seen a bit of a shift from its days in the classical ball rooms and massive bingo halls to the online Bingo rooms.
So, let’s take a look at just how the game has changed over the course of its history.
An Italian Lotto
You might not know it but Bingo can trace its origins right back to Italy in the 16th century. What would later turn into the game we know today started out as Il Gioco del Lotto d’Italia, a weekly lottery played on Saturdays.
The popularity of the game saw it eventually spread to France, where it proved equally exciting for the aristocrats and went by the name of Le Lotto.
It was here that it began to look a lot more like the game we play today. With the addition of cards – consisting of both horizontal and vertical lines of numbers – and a caller drawing lots to call out, the French added some of the most iconic parts of the game.
A German educational tool
As Le Lotto spread to the rest of Europe and its popularity grew, it saw further changes.
In the 1800s it came into use as an educational tool in Germany, with the usual numbers swapped out for words, answers to math problems or even animals.
Meanwhile, in the UK, we added the now infamous ‘Bingo Lingo’ to the game. Rather than just reading out a number, the caller could instead shout out a rhyming nickname for the players to echo.
After all, it’s a lot clearer if you hear the call of ‘time for tea’ rather than 83!
Housey-Housey halls
Bingo halls sprung up around Britain throughout the 20th century as the game really caught on in popularity.
They still weren’t called Bingo halls at the time, though, as the game was known as ‘Housey-Housey’ in the UK. It wasn’t until after the Second World War that British players started calling ‘Bingo!’ when they completed a line.
The form of Bingo catching on in the USA was a little different in shape once again. Rather than the 90-ball variant Brits are familiar with, Americans were instead playing a 75-ball game.
This did make getting Bingo a little quicker on the other side of the Atlantic!
Bingo goes online
Bingo took perhaps it’s greatest single leap forward when it went online in the 90s. The advent of the Internet changed a lot of things very quickly – and gaming was no exception.
As play shifted from the Bingo halls to online casino sites, players got to experience Bingo in a very different way. They could even finally try out the US version!
With the use of random number generation and clever computer graphics, new varieties of Bingo could easily come into existence and co-exist with the more classic forms.
Fusion games have put even more of a twist on the original Bingo format in recent years. Slingo, for example, fuses the basics of Bingo with the spins of Slots.
And this is just the latest step in Bingo’s transformation over the centuries.
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The more things change, the more they stay the same! Even though Bingo has been through quite the evolution over the years, it’s still very much itself at heart.