Feb 20, 2015 3 min read

The Meadows Casino, known for its bells and whistles, raised the ante on both Friday.

Officials there unveiled the Titan360, a massive station that seats as many as eight slots players at a time in a circle. And does it light up and sound off when someone wins big.

Actually, it lights up and sounds off – less ostentatiously – when someone wins small.

“It gave me goose bumps the first time,” said Mike Jankoviak, director of slots at the North Strabane Township facility, the second in Pennsylvania to get the 360.

On an arctic morning, he and marketing director Kevin Brogan showed off the hot machine to a small media assemblage, who then played on the Titan courtesy of the casino. No cash was exchanged, but media “winnings” were tabulated for donation to the Dollar Energy Fund. The Meadows contributed $1,000 in real money.

In the afternoon, the station debuted with the public.

Players seated around Titan can bet a minimum of 50 cents to a maximum of $5. The jackpot is progressive, starting at $10,000 and building until someone hits. The total could reach or top $1.1 million, the biggest jackpot in state history, which happened at The Meadows in August 2012.

Slots play is integral to many casinos, more lucrative and much less employee-intensive. That certainly is the case at the entertainment destination off Racetrack Road.

“Slots makes up 75 percent of our business,” Brogan said.

There are more than 3,200 slot machines at The Meadows, and this new cluster of eight is the glitziest and the largest, too. It is appropriately named.

Titan360, made by Konami Gaming of Japan, is 10 feet tall, 11 feet wide and weighs 5,800 pounds. Above the playing stations is a mechanical wheel featuring a large metallic ball which, after a player wins, rolls into a hole that determines bonus winnings.

“This is one of the largest slot machines in the Northeast,” Jankoviak said, adding it is the biggest in Western Pennsylvania.

It takes six weeks to build a Titan at the Konami plant. A team of five needed two days to install it at the local casino.

The first Titan was installed at Harrah’s in Atlantic City, N.J., in July 2013. There are now 21 Titans at gaming facilities in the United States and Canada, but only eight east of the Mississippi River.

Pennsylvania approved the station only three weeks ago, and Parx, in Philadelphia, got the initial one. The Titan in Philly is 300 miles away, but it is the closest to North Strabane.

Brogan said there are no plans, for now, to install a Titan at another Pennsylvania casino or at any venues in Ohio and West Virginia – where bells and whistles will be more subdued.