Dennis,

You have a great memory! I checked the old Gaming Commission approval lists and the last Rio Rita was approved on 2/25/99(http://www.geocities.com/rireno/Feb99.htm. I also found the old approval lists on Randy Mortimer's silver strike site and he shows that particular strike as being "cancelled" -- so it never went into play (see http://www.silver-strikes.com/1999approvallist.htm). If that was the GDC Rio Rita, it could explain why no one has seen this before. However, CT was still around at that point since according to his site, both GDC and CT were closed down by the same parent company in September, 1999 (see http://silver-strikes.com/randysInfo.html). Maybe their shaky future had something to do with the cancellation?

So I still don't know if this is a prototype, or whether they had a small batch produced that never officially went into play.

--Norm