Universal Overlay Games in an Electronic Gaming Environment

A method is disclosed herein for displaying winning and non-winning game results in a traditional gaming environment. The system uses an overlay game to present an entertaining display to a player upon the occurrence of a win or trigger event. An overlay game has limited capabilities and additionally is engineered to be usable on a variety of gaming machines. To be usable on a variety of gaming machines, the overlay game is intentionally kept simple; in one case, it comprises a visual display that is shown to a player upon the occurrence of a trigger event. In another embodiment, it requires a simple button press to start the overlay game. The overlay games are downloaded on an as-needed basis, run on the gaming machine, and then discarded.