Aruze Gaming Global: Ready to Roll

Aruze completes its development team and officially begins the new era for the brand

In 2023, Empire Technological Group Limited acquired the slot-related assets of the former Aruze Gaming America, Inc., and began operating under the name Aruze Gaming Global, or AG2. Ever since then, the new Aruze has worked to establish its own identity as a slot manufacturer.

Last year was a big year in the development of Aruze, with moves that would solidify the new owner of the Aruze brand as its own company. In March 2025, the company announced the elevation of veteran game development executive Masumi Fujisawa, head of Aruze affiliated entity Rainbow Gaming, to chief innovation officer.

In August 2025, Aruze announced that Srini Adiraju, a veteran of game and system development at WMS and Scientific Games and holder of 25 gaming patents, had joined the company as chief technology officer. A month later, Mike Sands was promoted from senior sales VP to global senior vice president of sales and marketing.

Sands, who had joined the Aruze executive team at the end of 2024, witnessed the building of the team that now constitutes Aruze Gaming Global—from the ground up. “In a lot of ways, in that period we were like a startup with a brand,” Sands says. “Then, we started building the team. I believe we’ve assembled the right core group, from the executive level on down. But the big change in the past 12 months has been the strategic direction the product development team is now getting.”

That direction is due in large part to Larry Pacey, the veteran game development executive who spent 13 years at the former WMS Gaming as senior vice president of game development and ultimately executive vice president of global products and chief innovation officer. Pacey served as senior advisor to Scientific Games following its WMS acquisition, before transitioning to executive vice president of global product strategy at Aristocrat and later becoming an independent industry consultant.

“Aruze has always been able to make pretty good games over the years, and innovation was one of the core values,” says Sands, “but they weren’t set up the way a lot of other manufacturers are. There weren’t individual studios created; in the past, it was one studio, and ‘Here’s the number of games you’ve got to build.’ There was not a lot of diversity over how we’re going to go about developing product.”

Aruze brought in Pacey—with whom Sands worked at WMS and Aristocrat—as an adviser on long-term product strategy, tasked with building production rigor, a multi-year platform roadmap, and clearer player insights across the game portfolio. Aruze named him vice chairman, strategy committee in 2025. “Larry has been brought in to drive strategy going forward, and he and Masumi Fujisawa, our chief innovation officer, are in lockstep on how we are going to approach product going forward. You’re going to see some diversification from traditional Aruze games.”

Sands says the first titles produced under the new R&D process are already out in the field, and initial numbers are encouraging. “We are getting better from a performance perspective,” he says. “Cash Master Blaster was a surprise success, so we’ve made that a series. We’re building on some of the successes, and also trying to diversify from what Aruze always was known for.”

Reaching the Summit

At the head of the new products this year—all of which will be live at the Venetian by G2E—is the Summit Reach cabinet, an elaborate display that uses a huge interactive LED display to link games on a bank of Muso Summit cabinets. The individual games seem to float over the nine-foot backing screen during play.

Game play extends to the overhead display, including enormous spinning wheels and other game elements. Sands says the Reach display represents Aruze’s entry into the premium slot market.

The launch games for the cabinet are Triple Treasure-Wheel and Magic Unleashed. Triple Treasure-Wheel uses the big display for the games’ central bonus wheel. It is a three-pot game with base titles Fortune’s Domain and Forbidden Spoils. All the bonus pots appear as wheels, and each triggers an enhancement to a free-spin round.

When wheel symbols land on the reels, the big wheel spins to land either a jackpot or one, two or all three of the bonus features, “Coin Nudge,” “Jackpots” and “Expander Reels.”

Coin Nudge triggers stacked cash-on-reels symbols with multipliers. Expander Reels causes the reel set to rise to six rows, and “Jackpots” triggers a jackpot-picking feature to land one of the four jackpots, including the top progressive, resetting at $10,000.

Aruze also is launching games on its Lightscape, which links Muso Summit cabinets in pods with interactive LED wedge displays between the machines for a unified presentation.

The launch title for the display is Gong Cash Extreme, a brand extension to the original Gong Cash, which is distinguished by cash-on-reels symbols displayed as gongs.

The new game adds three metamorphic pots to the mix—“Double Cash,” “Expand Reel” and “Extra Spin.” One or more can trigger an enhanced free-spin bonus round. Double Cash places blue frames around random reel spots in the free games, and doubles any gong amount landing there. Expand Reels boosts the reel array by two rows, to a three-by-five grid. Extra Spin extends the feature.

Also featured on the Lightscape is Rumble and Tumble, another three-pot game with an enhanced free-spin bonus. With a funny cartoon character hosting the bonus, cash symbols trigger the feature with one or more of three enhancements: The “Submarine Feature” places frames around reel spots that increase in color when a ball symbol lands, generating higher award levels if the symbols land there again, from blue to red to the highest level, gold—the awards are revealed at the end of the feature. The gold level includes all four of the game’s jackpots.

The Gold Bomb feature automatically places gold frames on reel spots for high awards or possible jackpots. The Expand feature expands the reel array from three-by-five to four-by-five. During the free spins, a Double Cash symbol doubles the awards in blue frames, and a special symbol can trigger bonuses not active at the start of the feature.

Also on the Muso Summit are Trolley Tracks of Gold and Ultra Stack Hyper.

Trolley Tracks of Gold is a 50-line game with gold nuggets appearing in the primary game as cash-on-reels symbols, which can trigger a hold-and-spin feature on a three-by-five grid that can unlock three additional rows. Also, a railroad switch in the primary game can trigger a wheel spin to award multipliers on cash-on-reels awards, boosts of cash values, or a second-screen bonus, Trolley Cash. In that feature, railroad cars full of golden nuggets dump extra awards to the reels.

Ultra Stack Hyper is a three-pot game with base games Lion and Wolf. The pots enhance a free-spin bonus. “Prize Boost” boosts cash-on-reels awards in the free spins. “Extra Spin” extends the feature. “Symbol Upgrade” prompts the player to pick one of the Lion symbols to upgrade in the feature. When appearing in the bonus, that Lion symbol changes into a large cash-on-reels symbol that pays instantly, for that and all adjacent cash symbols.

 “There are good things happening,” Sands says of Aruze’s prospects. “The way we’re structuring development and the people we have in the business should accelerate things soon.

 “I like our chances going forward.”