Evolving Forms

The success achieved by AGS can be marked by the evolution of the cabinets housing its games

In recent years, there has been a progression of trade-show exhibits from gaming supplier AGS, each with a familiar visual—the company’s franchise game, Rakin’ Bacon!, in a new version designed to leverage the capabilities of a new, innovative cabinet.

Hardware has always been an integral part of the AGS product plan going back to its 2005 founding—but in particular since the then-mainly Class II company was acquired by Apollo Global Management in 2013. (It subsequently was publicly traded and then acquired by current parent company Brightstar Capital Partners.)

A year after the Apollo acquisition, David Lopez would take over as CEO and president of AGS and would initiate the transaction that would ultimately crack the Class III markets for the supplier—the acquisition of Georgia-based Cadillac Jack and its well-equipped and highly accomplished R&D operations.

Today, Lopez acknowledges the Cadillac Jack acquisition in 2015 was a pivotal event for AGS, for a host of reasons. But he recalls the one thing that sealed the deal: a cabinet.

“When we bought Cadillac Jack, our goals were really to pick up a company that would complement our company,” says Lopez.“We had a very small R&D team. The velocity of game development did not match what our needs and our aspirations were in the market. So, when we acquired Cadillac Jack, we picked up a new cabinet, the Icon, and soon-to-be-released Orion Portrait, along with a lot of content, including upcoming new content that looked really promising.”

Just before the acquisition closed, Sigmund Lee, chief technology officer for Cadillac Jack—and still CTO of AGS today—took Lopez for a private viewing of the Orion cabinet. “He took me into this sort of private room,” Lopez recalls. “He had four of them in there, and said as long as you don’t take pictures, I want to show you this. And I was blown away.

“Sigmund left the room to make a call, so I took pictures. I then told our owners at Apollo, we need to buy this company. This is something special.”

Orion Evolution

Those early Class III days at AGS saw the company release several hit games, including Golden Wins and Jade Wins, on the dual-screen Icon cabinet inherited in the Cadillac Jack acquisition, as well as a surprise hit on another cabinet. In a separate 2014 deal, AGS acquired Colossal Gaming, and its jumbo three-reel cabinet known as “Big Red.”

The Big Red cabinet stands eight feet by eight feet, with three 42-inch LCD monitors serving as the reels spun by the giant handle. It is a classic novelty-style slot offering, but for AGS, it was another entry to Class III markets.

The year 2016 was monumental for AGS, as it marked the official launch of the Orion Portrait cabinet. With its 42-inch portrait monitor surrounded by 498 game-controlled LED lights, the cabinet was to define the manufacturer’s games for years to come.

“Orion Portrait was a game changer for us, for sure,” Lopez says. “As far as engineering design goes, it was pretty dynamic for the whole industry. It certainly got a lot of people’s attention. And it put us on the map. Icon performed very well for us, but it was a dual screen. Everything was going portrait. So, when we released that portrait, things really happened for us, because of the quality of the cabinet and some of the games that were on there.”

“As AGS was entering the Class III market, Orion Portrait was a product that was intentionally designed to really stand out and be differentiated in a lot of ways,” says Mark DeDeaux, senior vice president and general manager, slots for AGS. “Orion put AGS on the map with a unique and a distinct ID.”

Lopez adds that Orion was designed to check all the boxes of what the industry was calling for—and at the front of that checklist was simply that it was a portrait-style cabinet. “Dual screens were not really selling as much,” he says, “so we designed the portrait to be in the right place and target the market.”

Among the launch games for the new cabinet were the first titles in soon-to-be-famous game families including Fu Nan Fu Nu and River Dragons, but the third launch title represented another pivotal point for AGS—the first Rakin’ Bacon! game.

The hit game, with its iconic golden piggy-bank character “Cornsquealius,” was designed to take full advantage of the capabilities inherent in the Orion Portrait cabinet. “We had a bunch of good games, but when Rakin’ Bacon! hit on the Orion Portrait, that really got us moving,” says Lopez.

After that first Rakin’ Bacon! game became a smash hit, the game family was to evolve right along with the cabinet family. In 2017, the Orion Slant was introduced. The large-format, dual-screen Orion Rise would follow in 2018.

Within two years, the Orion family would expand to accommodate every game style on the floor. The Orion Upright would add the dual-screen format to the family in 2019, and that same year, the cinematic Starwall Orion premium presentation would be launched. The Orion Curve and Orion Curve Premium would follow a year later.

The release of the Orion Curve Premium included Rakin’ Bacon! Deluxe Golden Blessings and Pirate Plunder, two of the most successful entries in the game family to that date. Other hits launched on the Orion Curve Premium included Werewolf and Piñata Pays, two game families that led to successful brand extensions.

“We achieved research and development maturity when we picked up Cadillac Jack,” Lopez says. “Sigmund and his team were critical, but we had a very, very good hardware design team. We had a good platform that we were working off of. The Starwall and obviously the Orion Curve in a premium package allowed us to get into the premium market with some level of success.”

From Spectra to Revel

With the Orion game family now housing a variety of game styles, AGS introduced its next hardware evolution at the Global Gaming Expo in 2022, the Spectra family of cabinets.

Beginning with the 43-inch portrait Spectra UR43, the Spectra family would follow an evolution not unlike that of Orion, launching a new version almost yearly. Hit games launched on the Spectra UR43 included Shamrock Fortunes and Long Bao Bao, two of the most successful titles in the Triple Coin Treasures game family. That same year, Triple Coin Treasures was awarded Silver for Best Slot Product at GGB’s Gaming & Technology Awards.

The cabinet family progressed with the Spectra SL49+ slant-top, the SL49+ Premium, and in late 2024, the Spectra SL75+, which gave AGS its first jumbo-sized cabinet, available for sale or lease games and able to house any title in the Spectra family.

Last year’s launch of the Spectra SL75+ Premium would complete the hardware family. This group of Spectra cabinets acted as the canvas for a slew of well-received game families, as well as their brand extensions. Two notable franchises include Ultra Werewolf  and Piñata Pays Grande, both which debuted earlier this year.

“We wanted to make sure that we established a cohesive evolution to that product line,” says DeDeaux, “so Spectra was really the evolution of building out a full product portfolio and design, and schedule, that supported all of our video content but also gave operators a lot of flexibility on placing our games in different areas of the floor.”

Home to AGS’ Flex Program, select titles were designed to be available across all Spectra core and specialty cabinets, such as the UR43, UR49 and SL49+. Flex games, including Fortune Frenzy and most of the titles in the Rakin’ Bacon! franchise, give operators more freedom to place featured titles where they fit best, making it easier to tailor floor design and expand player choice.

In 2024, AGS also launched a completely different style of cabinet with Revel, the company’s first mechanical-reel stepper cabinet. The company’s R&D team is developing a complete game library for the stepper format, and early results show that the AGS development staff got the format right, matching the classic stepper experience in sight, sound and haptics, but with modern game features and cabinet technology.

“Development of a mech reel cabinet is not child’s play,” Lopez says. “It’s not a video screen. Those mechanical reels are harder to get working properly than you might think. Every little nuance of the spin of the reels to the stop of the reels, to making sure the reels have just enough bounce, not too much bounce… Our team was absolutely awesome at it, and we pulled off the development of the mech reel cabinet in a very abbreviated period of time.”

“When we launched Revel,” adds DeDeaux, “I think the industry was kind of scratching its head. We were an emerging supplier, but we had strong conviction that we could build a category-leading stepper cabinet. And if you look at the performance of our Revels, we’ve clearly established ourselves as just that—a leader in mechanical reels. We see it in the numbers.

“You almost had to be 10 times better than the incumbent, and I think we’ve demonstrated that we’ve emerged as the leading mechanical-reel game design and product offering supplier. And we’re going to continue to pursue that with passion and ambition.”

Basking in the Glō

At G2E this year, AGS will launch another hardware family with the Glō UR43. The 43-inch portrait cabinet with 16 controllable lighting zones is the first in what will be another product family, with Glō cabinets in every game style.

“For us, Glō is the culmination of all of the things that we’ve learned,” DeDeaux says, “and also represents a huge focus on modernizing the cabinet. The new design aesthetics that are in the marketplace today use materials that might not have even existed in the Orion era, so we’re trying to leverage new materials that make the cabinet stand out in different ways. We wanted to move away from the traditional industrial black cabinet, so Glō has a lighter champagne finish that gives a sense of warmth, which in turn complements the lighting that was used as a design material. Glō is the next stage in a continuous evolution of our cabinet design.”

“We think this is the best design we’ve had so far,” says Lopez of Glō. “We think it looks awesome, and we’re excited to get some of the new games on it.”

As usual, Cornsquealius will be there for the launch of the Glō cabinet. One of the three featured game launch families is Rakin’ Bacon! Ultra (the other two are Roaring Express and Hu Bao Bei—also debuting at G2E), and according to DeDeaux, the game and the Glō cabinet were designed to complement one another.

“We designed them for each other,” he says. “I truly believe that Rakin’ Bacon! Ultra has such a clever design in appearance and in mechanics that accentuates what Glō was designed for—the color choices, the backgrounds of the game, the five-pot mechanic—it is a thoughtful and creative way to demonstrate what Rakin’ Bacon! is as a brand.”

The game’s five pots are represented by five stacked pigs, and as they trigger bonus enhancements, the pigs animate in a hilarious sequence. “The pigs squash each other from top to bottom, and (the animation) fits perfectly with the Glō cabinet,” says DeDeaux. “When you see it aesthetically, it stands out immediately because of the lighting choice, and how it reflects off of the material of the cabinets.

“I’m in awe every time I see it. It’s a perfect culmination of efforts. Our studio that created that game has a great eye for how you blend all those elements together and absolutely nailed it.”

Working Together

As the hardware library of AGS continues to expand, game development takes on a new dimension, with hardware and software departments working together to match game elements with the capabilities of the cabinet.

DeDeaux says the company’s hardware and software engineers work together “intimately” on new game design. “I think the area that stands out the most is in the lighting treatments,” he says, “and how that is executed within the features and the game mechanics—then, how that is all aesthetically complemented together, whether in triggering a feature, in celebration modes, or even in attract mode. All of those things are very intimately tied together.”

Game development at AGS will continue to evolve as the cabinet features evolve. Lopez notes that each cabinet AGS has launched is the product of its time, reflecting player preferences and feature trends at the time of development.

“If you look at the Icon, at the Orion, the Spectra—when you design cabinets, you design them for the period of time in which you are working,” Lopez says. “The Icon hit the spot for us; there are many, many Icons still out there in the field. We learned a lot with Orion. We learned what we did well, and what we could have improved upon. As you innovate, you’re going to make some mistakes, but those mistakes actually are learnings for the future.”

All the lessons will culminate this fall in another new cabinet family for AGS.

More to come.