Gaming Arts: The Game is Changing
New parent company Merkur invests in R&D to take Gaming Arts to the next level
When Germany’s Merkur Group closed on its acquisition of Las Vegas-based Gaming Arts in September 2025, it was not the first time the two companies merged their efforts. Merkur had been Gaming Arts’ strategic partner for more than two years, providing new technology in the form of the Mod EX cabinet series and collaborating in game development. The result is a Gaming Arts that looks very different today: larger, faster and prepared to compete across a broader range of products and markets. The game is changing, and Gaming Arts is bringing new energy to what comes next.
The closing of the deal last year, though, has moved those development efforts into high gear, as Gaming Arts’ new parent company has ramped up its R&D investment in the supplier, which unveiled its new 23,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Las Vegas, called “The Forge,” early this year.
“We made significant investments into our R&D team,” says Greg Colella, chief product officer. “When I walked into this building in 2025, we had about 20-odd people in game development. We’re now over 40, still very modest size, but in a short year and a half, we’ve doubled the size of our R&D team. We’ve doubled the size of our sales team, making investments into operations, service technicians and other staff.”
The investment in R&D has ramped up game production. “Our roadmap has been fairly robust,” says Colella. “My sales executives have more games than they’ve ever had at one time to sell. We’re starting to gain more traction in the market. You’re seeing Gaming Arts machines pop up into more and more places., which is a sign of us getting better at what we’re doing.”
The R&D push also is boosting performance for Gaming Arts. The game Wild Temple-Panda appeared on the Eilers-Fantini Top Indexing Overall Games list for 10 consecutive months, its sister Tiger version for nine months. The Casino Wizard video table game unit also appeared on the top-indexing list for 10 months.
“By anybody’s measure, getting a game to perform that long is a feat,” Colella says. “When you start talking about a game that performs for almost a year, you’re really getting into rarefied air. Newer games, including Lava Lock and Brian Christopher’s World Cruise, also have delivered encouraging results. It’s been exciting to see Kong Even Bigger Bananas debut in the May Eilers report, and we’re also hearing very positive feedback from operators on the performance of Starburst & Starburst Supernova Multigame.”
New Hardware, New Experiences
Colella says he expects more of the same from the collection of titles slated for launch at the Global Gaming Expo. The company will display 15 new titles in all, scheduled for Q4 release to Q1 2027.
Some of that new content will be housed on new hardware being launched at G2E, the Mod EX 49C cabinet. According to Colella, it provides a large-format presentation with a 49-inch portrait monitor, but it is sized for a traditional 16- to 18-inch casino base.
The cabinet is part of the Mod EX family, which includes the premium J55. The 49C is more than 3 inches narrower than the J55. “When a casino plans for a machine, usually they assume it’s 28 inches wide,” Colella says. “All of the manufacturers have been producing these wider, taller cabinets, which puts more pressure on the casino floor.”
He adds that many casinos are reducing the number of machines on the floor because of the larger footprint of some cabinets. “To have a machine that fits into a standard footprint is advantageous to our customers, and needed in our product line,” he says. “That is where the introduction of the 49C comes in. It will sit on a traditional casino base.”
Colella says the 49C cabinet should be submitted to regulators around the time of G2E, and possibly released late this year, adding that any of the Gaming Arts portrait content can be placed on the new cabinet.
There will be plenty of that content on display at G2E, starting with Wild Temple 2, a sequel to Gaming Arts’ most successful title. “The first page in ‘Making Slot Games 101’—if something works, do a follow-up,” says Colella.
Wild Temple 2, appropriately, has two characters in each base game (Panda & Tiger, Panda & Monkey). The characters act as collection pots that expand the reel array (Extra Symbols) and extend the bonus feature (Extra Spins).
“You can actually get both of those characters as expanding reel arrays, moving independently on the reel set, a first for this style of game,” Colella says, “Those two are really promising games for us, following up on the big success we’ve had with Wild Temple.”
Meanwhile, a new game family being launched at G2E is unique in another way: The games are presented with completely black-and-white imagery, with a couple of important exceptions. Showtime Hollywood and Showtime Las Vegas take the player into the old-timey black-and-white vibe of the ’40s and ’50s, with a lady character in Hollywood and a male character in a Las Vegas club.
Each game displays the game character next to a black-and-white bonus wheel at the top of the monitor above the reels. When a wheel bonus is triggered, the wheel splashes to life in color, providing the only contrast to the black-and-white display.
“It is a high-value wheel,” Colella says. “There are three concentric wheels that are part of it and multipliers that can add to awards—a 10X and a 100X.
“The perceived persistence element of the game is the wheel colorizing. Obviously, that’s going to stand out on a black-and-white game… It’s very much the Wizard of Oz trick, right? Dorothy lands in the Land of Oz, she opens the door, and the rest of the movie’s in color. A little bit of the same type of idea.”
Other new releases include Mysteries of Atlantis, a three-pot game with sunken treasure chests as the prizes; and Gaming Arts’ first foray into premium licensed gaming ops offerings—The Goonies and The Jetsons.
New Partners, New Possibilities
“Gaming Arts is moving for the first time in our history to a full range of premium games,” says Colella. “We have a licensing agreement with Warner Brothers to deliver a Goonies-branded game into the land-based space.”
The Goonies is based on the 1985 adventure comedy film about a quest by a group of children who use a treasure map to search for a long-lost fortune. (It was based on a Steven Spielberg story.) There is an online game based on the film from Blueprint, one of Gaming Arts’ third-party partners.
“We’re porting it to a land-based version,” Colella explains. “It is a three-pot perceived persistence game with a wheel element, which offers a way to win any of the progressive jackpots or a way to win any of the progressive jackpots or to enhance one of the bonus rounds.”
Also part of the Warners partnership is a new video slot based on The Jetsons, the cartoon series about a space-age family that originally ran from 1962 to 1963 and was revived for three years in the 1980s. “It had two distinctive runs,” says Colella. “I’ve gone back and watched some of those episodes, and it was a good predictor about what was coming in the future.”
That would include the treadmill on which George Jetson walks his dog Astro in the opening credits (“Jane, stop this crazy thing!”) and the robot maid, if not the flying cars. All are represented here in a 50-line game with stacked wild symbols and five pots feeding a hold-and-spin bonus feature.
Gaming Arts has augmented its product roadmap with other partnerships, both land-based and online ventures. The company is partnering with Inspired Entertainment on the games Wolf It Up and Bigger Piggy Bank. Both are perceived-persistence cash-on-reels games with bonus wheels. But the intriguing feature in this title is that the graphics and art can be altered to reflect the season—a witchy version for Halloween, Santa hosting bonus rounds and green-and-white Hershey’s Kisses at Christmas.
“There will be an option for the operator in the configuration menu when they set up the game that asks them if they want to enable the alternate game themes,” Colella explains. “If they say yes, it will suggest the seasonal versions. Hopefully, this will give the games more longevity.”
Another of Gaming Arts’ partnerships on new games is with Rogue Studios, an independent content studio in Reno, and one of Northern Nevada’s largest casino operators, Peppermill Casinos. According to Colella, the Peppermill approached Gaming Arts seeking a new version of video keno for Montana, a huge keno market.
“We’ll be exclusively releasing this product in Northern Nevada through Peppermill casinos, but I’ll also be able to commercialize this outside of Northern Nevada,” says Colella. “It essentially becomes an alternative to the standard keno product in the IGT Game King programs.”
Finally, the company’s partnership with content suppliers Blueprint and White Hat Gaming has produced 7s Fire Blitz, a traditional theme in a five-reel (Fire Blitz Power Five) and a three-reel version (Hot Stepper). “They are both classic-looking slots, with lots of cherries, bells and those types of symbols,” Colella says, “only injected with modern-day perceived persistence.”
In the end, Gaming Arts stands essentially as a new supplier, with solid financing to expand its product line and expand into new markets. “To get the Merkur deal closed, we had to rescind our licenses in Michigan and New Jersey, but we are now back in business in both of those markets,” Colella says, “and we have applied in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. “We are starting to grow and show life in what we’re doing, and our games are starting to genuinely reflect real pr
