Meet WMS – An Old School Game Provider

WMS, in the online sphere officially known as Williams Interactive, is a storied name in the gambling industry. The acronym WMS comes from the initial name of this company, which was Williams Manufacturing Company, with roots going back to the 1940s. WMS was a pinball and arcade machine supplier that debuted in the former, and in the 1970s, transitioned into the latter field.

Once it started making slots, a venture that came about at the start of the 1990s through its gambling subsidiary WMS Gaming, its products, like Reel ’Em In, were highly sought after. The mentioned title gets credited as one of the most important reel spinners in the fish-theme subgenre. It had cool graphics for its day and a multi-line format, which was not something that was super common then.

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The History of WMS

As mentioned above, WMS now has a base of operations in Nevada’s Enterprise, but it was originally got founded in 1943 in Chicago, Illinois, by Harry E. Williams. Hence, the name Williams Manufacturing Company. Like we noted previously, its starting focus was pinball machines, and in 1963, jukebox manufacturer Seeburg Corp bought the company and decided to expand it towards the arcade machine sector. In 1973, it churned out Paddle Ball, a Pong rip-off game, which did okay, and then unleashed a series of products – Joust, Defender, Robotron: 2084, which were reasonable hits.

In 1977, Seeburg morphed into Xcor International, and Williams Electronics became an independent entity four years later and went public as WMS Industries in 1987. The next year, it acquired Bally Manufacturing, and in 1994, it did the same with the established video game company Tradewest, which later turned into Midway, the creator and publisher of the Mortal Kombat video game series.

In 1991, WMS got into gambling via WMS Gaming, and in 1999, it shut down its pinball division, as three years prior, it decided to focus chiefly on gambling, as pinballs were dying, and WMS also got into the hotel domain. In 1994, they released their first slot, and in the 2000s, they became synonymous with branded participation spinners, ones boasting licenses of franchises such as Star Trek, Men in Black, The Lord of the Rings, and The Dukes of Hazzard.

In the late 2000s, WMS made a splash with its dual 22-inch widescreen Bluebird2 gaming cabinet, and it made the vast majority of its money by supplying these and similar machines to US casinos. In the 2010s, WMS got into interactive gaming, and in the middle of this decade, it teamed up with EveryMatrix. That occurred a year after it got bought out by Scientific Games in 2013, operating now under its umbrella under Shuffle Master and Bally, two other top players in the gaming machine arena.

What Do WMS Slots Offer?

Given that WMS has not released an online slot in years, we cannot say this developer’s spinners match up well with new ones that have hit the market. For their day, they were mainly average to above average in virtually all departments.

WMS slots have been known to implement the Megaways engine, and the company has pioneered mechanics like the Colossal Reels engine, seen in its Spartacus title, among others.

Many of this provider’s creations lean toward retro aesthetics, but you can find some newer releases that incorporate modern elements and popular themes.

We should add that many WMS games participate in Light & Wonder’s Jackpot Party progressive network, and their RTPs range between 94% and 96.5% while also accepting bets up to $100 per spin.

How Does WMS Compare with the Big Boys?

Being active for over a decade in the online gambling realm, and three in the land-based one has given WMS teams a hefty dose of experience to make competent games. From a current-day perspective, most of their online slots do not look very modern, but they are adequate enough. We would not put them in the same pile as those from, let us say, Nolimit City or Pragmatic Play, but above or matching ones from lower-end developers.

In general, they have acceptable presentations that do not always match the cutting-edge visuals that newer studios pour into their creations. Still, their branded games do an okay job of leveraging iconic licenses, and as discussed, you can find some complex game mechanics in multiple WMS slots.

WMS’s Most Notable Features

WMS is best known for its renowned Colossal Reels system. That is a game engine found in WMS online and physical slots. It uses dual reel sets to create up to one hundred paylines. A WMS slot machine with it is this provider’s Kiss one, and an online one is Giant’s Gold, unleashed in 2013.

Another standout mode from WMS is the Super Jackpot Party one, a pick-and-win bonus feature. Free spins, multipliers, nudging, and expanding wilds are only a few of the standard elements that WMS’s team likes to add in the gameplay of slots they make, as they hope that through these they can capture casual Internet gamblers and veterans alike.

WMS’s Top Casino Games

From its library of somewhere in the neighborhood of one hundred and fifty online slots, here are three of WMS’s most popular ones:

• Raging Rhino – This African safari-themed spinner debuted in August 2015, offering a high-variance math model, an RTP of 95.9%, 4,096 ways to win, the Buffalo mechanic, and a betting range that moves from $0.40 to $60 per spin.
• Cluedo Cash Mystery – This is a follow-up to WMS’s Clue title, inspired by the famous board game. It has a medium variance, an RTP of 96.51%, twenty paylines that pay both ways and a max win of x3,750.
• Spartacus Megaways – Set loose in 2020, in September of that year, what we have here is a gladiator motif product that delivers prizes up to x12,500 your stake on gameplay powered by an RTP of 96.32% and high variance.

You can find these games at many of the site listed on our Light & Wonder Casino page.