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- description
- An upright cabinet is tall rather than long. It stands on the floor or hangs on a wall. It often but not always has a [[gameplay-feature:vertical-playfields]].
## The floor upright
[[manufacturer:genco]] built a short run in the early 1950s — *[[title:400]]*, *[[title:jumpin-jacks-2]]*, *[[title:golden-nugget]]*, *[[title:silver-chest]]* — each "an upright game with a vertical playfield",[1] played with a single flipper worked by a button on the backglass frame rather than by buttons on the cabinet sides. These were full-height machines: [[manufacturer:amusematic-corporation]]'s *[[title:boomerang]]* measured 84 inches tall,[2] and *[[title:zingo-2]]*, the first game [[manufacturer:williams]] ever built, reached 86.[3] Later consoles kept the proportions and changed everything else — [[manufacturer:midway]]'s *[[title:red-ball]]* (1959) filled an "upright cabinet advertised as 26 inches wide, 66 inches high, and 30 inches deep"[4] with a bouncing-ball scoring array.
## The wall box
The shallow body needs no floor at all. [[manufacturer:melchers-automatenbau-kg]]'s *[[title:flik-flak]]* "is a wall-mounted game with a vertical playfield",[5] and [[manufacturer:chicago-coin]]'s *[[title:mini-baseball]]* "Can mount on wall or be placed on an optional console base"[6] — one machine, hung or stood as the location allowed. A wall box costs an operator no floor space at all, which is why the shape kept turning up in bars and cafés long after it had left the arcade.
## Why it stayed a minority
While the economics of an upright cabinet makes sense, the gameplay doesn't. On a vertical playfield the ball drops fast and straight, so the outcome is mostly decided by where the pins are, not by the player controlling the flippers. A flipper mounted on a vertical surface gets a fast-falling ball and very little time or angle to do anything with it, whereas the usual two flippers at the bottom of a sloped playfield meet a ball that has rolled the length of the surface and slowed down.
Williams tried an upright cabinet once in the solid-state era with *[[title:still-crazy]]* (1984), which put four flippers on a large vertical playfield. Twelve test units were built and the sample run was pulled before it shipped: "it was just too difficult to control the balls via the four flippers over the large vertical playfield".[7]
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- display_order
- 5
- name
- Upright
- slug
- upright
- status
- active