Pinball and the slot machine grew up as siblings in the coin-operated trade, and for decades the line between them was blurry. Before [[gameplay-feature:id:65]] arrived in 1947 to reward skill, many a "pin game" was really a gambling device that paid out in coins, and the makers moved freely between the two businesses. The machines gathered here are the slot side of that family - the upright consoles and "flasher type" payout games that catalogs like IPDB swept up alongside pinball because they came off the same factory floors.
[[manufacturer:id:357]], [[manufacturer:id:257]] and [[manufacturer:id:86]] built these one-coin gambles by the thousands through the 1930s, '40s and '50s, while [[manufacturer:id:431]] - the house that perfected the spinning-reel bandit - turned out "flasher" games like *[[title:id:1931]]* that lit a winning combination instead of spinning a reel. They are not pinball, but they are pinball's shadow: the chance-driven amusements the industry spent decades trying to live down before skill, flippers and respectability finally won out.
By Flipcommons Catalog·
display_order
5
name
Slot Machine
slug
slot-machine
By The Flip Museum·
description
reverted by The Flip Museum·
Pinball and the slot machine grew up as siblings in the coin-operated trade, and for decades the line between them was blurry. Before [[gameplay-feature:id:65]] arrived in 1947 to reward skill, many a "pin game" was really a gambling device that paid out in coins, and the makers moved freely between the two businesses. The machines gathered here are the slot side of that family - the upright consoles and "flasher type" payout games that catalogs like IPDB swept up alongside pinball because they came off the same factory floors.
[[manufacturer:id:357]], [[manufacturer:id:257]] and [[manufacturer:id:86]] built these one-coin gambles by the thousands through the 1930s, '40s and '50s, while [[manufacturer:id:431]] - the house that perfected the spinning-reel bandit - turned out "flasher" games like *[[title:id:1931]]* that lit a winning combination instead of spinning a reel. They are not pinball, but they are pinball's shadow: the chance-driven amusements the industry spent decades trying to live down before skill, flippers and respectability finally won out.