Captive Ball

A ball permanently trapped behind a target or within a channel on the playfield, struck indirectly by the player’s ball to register hits or advance scoring. The captive ball never drains — it lives in its enclosure for the life of the machine, absorbing impacts and transferring momentum to switches behind it. The mechanism creates a distinctive heavy, satisfying hit feel unlike any other target on the playfield. Captive balls appear in hundreds of machines across the Solid State and Dot Matrix Display eras, often positioned as a high-value repeated shot.