Crossover Return Lanes

Crossover return lanes are Inlanes that have swapped places with the Outlanes beside them: the return lane runs outside the drain lane, so a ball coming down it has to cross the outlane to reach the flipper.^[1] It usually carries enough speed to jump the gap, but not always.^[2]

The reversal turns a safe lane into a wager, and it is a solid-state idea rather than an Electromechanical one. Bally used it repeatedly in the early 1980s — Fathom (1981) is the machine the arrangement is usually named for^[3] — and Spanish makers built it into machines through the decade. It has never quite gone away: Jersey Jack Pinball laid out Pirates of the Caribbean (2018) the same way.