Drop Holes

Holes in the playfield surface that the ball drops into, registering a score or triggering a game event. Found primarily on mid-era machines, drop holes function similarly to Kick-Out Holes and Sinkholes but may lack a kicker mechanism to return the ball, instead relying on gravity or trap-door mechanisms. Some variants, listed in IPDB records as trap-door drop holes, use a hinged cover that opens to accept the ball and closes afterward. Drop holes appear on machines like Starfighter (1980), which featured seven of them across the playfield, creating a Swiss-cheese landscape of ball-swallowing hazards.