Next Game Award

A next game award is a Bingo Pinball feature that pays into the future: something the player achieves during the current game switches a feature on, or guarantees a level of odds, in the game that follows it.^[1]

It is a device carried over from the One-Ball machines, and its commercial logic is plain — an award that cannot be collected without playing again.^[1]

The forms it took

The Bally Hole, playfield hole 16, is the blunt version: making it lights features automatically next game, a whole card’s worth of Magic Squares among them.^[2] The elaborate version is the OK game, renamed the red letter game on later machines, in which two or more balls landing in a designated orange section bought the following game a guaranteed floor of odds and features without the extra coins that would ordinarily buy them.^[3][4][5] Futurity went further again, letting a player bank OK games one on top of another until the game finally played could be played with nearly everything enabled.^[6]

United worked the same idea through the game’s own name. Its machines lit the letters of the title on the Backglasses as enabled Rollover Buttons were hit, a count held on a unit that survived power cycles and could take days and many players to complete.^[7][8] Completing it usually paid out on the spot, though on some machines what it bought was a feature in the next game played.^[9][10]