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- description
- A next game award is a [[game-format: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 [[game-format:one-ball]] machines, and its commercial logic is plain — an award that cannot be collected without playing again.[1]
## The forms it took
The [[gameplay-feature:bally-hole]], playfield hole 16, is the blunt version: making it lights features automatically next game, a whole card's worth of [[gameplay-feature: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]
[[manufacturer:united]] worked the same idea through the game's own name. Its machines lit the letters of the title on the [[gameplay-feature:backglasses]] as enabled [[gameplay-feature: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]
5. Pinball Collectors Resource — http://www.pinballcollectorsresource.com/russ_files/bally.html special screen section (the "OK Section") in which lighting 3 of it's 4 or 5 numbers gave the player guaranteed minimum "odds" and "special features" in the next game played, without depositing the usual "extra coins"
8. Bingo Pinballs — https://bingo.cdyn.com/machines/features.html Like Bally's futurity, lite-a-name was tracked by a unit in the machine that did not reset between power cycles, so it could take many days/players to fully light the game name.
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- next-game-award
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- active