Right Outlane Ball Return Gates

Right outlane ball return gates are Right-Side Ball Return Gates fitted at the right Outlanes — a hinged metal flap the ball can push through in one direction and not the other,^[1] fixing which way traffic runs at the bottom right of the playfield.

Nothing about the gate is powered or earned: it is a strip of metal on a pivot, and it does the same thing on every ball. That cheapness is why it turns up on so many playfields, fitted across four decades of machines from Bally, Williams, Gottlieb, Sega and Maresa, and why designers reached instead for a Detour Gates when they wanted the ball’s route to depend on what the player had done.