Free Play

A configuration in which no coin is required to start a game. The player presses the start button and plays without payment. Free play is not a reward mechanism in the same sense as Replay or Add-a-Ball — it is the absence of the coin-operated transaction entirely.

Free play configuration appears in several contexts. Home Use models were typically shipped from the factory in free play mode, since there was no operator collecting revenue and no reason to require a coin. Route machines at the end of their commercial life were sometimes switched to free play by their final owners. And some operators configured machines for free play in locations where the game served as an amenity rather than a revenue source — a break room, a waiting area, a private club.

On Electromechanical machines, free play was enabled by a physical switch or by setting the coin mechanism to zero credits per coin. On Solid State machines, it became a software setting in the operator menu. The game itself played identically in either mode — the same rules, the same scoring, the same playfield behavior. The only difference was whether a coin had to drop before the game would start.

In modern home collecting, virtually all machines are set to free play. The coin door remains as a physical artifact and a point of access to the cash box and operator controls, but the transaction it was designed to mediate no longer occurs.