Sources

Contributors to this record: Flipcommons AI Descriptions (Tag), Flipcommons Catalog.

description: A flipperless machine is a pin game with no player-operated [[gameplay-feature:flippers]]. The ball is launched with a plunger, and from there gravity, the pins and the [[gameplay-feature:bumpers]] decide where it goes, so a play ends wherever the ball settles rather than in how long the player can keep it alive. ## Origins Pinball began flipperless. Historians date the game to [[person:montague-redgrave]]'s bagatelle patent of 1871, which already had the spring plunger firing a ball into an inclined field of obstacles - and nothing the player could do once it was moving.^[1] The earliest flippers were purely mechanical. *[[title:double-shuffle-3]]* (1932, [[manufacturer:ad-lee]]) carried eight of them, and baseball machines commonly gave the player a bat to swing by hand.^[2] The electrically operated flipper reached production in 1947, on [[manufacturer:gottlieb]]'s *[[title:humpty-dumpty]]*.^[3] It carried three pairs of them climbing the playfield, a long way from the single pair at the bottom that later became ordinary.^[4] ## Chance, skill and the law The lack of flippers carries legal weight across the world. Almost everywhere, gaming law turns on whether a game is one of skill or chance. Flipperless machines have no obvious claim to skill, which places them alongside gambling equipment.^[5] The German word for a pinball machine carries that distinction outright, naming it a machine of skill that offers no cash prize.^[6] Most countries answered by licensing the payout machine into a category of its own rather than outlawing it. [[location:spain]] separates purely recreational machines from those programmed to pay a cash prize.^[7] [[location:japan]] arrived at a similar accommodation by a stranger route: cash gambling is illegal there, and pachinko, a flipperless vertical pin field, survives through an exchange of prizes for cash off the premises.^[8] The [[location:usa]] took the harder course. For much of the twentieth century pinball there was not licensed into any category but simply illegal across much of the country.^[9] ## The flipperless formats Several formats are flipperless by definition rather than by omission. [[game-format:bagatelle]], the ancestor of the whole medium, gives the player the launch and nothing after it. [[game-format:rolldown]] takes away even the plunger: the machine hands a ball to the player, who rolls it onto the playfield by hand. The gambling formats are bare for a reason of their own, since a wager on where the ball lands is only spoiled by a player who can aim. [[game-format:one-ball]] was legislated out of the trade by about 1951, and [[game-format:bingo-pinball]] was built expressly to replace it; bingo playfields stayed flipperless for decades afterwards. Operators fitted flippers to them anyway, cutting into the playfield and often using impulse flippers that cannot be held up, so a machine could read as skill without handing the player much control.^[10] What an operator did afterwards does not change the machine, which keeps the description it left the factory with.^[11] Not every machine lacking a pair of flippers belongs here. [[game-format:pitch-and-bat]] hands the player a bat to swing, which is player control under another name.

Flipcommons AI Descriptions (Tag)
name: Flipperless
Flipcommons Catalog
status: active
Flipcommons Catalog
slug: flipperless
Flipcommons Catalog

Citations

Pacific Pinball Museum — https://www.pacificpinball.org/pinball-gambling
Most pinball historians tie the birth of pinball with the 1871 patent for "Improvement in Bagatelle" secured by Montague Redgrave. [...] the spring-loaded plunger that launches a ball into an inclined field of obstacles
Internet Pinball Database (IPDB) — https://www.ipdb.org/glossary.php Archive
flippers were already used on many games prior to 1947, but they were non-electrical, entirely mechanical. Some games had eight mechanical flippers, such as Ad-Lee Company's 1932 'Double-Shuffle'.
Wikipedia — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humpty_Dumpty_(pinball)
it is the first pinball machine to include electromechanical flippers
Kineticist — https://www.kineticist.com/news/pinball-prohibition
included three pairs of flippers ascending the playfield to help send the ball around and give the player more control
Kineticist — https://www.kineticist.com/news/pinball-prohibition
A pinball machine without flippers made for a very different game, one that made the movement of the ball completely random.
Wikipedia — https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipperautomat
Ein Flipperautomat (kurz: Flipper, in der Schweiz meist Flipperkasten) ist ein Geschicklichkeits-Spielautomat ohne Geldgewinnmöglichkeit
Wikipedia — https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A1quina_tragaperras
ofrecen al jugador la posibilidad de ganar un premio en metálico
Wikipedia — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachinko
Gambling for cash is illegal de jure in Japan, but the widespread popularity of low-stakes pachinko in Japanese society has enabled a specific legal loophole allowing it to exist.
Pacific Pinball Museum — https://www.pacificpinball.org/pinball-gambling
pinball was illegal in many places for much of the 20th century
Bingo Pinballs — https://bingo.cdyn.com/oddities/flippers
flipper pins were skill machines [...] often impulse flippers were used so you can't hold the flipper in an up position
Internet Pinball Database (IPDB) — https://www.ipdb.org/glossary.php Archive
These games will still be designated as flipperless, because they were manufactured without flippers