Atlantic City

Atlantic City, released by Bally in April 1952, is not a conventional flipper pinball but a bingo machine, the card-matching genre that Bally dominated in the early 1950s. Designed by Don Hooker, it carries a beach-and-boardwalk theme inspired by its famous New Jersey namesake, fitting neatly into the era's fondness for American place-name titles.

The playfield features 25 trap holes into which the player shoots balls, attempting to light numbers on any of three bingo cards. Completing lines on the cards earned awards, which is the core appeal of the bingo genre: less about flipper skill and more about ball placement, nudging, and the gambler's thrill of a near-complete card.

As an early-1950s Bally bingo, Atlantic City is an interesting artifact of a period when these machines were enormously popular on location, and it offers collectors a window into a side of pinball history quite different from the flipper games that eventually defined the hobby.