Great Guns

Great Guns, manufactured by J. H. Keeney and Company of Chicago in July 1937, is a single-player, flipperless novelty game from the pre-flipper era of pinball. Its theme draws on aviation and naval warfare, subjects very much in the public imagination during the late 1930s.

As a novelty-play game, Great Guns offered five balls per play on a playfield measuring 41 3/4 inches long by 20 inches wide. With no flippers — those wouldn't arrive in the industry until 1947 — play centered on the skillful plunge and the luck of the ball's journey down the playfield.

Keeney, active in Chicago's coin-op trade from 1934 to 1964, also produced a payout version of this same design as 1937's 'Navy', reflecting the common practice of offering both novelty and gambling variants of a single layout. The designer is unrecorded, and surviving information on the game is sparse, which only adds to its intrigue for collectors of pre-war Keeney games.