Autodart

Autodart, released in February 1935 by the A.B.T. Manufacturing Company of Chicago, is a single-player electro-mechanical payout machine with a distinctive twist: it is a ticket vendor. Rather than simply displaying a score, the game prints the player's score on a physical ticket. A plate above the payout cup spells out the appeal plainly: 'Get Your Ticket! Your Score Is Printed On Ticket In Cup Below.'

This ticket-printing approach fit the mid-1930s coin-op landscape, where scores frequently translated into location-paid awards and operators needed verifiable records. A printed ticket gave both player and location proof of the score achieved, an elegant solution in an era rife with disputes over payouts.

Details of Autodart's playfield layout, rules, and artwork are not well documented, but as one of A.B.T.'s string of mid-1930s 'Auto' games it remains an interesting artifact of the period when pinball, gambling devices, and trade stimulators overlapped freely.