Jockey Special

Jockey Special, manufactured by Bally in 1947, is a one-ball horserace game with a horse racing theme, released as the replay (non-payout) counterpart to Bally's 1947 'Jockey Club'. It belongs to the family of one-ball games that Bally built its postwar business on, designed to capture the excitement of the track in coin-operated form.

Gameplay centers on a field of four passive bumpers and 31 trap holes, with the ball's final resting place determining the outcome. A Skill Lane option was offered for jurisdictions that required five-ball play, letting operators adapt the game to local regulations. The replay format made Jockey Special suitable for locations where payout machines were prohibited.

The game's release history is well documented in the trade press: Bally announced it in Cash Box on September 15, 1947 and advertised it in Billboard on September 13, 1947, with distributors' ads soon following, even though internal Bally documentation lists a release-to-production date of March 1, 1948. Little is known about the game's designer, but it remains an interesting study in how Bally offered parallel payout and replay versions of the same design.