Landslide

Landslide, manufactured by the Exhibit Supply Company (ESCO) of Chicago in August 1940, is a flipperless electro-mechanical pinball machine from the prewar era. According to a contemporary article in The Billboard, the game was originally scheduled for a Labor Day release, but an Exhibit sales manager declared it 'too good to hold back' and shipped it early; the original factory drawing is dated July 2, 1940.

What makes Landslide engaging is its rotation-based scoring. Players got five balls for five cents on a playfield of 18 passive bumpers. Hitting the lit numbered bumpers in rotation lights the corresponding numbers on the backglass, and hitting a red bumper while lit lights the next number in the rotation and scores 1000 points. The award ladder escalates nicely: completing numbers 1 through 8 in rotation lights the center yellow bumper for a Special worth one replay, completing 1 through 9 awards a replay outright, and running the full 1 through 10 awards five replays and lights the green bumper for an Extra Special worth five more. This clever system kept players strategizing rather than simply flailing.

The cabinet hardware shows the period's anti-cheating engineering: a pendulum tilt in the lower cabinet and a sway tilt in the backbox, plus a time clock, with a single bell providing the soundtrack. Without a pictorial theme to speak of, Landslide's appeal is all mechanics, an honest snapshot of pinball in the year before America entered the war.