Spit Fire

Spit Fire, manufactured by Genco Manufacturing Company in August 1935 and designed by Harvey Heiss, is a battery-operated electromechanical machine notable for its ball kickers and habitrails. It offers 10 balls per play, an unusually high number for the era.

Spit Fire's gameplay is distinctive: players shoot for 500-point kicker pockets at the top left and right, and a contact trigger can send these balls into a center 2,000-point pocket amid flashing lights. Balls that drop into designated "Fire" holes are shot out of tunnels with a flash of light, traveling along elevated runways toward high-scoring pockets. Two kickers in the upper playfield lock balls until another ball passes through the top rollover, at which point both kick simultaneously as a light flashes. Balls reaching the bottom of the playfield are kicked back upward until they score.

Spit Fire's design is characterized by its functional, no-frills construction, common for Genco games of the period, measuring 40 inches long by 21 inches wide. Little else is documented about its designer, Harvey Heiss, but Spit Fire remains an interesting example of the mechanically inventive, pre-flipper pinball machines of the mid-1930s.