Sportsman

The Sportsman, released by Bell Products Company in August 1943, is a converted game — records indicate it was a conversion of one of Bally's earlier titles, either 'Blue Grass,' 'Dark Horse,' 'Sport Special,' or 'Sport Event.' Conversions like this were common during and after World War II, when manufacturing shortages led companies to rework existing games with new cabinet artwork and names rather than building entirely new machines from scratch.

As a wartime-era electro-mechanical (EM) machine, the Sportsman would have relied on bumpers, targets, and skillful ball control typical of the pre-flipper era, since player-controlled flippers were not introduced to pinball until 1947.

Little further documentation survives about the Sportsman's specific design or artwork, likely because it was a rebadged version of one of the Bally originals listed above rather than an all-new game. Still, its status as a wartime conversion makes it an interesting artifact of the constrained manufacturing conditions of the early 1940s.