Tornado

The Tornado, manufactured by Williams and released in April 1947, is a flipperless, single-player electro-mechanical machine designed by Harry Williams. Originally drafted under the working title 'Rockets,' it was released the same month as the similar Williams game 'Cyclone.'

Gameplay on Tornado revolves around nine scoring bumpers, seven kick-out holes, and three kicker lanes. Its centerpiece is a center kicker lane that propels the ball upfield onto an elevated rail, which carries it back down to a lower playfield kick-out hole, an early forerunner of the wireform tracks that evolved into the habitrails of modern machines.

Tornado predates Williams' first flipper game, 'Sunny,' by about eight months. As operators of the era retrofitted flipperless games like this one with the new flipper mechanism after its introduction, many older machines ended up with flippers placed in unusual spots on the playfield. Exact production figures for Tornado are not documented, but its mechanical ingenuity makes it a notable entry in Williams' formative years.