Wildcat

Wildcat is a 1932 pure mechanical (PM) pinball machine manufactured by the Houston Showcase and Manufacturing Company of Houston, Texas, a short-lived company active only from 1932 to 1933. As a Pure Mechanical machine, Wildcat predates both electromechanical scoring and the flipper (which would not be invented until 1947), relying entirely on the ball's momentum and gravity as it traveled across a pin-studded playfield.

Gameplay on machines of this era was simple by later standards: players launched the ball and had no further control over its path beyond nudging the cabinet, with scoring determined by which holes or pins the ball encountered. Little further documentation survives about Wildcat's specific playfield layout, scoring, or artwork.

Given the brevity of Houston Showcase and Manufacturing Company's existence and the passage of nearly a century, surviving examples of Wildcat are rare. It stands as a glimpse into the very earliest, pre-electric era of pinball manufacturing in the United States, before Chicago came to dominate the industry.