Joker Wild

Joker Wild is an electro-mechanical pinball machine from Bally Manufacturing Corporation, listed as Model 886. Its exact production year is not documented. The game is a flipperless, single-player novelty-play machine: players shoot five balls onto a bingo-style playfield, where they fall into holes that light up a poker hand on the backglass. Unlike most pinball machines, it offers no replays - the poker hand displayed at the end of the five balls is the final result.

This bingo-style, poker-themed format was a distinct genre within pinball, blending target shooting with card-game scoring rather than traditional flipper-based play. The novelty-play design meant players were rewarded purely through the visual outcome on the backglass rather than through extending gameplay via replays or extra balls.

Little further information survives about Joker Wild's specific artwork, designer, or exact release date. Its rarity and the flipperless, poker-themed novelty format make it a distinctive example of the bingo-pinball hybrid games that Bally and other manufacturers produced during the electro-mechanical era.