Bally Bonus

The Bally Bonus, manufactured by Bally Manufacturing Corporation in February 1936, is a single-player electro-mechanical payout machine, Bally's Model 76. As a payout machine, it dispensed coins or tokens based on outcomes rather than functioning purely as a score-based skill game - a common and, at the time, widely marketed category of coin-operated equipment.

Being a 1936 EM machine, Bally Bonus predates the invention of the flipper by more than a decade, so play would have centered on the ball's path through pins and holes after being launched, combined with the odds display used to determine payouts. A related machine known as the 'Mystery Game' used an almost identical playfield to Bally Bonus but relocated the odds display to a new backbox and placed the tilt mechanism where the odds dial had been - it is unclear whether this was an official Bally upgrade or an after-market conversion.

Details on Bally Bonus's specific artwork and designer are not documented, but as an early payout-style EM machine from Bally's formative years, it offers insight into the gambling-adjacent side of 1930s coin-operated amusements.