Double or Nothing

Double or Nothing, manufactured by Pacific Amusement Manufacturing Company (PAMCO) in May 1935, was one of five miniature machines that PAMCO advertised collectively as the "Quintuplets" (alongside Hit or Miss, Make or Break, Odd or Even, and Left or Right). Each of the five games shared a compact 14-by-25-inch cabinet designed for locations too small for a full-size machine, with legs that could be removed to convert it into a countertop game.

As a 1935 EM machine, Double or Nothing predates the invention of the flipper by more than a decade, so play involved a plunger-launched ball navigating a fixed playfield of pins, targets, and pockets rather than flipper-controlled shots. The internal mechanisms, including a newly designed ball lift and plunger assembly, were mounted beneath the slide-out playfield rather than inside the cabinet itself.

No documentation of the machine's specific artwork or theme has surfaced, and it is not known for certain whether the game was designed by Bon MacDougall, though pinball historian Harry Williams suggested as much in a 1982 interview. Despite the gaps in its history, Double or Nothing remains a notable artifact of PAMCO's inventive approach to miniature coin-operated games during the mid-1930s.