New England

New England, produced by the Royal Music Company of Webster, Massachusetts in November 1949, is a single-player electro-mechanical (EM) pinball machine themed around American Places. It features two flippers, four pop bumpers, and four kick-out holes — a feature set typical of the era just after flippers had become a standard part of pinball design following their 1947 debut.

Players used the flippers to keep the ball in play and could send it into the kick-out holes or off the pop bumpers for scoring, in a layout characteristic of late-1940s EM machines that were still refining flipper-based gameplay conventions.

Little further information is documented about New England's designer, artwork, or production numbers, and it's unclear how large a footprint Royal Music Company left in the pinball manufacturing business. Nonetheless, with its patriotic American Places theme and standard-for-its-era flipper layout, New England is an interesting example of regional pinball manufacturing in the immediate post-war years.