Cosmint

The Cosmint, designed by Ted Zale with artwork by Jerry Kelley, was manufactured by Bally in January 1969 (model 825). It is an electro-mechanical (EM), four-player game with an outer space theme, and it is in fact the same game as Bally's 1969 'Cosmos,' but with a different name on the backglass for export to Switzerland, according to a 1969 Bally parts catalog. The unconfirmed story is that a Swiss company named Cosmos Automaten made vending and amusement machines, so to avoid legal conflict, Bally applied altered 'Cosmint' backglasses to games taken from the Cosmos production line; known examples carry serial numbers that fit within the Cosmos production run and use English-language printing.

Gameplay features include two zipper flippers, three pop bumpers, six mushroom bumpers, three slingshots, a kick-out hole, a right side drop lane, and a right outlane ball return gate. The game's signature feature is its mechanical backbox animation: a ball shot into the Blast Off area of the playfield appears to launch into the lower-left corner of the backglass and orbit the Earth before returning to play.

This animated sequence, paired with the outer-space theme, reflects Bally's commitment to theme immersion in its EM games of the era. As a rebadged export variant of Cosmos, the Cosmint is a notable curiosity for collectors interested in Bally's international distribution practices of the late 1960s.