Empire

Empire, made in 1933 by England's Arcadia Novelty Company, is a Pure Mechanical (PM) table-top/counter game - one of the true antiques of pinball's prehistory, predating the introduction of flippers by over a decade. According to the Encyclopedia of Pinball Vol 2, it was designed as a counter-top game rather than a full-sized cabinet machine.

As a Pure Mechanical machine of its era, Empire would have relied entirely on gravity, springs, and simple mechanical scoring elements - with no electricity and, notably, no flippers, since that innovation would not arrive in pinball until Gottlieb's 1947 'Humpty Dumpty.' Players of the era guided the ball via a plunger or tilt of the cabinet, scoring points as the ball settled into numbered pockets or holes.

Very little further documentation survives about Empire's specific design, artwork, or original gameplay rules. It remains a minor but historically interesting example of the small-format counter games that were common in shops and amusement venues of the early 1930s, an era when pinball as we now recognize it was only beginning to take shape.