Ball Shooter

The Ball Shooter, manufactured by Gatter Novelty Company of Philadelphia in September 1926, is one of the earliest documented coin-operated skill games with a pinball-style playfield. As a Pure Mechanical game, it predates the electro-mechanical and solid-state eras of pinball that would follow in later decades, relying entirely on manual, non-electric mechanisms.

Gameplay was simple and inexpensive: players received two shots for one cent. The cabinet was compact, measuring 20 inches long and 7 inches wide, standing 6 inches tall at the front and 11 inches at the back -- dimensions suited to counter-top placement in shops, arcades, or other public spaces of the day.

Little further information survives about the game's designer or specific rules. Gatter Novelty Company itself was short-lived, preceding the later Gatter Manufacturing Company and going out of business amid the stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed. As a result, surviving examples of the Ball Shooter -- like the one known example stamped with the number '463/4' on its cabinet with no other markings -- are rare artifacts of the pre-Depression coin-op trade.