Hi Fly

The Hi Fly, manufactured by Central Manufacturing Co. of Chicago in 1946, is technically not a pinball machine at all -- it uses no balls, and is instead classified as a Table Top/Counter Game. It was the first post-war game from this manufacturer, designed by Charles Solinski, with a baseball theme. Players insert a coin and propel it onto the playfield, where it bounces between pins and settles into score pockets marked for singles, doubles, triples, and home runs.

The machine's design is compact and functional, advertised at 19 inches high, 16 inches wide, and 10 inches deep, and priced for 1-cent or 5-cent play. It includes an anti-tilt mechanism, and before inserting a coin, players must press a button on top to reset the tilt and clear the previous score -- which also cleared any coins remaining in the score pockets from the prior game.

An intriguing operational detail: coins that scored would drop into cash cans corresponding to their pocket, segregated from coins that failed to score, which fell to the bottom of the cabinet. This let location payouts be calculated from the game's own final tally before the reset button cleared it, with the owner later counting the segregated coins to settle up. A period Billboard article referred to Hi Fly as a 'pin game' -- a term that, while technically applicable given its use of pins, more commonly implies round pinballs, which Hi Fly does not use, hence its classification as Not A Pinball.