Crack Shot

Crack Shot, produced by Century Manufacturing Company of Chicago in November 1934, comes from the earliest years of coin-operated pinball, when electro-mechanical features were just beginning to appear in what had been purely mechanical games. As a flipperless, single-player machine, it predates the invention of the flipper by more than a decade; play would have revolved around skillful plunging and nudging.

Little is recorded about Crack Shot's specific rules or scoring, but the game has a genuinely interesting origin story on the art side. Its playfield design was the result of a series of competitions among local artists, with the final design selected by a jury of ten operators, a remarkable, community-driven approach to game design that shows visual appeal mattered to manufacturers even in pinball's infancy.

As a product of a short-lived Chicago manufacturer active only in 1934, Crack Shot survives mainly as a document of the crowded, experimental pinball market of the early Depression years.