Cue Standard

The Cue Standard, produced by Chicago Coin Machine Manufacturing Company in January 1936, comes from the early years of electromechanical (EM) pinball, when manufacturers were just beginning to add electrical scoring and features to what had been purely mechanical games. With a production run listed at 351 units - though records are ambiguous as to whether that figure covers the Standard model alone or the Standard and Senior models combined - it is a scarce survivor from the industry's formative period.

The Cue Standard features a billiards theme, a popular subject at the time, and offered 10 balls per game. As a pre-flipper game, play centered on skillfully launching balls and watching them find their way to scoring positions on the playfield. The game was actually one of three related versions Chicago Coin offered in 1936, alongside the Cue Jr. and the Cue Senior De Luxe; surviving advertisements used the same game image for multiple versions, so the exact differences between them remain unclear.

Little is known about the machine's specific design or construction details, leaving enthusiasts to appreciate the Cue Standard as an early artifact of the electromechanical era rather than for documented aesthetic or artistic merits.