King Pin

The King Pin, produced under Pace Manufacturing Company Incorporated (active 1932-1933) but dated by IPDB to 1938, is not actually a pinball machine. IPDB explicitly categorizes it as a console slot machine styled to resemble a pin table — "pin table" was Pace's own term for it. Unlike Pace's earlier 'Paces Races' console game, King Pin added a plunger, shooter lane, and a small pinball-like playfield with rollovers that set the odds for play.

The game's abbreviated playfield and shooter mechanism gave it the outward appearance of a pinball game, and this appears to have been deliberate: period advertising called it the "King of all Pin Tables," using phrases like "Skill Counts" and "Strictly Legal in Most Localities." Including the word "Pin" in the name was likely an attempt to get this slot machine into markets, like pinball, where gambling devices faced fewer restrictions.

Aesthetically, King Pin uses a horse-racing theme. Beyond its blurred identity between slot machine and pin game, little else is documented about its design or reception, but its history as a slot machine disguised as a pinball-adjacent game makes it a curious artifact for collectors and historians of early coin-op gambling devices.