Handicap

The Handicap is a mysterious electro-mechanical pinball machine from an unknown manufacturer. According to Jean-Pierre Cuvier's book Pinballs le temps des flippers, it was distributed in the mid-1950s by Bussoz and appears to be a conversion reusing an unspecified Williams horse-racing machine, though the source game hasn't been identified. Its standout feature is a mechanical backbox animation in which horses race across the backglass.

The upper playfield includes a round numbered disc reminiscent of Gottlieb's 1964 'World Fair,' though ringed with rubbers instead of pop bumpers, while the lower playfield is made up of a circle of six pop bumpers. It isn't clear from the single surviving photograph whether the game has flippers, and the backglass has room only for bulb scoring, with no score reels; the cabinet stands on four wooden legs.

The horse racing theme reflects the sport's popularity at the time, and the mechanical animation showcases the creative engineering common among electromechanical designers of the era. Beyond that one black-and-white photograph, no further information about this machine has surfaced, leaving much of its history a mystery.