Flash-Baseball

Flash-Baseball, sold by Irmacor of Porto, Portugal, is not an original design — it's a rebadged conversion of Playmatic's 1978 'Space Gambler,' created by swapping out only the backglass. According to reports, strict Portuguese import laws on gambling-related devices in the 1970s pushed distributors like Irmacor to import Spanish-made games, modify them, and market them as Portuguese-made products to get around the restrictions.

Despite the baseball-themed backglass and cabinet art — complete with bilingual Portuguese and English text and a flashing-tunnel light animation overlaid with baseball stitching to represent the game's name — the playfield itself is unchanged from 'Space Gambler' and still carries that game's outer-space and dice imagery, including dice motifs visible on the backglass. Notable playfield features include two flippers, two pop bumpers, four mushroom bumpers, two slingshots, four drop targets, three standup targets, and a spinning target.

Flash-Baseball is a distinctive example of how regional regulations shaped the pinball trade in 1970s Europe, resulting in a game whose marketing theme and actual playfield tell two different stories.