Key Lite

Key Lite is an early electro-mechanical pinball machine from Bally Manufacturing Corporation, produced August 25, 1938, as model 270. A second run under model 314 with the same name followed that December; it isn't known what differences, if any, distinguish the two versions.

Like other pinball games of its era, Key Lite is a flipperless machine - player-controlled flippers would not be introduced to pinball until nearly a decade later, in 1947. Play on games of this period instead relied on skillful plunging and the natural roll of the ball through the playfield's targets, holes, and bumpers to score.

Beyond Bally's production records, little specific information survives about Key Lite's playfield layout, artwork, or theme. As an early example from one of pinball's most influential manufacturers, produced during the formative, pre-flipper years of the game, Key Lite remains a historically significant artifact for collectors interested in the earliest days of electromechanical pinball.