Shot Now

Shot Now is an unusual electro-mechanical game manufactured by Model Racing of Montemarciano - Ancona, Italy, likely dating to the early 1970s. Despite superficial similarities to pinball, IPDB classifies it as "Not A Pinball" — it is a gun game in which a single player fires at "clay pigeon" targets rather than controlling a ball with flippers.

The core gameplay revolves around 12 clay-pigeon targets. Scoring 12 consecutive hits lets the player continue shooting until missing or reaching a maximum of 20 shots. The game is believed to be based on an earlier, unnamed Italian rifle game invented by Luciano Ceccaroni and produced by Lanfranco Chinea, general manager of Model Racing — a company otherwise known for its "model racing" stock car games popular in Italian arcades. Ceccaroni was later granted US patent 3,918,714 (filed 1974, granted 1975) for the light-target mechanism used in games like this one.

Little else is documented about Shot Now, including its designer or production numbers. Its skeet/trap-shooting theme and unusual gun-game format make it a distinctive footnote in the history of Italian coin-operated amusement games.