Double-Shuffle

Double-Shuffle, released by Gottlieb in June 1949, is a single-player electro-mechanical pinball machine designed by Harry Mabs, the man who had invented the flipper for Gottlieb's Humpty Dumpty less than two years earlier. Backed by artwork from the prolific Roy Parker, Double-Shuffle (model 21) had a confirmed production run of 911 units.

The game is built around a shuffleboard theme, a popular recreation of the late 1940s. Its playfield features two flippers, two pop bumpers, ten passive bumpers, a kick-out hole, and eight rollovers, giving players plenty of targets from the early flipper era when designers were still working out how the new player-controlled game should feel. The backglass adds a charming touch of light animation, with a puck appearing to slide across a shuffleboard as the player scores.

With its pedigree of Mabs and Parker, Double-Shuffle is a solid example of Gottlieb's output at the dawn of the flipper age, capturing the spirit of late-1940s recreation and the rapid evolution of pinball gameplay in the years immediately following the flipper's introduction.