Fiesta

Fiesta is a flipperless electro-mechanical pinball machine released by Chicago Coin Machine Manufacturing Company in May 1938, with a confirmed production run of 958 units. Carrying a lively theme of dancing, music, and singing, it offered players five balls for five cents, the standard arrangement of the era.

Fiesta's gameplay is a marvel of pre-flipper design. The machine features 13 spring bumpers, three kickers, and a captive ball, but what truly sets it apart is its use of upper and lower playfields. Balls that exit the upper playfield line up in a lane that feeds a kicker. A ball passing through either of two upper-playfield 'Starter' tunnels causes all the balls waiting in that feeder lane to be kicked, one at a time, to a lower-playfield kicker, which then propels them into the lower playfield for further scoring. At the start of a game, any balls left in the feeder lane are released to an outhole trough directly beneath it.

Very little is known about who designed Fiesta, leaving room for speculation among pinball historians. Despite that, its unusual two-level ball-handling mechanism makes it a fascinating piece of late-1930s pinball engineering and a cherished glimpse into the game's development before the flipper era.