Futurity

Futurity is a Bally electro-mechanical one-ball horserace game - a distinct category of coin-op machine from the conventional flipper pinball. In these games, a single ball was shot onto a playfield of trap holes, with the outcome determining the award, much like betting on a horse race. IPDB does not record a production year for this model, which carries Bally model number 530.

The defining feature of Futurity's playfield is its 31 trap holes, an unusually large field of pockets for the ball to settle into. Fittingly for the format, the game wears a sports theme of horse racing - 'futurity' itself being a term for a horse race in which entrants are nominated well in advance.

One-ball horserace games like Futurity occupy an interesting corner of Bally's history, sitting closer to the company's gambling-adjacent products than to its flipper games. As documentation on this particular model is thin, it remains a somewhat obscure entry, but it offers a glimpse into a side of the mid-century coin-op industry that has largely vanished.