so I bought a pinball machine: Niche Mechanisms 001: the drop shelf

Wednesday, December 30, 2020

Niche Mechanisms 001: the drop shelf

A horizontal bar, but you push a button and it recedes. The ball or coin on it then falls. That's it! A delightful little gameplay mechanism that has been around for decades but is still barely known. Machines here span almost 100 years.

Let's start with a basic machine, and the earliest. There's a whole lot more under the cut.

1900 The Halfpenny by Price and Castell

when you push the button the shelf retracts, allowing the coin to enter the winning slot

Switchback (1928, London Automatic Machine Company)
Flick the ball up to the top, press the center button to drop the shelf!

when the bar recedes the ball enters one of these pockets

One of my favourite machines is the 1959 Bulls-Eye Drop Ball by Chicago Coin, which combines 3 separate drop shelves with a shuffle-alley mechanic!

In 1960 Chicago Coin also put out a baseball version, World Series

I've even seen this mechanism in Japanese machines. This is a very rare Japanese machine from the late 70s, part of the series 10yen games that were made back then, the equivalent of modern-day redemption arcades.

リボルバーターゲット (1977) aka "Revolver Target"

I have no information on this one, but watch it drop! Looks 30s or 40s? Definitely European.

Bomb Dropper (1918, Handan-Ni Ltd. London)

another version of Bomb Dropper (1919, Handan-Ni Ltd. London)

Even some pinball machines had drop shelves. In Allied Leisure's games Sea Hunt and Spooksville, each ball is started with a ball rolling back and forth along the top until you drop the shelf.

Sea Hunt by Allied Leisure (1972) (imdb photo)

Photo here and video below by pindude152

Video of the ball on the drop shelf, before getting released:

these are "shake pins" that have an inverse reflected playfield (photo from imdb)

drop shelf where each ball starts.

Spooksville (1973) has the same mechanism:

drop shelf can be seen at the top

There are some earlier examples of mixing the drop-shelf in there with pinball technology, though! In a glorious Frankenstein-experiment of a machine, Chicago Coin did a similar reflected-playfield idea that begins with a drop shelf, except it's a gun game!

There are two versions: Champion Rifle Range and Rocket Rifle Range. The you "shoot" the ball off the drop shelf. Then you shoot the bumpers to activate them. When the ball enters a kickout hole, you have to shoot it to get it kicked out, but that also resets your active bumpers.

It's confusing, so it's best to watch:

Some Allwins just went crazy with their designs in the same way some late-70s pachinkos went all out with wacky designs. Luna Park and Sitas emobdy that.

I wanted to end with another old machine, but one that is probably the greatest machine for the Niche Mechanisms series: The 'Slick' machine by Samson, from the 1930s

You'll be seeing more of Slick in future posts, as you'll note it also has a rotation mechanic and a catcher mechanic.

ADDED 2021-01-02:

Lite-A-Line (1960)

1920s drop shelf allwin

ADDED 2021-01-20:

older British drop-shelf machine with coloured pieces
"very similar to Discotelle"

ADDED 2021-02-03:

1930 Elite-Trumpf by DEWAG, Hanover

The Rolling Road, by Bollands Amusement

ADDED 2021-02-09:

1900 Fairplay Skill Switchback by Haydon and Urry

ADDED 2021-02-12:

Lipsia Geschicklichkeitsautomat (1908)

Matador (1929)

Unterhaltungsautomat ELITE (1930)

ADDED 2021-04-01:

probably the most recent drop-shelf machine produced, Addams Family Values redemption game by Midway. Press the button to release the shelves at the top and the coin falls through a pin field to the pockets at the bottom. You get bonuses if you spell out "thing-a-majig" and pressing the button rotates the lights, giving slightly more gameplay.