Here’s a genuine oddity for the collector — Bally’s Boot-A-Ball, an electromechanical two-player with a soccer theme and one of the most eye-popping specifications in all of pinball: a remarkable twelve flippers. With reel scoring and an extraordinarily low confirmed run of just 100 machines, it’s a scarce and fascinating curiosity that turns the usual flipper game on its head.
That dozen flippers is the whole story here, and it makes Boot-A-Ball utterly distinctive. Where a typical machine offers two or four flippers, this one gives you twelve, transforming the playfield into a frantic, multi-flipper contraption unlike almost anything else ever built. It’s the kind of bold, experimental design that the electromechanical era occasionally produced, when manufacturers were willing to try radical ideas to stand out on the arcade floor. The soccer theme suits that kicking, booting energy perfectly, evoking a whole team’s worth of legs sending the ball flying across the field.
Boot-A-Ball is exactly the kind of rare, unusual machine that makes pinball collecting so endlessly fascinating. With only 100 built and that jaw-dropping twelve-flipper layout, it’s a genuine conversation piece and a real prize for the collector who prizes the offbeat and the scarce. It represents the adventurous, boundary-pushing spirit of Bally’s electromechanical experimentation, a machine that refused to play by the usual rules. For anyone who loves the hobby’s strangest and rarest corners, it’s a holy grail of oddities. Work all twelve flippers, keep that ball booting across the field, and marvel at one of pinball’s most unusual creations. Sometimes the most memorable machines are the ones that dared to be different, and Boot-A-Ball kicked the door wide open. Drop a coin and boot away.