Big Improvements Are Coming to the Website; Today’s Featured Game - Bally Eight Ball 🎱

On the Knapp Arcade social media channels on Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky and Threads I share pictures of and details about at least one historic pinball machine nearly every day. All of these pictures are ones that I have taken myself at various pinball shows and arcades across the country. Those of you who don’t use social media and only visit this website don’t often get to see those pictures. I’m aiming to change that.

Major enhancements are coming to the Knapp Arcade website that will enable me to share stuff like this, and MUCH, MUCH more. Don’t worry, the blog that you’ve become accustomed to reading will always be free as a service to the arcade and pinball hobbies that we love. I’m just in the process of adding a ton of cool stuff to the site. My oldest son, who is in graduate school at Virginia Tech, is working on it as we speak. So keep an eye out for some really cool stuff hopefully later this year. I need to do something with this collection of tens of thousands of pictures of classic arcade and pinball machines that I’ve amassed lol.

Here’s pictures of a nice 1977 Bally Eight Ball 🎱 pinball machine that I took at Allentown Pinfest a couple of weeks ago.

A whopping 20,230 units were produced, a record at the time which was eventually passed The Addams Family fifteen years later. Designed by George Christian with art by Paul Faris andd Margaret Hudson.

Even though Eight Bally is a solid state pin, it still uses chimes to make sounds.

There are reports that Bally got in trouble with Paramount Television and CBS for using the likeness of Henry Winkler’s Happy Days character, The Fonz on the backglass but I have never seen an official confirmation of that or the rumored settlement.

Flyer, courtesy of IPDB

Flyer, courtesy of IPDB