1972 Bally NIP-IT pinball machine

Playing today is a 1972 Bally Nip-It pinball machine. The machine in the video above is missing the Balligator assembly. I was never able to find a replacement, so I fixed it up as best I could.

The original gimmick of this game was the added button on the right side of the cabinet near the right flipper button. Pressing this additional button activated the "Balligator" mechanism, a gate/wireform that would extend out from the alligator's mouth and pull the ball under the alligator plastic sending it down and out toward the flippers.

Without the Balligator assembly, the ball finds its way through this tunnel on its own, but it's far less interesting.

Nip-it employed some cool features. It has a two-ball multiball, zipper flippers and, of course, the Balligator. But truth be told, Nip-It isn't a very good game. There's virtually nothing to shoot for and it really isn't much fun.

Basically, getting the ball into the lower saucer locks it until one of the ball release targets are hit. This sends the locked ball back into play, resulting in multiball. The kicker lane along the left side is cool, but there's no real satisfying shots and, honestly, using zipper flippers is pretty awkward when they're closed.

This game was designed by Ted Zale with artwork by Dick White. This game was made famous by the Happy Days series where it appeared in the Arnold's Eatery on a regular basis.

[rhea]

Don’t bash an early 70s era game
Very difficult to engineer something
like this
Respect

[ThomasMuller-jblh]

One of the most difficult pinball machines ever.

[xpump]

this game looked to in the - "hard to get anything going .." catagory but theres plenty worse from that late 60's -early 70's period ...this looked to have some fun aspects -thx for posting

[McDurdle]

My grandpa had one when I was a lad! It was sold after his death unfortunately, but I would love to have one again.

[jimmyzzzzz]

The button-actuated ball grabber under the gator head plastic in the upper right hand corner is missing. This is a key feature of Nip-It.

[Foxonian]

The only other Bally game I saw besides Fireball that had "zipper flippers"

[rarecoolitems]

That is the pinball machine from the American Television Show Happy Days. I did a video on that machine.

[carterbradley]

Hello I was wondering were you plug in the power cord for the transformer. Thanks