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Le Rex Boule

Le Rex Boule

Le Rex Boule was the name of one of the now very rare needle games made by the Dudoit Fils company, which manufactured furniture and also slot machines. Dudoit Fils had its production workshop in Paris and manufactured some special slot machines, which could be found in some Parisian bars in the 1930s. Only very few of these devices survived and a few of them also made their way abroad. One of these machines, called Le Rex Boule, which was manufactured in 1932, lasted until 2020 in a Swiss attic in the Bern region until it was rediscovered. These years of loneliness had a negative impact on the device and its condition deteriorated significantly and therefore had to be extensively restored. This device was originally available with and without a table base.

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The gameplay was simple. It was about scoring as many points as possible in a game. In this needle game, the balls were fired via the plunger on the right side, as is usual with a well-known pinball machine. For some slot machines from this time, the name “Needle Game” was often taken away and replaced with “Bomber”. After shooting the ball, the hope was to get it into a field with a high score, which could also be influenced by the emotional shooting. When all the balls were shot, all the points where the balls had landed were added up, which then led to the final result. If you wanted to make a new game, you had to insert a coin into the slot of the left ball return mechanism, which was then set in motion by pushing the said mechanism horizontally, the black steel plate on which the balls lie, so that the Balls fall through recesses in the steel plate into the interior of the machine. Now the balls inside roll all the way to the front. By turning the middle lever to the right as far as it will go, a slide will sink down inside so that the balls will roll onto this slide, whereupon the middle lever will be turned to the left again, so that the balls will be back in their starting position and now with them again the plunger on the right, the balls can be shot.

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