They had a plunger, ball goes up and hits targets (or not) and falls down. Your score is however many targets it hit while it was up.

Your controls were bumping and rocking the game case to try to make the ball bounce better off of things.

Games have .. improved since then.

It’s important to point out that at this point in time, pinball wasn’t seen as gaming the way you would think of it today, it was almost exclusively for gambling. Like a way cooler slot machine.