Raise the totem and read the spirits — Gottlieb’s 1979 Totem is an American-West-themed four-player from the cherished partnership of designer Ed Krynski and artist Gordon Morison, the team responsible for so many of Gottlieb’s most fondly remembered classics. With a robust confirmed run of 6,643, this was a popular machine in its day, and its lean layout — two flippers, two pops, three two-bank drops, a vari-target, and a kick-out hole — is a textbook example of the elegant, bonus-driven design that defined the era.
Everything here orbits the bonus build, and there are several pleasing roads up the multiplier ladder. Shoot the rollovers on the right orbit over and over to increase your bonus, drive the vari-target on the left orbit all the way to climb the multiplier, and complete either the B or C drop bank together with its corresponding top lane for another bump. Finishing all eight drop targets adds a multiplier of its own, so the disciplined player weaves between the drops, the orbits, and the vari-target, stacking advances toward a fat end-of-ball payout. It’s the kind of clean, multi-path bonus engine that makes these Krynski-Morison machines so enduringly satisfying to learn.
Totem doesn’t have ramps or speech or a single moving toy, and it doesn’t need them — its pleasure lives in the pure tension of building a bonus and protecting it against the drain. For the player who appreciates pinball’s classic grammar, it’s a beautifully balanced, multi-path puzzle wrapped in Morison’s warm western art. Work the vari-target, ride the rollovers, drop the banks, and watch that multiplier climb. The old ways still play wonderfully, and Totem proves it.