Stern Electronics blasted into a new decade with Flight 2000, a 1980 widebody that holds a real place in the company’s history as its first machine with speech — a robotic, synthesized voice (the same one heard in Stern’s Berzerk arcade game) that perfectly suits the futuristic space-flight theme. It was designed by industry pioneer Harry Williams, one of the true founding fathers of the game, and it pairs that pedigree with the fast, uncomplicated gameplay that made early Stern tables so beloved.
Everything orbits the BLAST OFF sequence. You spell the words by hitting targets around the playfield, lock balls into a maze-like three-stage launcher, count the drop targets down from five to one, and finally fire the launcher to ignite a three-ball multiball — a genuinely thrilling payoff for an era when multiball was still a novelty. The right spinner and the sweepable right drop targets are the bread-and-butter scoring, with the spinner climbing to 5,000 a spin and sweeps occasionally paying 50,000.
Deeper play rewards knowledge: the multiball gets easier to relight each time, the left spinner becomes especially lucrative afterward, and while the playfield only advertises a 5X bonus, savvy players know 15X is actually attainable for a 150,000 collect. Smooth, quick, and satisfying, Flight 2000 is widely regarded as one of the finest games Stern Electronics ever produced — a confident leap into the talking, multiballing future of the silver ball.