Journey to the far future — Gottlieb’s 2001 is a late-electromechanical single-player wrapped in a fantasy-of-tomorrow theme, and it comes from the most celebrated partnership in Gottlieb history: designer Ed Krynski and artist Gordon Morison, the duo behind an astonishing run of the company’s most cherished classics. With a confirmed production of 2,200 and reel scoring, it’s a handsome, target-rich woodrail-era machine that plays as good as it looks.
The layout is genuinely ambitious for its day, boasting two flippers, two pop bumpers, four slingshots, four standup targets, five kick-out holes, and — the centerpiece — two big ten-bank drop-target arrays. That’s a formidable wall of drops, and clearing those colored target banks is the heart of the game: completing a set lights the color’s respective bottom lane and saucer, rewarding accurate, methodical shooting. The seasoned wisdom on this one is to keep the ball up in the upper playfield as much as possible and to steer clear of the risky lower-center targets, whose reward rarely justifies the drain danger. The skill shot rewards plunging into the center or any lit saucer for a tidy bonus.
2001 is a superb example of Krynski and Morison at the height of their electromechanical craft, pairing a busy, drop-heavy playfield with Morison’s evocative retro-future art. It’s the kind of machine that rewards a patient, controlled player who works the banks and protects the upper playfield. For the EM devotee, it’s a classic worth seeking out. Clear those ten-banks, keep the ball up top, and take a chiming, relay-driven trip to the future as 1968 imagined it. Timeless fun, in every sense.