Line up the perfect break — Gottlieb’s Big Shot is an electromechanical two-player wrapped in a billiards theme, and it comes from the legendary team of designer Ed Krynski and artist Gordon Morison, the partnership behind an incredible run of Gottlieb’s most cherished classics. With reel scoring and a confirmed run of 2,900, it’s a handsome, popular woodrail-era machine that brings the pool hall to the flippers.
The layout has a genuinely distinctive feature: two big seven-bank drop-target arrays, giving the playfield a formidable wall of drops to work through, along with two flippers, a single pop bumper, a pair of slingshots, two standup targets, a kick-out hole, and a right-outlane ball return gate. Those dual seven-banks are the machine’s calling card, offering a sharp-shooting player a satisfying and substantial objective — clearing all fourteen drops is a real test of accuracy, evoking the precision of running a pool table. The ball return gate provides a welcome bit of insurance against a drain, rewarding an alert player, while the standups and bumper round out the field.
Big Shot is a fine showcase of the celebrated Krynski-and-Morison team’s craft, pairing an evergreen billiards theme with a satisfying, drop-heavy playfield and Morison’s warm artwork. The pool-hall motif was a perennial favorite, and this machine translates its precision into rewarding pinball. For the collector who loves the golden age of EM pinball and its greatest creative teams, it’s a rewarding find. Clear those dual seven-banks, work the standups, and run the table. Some machines make their theme come alive in the playfield, and this Gottlieb billiards classic lines up a beauty. Chalk up and drop a coin.