Blast off into the cosmos — Gottlieb’s 1972 Outer Space is an electromechanical two-player that sends you rocketing into a spacefaring theme, and it comes from the dream 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 2,350, it’s a handsome early-’70s woodrail machine with a satisfying, bonus-driven design.
The layout is a clean, engaging spread with a few distinctive touches: two flippers, three pop bumpers, a slingshot, three standup targets, a vari-target, a spinning target, an upper-right ball-return rollunder, and a right-outlane ball return gate, all crowned by an end-of-ball bonus. That vari-target and spinner give the game satisfying variety, while the ball-return features and the end-of-ball bonus reward a player who works the playfield to build value and keep the ball alive. It’s the kind of elegant, multi-element design that made these Krynski-Morison machines such enduring pleasures to learn and play.
Outer Space is a fine showcase of the legendary Gottlieb team’s craft, pairing an evergreen cosmic theme with Morison’s evocative retro-future art and Krynski’s reliably satisfying playfield instincts. The space-exploration motif was a natural fit for the era’s optimism about the final frontier, and this machine captures that spirit with real charm. For the collector who loves the golden age of EM pinball and its greatest designers, it’s a lovely find. Work that vari-target and spinner, build your bonus, and take a chiming voyage to the stars. Some machines carry you somewhere, and this one launches you clean into orbit, 1972-style. To infinity and beyond.