Super Orbit

Super Orbit, designed by Ed Krynski with art by David Moore, was manufactured by Gottlieb in May 1983 on the company's System 80A hardware, a mature, well-refined solid-state platform by that point, since Gottlieb had been building SS machines since the mid-1970s. With 2,100 units confirmed produced, it reworks a familiar layout: the playfield is the same one used on Gottlieb's earlier EM titles 'Orbit' (1971) and 'Outer Space' (1972).

Gameplay features two flippers, three pop bumpers, a slingshot, three standup targets, a vari-target, and a spinning target, along with an upper-right return ball rollunder and a right outlane ball-return gate - an active, target-rich layout built for fast scoring. Super Orbit is also notable, per Gottlieb's own records, as possibly the first Gottlieb machine to produce a sound effect simply from pressing the flipper buttons while in attract mode.

Its outer-space theme and artwork by David Moore give it a colorful, era-appropriate sci-fi presentation. As a later-era Gottlieb System 80A title that revisits one of the company's own classic EM layouts, Super Orbit offers an interesting bridge between Gottlieb's electromechanical and solid-state design lineages.