Astro

The Astro pinball machine, designed by Ed Krynski and manufactured by Gottlieb in October 1971, is a single-player electro-mechanical game from one of the most productive design partnerships in pinball history: Krynski on the playfield and Gordon Morison on the artwork. Astro is an Add-A-Ball game - Gottlieb's format for territories where awarding free replays was restricted - and its replay-model twin is Gottlieb's 1971 '4 Square', which shares the layout but wears different artwork. Only 500 units of Astro were confirmed produced.

The game wears a fantasy and outer-space theme populated by robots, rendered in Morison's bold early-1970s style. On the playfield, players face eight standup targets, three pop bumpers, two slingshots, and two flippers, with a maximum displayed score of 99,950 points. It is a classic Krynski design: simple to grasp, demanding to master, with scoring built on accurate target shooting.

With its low production run, Add-A-Ball pedigree, and characteristic Gottlieb art and engineering, Astro is an appealing find for collectors of early-1970s electro-mechanical games.