Space Orbit

Space Orbit is LORI’s unlicensed, from-scratch copy of Gottlieb’s single-player Space Orbit — an Electromechanical bootleg rebuilt in Bologna. The Gottlieb source was itself an Add-a-Ball game, one built for export to Italy in 1972,^[1] and that reward type was the whole point: a 1965 Italian law had outlawed pinball as gambling, so a machine sold there could reward the player only with further balls, never a free Replay — which is exactly what add-a-ball means.^[2] The machine was already a patchwork of Gottlieb’s own parts: its Outer Space backglass borrowed artwork from Gottlieb’s 1972 Outer Space, while its playfield followed the layout of the earlier Mini Cycle and Polo.^[3] The design drew several Italian copyists — R.M.G. rebuilt it as Space Orbit! (1972) and Mondialmatic as Big Dryvers (1979) — with LORI’s copy among them.