Super Adventures in Pinball

This week on Super Adventures, I felt like writing about pinball games. A whole lot of pinball games.

Actually all I really wanted to do was stitch some screenshots together and show off lots of giant-sized images of virtual pinball tables, but I really have to write something underneath them. It's a bit awkward though, as I don't really know anything about pinball, plus I suck at it. I don't even know what I'm going to type for all these games, seeing as every single one of them is going to be about using flippers to smack a ball into targets. But I can at least tell whether or not I'm enjoying something and sometimes I can even pin down why that is.

I'll be writing about 23 pinball games in total, spanning 1980 to 1997 (to be honest I was aiming for 15 and missed), and they'll arranged in chronological order so they'll get prettier as you scroll down... theoretically. They certainly won't look any worse than the first game does.

---

GAME 1 of 23: VIDEO PINBALL

Developer:

Bob Smith

|

Release Date:

1980

|

Systems:

Atari 2600

---

I figured I might as well start at the beginning and Video Pinball on the Atari 2600 is the earliest pinball game I can find... kind of. To be honest it's not even the earliest Video Pinball game, as Atari introduced dedicated Video Pinball consoles in 1977 and an arcade game with a printed backlit screen in 1978, but I can't take screenshots of them so I'm going with this instead.

Right away I spotted a problem with the game: it all takes place on one screen so I can't stitch screenshots together to make a giant image! Also there's no music! You might think that playing with a square ball on a table with no diagonals might be an issue as well, but you don't have to worry about that as the thing bounces all over the place constantly. In fact I accidentally bounced it back down the shooter lane onto the plunger a couple of times. To be fair, I wouldn't have thought an Atari 2600 was up to even the most primitive ball physics, so to get something that halfway resembles pinball running on it isn't bad.

Well, maybe 'halfway' is exaggerating a bit. There's no rails or bumpers, only whirlwinds, and it seems like you've got to get those orange shapes. It does have flippers though, so there's that.

---

GAME 2 of 23: DAVID'S MIDNIGHT MAGIC

Developer:

David Snider

|

Release Date:

1982

|

Systems:

Apple II, Atari 8-Bit (1982), C64 (1983)

---

C64 version

David's Midnight Magic is another game that fits into a single screenshot, except this time it doesn't even fill the screen!

It does actually look like a real pinball table though, with bumpers and diagonal lines, which is a big step up. In fact it looks just like Williams' Black Knight table, the layout anyway. It doesn't look anything like Midnight Magic on the Atari 2600 though, which is an entirely different pinball game, weirdly.

This is clearly a more sophisticated game, it even has two sets of flippers, though the sound's not exactly impressive. The best it can manage is a few beeps and there's no music. Plus there's no LED screen with little animations on it! But the physics seem pretty solid for an 8-bit computer.

---

GAME 3 of 23: PINBALL

Developer:

Nintendo R&D1

|

Release Date:

JP: 1983, NA: 1985, EU: 1986

|

Systems:

NES

---

There you go! There's a proper tall pinball table for you! This is Pinball on the NES, programmed by former president of Nintendo Satoru Iwata.

Shame there's no scrolling, it just flicks between the top and bottom screens when the ball moves between them. It's also a bit of a shame that there's no rails, or LED scoreboard. Way more penguins than those other two games though. Plus it even has actual music... on the title screen.

There's also a bonus stage featuring a pre-Super Mario Bros. Mario, who is apparently trying to rescue Pauline by smashing the floor of her cell with a giant metal ball. It's okay, he's got a bit of girder to protect his head when the ball comes hurtling back down onto him. In fact you've got to race to get him underneath it when it falls as if it slips down the drain then he has to call the whole rescue off and go back to playing pinball.

Saving her apparently gets you bonus points, but I never managed it. Sorry Pauline!

---

GAME 4 of 23: PIN-BOT

Developer:

Rare

|

Release Date:

1990

|

Systems:

NES

---

The next game is Pin-Bot, which is somehow running on the exact same system as Pinball up there. In seven years the Famicom/NES went from basic shapes to replicating an actual real pinball table (Williams' Pin-Bot). Before Rare put 3D graphics on the SNES with Donkey Kong Country they were pulling off things like this.

I haven't played the real Pin-Bot so I can't say how accurate it is, but it seems to have all the same targets, ramps and rails, and the lights are flashing in the way you'd expect. Also there's in-game music and speech. Plus it has one feature I definitely didn't expect to see on the NES: multiball! It's a shame I didn't grab a shot with the balls further apart as I could've showed off the scaling as well, as the ball shrinks as it gets further away to match the perspective of the table.

The game has proper smooth scrolling by the way and features a trick I don't remember ever seeing in a pinball game before: split screen. You can always see the flippers and scoreboard even when the camera's up at the top of the table. It's a bit hard to make sense of what you're looking at maybe, the graphics are kind of busy, but then that's a feature of the original table as well.

I've got to be honest, I wasn't really having much fun playing this, but I was bloody impressed.

---

GAME 5 of 23: DEVIL'S CRUSH / DRAGON'S FURY

Developer:

Compile

|

Release Date:

1990

|

Systems:

TG-16 (1990), MD (1991)

---

TurboGrafx-16 version

Next is TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine game Devil's Crush/Devil's Crash, aka. Dragon's Fury on the Mega Drive/Genesis. Man, devs should just pick a name and stick to it, it would make things so much simpler for me.

We've jumped to the next console generation here and you can tell just by looking at it. They used all their extra colours to make it properly metal. Though it also looks surprisingly tile-based, like a typical console game. Plus instead of traditional pinball targets like ramps and switches, it's covered in little enemies. I never really figured out what exactly I was meant to be doing on this one, besides smashing bits of scenery, but I did discover that there are many teleporters around that take you to bonus stages.

TurboGrafx-16 version

They're all pretty much the same layout, with a launcher on either side of the playfield that fires the ball back out if it falls in, but they contain different enemies that need defeating. In this case there's a row of dragon heads that need smacking.

Mega Drive version

And in this case it's a little more... elaborate. Those ball launchers are still there by the way, it's just this time the ball gets fired out of their eyes.

It seems that there are at least 6 bonus stages, but you there's only one main table. We're in the 90s now and I still haven't reached a game with multiple tables yet.

---

GAME 6 of 23: PINBALL DREAMS

Developer:

Digital Illusions

|

Release Date:

1992

|

Systems:

Lots

---

Amiga version

Finally a game with multiple tables! There's four of them here in fact: Ignition, Beat Box, Nightmare and the one you're looking at here, Steel Wheel... which may be slightly inspired by the Williams' machine Bad Cats. Nightmare's a little similar to Williams' T2 table as well. In fact I think they're all probably based off something.

Pinball Dreams was the first game by Battlefield developer DICE, and it started out on the Amiga before spreading out to systems like the PC, SNES and even the Game Boy. But instead of taking advantage of the hardware to add little monsters walking around or bonus stages, they've gone for as much realism as they could manage.

It feels like proper pinball, not just in how the ball bounces around, but in how the music's continually interrupted by little jingles as you achieve things, and how the digital screen at the top shows scrolling messages. It's a very reactive game compared to its ancestors and that makes a big difference. In fact it's just a pleasant game to experience, with nice looking tables and catchy music. Even the PC game has tracker music instead of midi, and there's multiple tunes for each table. It's just stylish.

Plus they put a pin between the flippers! It's so damn frustrating to watch the ball go sailing through that open gap without you being able to do a damn thing about it, so a pin suits me just fine.

---

GAME 7 of 23: PINBALL FANTASIES

Developer:

Digital Illusions

|

Release Date:

1992

|

Systems:

Lots

---

Amiga AGA Version

I can't believe Digital Illusions released two classic pinball games in the same year. Pinball Fantasies isn't all that different from Dreams (this Party Land table is 12.5% taller than Steel Wheel I suppose) but it feels more advanced somehow. The extra flipper at the top for skill shots and the animated dot matrix scoreboard definitely helps!

This is a step forward, not just an expansion pack of four new tables, and it might be the best pinball game on the Amiga. In fact Amiga Power magazine ranked it as the 6th greatest game on the system in their 1993 Top 100 list.

One magic trick that Digital Illusions were always able to pull off is making their tables very readable and nice to look at, even when they're a colourful mess with a bloody clown face on it. The obnoxious fairground music's good too! I love this table, even though I'm very very bad at it.

---

GAME 8 of 23: TIME CRUISE

Developer:

Sankindo

|

Release Date:

JP: 1991 US: 1992

|

Systems:

TurboGrafx-16

---

The next game is Time Cruise (no relation to Tom Cruise). It's known as Time Cruise II in Japan, because it's actually a sequel... kind of. You see, they never actually released the first game, so the second game is the only game in the series.

You might have already figured out its gimmick from the stitched together image up there: you basically play on seven interlocked tables simultaneously. Seven kind of dull tables. The plus side of this is that you have to lose the ball down the drain a few times before it's finally off the table. The negative side is that if you keep playing you have to keep listening to the music. It's not terrible, but it is relentless, repetitive, and there's no jingles to interrupt it.

Time Cruise also features different bonus games which you access by activating one of the time machines along the top of the table and launching your ball into it. This one is caveman golf, where I have to find the exact amount of power needed to get the ball across the obstacles without overshooting.

It was easy enough until they put a pond under the hole! The bastards. I really don't know what to do about that.

---

GAME 9 of 23: SONIC THE HEDGEHOG: SPINBALL

Developer:

Sega Technical Institute

|

Release Date:

1993

|

Systems:

Mega Drive, Master System, Game Gear, PC

---

I gotta admit, I really wasn't prepared for how big Sonic Spinball's first stage is. I decided I was going to be stubborn enough to map it all out and stitch it together anyway, but then my enthusiasm drained and drained and this is all I got done in the end. In fact I got a bit less than this, but I realised the stage was mostly mirrored and flipped some screenshots to fill in some of the gaps. This picture is a real bloody mess I'm afraid, but you can find a better one on Sonic Retro if you're curious.

If I had a bit more patience I could've probably achieved all the goals in all the rooms, got to the remaining two chaos emeralds, and taken some screenshots of the boss room at the top, but I wasn't really enjoying the game to be honest.

Why didn't I love it? I think the sluggishness didn't help. Plus it wasn't exactly throwing jingles and animations and flashing lights at me to keep me engaged. The menu screen did throw possibly the worst sounding guitar I've ever heard on the Mega Drive at me though. I don't think I'll ever hear anything as bad again, because I feel like it must have destroyed my ability to hear those frequencies. It's a shame because the actual music isn't bad, just the instruments.

Not an actual screenshot. Spinball does not have a character select, sadly.

Also what have they done to Sonic? Somehow he became shorter, shinier, darker and angrier for a bit in between games. Then again he is in a dark sewer here so you'd expect him a bit a bit gloomier. The game apparently has other levels, but you progress through them in sequence so I didn't see anything past these toxic caves.

It's a really unique idea for a game though, and the way you can pull Sonic around a bit in flight gives it a very different feel to the typical pinball game. It's something closer to the pinball sections in the platform games perhaps, even though he's fake dark-blue no-inertia Sonic.

---

GAME 10 of 23: EPIC PINBALL

Developer:

Digital Extremes

|

Release Date:

1993

|

Systems:

PC

---

Epic Pinball is a DOS exclusive game by Digital Extremes, which is entirely different company to Digital Illusions. One went on to make Battlefield, the other went on to make Warframe. Also one was much better at making pinball games.

I'm probably being unfair, I know a lot of people like Epic Pinball and it sold really well, plus the ball physics seem fine, but I've never really enjoyed it. The game is like Pinball Dreams with the charm drained out of it, shorter tables, and no jingles playing when you achieve something. Not that I really achieved much, except for flinging my ball down one of the side lanes.

The full version of the game comes with 13 tables, so I can't accuse it of not having variety. I just don't like any of the tables very much.

I mean look at this! You have to hit the ball down the lane with the red gem in it, without accidentally sending it down the lane blocked by the mine and instantly blowing up.

To be honest, I wasn't having a whole lot of fun here. Though instant death mines are a pinball innovation, I'll give them that. A big empty playfield with nothing but the colour cycling background to look at is fairly unusual as well. It made it a real pain in the ass to stitch screenshots together as one complete table however, as the colours were always wrong!

---

GAME 11 of 23: PINBALL DREAMS 2

Developer:

Spidersoft

|

Release Date:

1994

|

Systems:

DOS

---

The thing I don't get about Pinball Dreams 2, is why it exists. I mean making a sequel to Pinball Dreams was a fantastic idea... and Digital Illusions did that already. It was called Pinball Fantasies. But then Spidersoft, the devs who did the PC ports of Dreams and Fantasies, went and made their own DOS-exclusive two years later (assuming the release date on the internet is correct).

Pinball Fantasies is a different game to Pinball Dreams, a proper successor, while this is more like a stand-alone expansion. That isn't necessarily a bad thing though, as Dreams was pretty decent. Trouble is that it looks like... that.

It's got all the physics of Pinball Dreams (I think) and I don't think the four tables it features are terrible. But the art and music are a clear step down, and the playfield's too vivid so it's hard to see what you're doing. You know you're in for a bad time when the background's as shiny and chrome as the ball is.

---

GAME 12 of 23: ULTIMATE PINBALL QUEST / LIVING BALL

Developer:

Interactivision

|

Release Date:

1994

|

Systems:

Amiga (1994), DOS (1995)

---

DOS version
Ultimate Pinball Quest tried to win me over by starting off with an actual intro, complete with this clever image of a wizard admiring his reflection in his crystal ball. The image then shifted between three women, each with an elemental power... and then it was over. No idea what that was about. The game's got three tables and two modes. The second mode just lets you pick a table, but the first puts you on Wasteland, which is a pretty apt name for the table as it's a real dry and barren place, and it seems to stretch on forever.
DOS version
The goal seems to be to ascend the table, but the higher you go, the more you end up exactly where you came from. All that changes is the number in the pointy green box, at least for the stages I reached. Maybe it gets really interesting up at stage 25, I don't know, but if you glance at the image on the right you'll see a complete absence of bumpers, ramps, rails, or much of anything to break up the monotony. I almost made it to stage 8 before slipping all the way back down to the bottom and turning the thing off out of boredom and despair. It apparently goes all the way up to 99 but I can live without ever seeing it.
Still the DOS version
I did find a Devil's Crush style bonus stage though! Which was rubbish.

It apparently wanted me to hit those four faces on the sides of the screen a few times until they were all defeated, but I could only get three of the sandy bastards. I bounced that ball around the screen for ages but it just didn't want to hit that spot.

Anyway I didn't enjoy this one at all, so I can't recommend it. You'd be better off playing basically anything else.

---

GAME 13 of 23: OBSESSION

Developer:

Unique Development Studios

|

Release Date:

1994

|

Systems:

Atari STE (1994), Amiga (1995)

---

Atari ST^E version

This isn't the prettiest of Obsession's four tables, but it had to be the one I showed off. Because the art is amazing.

Obsession is one of the few Atari ST^E games, and one of the very last of them as well. It's another Pinball Dreams clone like Epic Pinball and it's alright I suppose. The playfield's too vivid and the ball's so heavy I had problems getting it to actually go up the ramps instead of rolling back down, but it works. The ball bounces around like you'd want, the scrolling is smooth. It even has a LED scoreboard!

The game eventually made it to DOS computers as well... kind of. They reworked the art, tweaked the tables, and changed the name to Absolute Pinball. Plus poor X-ile Zone was removed and replaced with a new movie-theme table called The Dream Factory!

---

GAME 14 of 23: PSYCHO PINBALL

Developer:

Codemasters

|

Release Date:

1994

|

Systems:

Mega Drive/Genesis (1994), DOS (1995)

---

DOS version

Man, that ride in the middle looks incredibly unsafe.

Psycho Pinball is perhaps only Codemasters' second pinball game (I can't be bothered to go through every game they made in the 80s and see if it's pinball), but damn it looks good. It also sounds great and it plays.. really well. It's a bit of a shame they never made another one... unless they did. (I can't be bothered to go through every game they made in the 90s either).

The game has four tables, like you'd expect, but this main Psycho table lets you travel to any of the others for a bit by completing challenges and unlocking the tents. It's also a fairground-themed table with a clown on it, just like the best table in Pinball Fantasies, so they're really taking on the reigning champion here. It's 31% taller than Party Land (almost twice the height of Epic Pinball's Super Android), but I don't know if it's also 31% better. It feels decent though; the physics seem to be as good as any of those games.

It actually started out as a Mega Drive game before being ported to PC, and it works just fine on the console. The graphics aren't quite so pretty with the lower colour depth and the music's not so good, but it does have something the PC version doesn't:

Mega Drive/Genesis version

Minigames! Well okay both versions have things like the shell game played on the LED scoreboard, but this is something a bit more elaborate.

Here I have to make it across to the other spaceship by rolling to a safe tile and waiting for the less-safe tiles to collapse and reappear. It's really simple, really really simple, and I totally failed at it.

Overall Psycho Pinball nails it, and it may be the best Pinball Dreams clone not made by Digital Illusions. It has the same reactivity, where everything you do gets rewarded with a little jingle, an animation, and maybe even a voice sample, it's slick, beautiful, and it's a joy to play.

---

GAME 15 of 23: PINBALL ILLUSIONS

Developer:

Digital Illusions

|

Release Date:

1995

|

Systems:

Amiga, CD-32, DOS

---

Amiga version

Super Pinball Fantasies Turbo EX II: M-Ball Edition (or Pinball Illusions for short) was Digital Illusion's third and final pinball game and a lot's changed since Pinball Fantasies. For one thing they've lost a table, on the original Amiga version anyway, leaving it with only three.

The mysteriously lost Vikings table did eventually make an appearance on the DOS port, but the PC game's missing the 'Super Pinball Fantasies' joke at the start so it's a bit of a trade off.

DOS version

The game also has other changes, such as graphics designed for 256 colours from the start, bigger tables, and a more reflective pinball. In fact it has pinballs plural, as the game has multiball! It also has a high res mode so you have a fighting chance to keep track of what's going on while multiple balls are flying around. I don't like using it though, as the zoomed-in view will always be my favourite.

As far as I can tell, the PC and Amiga versions are identical, except for where they put the scoreboard. The DOS version has it at the bottom of the screen instead of the top, possibly just to confuse me. There's a lot going on with the scoreboard this time as it never misses an opportunity to put a new animation up or start up a different bonus mode.

True Pinball (PSX)

The PSX and Saturn versions are a little bit different though. For one thing they're called True Pinball instead, for whatever reason. It's clearly the same game on the same tables though, it's even got the Vikings table. It's just a bit more 3D than it used to be.

The new perspective helps make it more obvious how all the different elements of the table exist in 3D space, but honestly I prefer the old 2D version. I just think it looks better.

Amiga AGA version

Man, I'm the absolute worst at pinball games. Fortunately they've added the option to nudge the table left or right as well as up (though not too much or you get TILT'd).

I don't love Pinball Illusions as much as Pinball Fantasies or Psycho Pinball, as something about it doesn't feel right. For one thing it's become much harder to get to get the ball up the bloody ramps, as it just rolls back down again. Plus they've taken away the pin between the flippers! But visually it's clearly the best of the trilogy, and possibly the best looking game of its kind.

---

GAME 16 of 23: PINBALL WORLD

Developer:

Spidersoft

|

Release Date:

1995

|

Systems:

DOS

---

With Digital Illusions dropping out of the pinball game, Spidersoft didn't have any pinball games to port to DOS anymore. But that was fine as they were making plenty of their own by this point, including Pinball World.

You might be looking at this wondering where the pinball game is and what those boxes at the bottom of the screen are about. Those are there to replace the drain and each has a certain number of extra balls to return into play. Once the number hits zero it's game over... presumably. I didn't have the patience to see what happens if you run out. The game's just not very fun, interesting, good to listen to or nice to look at (though I do like how the G at the end of BOOMERANG lights up the glass tube next to it).

The game has another gimmick and that's that it's made of at least nine connected tables, which you can travel between by opening the exits. It apparently gives you minigames to play between tables, but I never got that far. Fortunately it lets you pick which table to start with from the table select screen, so you can see them all that way. Well, you can try anyway.

The table select screen is another table and it's actually kind of difficult to get the ball flying off at the right angle to hit the button you want. Even if you do there's a chance it's just going to bounce off and hit something else. Hey isn't that the Transport Tycoon box art on the top?

There's something else I've been wondering: how did Spidersoft make so many pinball games and still end up so much worse at it than Digital Illusions. Psycho Pinball is much better than this and that was Codemasters' second try! I can't say this isn't ambitious though.

---

GAME 17 of 23: PINBALL PRELUDE

Developer:

Effigy Software

|

Release Date:

1995

|

Systems:

Amiga (1995), CD-32,DOS (1996)

---

DOS version

I'll say this about Pinball Prelude: I like how the ball actually makes a splash when it falls into the river. Also you can fire the ball into the dino's mouth and have it come out the other end, if you feel like that's a good idea. The game's not without its nice touches and it has a bit of humour and creativity to it. Plus the ball physics seems decent, it has multiball, and that 3D triceratops wasn't so easy to do back in 1995. But man it's not a pretty game to look at. The sound effects aren't great either.

The game features three tables and this is possibly the ugliest of them, but none of them are all that appealing. It doesn't help that there isn't much going on. It doesn't have the reactivity that makes games like Pinball Fantasies so addictive. The scoreboard isn't even animated. Plus there isn't even a scoreboard!

---

GAME 18 of 23: EXTREME PINBALL

Developer:

Digital Extremes

|

Release Date:

1995

|

Systems:

DOS (1995), PSX (1996)

---

Extreme Pinball was Digital Extremes' follow up to Epic Pinball, which makes sense. Epic Pinball was published by Epic, this was made by Digital Extremes.

If you're wondering what looks weird about this screenshot, it's got twice the vertical resolution, so all the pixels are doubled horizontally. The graphics also look a bit stretched when displayed on a modern screen like this, but then that's true of lots of DOS games (except for most of the pinball games I've shown so far).

You've got the typical four tables here and no matter what I played I typically ended up with my ball flying down the side lane to its doom for reasons I'm not entirely sure were my fault. The game's definitely more sophisticated than its predecessor, with its animated LED screen and modes to activate, but it's still just not as good as the Digital Illusions games or Psycho Pinball in my opinion.

---

GAME 19 of 23: FULL TILT! PINBALL

Developer:

Cinematronics

|

Release Date:

1995

|

Systems:

Windows, Mac

---

It's funny going from those earlier pinball games to... this. Full Tilt! Pinball is a definite change from all the Pinball Dreams clones I've been playing, partly because it goes all the way back to a Pin-Bot-style angled perspective, partly because it's so tiny! You could fit five of these tables into one Pinball Illusions table and still have space left over. Though there are only three tables in this one: Dragon's Keep, Skulduggery... and Space Cadet.

Space Cadet ended up becoming much more famous than it's own game as it was added to Windows 95 with the Microsoft Plus! upgrade, and they kept on throwing it into subsequent Windows releases all the way up to Windows XP. The table actually predated the rest of Full Tilt! by two months, though the Plus! version is slightly different as has a cartoon spaceship in the top right instead of that 3D rendered starfighter you can see here.

I didn't hate this one at all, but it feels like playing a real physical mechanical pinball table... from the other side of the room. It's really good at flashing its lights in a pinball-like fashion but they can't have anything written on them as you'd never be able to read it. The game's the opposite of immersive, especially as it never interrupts the music for a jingle to show that it's aware of what you're doing and supports your efforts.

Oh plus you can't redefine the keys properly! You have to pick each key from a list and both left and right shift count as the same button! How did they even make a pinball game without knowing that every pinball game before it uses the shift buttons for the flippers?

---

GAME 20 of 23: PRO PINBALL: THE WEB

Developer:

Empire Interactive

|

Release Date:

1996

|

Systems:

DOS, PSX, Saturn

---

DOS version

Pro Pinball is another series with four tables, but they went and released each as a separate game! Pro Pinball: The Web was the first of them and it's another game that uses the Pin-Bot perspective.

Pinball games had reached a fork in the road here, split between the Pinball Dreams style and the Pin-Bot style. But 2D dropped out of fashion fast in the latter half of the 90s and this is the evolutionary path that pinball games ultimately went down, getting more realistic and more 3D over time. There were still a few top-down 2D games coming out, but their extinction was imminent.

To be honest I prefer the overhead view scrolling games to the 3D ones, partly because I can actually see what's going on at the top of the table in them (and the scrolling makes it look like something's happening!) But I can understand why people might want to see both the ramps and the flippers at once. Plus I can't deny that the physics feel very legit here. It's probably the most realistic simulation so far, underneath all that dithering.

It even has a shiny reflective ball! Look how it's reflecting the green circles underneath it in this shot. So clever.

---

GAME 21 of 23: SLAM TILT

Developer:

Liquid Dezign

|

Release Date:

1996

|

Systems:

Amiga (1996), DOS (1997)

---

Amiga AGA version

What's with all these pinball games called 'Tilt'? That's what you're supposed to avoid doing!

With Digital Illusions done with pinball by this point, publisher 21st Century needed another developer to step into their shoes, and this time they turned to Swedish studio Liquid Dezign. Well I mean they already had Spidersoft making them pinball games, but they weren't exactly on DICE's level.

I wouldn't say that Slam Tilt is on their level either, but it definitely looks a bit more convincing than Pinball Dreams 2. There's definitely lots of animations displayed on that LED scoreboard as you play. That distractingly giant scoreboard. With that thing taking up so much of the screen there's 10% less room for the table compared to the typical DICE game. Though I suppose it has to be big enough to fit the minigames on.

The game has four tables, no big shock there, and they seem fine to me. It comes the closest to matching the Digital Illusions games in look and style, and it's more appealing than something like Extreme Pinball and Obsession, but personally I don't think it quite makes it to Psycho Pinball's league.

---

GAME 22 of 23: PRO PINBALL: TIMESHOCK!

Developer:

Empire Interactive

|

Release Date:

1997

|

Systems:

Win (1997), PSX (1998)

---

I'm going to stop writing about pinball games soon, I promise, but I just had to show that the second Pro Pinball game has a proper overhead view mode! Trouble is that it shows the whole table at once with no scrolling, so it's hard to see anything. In fact it's hard to see anything in general on this table, with the way that everything blends into the playfield background. To be fair, it's easier when you use the standard perspective view and can see it in 3D.

The music's pretty good on this one I thought, plus it still feels very legit, with quality physics and pretty light routines. Overall I'd say Timeshock! is a better game than The Web, even though it still only has the one table though!

One thing this game has over every other pinball game I've played so far is its options. It's got all kinds of things to adjust and it even has tests, just in case you needed to make sure your virtual pinball table hardware is operating right. As simulations go, that's pretty hardcore.

---

GAME 23 of 23: BALLS OF STEEL

Developer:

Wildfire Studios

|

Release Date:

1997

|

Systems:

Win (1997), Mac (2014)

---

Click for full resolution PNG

One last game for you, because I couldn't leave out Balls of Steel!

Balls of Steel is a traditional Pinball Dreams style overhead view pinball game, except at a way higher resolution. There's no pixel art on this table, just a lot of textures borrowed from Duke Nukem 3D. There's also five tables instead of four, and despite the name only one of them has anything to do with Duke Nukem! (There's actually a sixth available, Devil's Island, but it got displaced when the Duke Nukem table was added and was released later as a stand alone game).

The Duke Nukem table's my favourite of them though. It even has the music from Duke Nukem 3D's first level playing! In fact it never stops playing as there's no jingles to interrupt it. They've gone for maybe 85% realism on this one, as this could've been an actual physical table if it wasn't for the enemies appearing. It's certainly more like regular pinball than something like Devil's Crush.

Weirdly this isn't the table that you find in Duke Nukem 3D or the one you get to play on in Duke Nukem Forever, despite them all being called Balls of Steel. They just couldn't think of another funny pinball table name is all.

---

Alright, I've shown off 23 different pinball games, but which of them is the best? Some people would argue that Slam Tilt is the greatest of the Pinball Dreams-style overhead view games. Others claim that everything before Pro Pinball's 3D perspective and realistic physics is too dated to even consider.

Personally, I'm a Pinball Fantasies and Psycho Pinball fan, partly because those are the ones I played as a kid, partly because they're really good! Well, I think they're good anyway. Like I mentioned at the start, I don't actually know a damn thing about pinball and I'm terrible at it.

Oh, here's another thing, seeing as I'll never get another chance to mention it again:

It's an online pinball emulator that only emulates the inner workings of a machine, not the pinball going on above. You can flip the switches manually and watch the animations play on the screen as you rack up points, but there's no pinball bouncing around. It's all about visualising all the data that's going through the machine in a way that would look great on a monitor screen in the background on a sci-fi show. In fact they actually sell images like this on their website so you can frame them and put them on your wall (seriously).

Anyway it's at https://playfield.dev/ if you want to play around with it yourself. This isn't an advert, I'm not getting paid for this, I just like flashing lights.

---

Thanks for reading! I'll be taking a two month break from video games to regenerate my enthusiasm, but Super Adventures will return at some point in June. Probably.

Please leave a comment! If you want to.

If you want to be notified when the next game is up you've got a few options:

• You can add the site to an RSS reader.
  
• You can drop by the friendly Super Adventures Discord.
• You can subscribe to my Twitter feed.
  

Or you could follow me over to Sci-Fi Adventures for a couple of months and read about Star Trek and Babylon 5 and Star Wars and stuff while you wait.