What I’m Playing Right Now – #01

So, I’m not going to be posting updates to the former Twitter. I’ve decided to keep my account open for at least for a couple days so that my followers can see my parting message. I might just keep it open so that the plethora (great word) of indie developers who I’ve already connected with can still reach out to me and so nobody else can claim my handle there. But I’m ceasing updates to it, effective immediately with the link to this post. And it’s not really a politics thing, whether anyone believes it or not. I’ve quit following politics. It’s because social media is worse for you than cigarettes. Hey, I’ve quit smoking already. I quit opiates before that. I’ve been sober for years and years now. I’ve quit every addiction in my life, except that stupid Twitter account, and for what? Because I didn’t want to lose my followers? Actually, I trust the followers who want to read my reviews that they know where to find them, and it’s not on Twitter. The reviews are here, at Indie Gamer Chick, and I ain’t going anywhere. I had good times there, but it’s not like it was all positive. I’ve been wiping tears all day, and I imagine I will for a while to come, but I’ll have no shortage of bad memories to look back on and know that this is what I should have done years ago. I wanted to, but I have over 18,000 followers, and that’s tough to give up. So, why do it?

UPDATE: The Contra Review is up! And I shut down the Twitter. Like pulling off a band-aid. I don’t know why they say that. I don’t remember a band-aid ever hurting. But, I’ve had my legs waxed. That’s a better metaphor. I leg-waxed my Twitter.

A few years back, some person who had, only five minutes earlier, discovered that, yea, epilepsy in gaming is a problem tried to whip-up a mob to cancel me, because this person decided I was an enemy of gaming accessibility. Me. As in the person who has been writing about epilepsy for a long, long time. She was having a tantrum and acting like developers were deliberately hurting people with flashing visuals in their games, which helps not at all. She literally didn’t know what she was even mad about. She didn’t know the science. She didn’t know the history. She didn’t know the particulars. She didn’t have a f*cking clue what she was talking about, and she didn’t care. It was just the latest thing to cross the path of a person who is perpetually raging. If this woman had done more than read half a tweet and a quarter of an article and actually did research, she would have understood that epilepsy is among the most misunderstood medical conditions in the world. When I started Indie Gamer Chick, in my experience, most developers during my early years (2011 – 2013) thought that people with epilepsy just didn’t play games. It made perfect sense to believe that, too. I believed it when I was diagnosed in 2005. My literal first thought was “oh no, I think I just lost video games forever.” Thankfully, it’s not that simple. Medical stuff rarely is. A lot of people think most or all epileptic people are photosensitive. They’re not. Take a random sample of 100 epileptic people and try to guess how many of them will be photosensitive enough to have seizures. Half? Two-thirds? Twenty? Twenty-five? Forty?

Three. Only 3. That’s 30 for every 1,000 people who live with epilepsy.

So, why is it such a common belief? The media, mostly. I’m sure every Nintendo fan has heard of the episode of the Pokemon anime that gave hundreds of kids seizures. Actually, most probably didn’t have tonic–clonic seizures (that’s what they call grand mal seizures now), or seizures at all. That’s because you don’t have to be epileptic to be photosensitive. You, the person reading this, could be photosensitive. Ever get blurred vision from a flashing light that lasts longer than it takes for your eyes to normally focus? How about a headache? Ever get a headache from a strobe light? Even a little one? YOU’RE PHOTOSENSITIVE. Welcome to the club. It’s a big club, too. The things that can give ME a seizure can give a SIGNIFICANTLY greater portion of the population what were the most widely reported effects of that Pokemon episode. Headaches. Dizziness. Nausea. Loss of balance. Confusion. Blurred vision.

There’s also a lot of myths about “triggers.” It’s best to think of it as a range. Even in the days where I wasn’t taking care of myself and seizures were more common, I had moments where I accidentally saw a strobe in full view and didn’t have a seizure or feel any consequence at all. But, there’s the time that it’s suspected I had a seizure from looking at a lamp, looking away from it, then looking back at it. Isn’t that scary? But that’s not an anomaly. That’s how it works. The scariest part by far of having epilepsy is how unpredictable it is. There’s no on-off switch that’s activated by something specific. It’s a scale, and an epileptic person only knows a moderately certain range. If you’re lucky (or maybe it’s unlucky, given the circumstances) you might get a feel for when you’re more sensitive than normal. I’ve had intuitions like that before, but really, it’s just a range where you don’t know where you’re at on any given day. It’s like the Range Game from Price is Right, only I play it with a strobe light and instead of winning a new refrigerator, I have a seizure.

“Ms. Vice is so excited to have won that she’s shaking. Hey, wait a second.. uh, medics?!”

That’s epilepsy. A series of dice rolls where you only get a vague set of rules. I don’t have “photosensitive epilepsy.” I have epilepsy AND I have photosensitivity which can result in a seizure. And I don’t even always have a seizure if the trigger “hits.” All those symptoms I listed above are far more likely to happen than a seizure. In fact, these days I rarely have seizures at all. I had a LOT when I started IGC. As many as one every three to four days. But, that was because I wasn’t taking care of myself. I felt sorry for myself, so I took drugs, but not the drugs I should have been taking. Robin Williams had a joke where he said a doctor told him “Robin, if you keep taking drugs, you’ll die” then later in life it became “Robin, take these drugs or you’ll die!” That’s my life these days. The “fun” drugs are out and the good ones are in, and seizures are very rare. In 2024, I’ve had two verified seizures and two suspected ones. So the betting favorite isn’t “death by seizure” anymore (who am I kidding? Overdosing was the favorite!) I think “crushed by a pinball table following a fit of rage” is the new favorite. Sh*t, I’ll take $10 on that.

So photosensitivity is a lot more complicated than people might think. Hell, you’re probably thinking of strobes only, aren’t you? While that is the most common trigger, it doesn’t even get you two-thirds the way there. What if I told you repetitive patterns can trigger some people? Shifting colors can too. And, by the way, there’s no such thing as “epilepsy safe.” Neither epilepsy nor photosensitivity work that way. Game developers need to discontinue using medical language in their option menus. You’re not a doctor, and calling your well-meaning toggle “epilepsy mode” or “photosensitive mode” implies safe for epilepsy. It’s just not, no matter how many things you change, because there’s no safety from it. Gaming will always be a risk for me and people like me. I’ve decided that it’s an acceptable risk, but make no mistake: it could kill me. That’s not off the table and WILL NEVER be off the table, so the best I can do is build a very big table for myself. What you’re doing might be “safer” but you don’t know who’s playing your game, their medical history, or their triggers. I prefer the term “effects intensity” for those toggles. It’s not medical jargon, so it implies no safety. Also, most photosensitivity goes undiagnosed, but “effects intensity” is neutral to that and invites more people. By the way, I’ve been doing this for over 13 years, and I’ve never met a single developer who was anything short of horrified to learn their game might be potentially dangerous for me to play. They’re not idiots or willfully ignorant. Our culture has led many people to believe that people like me don’t play games at all or can’t play games at all. It’s a stigma that makes logical sense if you only know this stuff from watching TV. People like Karen.

So, Karen, like, chill the f*ck out. People aren’t born smart to everything. Stuff gets stigmatized, and medical stigmas are not overcome by screaming at people. This is a complicated topic that the adults are handling. I love video games, so I’ve participated in this topic. This woman was “outraged” (really faking outrage) because I actually do not care if I ultimately can’t play a game because of my condition. A condition she hadn’t thought twice about in her entire miserable life, but one that I once genuinely believed would likely kill me someday. Not from a “trigger.” I have epilepsy. Seizures JUST HAPPEN, no trigger needed. I’ll be minding my own business when ZAP and then I wake up with no memory of what the f*ck happened, feel like I’ve pulled muscles all through my body, and glance around the room to see worried faces and people asking “are you okay?” That’s what it’s like. The most common question I get is “do they hurt?” I dunno. I don’t remember any of them. Some people say they’re alert during their seizures and remember everything. For me, it’s like it happens to someone else, and even if I’m up and at ’em an hour or two later, that doesn’t mean I’m all there. That could take a while. Maybe 12 hours before my short term memory is working again. The most common side effects are severe body aches, usually a headache, and my body’s internal clock is well off track. “It’s not 3am Saturday! It’s only 1pm Friday!” is what it’s genuinely like. It’s not hard for me to imagine that at least one of those people who think they’re abducted by aliens and cite the lost time as their proof might actually have epilepsy and not know it. It’s a heartbreaking thing to think about, but I figure it has to be true for at least one of them.

With the photosensitivity, I just really have to take caution with games. This is the part where I say “this is not medical advice. If you have photosensitivity, talk to your doctor. What works for me WORKS FOR ME.” The big two precautions are distance from the screen and lighting in the room. Gaming in the dark is not an option. ANY use of televisions in a room with the lights turned off isn’t. I don’t even get in cars at night if I can help it. Any pinball fan knows that the best pinball is played with the lighting turned down and the table lights turned up. I can’t do it. It’s super dangerous. The risks I take with gaming are calculated risks. Trust me, I have the capability to be stupid. We went to Disneyland recently and I opened my eyes on Space Mountain. I snuck away from my family and rode an indoor, flashy rollercoaster with the intent of keeping my eyes shut the whole time like it was the Ark of the Covenant from Raiders of the Lost Ark. But, I just wanted just a f’n glimpse of what had once been my favorite Disney ride. A glimpse I hadn’t seen in almost 20 years, and now that I’m sober, properly medicated, and mostly seizure-free, it was too tempting to resist. They’d updated the effects since I’d last seen them! So, I opened my eyes for a few seconds and ended up with a ripper of a headache that almost ruined the day for everyone, especially since they knew what I’d done and that I was messed up. Stupid and childish, and I’ll never do anything like it again. It doesn’t affect my gaming as much as you’d think. I’ve had ONE instance in the last few years where I was like “HOLY HELL” with a strobe light. Of all the things, it was the Jetsons NES game that had my family asking “what the hell is wrong with you?” until they realized I honestly didn’t know it was coming. The entire last boss and the aftermath have strobe lights going non-stop. EPILEPSY WARNING FOR THIS VIDEO.

That’s an extreme outlier. There was a single boss in the game Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon that went overboard on the strobe lights. The Pinball Arcade version of the pinball machine Sorcerer got me TWICE. And, that’s really all I can remember from games I actually played since 2019, which is around the time my epilepsy became “manageable” thanks to me growing the f*ck up and acting like I actually cared about my health. I let my friends and family make final decisions on what is and isn’t safe and I respect their decision as final and absolute. If they veto a game, that’s it. I don’t play it. The most recent was the NES Zapper game Gumshoe. We bought a relatively expensive light gun so I could do some light gun game reviews, but Gumshoe was vetoed because of how much shooting is involved: constant, non-stop shooting. That’s a problem because of the bright, white, screen-wide pulse the technology of the NES Zapper causes. I think the world can live without my Gumshoe opinion. But, that really is the extent of my recent epilepsy in gaming experience. What does any of this have to do with the Karen mentioned above? I don’t need to play any one specific game. I can play so many other games. In my experience, even the biggest advocates for the epilepsy options will say “if the game can’t work without the flashing lights, then people with epilepsy have other options for games they can play. Make the game you want to make. It’s YOUR game, not ours.” By the way, that’s a hypothetical situation that I have LITERALLY NEVER HEARD OF ACTUALLY HAPPENING, but just saying it lets the developers know that, hey, we respect your vision as a creator.

This was taken by someone at a conference on accessibility given by my friend Ian Hamilton, one of the world’s foremost experts on game accessibility. This was LONG before the scary lady read half a tweet and was suddenly down with fixing epilepsy. There’s a LOT of epileptic gamers out there, and the greatest honor of my entire life is doing my small part to make gaming truly for everyone. Having my parents, who I gave many sleepless nights to in my youth, tell me they’re proud of me, when I had really not given them a lot to be proud of.. let’s just say, I’m biting my lip right now or else I’d burst into tears.

And that’s what she was raging about. That sentiment above was insufficient for Karen, who didn’t even know there was any problem at all just minutes earlier. She was literally looking at my followers list and directly demanding the ones with the most followers publicly denounce me and join the mob against me. Do you know how many of those big names said anything to the effect of “wait, you’re mad at Indie Gamer Chick over an epilepsy thing? Are you f*cking kidding me?” None. They were too scared they would become the next target of this monster, who was known for turning on people on a dime. I got a lot of private well wishes from people she tagged demanding to cancel me, including some pretty big names in gaming, some who acknowledged they were scared to be targeted, but no big names had the courage to defend me against a woman who clearly didn’t who didn’t give two sh*ts about epilepsy. Her timeline was a series of big bullsh*t fake outrage of the day, and she had enough followers to make someone feel her wrath. That just happened to be the day her big bullsh*t fake outrage of the day was epilepsy, because she had just found out about it.

Do you know what *I* found out that day? I found out that I didn’t really have as many friends as I thought I had. To be clear, a lot of people did come to my defense. Friends did. Total strangers did. One of them didn’t even follow me, but they knew me as a person associated with epilepsy awareness in gaming. That meant a lot to me, and I’m not trying to say that those who did stand up for me meant nothing. It meant EVERYTHING that day. I found out who truly cared. But so many others were sending their well wishes instead of saying “you’re wrong” to this woman while I was puking my guts out, sick to my stomach that I was being attacked for not being supportive enough of something I poured my life into supporting.

That’s not why I’m leaving Twitter, obviously. It happened a long time ago. I blocked Karen. I find that it’s better for your blood pressure to block people who attempt to cancel you because they’re furious you got to a good cause before them. Let’s be real: that’s what she was REALLY mad about. What a f*cking child. But, now, I can’t block her. Twitter, or X or whatever it’s called, is doing away with blocking. People can still see what you’re doing now. It’d be like a judge saying “here’s your restraining order, but your ex can still stare creepily through your window and make throat-slashing gestures.” I don’t take blocking lightly. I recently blocked someone after many, many months of him being just plain annoying, and the final straw was he preemptively raged against a developer about how artwork better not be AI generated. No basis for it at all. Just a kid puffing up his chest and putting a developer on the spot, based on nothing. It wasn’t AI art. He could have asked “is this AI art?” instead of figuratively shaking his fist like some kind of big shot. That was not the only instance of preemptive outrage over an imagined slight towards a studio or developer from this individual, either. I don’t want this person seeing my timeline, because they didn’t use it respectfully. I don’t have that option anymore. But, I do have the option to leave.

One of the reasons I’ve stayed is because I didn’t want anyone taking my Twitter handle. I’ve had issues with people either claiming to work with me or collaborate with me to score review codes. I had a whole group of people try to score free copies of a major indie game by saying they worked with me, when they didn’t. I have the emails between the owner and the developer. The developer, by the way, who respected me so much that he put my f’n mascot, Sweetie, in his game. Of all the people to try to pass off a working relationship that doesn’t exist, you did it to a developer who essentially put me in their game? Wow. When I confronted the owner who sent the email to the dev (which I have) he told me I was wasting time he could be using to promote indies. The owner of that group later told one of the few male content creators he had (he mostly recruited women) that he would spit on me if he could. The guy he told that to quit because, yea, that’s major league f*cked and this person actually had integrity. The audacity of saying you would spit on someone whose clout he was trying to use to score games FOR HIM AND HIS PEOPLE. Good f*cking god. By the way, only two people out of close to twenty, if not more, quit over this.

A lot of the people who worked for this group acknowledged it, verified it, and stuck with them to keep the review copy gravy train going. I never called them out in public because I’d already tried that, and I was told I was wrong for it. Even though it was obvious what they were doing, apparently I came across like I was insufficiently grateful for my position of being a semi-popular game critic. To understand what happened, imagine the audacity it would take to make a group called “Indie Game Nation” so your content creators can call themselves “IGN” or say “you’re with IGN.” Well, I’m not IGN big, so I, a small content creator when you get down to it, was fair game. This group even recruited a content creator who had “Chick” in the name and a round yellow mascot. She probably doesn’t even know about this. I tried telling her, but never got a reply. And that almost by itself kept me at Twitter. After 30 days, your handle becomes available for someone else. I could post a million billion things here at this blog saying “that’s not me anymore” but developers would probably still send codes to the person who got my handle. That whole episode messed me up. It feels so awful to have someone who doesn’t respect you get caught trying to use your name to get games for themselves, but then to brag to someone on your team “I will spit on her, any day, any time” (that’s an exact quote, I have the transcript) is such a nasty, hateful thing. To get caught trying to get codes using my name THEN say you would spit on me if you could? Yea, this guy is totally down with female empowerment. I was sick to my stomach over that whole thing, and that kept me around longer than I wanted.

Not that I have the market cornered on yellow round mascots. She’s basically a smiley with a bow at this point, but dammit, she’s MY smiley with a bow. Thanks Scott for all the Sweeties over the years.

By the way, the good times outnumbered the bad, easily. My followers were always up for donating to charities like the Epilepsy Foundation and Direct Relief. They helped me to discover so many games I never would have found without them, and I hope I did the same for them. I went through a time where I was handing out more games than I was playing. All I wanted was for people to spread the word of the games. Even that had a lot of negativity, so much that I had to quit doing it for my own sanity. People tried to use duplicate accounts to grab double the copies. People didn’t do the work. Some people agreed to the terms, then thought I was being unreasonable to say “can you just play for like twenty minutes and show it off to people? That’s sort of the point of this whole thing.” But, last Halloween, I did it one last time, and there was no drama. It went great. I wish I had quit THAT NIGHT, going out on one of the happiest days of my adult life. Not even a special night, but just a night where it was like “yea, this is what gaming should be.” And hey, I made a lot of friends along the way. I met my best friend through Twitter. I met most of my friends through it. One of my closest friends had a little girl going to kindergarten when I started IGC, and now she’s started college. What? “Where did the time go?” I’ve been around long enough that I’ve fallen out of touch with more friends than I can keep up with. I’ve even had friends who’ve since died. People drift apart. That’s life. This feels like it’s just a larger scale drifting apart.

From a personal point of view, the biggest thrills were always when the people who made the games I played growing up were telling people to read my reviews. I wish everyone could know what that feels like. I wish I could go back in time and tell the little girl who didn’t have a lot of friends that, some day not far from now, the people who made this game you’re playing will be your friends. I wouldn’t have believed it. But, sure enough, even that became a downer. On January 7, 2023. Ed Boon, the mastermind behind Mortal Kombat, told people that he thought my review of Nintendo’s coin-op Popeye was good. “Nice work @IndieGamerChick”

That’s the guy who created Mortal god damned Kombat telling people he liked MY work. That’s not supposed to happen. I do game reviews with lame jokes. You have no idea what that meant to me, and that came during a rough time for me. But, almost none of the replies in that endorsement were about my review. It was almost entirely people demanding he announce the next Mortal Kombat right f*cking now. Still a career highlight, but it’s also like how I imagine everyone who won an Oscar after Chris Rock got smacked by Will Smith felt. It’s not the same, but man, I felt like a complete piece of sh*t reading that thread. And, I probably shouldn’t have, because damn, that was a great day at this blog. But, I have feelings, like anyone else. So, no, it’s not a politics thing. It’s a “what am I even doing here?” thing. Years ago, it wasn’t rare for me to get a few hundred clicks off Twitter from links I’d post throughout the week. Even though the Ed Boon thing was soured, I got over 900 clicks through Twitter that day alone. But, these days, I only get maybe a dozen clicks a day off Twitter on a day that a new review goes up, if I’m lucky. Engagement is way down. And yet, my blog has never been more popular. My reviews have been finding an audience without Twitter. I’ll miss interacting with followers, but it’s time.

Why not jump to another social media? Bluesky or whatever? I think I just want to play games with my family. I wasn’t joking earlier about social media being an addiction. It totally is, at least for me. It’s my last addiction, and I’m ready to drop it. I’m on the patch for it and everything! To everyone who followed me there over the years, thank you! I’m sad, but I’m also excited. God knows my family has been wanting me to do this for years. I’ll miss you, but it doesn’t have to be goodbye. On the sidebar you can put down your email to get updates of my posts. I don’t think there’s spam associated with it. It’s just an email alert of when a new review or feature is up. I’ll miss Twitter, but my reviews are here, at Indie Gamer Chick, and I’m not quitting. (cracks knuckles) I’m just getting started.

SO, WHAT AM I PLAYING?

Is that building puckering up to kiss me?

Some fun reviews coming to IGC. Contra is coming later today. I need some comfort food, and there’s no better comfort food than one of the greatest NES games of all-time. I discovered that autofire and a spread gun make that game almost trivial. At least one new Pinball FX review is dropping this weekend. Speaking of pinball, you might want to take a look at this pool of games, because it might matter in the coming weeks.

• Video Pinball (Atari 2600)
• Pinball (Intellivision)
• Sega Flipper (Sega SG-1000)
• Rollerball (MSX)
• Pinball (NES)
• Pinbo (Arcade)
• Pinball Action (Arcade)
• Midnight Magic (Atari 2600)
• Time Scanner (Arcade)
• Super Pinball (Famicom)
• Alien Crush (TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine)
• Rollerball (NES)
• Casino Games (Sega Master System)
• Family Pinball (aka Rock ‘n Ball, Famicom/NES)
• Revenge of the ‘Gator (Game Boy)
• Hero Shūgō!! Pinball Party (Game Boy)
• Pin⋅Bot (NES)
• Dino Land (Sega Genesis)
• Devil’s Crush (TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine)
• High Speed (NES)
• Dragon’s Fury (Sega Genesis) Devil’s Crush Re-Release
• Time Cruise (TurboGrafx-16)
• Pinball Jam (Atari Lynx)
• Virtual Pinball (Sega Genesis)
• Dragon’s Revenge (Sega Genesis)
• Super Pinball: Behind the Mask (Super NES)
• Sonic Spinball (Sega Genesis)
• Kirby’s Pinball Land (Game Boy)
• Crüe Ball (Sega Genesis)
• Psycho Pinball (Sega Mega Drive)
• Pinball Dreams (Super NES)
• Pinball Fantasies (Super NES)
• Super Pinball II: The Amazing Odyssey (Super Famicom)
• Galactic Pinball (Virtual Boy)
• Getaway: High Speed II (Super Game Boy)
• Pokémon Pinball (Game Boy Color)
• Little Mermaid II: Pinball Frenzy (Game Boy Color)
• 3D Ultra Pinball – Thrillride (Game Boy Color)
• Microsoft Pinball Arcade (Game Boy Color)
• Muppet Pinball Mayhem (Game Boy Advance)
• Pinball Advance (Game Boy Advance)
• The Pinball of the Dead (Game Boy Advance)
• Pinball Tycoon (Game Boy Advance)
• Sonic Pinball Party (Game Boy Advance)
• Pokémon Pinball: Ruby & Sapphire (Game Boy Advance)
• Pac-Man Pinball Advance (Game Boy Advance)

I don’t know what I’ll be doing with that list, but I’ve started knocking those games out already. So, I’ll leave you with this, my brand spanking new review of Video Pinball for the Atari 2600, which will be part of whatever feature this ends up being. I’m going to use “What Am I Playing” to post a lot of content from projects that went unfinished. I love you all! Thank you for 13 awesome years on Twitter. This isn’t goodbye. It’s “let’s stay at home for dinner today.”

Video Pinball
aka Arcade Pinball (Sears Label)
Platform: Atari 2600
Released in 1980
Designed by Bob Smith
Developed by Atari

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Video Pinball is probably one of the most famous video pinball games ever. That’s particularly weird because it never actually feels like pinball. The ball is practically made of Flubber with how much it bounces around. It’s actually not out of the question that you could end up going several minutes without having to touch the flippers or nudge. Not seconds. Minutes! We used a stopwatch and everything! In a game where we never once activated the flippers, one ball lasted 1 minute, 7 seconds AND it returned to the plunger instead of draining. The total time was 3 minutes, 4 seconds, without ever once hitting a flipper, and that included three total returns to the plunger. Designer Bob Smith apparently took inspiration from Atari’s own Superman table. Atari tables were notorious for breaking down, so kudos to Mr. Smith because my PC didn’t catch fire playing this (like Atari pins really did do). But, come on. Including this game is a little tongue in cheek. The control you have over the ball is minimum. None of us found the nudge effective except in very limited circumstances where the ball was bouncing slow enough but in a sharp-enough angle that a tiny nudge pushed in down one of the scoring lanes. The biggest misnomer of pinball is that it’s random chaos. Video Pinball for Atari is random chaos.

With the difficulty toggled, it opens what I assume are double outlanes.

Can You Trap? No. If you attempt to, at best, the ball just reverses direction and bounces until it hits the staircase that represents the slings. Can You Pass? No. You can’t even really aim the ball all that well. Pinball is a precise ball sport. This is just batting a ball back into play and hoping for the best. The world’s greatest snooker players couldn’t calculate the amount of trajectory that goes into “shots” in video pinball. I’m not even sure it’s charming in the way video pinball can be. My family firmly disagreed. Oscar said “all things considered, there’s dynamic scoring with the drop targets raising the bumper value. There’s ‘lights’ in the Atari lane that grant bonuses.” Even 9 year old Sasha found herself defending it. “The plunger is easy to use and has adjustable strengths. You can aim the first shot!” Mind you, defending or not, none of us gave this a YES! It’s like a novelty toy more than pinball, and it wasn’t until after the review that I told my family I only had us start with this to see if they were going to hand out YES! votes like candy to trick or treaters.
Verdicts: Cathy – NO! Angela – NO! Oscar – NO! Sasha – NO!