Classic Pinball Video Games from 1979 to 2009: The Definitive Review – 130 Full Reviews and Rankings of Pinball Video Games for over 40 Different Platforms

I never really cared for video pinball growing up. I grew up with real tables, and I couldn’t adjust to less than perfect physics. But, now that I’m into gaming history, I’m kinda curious what was the best video pinball game to release between 1979 and 2009. Plus, I get asked more about classic video pinball games more than any others. So, let’s do it! This was a project that took me five months and hundreds and hundreds of hours of playing, writing, replaying, and rewriting, and I really do hope everyone enjoys it. If you do and you have some disposable money, I don’t want it. I want you to send it to one of my three favorite charities: The Epilepsy Foundation, Direct Relief, or just donate cash to your closest food bank, which my American readers can find using the tool provided at Feeding America.

There’s literally hundreds of video pinball games so I couldn’t do ALL of them. I opted not to do any Breakout-like paddle games labeled pinball. Why are they labeled that? Because in Japan, “pinball” is sometimes used as a shorthand for the brick breaker genre. In the late 70s and early 80s, there seems to have been an effort globally to make the name stick for the genre as a whole. It didn’t take, obviously, as despite the name, I wouldn’t consider Commodore 64’s Pinball Spectacular to be a pinball game. Would you?

Otherwise, I think I got pretty much every video pinball game I’ve ever had a review request for, along with many, many more I’ve never heard of. I intended to do twenty or thirty games. I ended up doing 130, of which I ranked 125 at the conclusion of this feature and abstained from five. So, to celebrate my 37th birthday and my site’s 15th birthday, here’s every video pinball game I could get my hands on…. and get working. Originally this was going to have indie games like Demon’s Tilt in it, but I’m going to post those separately in the near future. I do need a break from video pinball first.

HOW I RANKED ALL THESE

I claim no objectivity in my rankings. I claim no expertise. I’m not looking for technical merits or table count. I’m simply looking to have fun. With that in mind, I thought ranking these games would be fun. HAH! Yeah, it turns out the final fifty or so spots were really hard to put in order. The scenario I used is that I have a gun to my head and I’m about to be marooned on a desert island. I’m given a choice of two games, and I will only have that game for the rest of my life on my little desert island. By doing that with every game, a consistent ranking revealed itself, with a lot of games changing from my off-the-cuff vibes of where they would be ranked. Fans of some games will be pleased. Others will be furious, but the rankings represent only the order *I* would choose these games if I was given one and only one game to play for the rest of my life.

With one exception, but hey, it’s my list.

 WHAT’S HERE…….AND WHAT’S MISSING

The most glaring omission and one I’m sure my readers will note is that this feature is woefully short on Windows and Mac games. I agree. The problem is that a lot of Windows 95/98 games don’t run great on modern computers. Which ones? I don’t know, but like with Full Tilt! Pinball, the effort I had to go to for a single review would normally not be worth it. A few games that had both up and down and left and right scrolling made me motion sick so I passed on them. There’s also a lot of random DOS games I missed, and a few games just plain didn’t work. In time, I will try to get to all the stuff I missed. I only did Full Tilt! because it has Space Cadet and that’s the most played video pinball table of all-time. This will NOT be my final look at Classic Pinball Video Games and some day, I swear, I will get the stuff I missed.

But, I got almost every console and handheld game I could find from 1979 to 2009. I decided not to do LCDs, but you can check out my review of Game & Watch Pinball in my Game & Watch Gallery feature. The only arcade games not included are a few, ahem, adult-oriented ROM hacks of Super Pinball Action. If they were mostly original playfields, I would have done them too. I would also like to note that this feature includes my first ever reviews for many platforms including my first reviews of games for Vectrex, Sharp X68000, Commodore Amiga (including Amiga CD32), Phillips CD-i, 3DO, Sega Saturn, Sega Dreamcast and PlayStation 2. I focus on console games at IGC and so I gave them priority, but platforms like Amiga that hosted some of the greatest video pins ever I had to include. Here’s the lineup for this feature!

Update: To ease the loading issues, I will post all the reviews separately or in groups, but it might take me a while to finish this. I’ve started the process, and you can click each to go to their own review page.

• Video Pinball (Arcade)
• Solar War (Arcade – Unreleased)
• Thunderball! (Magnavox Odyssey²)
• Raster Blaster (Apple II, Atari 8-Bit)
• Video Pinball (Atari 2600)
• David’s Midnight Magic (Apple II, Commodore 64)
• David’s Midnight Magic (Atari 8-Bit)
• Night Mission (Apple II)
• Pinball Construction Set (Apple II)
• Bumper Bash (Atari 2600)
• Queen of Hearts (Apple II)
• Spinball (Vectrex)
• Pinball (Intellivision)
• Sega Flipper (Sega SG-1000)
• Rollerball (MSX)
• Slamball (Commodore 64)
• Vs. Pinball (Arcade)
• Pinball (NES)
• Pinbo (Arcade)
• Pinball Action (Arcade)
• Midnight Magic (Atari 2600)
• Panic Road (Arcade)
• Speed Ball (Arcade)
• Music Ball (Arcade – Unreleased)
• Time Scanner (Arcade)
• Fire Ball (MSX2)
• Moon Ball Magic (Famicom Disk System)
• Super Pinball (Famicom)
• Alien Crush (TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine)
• Rollerball (NES)
• Advanced Pinball Simulator (Commodore 64)
• Power Pinball (Amstrad CPC)
• Time Scanner (Amiga)
• Family Pinball (aka Rock ‘n Ball, Famicom/NES)
• Casino Games (Sega Master System)
• Revenge of the ‘Gator (Game Boy)
• Pinball Quest (NES)
• Hero Shūgō!! Pinball Party (Game Boy)
• Pin⋅Bot (NES)
• Devil’s Crush (TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine)
• Pinball Pinball (Sharp X68000)
• Lucy Shot (Sharp X68000)
• Pinball (CD-i)
• Super Pinball Action (Arcade)
• Dino Land (Sega Genesis)
• High Speed (NES)
• Dragon’s Fury (Sega Genesis)
• Mechanicus (Commodore 64)
• Time Cruise (TurboGrafx-16)
• Pinball Dreams (Amiga)
• Pinball Jam (Atari Lynx)
• Crüe Ball (Sega Genesis)
• Jaki Crush (Super Famicom)
• Pinball Fantasies (Amiga CD32)
• Virtual Pinball (Sega Genesis)
• Epic Pinball (MS-DOS)
• Dragon’s Revenge (Sega Genesis)
• Sonic Spinball (Sega Genesis)
• Kirby’s Pinball Land (Game Boy)
• Royal Flush (MS-DOS)
• Super Pinball: Behind the Mask (Super NES)
• Real Pinball (3DO)
• Pinball Dreams (Super NES)
• Sonic Spinball (Sega Game Gear & Master System)
• Wizard Pinball (Sega Game Gear)
• Grand Cross (Arcade)
• PaTaank! (3DO)
• Battle Pinball (3DO)
• Psycho Pinball (Sega Mega Drive)
• Pinball Dreams (Sega Game Gear)
• Pinball Illusions (Amiga CD32)
• Thomas: The Tank Engine & Friends Pinball (Amiga)
• Pinball Mania (Amiga)
• Battle Pinball (Super Famicom)
• Super Pinball II: The Amazing Odyssey (Super Famicom)
• Kyūtenkai: Fantastic Pinball (PlayStation/Sega Saturn)
• Obsession (Amiga)
• Galactic Pinball (Virtual Boy)
• Space Pinball (Virtual Boy – Unreleased)
• Full Tilt! Pinball (Windows)
• Getaway: High Speed II (Super Game Boy)
• Ruiner Pinball (Atari Jaguar)
• Pinball Hazard (Amiga)
• Pinball Prelude (Amiga CD32)
• Slam Tilt (Amiga)
• Extreme Pinball (PlayStation)
• True Pinball (PlayStation/Sega Saturn)
• Pinball Graffiti (Sega Saturn)
• Pro Pinball: The Web (PlayStation)
• Power Rangers Zeo: Full Tilt Battle Pinball (PlayStation)
• Digital Pinball: Necronomicon (Sega Saturn)
• Hyper 3D Pinball (PlayStation/Sega Saturn) aka Tilt!
• Digital Pinball: Last Gladiators Version. 9.7 (Sega Saturn)
• Dragon Beat: Legend of Pinball (PlayStation)
• Pro Pinball: Timeshock! (PlayStation)
• ParanoiaScape (PlayStation)
• Hollywood Pinball (Game Boy Color)
• Pokémon Pinball (Game Boy Color)
• Power Pinball (PlayStation) aka Golden Logres
• Neo Golden Logres (Dreamcast)
• The Pinball (PlayStation) aka Simple 1500 Series Vol. 11: The Pinball
• Worms Pinball (PlayStation)
• Pro Pinball: Big Race USA (PlayStation)
• Pinball (PlayStation 2) aka Play It! Pinball
• Little Mermaid II: Pinball Frenzy (Game Boy Color)
• Pro Pinball: Fantastic Journey (PlayStation)
• 3D Ultra Pinball – Thrillride (Game Boy Color)
• Super Robot Pinball (Game Boy Color)
• KISS Pinball (PlayStation)
• Microsoft Pinball Arcade (Game Boy Color)
• Akira: Psycho Ball (PlayStation 2)
• Elemental Pinball (PlayStation)
• Muppet Pinball Mayhem (Gahttps://indiegamerchick.com/2026/07/18/ps1-pinball/me Boy Advance)
• The Pinball of the Dead (Game Boy Advance)
• Pinball Advance (Game Boy Advance)
• Austin Powers Pinball (PlayStation)
• Pinball Tycoon (Game Boy Advance)
• Patriotic Pinball (PlayStation)
• Pinball Fun (PlayStation 2)
• Sonic Pinball Party (Game Boy Advance)
• Pokémon Pinball: Ruby & Sapphire (Game Boy Advance)
• Flipnic: Ultimate Pinball (PlayStation 2)
• Mario Pinball Land (Game Boy Advance) aka Super Mario Ball
• Pac-Man Pinball Advance (Game Boy Advance)
• Pinball (PlayStation Portable)
• Metroid Prime Pinball (Nintendo DS)
• Ottifanten Pinball (Game Boy Advance)
• Odama (Nintendo GameCube)
• Powershot Pinball (PlayStation 2)
• Alien Crush Returns (WiiWare)

And there’s several more bonus reviews and glimpses of some of the games I cut (and explanations why) after the feature. Let’s get on with it!

GAME REVIEWS

For those not familiar with my way of thinking of how retro games should be reviewed, I take NO historical context into account. I don’t care how important a game was to the industry, because that doesn’t make a game worth playing today. The test of time is the cruelest test of all, but every video game must face it. I might not be here if not for Pong’s success, but I wouldn’t want to play it today. Not when there’s better options. Therefore, when I review retro games, every game gets either a YES! or a NO!

YES! means the game is still fun and has actual gameplay value when played today and is worth seeking out.

NO! means the game didn’t age gracefully and is not worth seeking out, and certainly not worth spending money on.

Release Status Disclaimer: “NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED” doesn’t include reprints of a game for the original platforms it was available on. It means it wasn’t released for any subsequent generations. For example: a game reprinted as a Nintendo’s Player’s Choice title would not count towards a re-release. If it was remade for future generations, that’s not the same thing, either. “NO MODERN RELEASE” means it’s currently not sold on current gaming platforms or included in subscriptions (such as Nintendo Switch Online’s classic libraries).

IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

Video Pinball
Platform: Arcade
Released February, 1979
Designed by Ed Logg, Dave Stubben, and Dan Pliskin
Developed by Atari
Requires Overlay to Play Properly
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Behold the first* video pinball game ever made: Video Pinball! After playing it, I honestly think this is one of the biggest snubs from my friends at Digital Eclipse in the Atari 50 lineup. An especially insulting snub given that the atrocious Atari 2600 “port” of this game (really no relation at all) made the cut, along with the putrid Ruiner Pinball for the Atari Jaguar, a game so poorly made that I would actually take Video Pinball 2600 over it. Having finally played the coin-op Video Pinball, I’m very frustrated Digital Eclipse did snub it, because not only is it the first of its kind in a moderately famous genre of video games and thus should automatically be in a collection that champions the history of Atari and the game industry, but Video Pinball is actually a very good video game.

*Yeah, there’s a 1977 dedicated console called Video Pinball, also by Atari, but it’s more like Breakout where you raise a paddle than a true flipper. The coin-op is, as far as I can tell, the first video game that’s recognizable as pinball.

And I don’t mean “good for its time” though that’s obviously the case too. Maybe it was snubbed because they thought too much of the charm of the original cabinet was lost. A real Video Pinball had an actual plunger and even the ability to nudge built into the panel. Home versions won’t have that, and someone who isn’t necessarily passionate about the sport of pinball might look at that and say “well, what’s the point? The main gimmicks are gone.” But I’m not advocating for Video Pinball to be put in Atari 50 for historical reasons. My argument is on the gameplay merits, because guys, this is actually a f*cking phenomenal pinball video game that has to be seen to be believed. A fast-paced, era-appropriate shooter based around building up the bonus lights. Video Pinball’s score sheet, rules, and risk/reward factors are actually elite by the standards of real 1979 pinball. The high risk front-and-center targets are tied to an extra ball light in the left inlane while the satisfying orbital shots are all proportionately difficult rebounders.

While the scoring format is definitively 70’s-style “build up the bonus lights” it’s the physics that impressed me the most. At the time I’m typing this, I’ve completed thirty-five of the reviews in this feature. I’m just now into the 1990s and playing games that can actually make a case for taking the title of “best video pinball physics” from Video Pinball and its unreleased sequel (up next). Video Pinball 1979 had no peer for over a decade. Nothing even close. For the next few years, balls will be too bouncy. Even the best games have balls that do “bunny hops” totally detached from reality. Video Pinball is comparatively smooth. What the actual f*ck?! How did that happen? Well, I have a theory. First, why did I play Video Pinball out of order? Because I needed a crash course in how to get backdrops working MAME (it turns out in RetroArch you need to create an “artwork” folder in the MAME system folder, then I had to tinker with a few settings to get things to line up right). If you don’t have the backdrops, you cannot play Video Pinball. This is what the game will look like:

What the hell is that? I’ll tell you what is: a historically great video pinball game! Okay, so what’s happening is only the ball, flippers, drop targets, and the score are represented graphically. All surfaces, including the bumpers, orbits, and a satisfying U-Turn element are actually in the game code. The ball bounces off walls, gets banged by bumpers, and activates lights and rollovers. You just can’t see them, or the bonus lights which would normally be represented by LEDs. You need the backdrop and a file called a .lay file to make it work. You know how you can play Asteroids with or without the backgrounds in Atari 50? Video Pinball is like that, only the background is not optional.

While that sounds primitive, it’s also why Video Pinball’s physics engine had no peer for over a decade. Drawing resources on a screen takes computing power. Just saying they’re there and using an overlay for it takes a LOT less. So most of Video Pinball’s 1979 CPU muscle is spent on a physics system that would be the envy of pinball video games well into the 16-bit era. Seriously, I just played Dino Land and it wishes it had pinball mechanics this good. Even David’s Midnight Magic, the champion of home video pinball for the 1980s, would have killed for physics this good.

Set your expectations accordingly, as this isn’t a “simulation” of the sport like Pinball FX or Zaccaria are. There’s no way to pass the ball consistently, though I did complete several inlane transfers (those will be quite the rarity over the next several dozen reviews). There’s also very clearly a set amount of fixed shooting and rebounding angles, but the variety of them is high enough that it’ll take a LOT of playtime to get a feel for them. The family members I work with at The Pinball Chick put about four hours total into Video Pinball and its unreleased sequel, Solar War. We hadn’t “clocked” it to the point that it was effortless. I came back for two more hours as I finished typing this and STILL hadn’t fully memorized every nuance. So there’s value in this in 2026.

I’m sure Video Pinball might not excite non-pinheads. It has a fairly conservative layout. I mean, the game is called “Video Pinball” so that’s a gimme. The best element is probably the delightful U-Turn in the upper-left corner, but otherwise you’re taking basic shooting angles. It’s not entirely basic, as the flippers aren’t parallel and there’s no Italian bottom. Also, the game can be quite punishing with its difficulty, as the outlanes especially led to plenty of house balls. Probably more than any game in this feature, and it’s obviously by design to make play times go quicker. Make no mistake: Video Pinball is a genuinely fun game weakened by an unambitious layout and a few (frankly realistic) house ball-creating elements. Really, it’s not hard to understand why it flopped. If you’re going to do Video Pinball as a coin-op in 1979, the height of video games AND pinball, you need that game to offer something real pinball doesn’t. Video Pinball doesn’t.

It’s just pinball in digital form, and not even perfect pinball since, state-of-the-art or not, the physics aren’t lifelike. They’re AMAZING by what will be the standards of digital pinball for a long while, but not by the standards of actual tables that are, presumably, just a few feet away from customers in 1979 arcades. Dad was right: Video Pinball exists only as an intended novelty. Atari did that a lot (see my review of Starship 1) and so it’s to be expected of them. But even if you only look at Video Pinball as a historic curio or (sigh) a novelty, PLEASE don’t forget that Video Pinball is also a damn good video pinball game in a vacuum. One that this pinhead thinks holds up to the test of time. Do the right thing, Digital Eclipse, and don’t forget about Solar War. Seriously, DO NOT FORGET ABOUT SOLAR WAR! In fact, let’s look at Solar War too!
Verdict: YES!
Holds title of Greatest Pinball Video Game Ever Made from February 1979 to Circa 1980
Rank: #16 of 125
Percentile: 87%

Solar War
Platform: Arcade
Unreleased Finished Prototype
Designed by Mike Albaugh and Dave Theurer
Developed by Atari
Requires Overlay to Play Properly
NEVER RELEASED*

*My policy with unreleased coin-ops is that route testing doesn’t count as a release because technically the game isn’t “gold” yet and locked-in for mass production. See my review of fellow Atari Cornfield occupant Cloud 9. HOWEVER, in the case of Solar War, I’m getting mixed signals on it, because the Killer List of Video Games specifically calls it a “prototype” but also says that three-hundred conversion cabinets were manufactured. Presumably as a conversion kit for Video Pinball. Hold on, wait. I’m confused. Is Solar War a prototype or is it a game that saw at least 305 units distributed? It’s one or the other, right? The story is even weirder, as allegedly it was a Greek distributor who bought all 300 conversion kits. Apparently you couldn’t walk twenty feet without bumping into Solar War in Greece. They must have been building homes out of the f*cking things. If any of my European readers saw this in the 70s and 80s, please leave a comment because, seriously, 300 is a lot of units and it just doesn’t sound right, does it?

Okay, let’s assume Solar War really is a canceled game. Maybe it’s not! Maybe there’s a bunch of Greeks reading this who are like “oh, this was EVERYWHERE in Greece! We used them as school desks and sometimes when the soccer ball was lopsided we just used Solar War instead! And in the event of a famine? Boiled Solar War with a pinch of nutmeg and some salt is good eat’n!” But even if all that’s true, the story of Solar War is nothing short of a gaming tragedy. As good as Video Pinball was, this slays it and would have held the title “best pinball video game” for a solid decade until Devil’s Crush came along.

There’s not a ton of info out there on Solar War but what is known is that it was going to be both a stand-alone sequel and an optional conversion kit for Video Pinball with a change in themes, and not originally a space theme either. No, it was originally going to be Superman! Which means this is the second time I’ve reviewed a game that started life as a Superman game before being changed into another IP and ultimately never being released at all. It’s a cursed video game franchise, I keep telling you! In the case of Solar War, it doesn’t require a ton of imagination to FEEL like a Superman pinball table. Solar War’s main objective is to “tour the table” by hitting all the letters.

Had it been a Superman game, the idea would be each letter represents a person Superman needs to rescue. The four rollovers right next to a curved wall even give a Daily Planet vibe while Angela coined the “able to leap tall buildings in a single bound” shot. Not only does it genuinely feel like a table based on the Man of Steel, but it works brilliantly too. Solar War’s layout is light year better than Video Pinball’s or really almost any video pin that’ll release over the next two decades. The original Video Pinball’s unconventional flipper arrangement paired with a conservative layout has given way to a two flipper widebody design with an Italian Bottom and a HUGE variety of ambitious targets. In addition to the eight letter targets, there’s four rollover lanes (God how I wish it had lane switching), a locker with rewards, lights for the bumpers (confusingly done using the ball sprite), two satisfying orbits, and even an open plunger lane that the ball can return to. On top of all that, the bonus point system from the first game carried over here. This is a busy layout, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun too.

But that’s not all. Solar War isn’t simply Video Pinball with a different layout. The physics engine has been subtly but noticeably tweaked. It might be the placebo effect but myself, Dave, and Angela could swear there’s sharper shooting angles. This wasn’t universally agreed upon as Dad and Sasha the Kid insist the angles are more or less the same which led to quite the argument over whether they would keep the same exact angles with only two flippers. What all five of us agreed on was that the ball is floatier, slowing down the action and making rebounding easier (ironically floaty physics would eventually become a common knock against modern pinball sims). The nudge is more jolty too, which makes sense since the machine’s physical nudge mechanism would have been upgraded as well, though I wasn’t exactly sure of the specifics. Either way, all gamers lost out when Solar War was canceled. It’s so good. Genuinely fun, and not just for 1979/80. It holds up.

Now here’s where I have to be the devil’s advocate. From a business point of view, it makes sense to cancel Solar War. The tragedy is that this layout and theme wouldn’t have been much more successful than Video Pinball’s minimalist night at the disco. The whole coin-op Video Pinball project and its sequel were doomed to fail from the start. You have to understand that Video Pinball released against the hottest period the pinball industry (hell, the whole arcade industry) had ever seen up to that point with nothing to compare it to historically. The 1990s? No, actually. Addams Family was the biggest seller ever, but 7 of the 10 best selling pins of all-time and 13 out of the top 20 released between 1976 and 1980.

That means Video Pinball released against tables like Flash (19,505 units), KISS (17,000 units), Playboy (18,250 units), Star Trek (16,842) Mata Hari (16,260 units) and Eight Ball (20,230, only forty short of Addams Family’s record). Had Solar War come out, it would have run smack dab into Firepower (17,410 units) which became one of the highest earning pins in arcade history. Releasing Video Pinball in 1979 was tone deaf to what was happening in the industry at large. I enjoyed both these games so much that I literally sent a note to Digital Eclipse head Mike Mika *begging* for them to at least talk about putting Video Pinball and Solar War in the next Atari 50 update because they’re amazing, but they should also have never existed at all. Sadly, both can be true. Tragedy all around with these games.

So it turns out, Atari’s two arcade video pins are really good. I want to believe time heals all wounds and it’s time for Video Pinball and Solar War to be celebrated. They’re fantastic games released at the worst time possible, or in the case of Solar War, (probably) not released at all. And if it does get that Atari 50 release, Solar War can finally get appreciated by a wider audience. It’s an absolute masterpiece, and I’m on my knees, Digital Eclipse. (shrug) It’s not like it’s the first time.
Verdict: YES! – Creates Split in “Greatest Pinball Video Game Ever Made” Title
Solar War holds title of Greatest Pinball Video Game Ever Made from  circa 1980 to July 20, 1990
Video Pinball holds title of Greatest Pinball Video Game Ever Released from February, 1979 to December, 1981
Ranking: #10 of 125
Percentile: 92%

Thunderball!
Platform: Magnavox Odyssey²
Released in 1979
Developed by Magnavox
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
Listing at Odyssey² Homepage

Most of the games in this feature stood no chance of surviving the test of time. Thunderball, was my first ever Odyssey² review (I finished this before posting reviews for O2 killer apps K. C. Munchkin and K. C.’s Krazy Chase) and I have no doubt it does the absolute best it can with the meager resources of the system. You know how primitive the Atari 2600 is? At 64 bytes of RAM dedicated it its CPU (not megabytes or kilobytes, but 64 BYTES) Odyssey² has *half* the horsepower of the Atari 2600. So the fact that a pinball game that vaguely resembles the sport is on the console at all is kind of amazing. There’s bumpers, drop targets, and something that I thought was meant to be a spinner but it’s labeled “bonus box.” There’s even an after-ball bonus (in the bottom right corner). Given the limitations, it’s impressive. I mean, even if (as my friend Todd noted) the ball looks like Evil Otto from Berzerk.

But it’s the flippers that stand out the most because they can’t be activated independently of each other. You either flip both at the same time or neither, making this the only pinball game I’ve ever seen with mandatory seal clapping. To make up for this, there is a neat twist: you can move the flippers left and right to adjust your shot, essentially creating your own outlanes. Thunderball is the poster child for why I dreaded doing this feature. For all its effort, the action is too random to ever truly feel like the skill sport of pinball. You’re basically just smacking the ball back into play and hoping for the best. The scoring system is nice and I do like the primitive version of zipper flippers, but this never stood a chance of surviving the test of the 1970s, let alone the test of time as a whole. Thunderball is charming, but it’s not really fun at all. Good effort though.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #100 of 125
Percentile: 20%

Raster Blaster
Platform: Apple II, Atari 8-Bit
Released in 1981
Designed by Bill Budge
Published by BudgeCo.
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

The first game in this feature chronologically that’s based on a real table, Raster Blaster is directly inspired by Firepower, the 1980 Steve Ritchie classic that was one of two real life pinball machines my father owned long before I was born, and Dad’s favorite pinball table to this day. My earliest vivid memory of my father and I is literally getting my first multiball on Firepower. It’s my favorite memory too, because when I locked the final ball and looked at my father, he didn’t say a word. He was BEAMING, and then he simply pointed at the table for me to play the multiball. It probably wasn’t my first multiball overall. The other table that was in our home before I was born was Black Knight, which is designed specifically around easy-to-get multiballs, and I liked it a lot more than Firepower even if I don’t remember much about playing it until I was older. But Firepower’s multiball? Not so easy. Hell, I was 4 years old in that memory I talked about. I just turned 37 and I still can’t get multiballs regularly on Firepower. It’s a tough table, and not one that probably should have been the choice for a primitive Apple II simulation.

I get it. In 1981, Firepower was still new and INSANELY popular. With 17,410 units sold, it was the fifth best selling pin ever. Creating a convincing approximation of that table using this technology is pretty remarkable in and of itself. But Firepower is also a precision sharpshooter-style table, and the physics of Raster Blaster aren’t even remotely close to being able to do it justice. This was one of the first video games that utilized the “living ball” mechanic that would become the standard for 2D pinball sims for decades to come, but that unpredictability hurts so much. Firepower requires players to trap the ball for set-shots. When you do it in Raster Blaster, you never know how the ball will behave when you release the flipper. Sometimes it’ll take off like a bat out of hell towards the drain. Sometimes it’ll do bunny hops of various sizes. The speed combined with those bunny hops makes it impossible to aim, which is f*cking insane for a layout and scoring system based around Firepower, one of the all-time tough shooters of solid state pinball.

Don’t get me wrong: it’s not like Raster Blaster is NEVER good. In fact, I put so much time into it trying to get my first (and then second) multiball that I briefly wondered if I should vote YES! on it, except I wasn’t actually having fun so it wasn’t THAT hard a decision. But there’s some highlights, like when I completed an inlane pass, and it was a stand-up-and-cheer moment, even if the physics aren’t good enough or reliable enough to be able to predictably complete such a pass regularly. In fact, I only did it that one time and never again. BUT I did do it. It’s also the only table where you have to put English on the ball manually (“tilting” though not in the TILT penalty sense), though it’s really hard to know how much it’s working.

The only time I really seemed to feel it was for backhanded shots, which hey, there’s another important first in video pinball history. But tilting the table feels like a bandage for a ball that’s too hoppy and too unpredictable in its speed to actually aim properly. It’s not hard to imagine that someone could practice a LOT of Raster Blaster and enjoy constantly fiddling with the tilt in the same way you might adjust a stick shift in a racing game, but I found it to be hugely distracting and not all that helpful. Ultimately, Raster Blaster is too damn hard for its own good. After my first couple hours of gameplay, I still hadn’t once gotten the multiball. Neither had my father, a much more skilled Firepower shooter than I am. We both got a couple balls locked, but never actually achieved the activation. Originally, I gave up and wrote the review, but I felt guilty about not getting at least one. Eventually, I did.

After that first multiball, I spent hours trying to get a second one and never did. I also never got an extra ball (the highest I got the multiplier was x4 one time). The gravity is too heavy, so even on-target shots might not have the lift to actually grasp the ball lock, or maybe they’ll bang against the sides and not lock. HARD mode seemed to have harder slap shots that traveled higher, but we also had tons of house balls on the HARD difficulty as well, and the outlanes become straight-up serial killers. But it’s really those bunny hops on the flippers that kills Raster Bastard because there’s no aiming.

Of all the real life tables Budge could have recreated, why Firepower? A table like it, where rebounding is the key to everything, is so obviously unsuitable for the engine. As remarkable of an achievement as it is, this never stood a chance at the test of time. A shooter’s table where you literally can’t aim is basically hell for pinheads. Black Knight would have made way more sense. If only another Apple II game from this era would prove that, but what would be the chances of that happening? You’d need some kind of magic to make that happen. Perhaps magic cast at midnight. No, actually, magic cast at midnight by someone named David. Alas, such a thing is unlikely.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #99 of 125
Percentile: 21%

Video Pinball
aka Arcade Pinball (Sears Label)
Platform: Atari 2600
Released April, 1981
Designed by Bob Smith
Developed by Atari
Included in Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration

I know the original Atari 2600 game that wore the name Video Pinball has fans who love its chaotic “gameplay.” I’m not one of them. I’m someone who really hates the whole “pinball is controlled chaos” stereotype. Pinball is a ball sport and anything but chaos. Video Pinball is all about the chaos. Not that I expected a complex physics simulation, but the “ball” is far too energetic, bouncing at a high speed and ricocheting all over the playfield in a way that turns the game into one of luck.

The only real way a player “plays” Video Pinball is with the nudge. When the ball zooms around the screen, if you wait for the right time, you can use nudging to make the ball bounce up and down though one of the two rollover lanes a few times. In the above picture, I took the rollover from 3 to 9 using just the nudge in one single streak of bounces. Was it satisfying? I guess, and so was the one time I nudged the ball away from the outlane. But I can’t stress enough that it took several games just to find myself in the perfect position to manipulate the ball that way.

It’s not like you can reasonably aim with the flippers. The flippers are just elements that kick a super bouncy ball back into play. Video Pinball is little more than a slightly interactive screensaver, and while I could see how it would have fans because it’s so crazy that it’s practically anarchy, I’ve never personally understood the appeal in it. This not only has fans, but BIG fans. I assume they grew up with it and I do admit there’s a charming sense of outright insanity to it. But it’s one of those games that your contribution to is practically nonexistent. Thankfully, the 2600 has a couple pretty decent video pins coming up. By the way, if you want to really know how bad video pinball is as a genre, get this: I played twenty-eight video pins that are worse than this. F*cking yipes.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #97 of 125
Percentile: 22%

David’s Midnight Magic
Platform: Apple II, Commodore 64
Released December, 1981
Designed by David Snider
Developed by Brøderbund
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Someone named David cast the magic I hoped for at the stroke of midnight. Look, it’s Black Knight! David’s Midnight Magic is played with a physics engine very similar to that of Raster Blaster. So similar that, no joke, I really thought this was a direct sequel to the Bill Budge game. The ball behavior in Midnight Magic is very close to Raster. But, unlike Raster Blaster, developer David Snider picked the correct 1980 Steve Ritchie pin to copy. Black Knight lends itself pretty damn well to this engine. So much that, after a few games of this, I startled my family by yelling “F*CK YES! I HAVE A FEATURE NOW!” I had completed over a dozen reviews before I finally decided to go ahead and start adding classic home PC games to the list. All these early pinball titles eating sh*t against the test of time was making this a huge downer of a feature. And then David’s Midnight Magic showed up and dazzled me.

Everything I said about Raster Blaster having the right engine but the wrong table is proven correct here. Mostly, at least. Some tweaking was clearly done to the ball physics. Although it’s still fairly hoppy, the ball doesn’t just randomly build up speed when it goes through the inlanes or rolls along surfaces. Despite the fact that the bunny hops can be erratic, the physics are now reliable enough that you can start to plan for the ball’s idiosyncrasies, which means, hey, you can aim! It’s certainly not perfect. I noted that toe shots are difficult to pull off and that I never finished a top-to-bottom circuit, but I also never completed the lower right orbit either. Not that either shot is necessary, but it does limit strategic flexibility.

Then again, since the balls in multiball don’t interact with each-other, orbits used for ball management or juggling hold less strategic value anyway. No ball interaction also means you can’t save a ball heading for the drain with a well-timed deflection (called Air Defense or Air-D). The real Black Knight is a table where the Air-D potential is so high that it’s almost an unstated feature and arguably the most thrilling aspect of the game, and it’s obviously not in this conversion. For those reasons, it’s certainly much harder to play Midnight Magic than a real Black Knight table. I also fully admit to struggling to find some key angles. Most of my trips through the lower u-turn (which earns multipliers) came via the right slingshot, not from me directly shooting them. Most, but not all.

On the other hand, half the key to Black Knight’s high scores comes down to target shooting, and that works so fantastic here. After playing this for a full day (seriously, a full day. I was totally hooked), I can say with certainty that there’s either direct angles or backhanded shots for all the drop targets. The ridiculous tilt feature is gone from Raster Blaster, replaced with a very subtle nudge. So subtle that it’s really only effective when the ball starts dancing on the outlane rail. And yes, you can tilt if you overdo it. Thankfully, David’s Midnight Magic retained Black Knight’s legendary Magna-Saves to help with the defense. That blew me away. I mean, even the animation looks pretty realistic for them. I wasn’t expecting that at all.

I was SO HAPPY playing David’s Midnight Magic. Happy for myself that I chose to include home PC video pins, and happy for Apple II and Commodore 64 owners of the 80s who had a very impressive sim of one of the all-time greats in Black Knight. I never knew that decent sims of real tables existed this soon in the history of video games. The quick gameplay and ultra-addictive bonus system of Black Knight is perfect for this style of video pinball. Some games reach legendary status for a reason. David’s Midnight Magic deserves it and would hold the crown of “greatest home video pinball game” for quite a while. Years and years, in fact.
Verdict: YES!
Holds title of Greatest Pinball Video Game Ever Released from December 1981 to July 20, 1990
Ranking: #12 of 125
Percentile: 90%

David’s Midnight Magic
Platform: Atari 8-Bit
Released in 1982 (Atari) 
Designed by David Snider
Developed by Broderbund
Published by Atari (Cart Only in 1987)
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Well crap. This was originally set to be a bonus review, but the drop in quality of this port broke my heart. David’s Midnight Magic for the Apple II and C64, for all its problems, is very playable because the physics work with Black Knight’s layout. But in the Atari 8-bit build, the physics are far too heavy while the ball is a little more bouncy. It’s a disastrous combination. It almost feels like the hard mode of the original game because the ball locks are significantly tougher to make those shots.

I felt so bad for Atari owners playing this because it’s a shell of the game I fell in love with. The angles are much tighter, though not in service to the game. The living ball is so erratic that shots that should hit the giant U-bend fail constantly, not to mention far more balls bounce right over the flippers. It’s still an amazing layout because, I mean, duh, Black Knight. Black Knight is awesome! But the Atari 8-Bit build made me appreciate what a fine line the original game walked, because just a slight difference in the gravity sucks ALL the fun away. Atari owners deserved much, much better than this shoddy port.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #66 of 125
Percentile: 47%

Night Mission
Platform: Apple II
Released in 1982
Designed by Bruce A. Artwick
Developed by Sublogic
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

From the creator of Flight Simulator (yes, THAT Flight Simulator, IE Microsoft Flight Simulator) comes a game that could have very well been called “Pinball Table Simulator.” The sheer amount of options and settings are jaw dropping. The instruction book for this is twenty pages long, and not twenty pages of big pictures and large print. The reason for that is Night Mission is legitimately attempting to feel like a simulation of a physical, coin-op pinball table. Real life tables do have lots of settings that can be changed (sometimes we like to crank up games to 10 balls, 10 potential EBs, and play for hours in duels we call Iron Ball). EVERYTHING in Night Mission can be tweaked, which I’m sure was thrilling for players in 1983. But for the purposes of this feature, guys, I just want to play pinball! I don’t want to need a correspondence course in Apple II to do it, but look at the instructions!

I’m sure kids of the Apple era wouldn’t sweat those instructions, but I certainly did. Night Missions was the most complicated game in this feature, and I’d be fine with that if the same thing were done today. That’s because the same idea today would have more intuitive menus instead of whatever the hell language that is above. But, I would like everyone to note that none of that factored into my verdict. That’s because my father does know how that stuff works and helpfully set up some games for me after I played on the default setting that made a few adjustments, and that’s where the real problems with Night Mission became obvious: the layout is just not a good layout.

Night Mission is what we’d call a “bricklayer” in that too many angles directly feed the drain. This includes the F-L-Y targets that you need to light multiball on the default settings. They have to be the most lethal targets I’ve ever seen in any pinball…. ANYTHING. Even after 129 other games, I never encountered anything quite like those F-L-Y targets. That’s assuming you even get to play the ball at all with the ridiculous positioning of the bumpers. The elements ice you more than any amount of your skill does. If you want to nudge, you have to be able to adjust those settings. Oddly, the way TILTING works is based on probability. You essentially roll a dice when you nudge on whether it tilts or not. Ooh, I like that. Cool idea. The probability of triggering a TILT can also be adjusted, but then again, EVERYTHING can be adjusted. But unless you adjust the ball speed, you won’t be able to react fast enough to nudge the ball away from the gap. I admit that my opinion might have been soured by the time I spent with the default settings, where I found Night Mission to be too punishing and having too many elements blocking shooting angles. Why the heck WOULD you scatter the bumpers in the places they’re located when the upper playfield matters so much to the gameflow?

But ultimately, it’s the layout that kills Night Mission. What befuddles me is that they went through all this effort to create the ultimate pinball simulator and they did come up with an eye-popping amount of adjustments. It’s impressive. No question about it, and my hats off to everyone involved. So, like, why didn’t they hire a professional pinball designer to come up with the layout? Because the layout is what kills Night Mission. The sloppy placement of bumpers and the overly hostile placement of the drop targets doomed Night Mission before a single option was toggled. It really is that big one (the lowest one) that kills Night Mission.

Some video game designers are capable of creating amazing layouts. Look at the teams at Zen Studios and Magic Pixel. They have some of the best people working in pinball today on their staff. But in 1983? Why leave anything to chance? Not that they could have scored someone like a Steve Ritchie or even a George Christian, but there were plenty of legends of the 60s and 70s being put out to pasture. Ed Krynski would soon exit the industry at the point this was released. Imagine if HE had designed the layout for Night Mission. Both Dave and Sasha the Kid suggested Steve Kordek, who would have used these elements and given Artwick’s Night Mission a nice shooter’s stroke. Had a real pinball designer done Night Mission, I might be talking about a game that not only was amazing for its era but withstood the test of time overall. This is a wantonly cruel layout, whether the ball moves fast or slow.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #101 out of 125
Percentile: 19%

Pinball Construction Set
Platform: Apple II
Released November, 1982
Designed by Bill Budge
Published by Electronic Arts
NO MODERN RELEASE (?)

I’m going to take the wishy-washy way out and not render any verdict on Bill Budge’s famous tool set for creating your own pinball experience, mostly because I didn’t want to actually play it. But I had to at least mention Pinball Construction Set in this feature. It’s one of the most historically important games ever made. One of the first DIY games that set the stage for Mario Makers and RPG Makers, and it’s even partially responsible for the rise of Electronic Arts. It has an impressive amount of features, including being able to set scoring values for targets, changing the slope, etc. But I have no interest at all in designing a pinball table. I made it as far as laying a couple slingshots and flippers while reading the instruction book to realize that it would take me days, and possibly weeks or even months, to get a decent table up and running. DIY game construction kits are one of the few genres I never got heavily into.

But I’m not going to argue with all the contemporary awards and modern hall of fame inductions. Pinball Construction Set does deserve them. It’s a remarkable achievement, especially from a designer who doesn’t like video games and described playing real pinball as “sheer torture.” Well golly, I almost can’t believe this guy never had another hit after this. As someone whose life was literally changed by video games and grew up playing pinball as one of the few pastimes I shared with my father, hearing someone who made a pretty decent fortune on both talk like they’re above it all just rubs me the wrong way. Whatever. Again, no arguing with this being an all-time classic, but I’m the wrong person to evaluate it.
No Verdict or Ranking

Bumper Bash
Platform: Atari 2600
Released in 1983
Designed by David Lubar
Developed by Spectravideo
Utilizes Paddle Controls (Not Optional)
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

If there’s one lesson I should have learned a long time ago and still apparently haven’t, it’s “you never know.” I would have bet all the money in my pocket against all the money in yours that it was impossible for any Atari 2600 pinball game to get a YES! And yet, here I am, awarding the first console game YES! of the feature to this insanely ambitious-for-the-era VCS release. You’ve probably never even heard of Bumper Bash. I certainly hadn’t. But I’m guessing hardcore Atari collectors might know the name. You see, Bumper Bash is rated a 9 out of 10 in rarity by Atari Age. “Extremely rare” and, while I have some Atari collecting friends who think that rating is likely wrong or outdated (copies regularly sell for under $100 on eBay), it’s certainly a very rare, very obscure game that didn’t get wide distribution. I’m heartbroken over that, because Bumper Bash MURDERS Atari’s own Video Pinball.

Bumper Bash is trying, and often succeeding, to simulate the SPORT of pinball. Instead of playing with a single joystick, the game uses the paddle controllers, which for the unwashed are really two controllers that plug into a single port. David Lubar did it this way so that the player could hold a paddle in each hand and press one button for each flipper, just like they would at a real table. The problem with that is, as I noted in the captions, there’s no nudge. That’s the only commonplace element missing. Bumper Bash features an Italian bottom, drop targets, scoring multipliers, kickbacks that are activated via the top rollovers, bumpers, and even an animated spinner that’s pretty convincing. The scoring is well balanced too, which I appreciate. The physics? Well, they’re probably as good as you could hope for from 1983 on the Atari 2600, which is a wishy-washy way of saying “not great.”

The ball is very bouncy and the speed doesn’t make sense. The flippers are too small and some of the angles the balls take off them feel completely detached from reality. I especially couldn’t directly shoot the ball high enough to get up to the rollovers, which are what activates your kickbacks. Since the outlanes are pretty hungry, a kickback is very valuable on this table. But, there’s moments that made me sit up in my chair. As you can see in the above clip, you can reliably, predictably perform inlane passes in this game, a first for video pinball. Eventually, I was also able to shoot the three lower drop targets somewhat reliably. Not so much the three upper ones. The easiest target to shoot is the spinner, but putting the spinner in the center, where it can sometimes funnel the ball straight down the drain, was probably not the best design choice. As the first pinball sim on a console that feels like a true simulation of the sport, Bumper Bash is a remarkable achievement. But I’m not cutting it a break because it was a good effort. For all its problems, I did have fun, and that’s all I care about. I’d have had a lot more fun if it used two joysticks that allowed for nudging.
Verdict: YES!
Ranking: #43 of 125
Percentile: 64%

Queen of Hearts
Platform: Apple II
Released in 1983
Designed by John Lyon
Developed by SSI
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

The final Apple II game I played for this feature is the third release based on a real table. In the case of Queen of Hearts, it’s based on Genie, the beloved 1979 Ed Krynski designed, Gottlieb published widebody that my father loves but I’ve always felt was just pretty dang okay. I like Genie, but I don’t love it. What I do love is the compromises designer John Lyon did to make it work as a 1983 computer game. Look at the plunger! It’s a tiny little thing positioned above the A-B-C-D rollovers, but it actually makes perfect sense, right? That’s all you need and there’s nothing inherently sacred about the plunger being the length of the screen that it has to always be that way. It even works with Genie’s open plunger. In Queen of Hearts, the ball maintains all its momentum when it enters the plunger hole and just instantly transfers back to the rollovers. And the lights are placed on top of the structure housing the drop targets. Creative solutions that make sense! Love it.

Now, Queen of Hearts does have quite a bit of weirdness to it. Such as the ridiculous method of selecting how many players you want. An indicator shifts between the four scoring slots, and you have to time when to hit the button to decide how many people will play. Christmas day 2026 will mark my 30th anniversary of me starting to play video games and I’ve never seen THAT before. Weird, but whatever. A bigger problem is that the physics have regressed from the last few games. Still not Raster Blaster levels of unpredictability, but not as strong as David’s Midnight Magic either.

Thankfully, Genie actually lends itself pretty well to this primitive pinball engine. Well, except for the outlanes, but the actual shooting and rebounding angles work very well, given the limitations. Dad even thought this made more sense than Black Knight, though we both agree that the Midnight Magic’s stronger physics make for a much, much better game. Still, as the final pinball game for the Apple II, at least for this feature, Queen of Hearts is sending the platform out on a high note.
Verdict: YES!
Ranking: #45 of 125
Percentile: 64%

Spinball
aka Flipper Pinball
Platform: Vectrex
Released in 1983
Designed by Jeff Corsiglia
Developed General Consumer Electronics
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
Listing at Vectrex Wiki

This is my first ever Vectrex review and I sincerely wish it was for a better game. For the unwashed masses, Vectrex was a unique vector graphics game console on a dedicated 9 inch “tabletop” monitor. At $199.99 in 1982 dollars (over $600 in today’s money) and with limited software support and distribution, it was a commercial failure, but the thing is, the games for it looked great and were damn near arcade quality in terms of both graphics and playability. The people who owned one tended to love it, and to this day Vectrex is one of THE definitive cult hit devices in gaming history. It also doesn’t get a lot of coverage from major gaming sites, and I’m all about giving those types of games a platform. So I hope Vectrex fans will give me a second chance because I have to kind of sh*t on the one and only pinball game for it. Actually, the Vectrex fans who knew I was playing this seemed like they felt sorry for me. That’s a bad sign.

And please note that the game is VERY flickery so any screenshot taken without trapping is going to be missing some stuff.

This one really hurts to give a NO! to. It went so far out of its way to pack every major feature real pinball had during this era that I can’t help but admire the ambition. Instead of just making a basic, efficient layout, designer Jeff Corsiglia went for broke, and he did successfully make a table that looks the part. The spinners are animated to convincingly resemble real spinners. There’s a kickback that needs to be lit. There’s drop targets. There’s four directions of nudging. There’s multipliers and post-ball bonuses. The scoresheet is well-crafted. Hell, there’s even a two-ball multiball. The layout, resembling an era-accurate widebody, is also pretty good. Spinball checks every single imaginable box you would hope for in terms of elements, and that’s why this is such a heart breaker, because they’re all failed by an unstable engine.

The ball is FAR too bouncy. It’s like playing pinball with a rubber ball, and while it’s not quite as bad as Atari 2600 Video Pinball, it’s not remotely close to being life-like. The trajectories the ball takes sometimes make no sense as well, and so aiming off anything but a trapped shot isn’t really possible. For the most part, you’re just trying to keep the ball in play and hoping the chaos favors you. But what truly sucks the fun out of Spinball is the fact that targets and even the walls themselves often fail. In addition to targets failing to work, the ball constantly clips through solid surfaces, including the flippers. It’s not rare for the ball to pass right through them.

What I think is happening is because the game flickers to handle all the data, the objects aren’t just disappearing graphically but their entire existence phases in and out. The drop targets aren’t failing to activate, because in that frame there ARE no targets. Whether that’s the reason or not, it does happen, and the result is a pinball game that basically plays Calvinball with the objective reality of the playfield, all with one of the most unpredictable balls in this feature. As commendable as the layout is, when the physics are as bad as Spinball, building an era-authentic table probably isn’t a good idea because it will never feel like real pinball but instead a warped nightmare version of what the player is hoping for. It really speaks to how bad the video pinball genre can get that Spinball didn’t finish dead last in the rankings. If you had told me that while I was playing it, I wouldn’t have believed that even one pinball game could be worse, let alone five.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #120 of 125
Percentile: 4%

Pinball
Platform: Intellivision
Released October, 1983
Designed by Minh Chou Tran & Bob Newstadt
Developed by Intellivision
Included in Intellivision Spirit ($149.99)
Included in Evercade Intellivision Collection Volume 1 (Out of Print)
No Modern Release

Intellivision’s Pinball features two major milestones in the history of video pinball. The first is so important that it would become the standard model for pinball pretty much right up until the modern simulation era. Intellivision Pinball was the first release where the “table” is represented by multiple screens that the ball travels between. And you can totally feel the prototype nature of this design, as most games that utilized this format start you in the middle or top screens and allow tension and urgency to build up. In INTV Pinball, you start at the bottom of a three screen tower. The ball cannot directly travel up through the center to the next screen. Oh, it can go down between the flippers or through an outlane to a lower screen, but moving upward requires unlocking tunnels that take you there.

The second major evolution is one that was inevitable: the physics are not rubbery or hyperactive. The ball has weight and something resembling real-world momentum, making it feel, well, like a ball. Unfortunately, we’re still nowhere near being life-like. There was this heart-wrenching moment where, for the third time in my session, the ball had been teed-up for a picture-perfect backhanded shot. The angles were all perfect and all that was left was for me to smack the ball with a textbook backhand, which is one of the key shots that I personally need to feel like I’m really playing THE sport of pinball and not a pinball-like video game. Sadly, instead of the ball being backhanded, it just limply nestled down like I was trapping it, which is what happened in every previous attempt at a backhand and continued to happen after this. It wasn’t the only “darn it” moment. There were multiple instances of the ball clipping through the base of the flippers, like Paragon’s open flippers, only unintentional.

I hope that people can understand why I’ve resisted this feature since my site’s move to retro games. Not only did I not grow up with these games, but video pinball specifically is fated to age badly. So even a game like INTV Pinball, that does SO MUCH right, isn’t more fun today than it’s not, which is how I award a YES! I can’t look the other way on the weird physics or how easy it is to hit the outlanes on the bottom floor. I can’t overlook how finding the angles to get the ball to the upper targets is too tough compared to the side targets. These things suck the fun out, and all I want to do is have fun.

It’s not all bad. There’s good scoring balance even with the potential to double scoring (since opening it takes a while). There’s also a wide variety of targets, like spinners (though oddly not as convincingly animated as ones in Bumper Bash or Spinball). But the target placement doesn’t feel like real pinball and the lack of shooting angles makes INTV Pinball kind of a slog. It’s not NEVER fun, but there’s not enough highlights to outnumber haphazard flippers and downright evil outlanes.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #51 of 125
Percentile: 59%

Sega Flipper
aka Video Flipper
Platform: Sega SG-1000
Released October, 1983
Designed by Shuichi Katagi & Yoji Ishii
Developed by Sega
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED (?)

Sega Flipper looks like pinball. Bland pinball, but pinball nonetheless. Personally, I think it looks like one of those cheap handheld toy pinballs, doesn’t it? The only interesting thing about it was the debate on whether Sega Flipper or Vectrex’s Spinball would rank dead last in this feature. Who knew that the worst was yet to come? But if someone believes Sega Flipper deserves to be dead last, I won’t argue passionately against it. The case for Sega Flipper being the toenail fungus of video pinball is how unambitious the layout is. Say what you will about Spinball but the designer for it went for broke, while this LOOKS boring. And it is, but it’s broken too. In addition to the agonizing downtime, it also features balls clipping right through the flippers. This especially happens on the first-of-its-kind mini-playfield.

The “living ball” physics are also very erratic. The ball feels very heavy, yet it often defies gravity. For example, the ball can enter one of the rollovers from the top and, without touching the bumpers underneath it (logically the only way it should be able to be launched back up), it can sometimes bounce itself right back out the top. HOW?! There’s just too much energy in the ball and no reality behind that energy. When you trap the ball, it seriously looks like it’s having a seizure.

I can’t even say “at least the scoresheet is good!” because it ain’t. The two bonus holes, especially the one on the mini-field, are too easy to hit over and over. And those, oh right, KILL THE GAME. So why was it even a debate? Because hitting drop targets works every time in this game, which I can’t say about Spinball. Faint praise, because the truth is, Sega Flipper is horrendous, broken in both body and spirit. It’s not only one of the worst video pinball sims, but also one of the worst video games ever made. Maybe the ball doesn’t clip right through walls like it does in Spinball, but Spinball doesn’t halt the game for almost a minute in the middle of a ball to tally points, either. It speaks volumes to how bad video pinball can get that this didn’t finish dead last.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #116 of 125
Percentile: 7%

Rollerball
Platform: MSX
Released in 1984
Designed by Satoshi Matsuoka
Published by HAL Laboratory
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

I swear to God, this was the point where I strongly considered aborting this entire feature. Not because Rollerball is a bad game, exactly. The physics are remarkably well done given the hardware limitations and it’s the first game where ball control and set shots can be reasonably expected. But, I didn’t have fun at all with Rollerball. Rollerball uses a four screen table set-up that may or may not be the first pinball video game where you start on a top screen and try to stay as high on the stack as possible. Since both Rollerball and the Nintendo game known as simply “Pinball” were both developed by HAL and released in 1984, it’s hard to know which gets the credit as the pioneer of that format. Just give HAL the credit, I guess. So, what’s wrong with Rollerball? Well, sigh, it’s not very fun, at least in 2026. And not just because it’s old fashioned.

Each of the four screens in Rollerball is a little too simple, and sometimes, exploitable. None more so than the second screen, which is themed like a slot machine. Each of the reels is tied to A-B-C targets, of which there’s a pair of each on the playfield. Once I had the A and B reels on the bell, I was able to just chop wood on the C shot, which was away from the other targets and thus unlikely to have a ricochet spin the other reels. Every single time it came up a bell, with reels A and B already being bells, the multiplier went up, and so X2 became x9 fairly quickly. The risk/reward for such valuable shots are non-existent. Unless Rollerball forced all three reels to be spun at least once to count, this is too easy to pump your post-ball bonus up for.

Don’t get me wrong: there’s a lot to like about Rollerball on MSX. The drop targets especially are satisfying to shoot, and the table does build a sense of urgency as you get closer and closer to the fourth and final screen, which has a drum roll to warn you that you’re close to death. But that final screen is really lacking in targets and is so simple and so boring to shoot that it sucks all the tension out of it. Better physics is great, but Rollerball just doesn’t do enough with those physics. It’s just not a fun layout.

Originally, I wasn’t even going to do the MSX Rollerball. I figured since the game was released on the NES as well, I was covered. Except, the NES Rollerball has an entirely different layout. They share a name and a format, and that’s it. Rollerball MSX has more in common with the Nintendo published (but HAL-developed) black box Pinball. Except, I think they got more out of Nintendo’s game. This feels like a prototype for that game, and not a very fun one, though it did end up higher in the rankings due to Nintendo Pinball’s historically inept scoresheet. Plus, Rollerball has more options, and I do appreciate that they included four different speeds for players. I prefer a wide variety over the typical “fast/slow” option.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #58 of 125
Percentile: 54%

Slamball
Platform: Commodore 64
Released in 1984
Designed by Stephen C. Biggs
Developed by Synapse Software
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

This was the final game I played for this feature in order to get the game count up to a nice, even 130. And I’m walking away with a winner. Slamball’s physics aren’t remotely pinball-like. The ball is unpredictable and bouncy as all hell. The flippers serve little purpose beside keeping the ball in play. I have hated so many games like that. So, what sets Slamball apart? Two things, the first being the nudging is incredibly effective, to the point that it’s arguably the true primary point of the game and not the flippers. The second is that Slamball gives the chaos an addictive purpose beyond just a high score.

While you’re TECHNICALLY going for a high score, the actual goal is to knock out all 37 targets on the playfield. Which, hey, I’m typing this on my 37th birthday. Come on, that’s fate! You have five balls to do this, and if you do, you “beat the level” and move onto the next, which is an identical playfield with identical target placements. Only the colors change, but you do get all your lives back. You’ll need them to. The hyperactive ball is basically unclockable. But with the highly effective nudge, you can sort of steer the ball in the direction of the targets.

Slamball is exactly the type of silly twist on pinball that game manufacturers should have been doing all along during the early-to-mid 80s. You’re not going to have life-like physics on the Commodore 64 in 1984. But you can take the base ingredients of pinball and create a fun little time waster that is genuinely exciting and memorable while also being true to the spirit of pinball. You might have noticed in the above clip that the ball behaves about as crazy as the Atari 2600 Video Pinball. I hated that game, but I’m giving Slamball a YES! because the shifting colors, wider variety of targets, and the satisfaction of clearing all 37 targets takes the unmitigated chaos and gives you a reason to want to play it. It’s not rocket science. Plus the death animations genuinely made me laugh. I might be a sadist.
Verdict: YES!
Ranking: #39 of 125
Percentile: 69%

Pinball
aka Vs. Pinball
Platform: Arcade
Released February, 1984
Designed by Satoshi Matsuoka and Tadashi Sugiyama
Directed by Kenji Miki
Developed by HAL Laboratory
Published by Nintendo
Sold Separately via Arcade Archives (Nintendo Switch Only)

I already gave Vs. Pinball a NO! back in 2019, while my “anti-retro” snobbery streak had yet to really be quelled. I didn’t expect it to change, but like every game I re-review, I went into this play session with an open mind and gave the game as clean a slate as a human being can possibly give a game they’ve already disliked. “Find the fun” is my motto, and I did find some fun moments in Vs. Pinball. Unfortunately for Vs. Pinball (which actually doesn’t have the name “Vs.” anywhere in the title but that’s what everyone calls it), most of that fun was unrelated to the gameplay and instead in comparing it to the NES version (up next), because the two games aren’t actually identical, and not just because of the shades of colors used. So, let’s add it to this review.

Pinball
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System and Arcade
Released February 2, 1984
Designed by Satoshi Matsuoka and Tadashi Sugiyama
Directed by Kenji Miki
Developed by HAL Laboratory
Published by Nintendo
Included with Switch Online Subscription

Vs. Pinball is on the left, NES Pinball on the right.

Despite the Nintendo Vs. System ostensibly running NES hardware, the home versions of the coin-ops were usually significantly stripped down, and Pinball is no exception. Visually, the colors are not as vibrant and the extras like the sideboard look stripped down. Look at the difference between the bubble gum pink in the coin-op version compared to the home port. One is unforgettable, the other is bland. But then you get to the gameplay. The default “slow” ball in the coin-op is still, I think, a teeny-tiny bit faster than B mode in the NES game. By the way, ANYONE with any sort of pinball experience will want to avoid the ultra-ultra slow A mode in the NES game. Yikes, it’s boring. There’s a “fast ball” dip switch setting for the coin-op but I was not impressed with its performance. Meanwhile, the kickhole on the right of the playfield simply fires the ball out on the NES, but in the arcade, it’s a hazard to be avoided and will transfer the ball to the lower playfield. The coin-op has music. The NES game doesn’t. And again, I’m pretty sure the ball save doesn’t happen on the NES game, as there’s only one tier of chicks that appear in the eggs. The coin-op has two.

Vs. Pinball is on the left, NES Pinball on the right.

One of the biggest differences is the NES game features no end-of-ball bonuses. When you enter the bonus room (seen above), your points are just added to your total. They’re accumulated and added to after your final ball drains in the coin-op, and if you clear 75,000 total points (with the bonus) you get another ball. You can also start with anywhere between 3 and 5 balls, depending on the dip switch setting you choose. And none of these things matter thanks to those ruinous disappearing flippers.

Even that’s different between the home and arcade versions. They vanish in the NES version when you reach 100,000 points and reappear at 150,000 points. I couldn’t find ANYTHING on when they disappear in the coin-op, but it happens more frequently. It seems to be tied to specific shots, as I had them disappear when I knocked out all the drop targets circled in these two pictures. Both these pics are from Vs. Pinball:

BUT, the flippers also disappeared in the upper playfield when I completed the left orbit. As for when they reappeared in Vs. Pinball, sometimes it would happen for such mundane things as hitting a bumper or rollover. In general, making the flippers invisible was a stupid idea that should never have made it past the drawing board, and yes, I’m petty enough to give Nintendo’s Pinball a NO! just for them. But I’d be giving it a NO! anyway. This is the rare re-review where I don’t have anything new to really say. The risk/reward factors in Nintendo Pinball make no sense at all and the scoring sheet just isn’t well thought-out. The bonus room is atrocious, with probably half my games ending immediately from an unplayable ball. Even if you think of the bonus room as a video mode, it doesn’t work at all.

There’s also SOME satisfaction to be had by shots like the orbits, but it’s rare that the ball actually does clear those orbits probably due to its constantly vibrating nature. There’s also limited defensive options since there’s no means to nudge. I wouldn’t mind seeing a modern remake with this same layout, with today’s physics and a more balanced scoresheet. For the record, I think the physics are slightly better in the coin-op and Vs. Pinball offers a little more substance with its two tiers of eggs/chicks, but I don’t really want to play either of these games again. And now I really have no reason to. Well, unless I do every black box game as a Definitive Review.
Verdict: NO! and NO!
Rankings: #66 of 125 (Arcade) #67 of 125 (NES)
Percentile: 47% (Arcade) 46% (NES)

Pinbo
Platform: Arcade
Released August, 1984
Developed by Jaleco
To be Included in Jaleco Arcade Collection Vol. 1, Coming in 2026

The first of many Japanese exclusives in this feature and the first pinball/action hybrid, Pinbo is sort of like video pinball mixed with WarioWare Inc.: Mega Microgame$. The primary playfield features three bumpers, three rollover lanes, and ten very easy to hit drop targets. While you shoot pinball, up to three enemies slowly make their way towards the flippers, and if they reach one, they will eat it and you’re certain to lose the ball. It only takes a single hit to kill them, and you can also kill them if they’re on or near the bumpers. If an enemy spits out a balloon and you hit it, all enemies die. If you hit all the BONUS drop targets, you start a two-ball multiball. Finally, there’s a LUCKY saucer. I was never quite sure how exactly you activate it, but doing so shrinks the flippers but allows you to move them freely around the lower playfield. You can return the flippers to the drain any time you want, which will restore them to full size. There’s no guides or, really, much of anything about Pinbo out there so I was flying blind with this one.

The big hook with Pinbo is that you don’t score most points on the primary playfield. A mini-game is named above the A-B-C rollovers and changes every time you complete all three. Hitting the J-A-L-E-C-O lights activates that game. Some of them use the same mechanic as the LUCKY saucer, shrinking the flippers and allowing you to move them freely in order to shoot at targets, which can be a LOT of different things. A pool table with a single ball that needs to be pocketed. A clown jumping on a trampoline or walking a tight rope. Magic lamps that need to be rubbed and only one is real. Oil wells that, again, only one is real. Now, keeping control of the ball with the mini-flippers is tough. The ball doesn’t shrink and, if you don’t move carefully, it can fall off the flippers and to its doom. If a ball drains at ANY point, mini-game or otherwise, it’s a loss of life. All of these games are hurry-ups, so the faster you complete them, the more you score. I want to say “they’re easy to clock” but determining the angles isn’t so easy that I ever reached the point where I could win every game every time.

BUT, the WarioWare-like vibe really comes through when the mini-games require you to switch to an entirely different style of gameplay that has nothing to do with pinball. Some of the mini-games are themed around sports and might see you having to sink a basket, hit a baseball into one of six scoring pockets, or make a goal in soccer. The basketball one is too easy. Once you realize you just barely have to tap the button, it’s practically like giving you the max value. But the baseball and soccer ones I failed more than just about any other game. There’s certainly a lack of balance in both the games and the values they can represent. Plus, there’s no incentive to cycle through each-game, not that you have any control over it. The bumpers might lead to you changing games three or four times before the ball finally wiggles loose of them. Today, this same concept would include checklist lights for each mini-game and a wizard mode once you’ve done them all. Like SO MANY of these early video pinball games, this is dying for a remake.

I get why Pinbo wasn’t considered a high prospect for a global release. I’m thrilled that, after I wrote this review, it was announced for inclusion in the upcoming Jaleco sets, but set your expectations accordingly. The physics aren’t amazing. Things like accurate backhanding still don’t exist, and finding correct shooting angles isn’t intuitive. Sometimes it sure seems like the ball rolls over the missing J-A-L-E-C-O letters and doesn’t activate. Plus, without the ability to nudge, you can’t defend at all against the outlanes. Accurate shots can still take unlucky bounces and drain down the sides, and that bottom bumper is LETHAL. But the outlanes are especially dangerous and there’s really nothing that can be done about them, so a lot of Pinbo is going to come down to luck. It’s a very hard game to get the hang of and, even if you do, expect house balls galore.

Mind you, that’s with the 70 lives cheat toggled on. When I played without cheating, it took me over five hours before I even cleared the 500,000 benchmark that would have netted me an extra ball. There was just no way to stop the outlanes or that lower bumper even when I thought I was playing conservative. Still, as a first-of-its-kind concept that offers fast paced mini-games that feel like precursors to modern video modes, Pinbo worked for me. The enemies are a little generic in design, but what matters is hitting them is satisfying. For all its physics problems, I had fun. And I screamed and rolled my eyes a lot, but that doesn’t cancel out the fun. Pinbo is not a masterpiece and the good and the bad are basically equal, but it will make a fine +1 for Jaleco Arcade Collection Vol. 1. Don’t skip it.
Verdict: YES!
Ranking: #41 of 125
Percentile: 67%

Pinball Action
Platform: Arcade
Released July, 1985
Developed by Tehkan Ltd.
Sold Separately via Arcade Archives

Tehkan Ltd. would soon be known as “Tecmo” and they threw their hat into the ring with this release that checks off a pair of historic firsts. Pinball Action the earliest video pinball release that I could successfully use dead flips with consistency. It was the first game that allowed me to predictably pass the ball from flipper to flipper. It also has DIP switches that have separate difficulty factors for both the flippers and the outlanes, and they matter. With the settings all set to EASY, including extra balls, I cleared ten million points in only my third game. But the game is much faster paced with the “flipper” difficulty set to HARD so I recommend that to all players. Just adjusting the outlanes to MEDIUM led to multiple 50,000 point games in a row before getting my mojo back, so it does make a noticeable difference. Finally, Pinball Action also introduced the idea of traversing through multiple different themes, though how successfully is debatable.

Despite having physics that do resemble that of a weighted ball, finding shooting angles in Pinball Action was very difficult. The game doesn’t seem to have a “living ball” design. Instead, I assume they treated the flippers like the paddles in Breakout, dividing them into segments that launch the ball at very specific angles depending on the speed and position where you flip. In theory, that means you should be able to clock shots. Except there were multiple targets that, over the course of literal hours of a single game, I couldn’t find a direct angle to shoot regardless of the speed or angle of the flipper. Had the same layout been done on a real life table, I would have been able to shoot those angles. You feel it especially on this screen:

As you can see, all the drop targets should have easy access from the flippers and relatively simple shooting angles. But there’s just no way to directly shoot some of the drop targets directly off the flippers when the ball is teed-up by an inlane. The second K target? The angle that should get it instead shoots spinning. The flippers just needed more angles. Over the course of several hours, bricked shots behaved in a very limited amount of different ways. Even when bumpers are involved, I started to notice the same handful of ball behaviors when the ball traveled a certain angle. Once I knew that certain targets were more likely to be hit by banked shots, it was just a matter of figuring out where those angles were.

The good news is that the targets are fairly fun to shoot. All four screens are rooted in early Solid State-style design with simple targets, spinners, and occasionally orbits. You can adjust the settings to make it harder to get extra balls. Not only do I recommend it, but honestly I think most gamers might find that Pinball Action is at its best when it doesn’t offer EBs. For all my complaining, I found the themes enjoyable enough and I really enjoyed getting the hang of the physics. I don’t think Pinball Action is going to have staying power in anyone’s lineup. I know this because when I replayed it after finishing this feature to grab a clip of the gameplay, I didn’t enjoy Pinball Action as much.

But I don’t need any of these games to be long-term investments. I just need them to be fun enough where I could put a few hours into them and walk away satisfied. I got my $8 worth of fun out of Pinball Action and found myself genuinely looking forward to the sequel, which I found out was made for mature audiences. Wait, we’re still talking about Pinball Action, right? Well, it is Tecmo so I guess that tracks. I should note that, as a pinball game, the two score chasing modes with online leaderboards in Arcade Archives are perfectly suited for this. It’s NOT perfect. God no. But it’s still fun even in 2026. Barely, but barely counts.
Verdict: YES!
Ranking: #31 of 125
Percentile: 75%

Midnight Magic
Platform: Atari 2600
Released in 1986*
Designed by Glenn Axworthy
Developed by Atari
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED (?)

*Despite the copyright being 1984 on the title screen, Midnight Magic was not released until 1986.

What the actual hell? Not only is Midnight Magic not part of Atari 50, but as far as I could tell, it has never been included in any Atari collection. That’s a travesty, because this is SO much better than Video Pinball and has a case that it’s more fun than Bumper Bash and the best pinball game on the 2600. While I think it’s a little cringy that the 2600 version of Midnight Magic is trading on a much better video pinball game’s name value and reputation, this VCS game is solid in its own right. It offers a four flipper layout, five simple drop targets, two stand-up targets, and the most satisfying-to-shoot spinner yet. That sucker SPINS, with some direct hits lasting quite a while before it stops, and with a convincing animation to boot. But that’s not a whole lot going for a table by this point. Hell, the most notable thing was Midnight Magic is the first table in this collection to allow you to thread the needle, a term the Vices apparently coined (though my father insists he’d heard it before).

At first, I thought Midnight Magic was a little too simple with its layout, and maybe too easy. You get extra balls just for knocking down all five drop targets and then hitting either of the two rollovers in the corners. That’s too generous when a single EB based on a scoring benchmark would have made more sense. It’s also the final game chronologically to use a ball that’s most suitable for Breakout with its speed and bounciness. But, I’ll be damned if I wasn’t so hooked on this f*cking thing that I couldn’t put it down. Hitting the top five targets is quite satisfying. It also feels like the game was fine tuned enough to have the difficulty be something that felt authentically pinball. The #1 thing that killed me? Lethal slingshots, which sent the ball directly between the flippers and down the poop chute. Zen Studios nods with approval.

If this had a nudge, I might have gone a little higher on it. Midnight Magic is proof that you can have a VERY fun video pin with very little actual targets to work with just by optimizing the addictive potential of those targets with some kind of visual reward. In the case of this game, it feels great when the colors change after clearing all the targets. Originally I gave the edge to Bumper Bash as the best 2600 video pinball game, but I’ll probably never play that game again. I might actually fire up Midnight Madness just for fun when I know I have ten minutes to kill. Huh. Three Atari 2600 pinball games. I was certain they would go three for three on NO! votes. Instead, two got a YES! and I’m eating crow. Delicious, nutritious crow. Breakfast of champions.
Verdict: YES!
Ranking: #37 of 125
Percentile: 70%

Panic Road
Platform: Arcade
Released in 1986
Developed by Seibu Kaihatsu
Published by Taito
Never Released in North America
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

It’s been a while since I’ve gotten to say these words: I think I just played the worst video game I’ve ever played. Of course, I’ve said that before about other games (see my review of NES hall of shamers Where’s Waldo and Fox’s Peter Pan and the Pirates), but hey, it’s not MY fault I keep running into games that scratch past what I thought was the bottom of the barrel. When I beat Panic Road’s seventh and final level and was given one of the most pathetic “congratulations” screens I’ve seen, I thought to myself “it’s not possible to be worse than this.”

Panic Road appears to have been the first attempt at mixing pinball with arcade platforming or adventure gameplay. It does make sense. Platforming was all the rage in 1986. But literally nothing goes right beyond looking good in screenshots. The flippers are teeny tiny little nubby things that look more like they belong on a 50’s style woodrail. That alone should have set off red flags. Not a lot of aiming flexibility with those. It turns out that aiming just wasn’t on the menu anyway thanks to the worst physics imaginable.

The physics. Lord help me, these physics. The behavior of the ball, at all times, is complete f*cking nonsense that gets more and more detached from reality as the game goes on. The ball will curve for no reason. The ball will ignore flips and just roll up and over the flipper. The ball will get stuck on the flipper hinges where they attach to walls. It truly, no bullsh*t, feels like the ball has a mind of its own. And that’s before you’re expected to manually f*ck with the physics yourself via unlimited nudging, which the game seems to be more based around than the flippers. But when the ball just doesn’t adhere to anything resembling predictable shooting angles, the ability to shake left or right without tilting isn’t going to make the game feel more interactive. Frankly, I think the ball ignored my nudging just as much as the flippers.

The only explanation I could come up with to explain the ball behavior is that the developers took inspiration from another Taito-published game, Bubble Bobble (read my review here) and the levels have invisible currents that affect the ball. I figure this might be the case because when a ball tended to hook for no reason, it would do it again and again in the same area. What that doesn’t explain is why collision is also so historically inept. The object of the game is to collect X-amount of items and/or destroy X-amount of fixtures, which makes a key appear near the bottom of the stage that, once you collect it, you automatically beat the stage. THANK GOD for that part too, because if I had to climb back up the table I think I would have quit early. That’s because direct hits on items often don’t pick them up. The ball literally passes straight through them. I thought it might require a specific angle, but throughout the game, there was no consistency to it. The coins in the above picture were the worst, as I watched the ball go through them from the sides, below, and from above. I wondered if they had a single pixel that collision was mapped to.

Combat is equally fickle, as enemies need direct hits from the correct angle. Not that it would have helped all that much. They have boring design and don’t really “attack” so much as just sort of annoy you by blocking shots or getting in the way. At worst, they grab you and throw you down, though not always between the flippers like you would expect. There’s also warps that take you around the board, but you never know where you’ll go. Here is what the game looks like without nudging, and at the end of this clip, you’ll see a glitch happen where I hit a warp, but something goes wrong and the ball suddenly ghosts through all objects before traveling out of the screen for a loss of life, solidifying this as a broken game.

The worst part of all is that if every single pinball element of Panic Road were somehow improved to the point of being as good as you could hope for, it would still be a mediocre-at-best coin-op. The dull level design, bland enemies, tiny flippers, and overall boring presentation would assure that. So yeah, I do think this is the new worst game I’ve ever played. At least Where’s Waldo delivers on the premise of finding Waldo. A pinball game with a ball that does its own thing regardless of what you do? Seriously, there’s dozens of games in this feature where the only function of the flippers is to volley the ball back into play. Panic Road’s flippers don’t even do that consistently.  Who would want to play this, even for $0.25? After 130 games, if I had to choose between all of them to be stuck on a desert island with, I’d choose this one last. No, f*ck that, I’d swim for it and I’m not even kidding. I’d swim for it. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the worst arcade game I’ve ever played and, I believe, the worst video pinball game ever made.
Verdict: NO!
Ranked #125 of 125
Percentile: 0%

Speed Ball
Platform: Arcade
Released in 1987
Developed by Tecfri
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Speed Ball is a contender for the most obscure game in this feature. Hell, it doesn’t even have a listing at MobyGames, as far as I could tell. I’d never heard of Tecfri, the Spanish developer behind it. Their business model was bold for its time, likely based on Nintendo’s PlayChoice 10 or Vs. System lines, but for video pinball. The idea was that arcades or route operators on a budget could ditch their physical pinball tables (which were more expensive than video games) for their Super Pinball machines, which featured three tables. Speed Ball is the first and apparently only release in the Super Pinball line, which has no relation to Williams/Bally’s legendary SuperPins or the Super NES Super Pinball games still to come in this feature. When players started to get bored with the current Super Pin lineup, operators could swap the PCB and get a hefty discount on a fresh set of three tables.

It’s actually not the worst idea. Pins take lots of space. They make a sh*t ton of noise. They require cleaning and maintenance that video arcade games don’t. Route operators especially were careful with pinball machines because store owners would get pissy if they broke down. An out of order sign on a table makes the whole business that hosts the machine look bad, when they didn’t even own the machine. The obvious solution is to shrink them down and replace the physical components with video games. If it sounds silly, really, it’s not. My father said it best: if Pinball FX or Zaccaria Pinball-like quality video pinball existed in the 1980s, real pinball would never have made it to 1990. Video pinball would have killed real pinball if for no other reason than cost efficiency. Whether we like it or not, it’s true. The only reason it didn’t happen: gaming tech wasn’t even a little close enough to life-like yet. Obviously Tecfri thought it was.

And honestly, I can kind of get why Tecfri thought maybe they were ready for this format. This is the best arcade pinball game up to this point chronologically, finishing just one ranking ahead of Tecmo’s Pinball Action, but undeniably normal pinball instead of an action game hybrid like Pinbo. The tables are a little truncated, somewhere between the dimensions of a real table and a cocktail pinball like Game Plan did. Now, I’m a little confused how their business model was supposed to work.

At first, I thought the game would offer three distinct tables with the player being able to choose one to play. So far, so true. But then in the middle of a game, I landed the ball in a saucer and was teleported to another table. In fact, all three tables offer access points to the other two tables, making this share a little too much DNA with Pinball Action and seemingly defeating the whole point of the format. (shrug)

No matter what setting you use, the physics are decent, but they’re not going to knock your socks off. I assume the name “Speed Ball” comes from how fast the ball gets knocked around by the bumpers, but it’s not so fast that they should have named the whole game that. It’s not THAT fast of a game. But shooting and rebounding is good enough. Inlane passing is a cinch, the ball doesn’t have enough bounce to perform any other pass. There is an effective nudge (I have NO CLUE on if you had to physically manipulate the Super Pinball unit for this) and no TILT as far as I could tell, but this never worked to defend against the drain. Outlanes only. If that sounds like it’s too easy, well, it’s fairly easy to learn the shooting angles, but the outlanes are brutal on all three tables, and there’s no visual cue that the nudge is doing anything. You won’t know until the ball drains or not, and then again, you won’t know if it was your nudge or just a lucky bounce. I had several games turn on a dime even after hours of playtime.

I found the Egypt table to be the least exciting of the three, as there’s just not enough targets to shoot. Besides the left and right most stand-up targets, there’s little risk/reward on that layout. But the Outer Space and James Bond tables were pretty solid digital pins that were tricky enough to put up a significant challenge. Outer Space had an especially cruel right outlane, but this is balanced by a fun layout.

The unauthorized James Bond table, which I suspect might have been the death knell for not just the Super Pinball platform but Tecfri as a whole, was the strongest table. By far, actually. It has the equivalent of what we would call cardboard targets today. Six little stick figures that are satisfying to shoot, along with an inlane drop target element. As fun as it is, it doesn’t take long to clock the safe angles and rack up big points. I could totally understand how Tecfri would be proud of their pinball engine. It’s very good for the era. It’s just not REAL pinball, and their model was never going to be a big money earner. Still, for one brief, shining moment, a nobody company could legitimately claim they had made one of the best games a genre had seen up to that point. I love stories like that.
Verdict: YES!
Ranked #30 out of 125
Percentile: 76%

As for what happened with Super Pinball after Speed Ball, the first PCB swap option, Music Ball, never got released and was vanished to the cornfield of gaming. It has no listing at GameFAQs. It has no listing at MobyGames. It has no listing on the Killer List of Video Games, which has PLENTY of unreleased prototypes. I’m a chick that came from the XBLIG scene and I can honestly say that I’ve never played a game that is more of a non-entity than Music Ball. And yes, I did play it. There’s a ROM floating around out there that nobody seems to know much about. I found a few message board posts that speculated it was a bootleg, but I don’t believe that’s the case.

After playing around with it, I believe it’s obviously an unfinished prototype. The title screen has no name on it. There’s no copyright dates. You can’t even select which of the three tables you want to start on despite the fact that there is a table select screen after you quarter-up. And most importantly, the physics don’t match that of Speed Ball. In whatever authority I have, I think it’s a prototype that wasn’t turning out good and got canned mid-development that isn’t complete enough for me to review. So, let’s do a non-review.

Music Ball
Platform: Arcade 
Unfinished Prototype
Developed by Tecfri
NEVER RELEASED

Music Ball is clearly not even close to finished. Whereas Speed Ball had shooting angles off the flippers that were remarkably life-like, at least by the standards of the era, Music Ball’s shooting angles are just plain wrong. It’s as if some angles haven’t been programmed in yet, so shots that should travel higher off the flipper instead take a more shallow trajectory. Weirdly, you’d think THIS was Speed Ball based on how fast the ball traveled. Much, much faster than Speed Ball, though this seems to be the source of much of the game’s instability.

I wondered if Speed Ball originally had this too and they couldn’t figure out how to make it more stable so they just dialed back the speed. If I’m right, at least that makes the name “Speed Ball” make sense. The entire gameflow is changed. Unlike Speed Ball, when you die, you return to the first table and must make your way from table to table, though I’m not sure if that was intentional or not since the table select screen is still there when you start a new game. You just can’t actually select any table but the headphones one in the above picture.

I saw at least two instances of the ball skipping from one spot to another after hitting a target. Not BIG skips, but tiny ones that still break the illusion of real pinball. Although this had the first multiballs in the Super Pinball format, as I noted above, it seemed to crash the game on the third table, which happened to me twice. It’s such a shame because these layouts would have been more exciting and challenging than the original game, but the physics are maybe 50% finished. That’s a shame because all three of these tables are much, much stronger than the three tables in Speed Ball. I especially think headphones and the table pictured below were potentially some of the best video pins of the 80s. But they didn’t work.

In fact, the game is so wonky and unstable that I’m not sure if development simply halted when Tecfri went belly-up or if they cancelled it before then, then went to that big game studio in the sky. For all my whining in this feature, I’m not naive. Video pinball is complicated and time consuming to develop. That’s why I didn’t want to play with Pinball Construction Set. I don’t know the financial shape of Tecfri, but they never released another game after 1987. I don’t know if Super Pinball killed the company or if there was more going on. I do know the first game was strong enough that they clearly had talent. You can’t fluke into a game as good as Speed Ball. But video pinball requires a TON of patience, and if their leadership didn’t have it, it was never going to work. From what I can see in this early build of Music Ball, it had a TON of potential. Maybe some day a talented developer will recognize that and finish it. I played 130 old video pins, and I think it would be a project that’s worthwhile.
No Verdict or Ranking

Time Scanner
Platform: Arcade
Released March, 1987
Directed (?) by Tomosuke Tsuda
Published by Sega
Never Released in North America
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED (?)

Before I fired up Time Scanner, I was excited. It looked like Sega’s arcade version of Alien Crush. The voices in my head were telling me “if this were any good, don’t you think it would have been released globally? Don’t you think Sega would have ported it to the Genesis? Don’t think they would have done something with this game over the last forty years?” And I was like “SHUT UP, VOICES! If I didn’t listen to you when you kept telling me over and over to set my bed on fire, why would I start now?” The lesson I learned: always listen to the voices in your head. Always. Ahem.

Time Scanner has some of the best layouts of any multi-screen game yet, but others are just a bore that make the lack of decent shooting angles stand out much more. The ball also lacks a nice, satisfying WHOMP to it. Plus it feels lightweight, so the ball behavior ends up being a step back over what Tecmo and Tecfri had accomplished with their arcade pins.

Initially, I really disliked Time Scanner. It speaks volumes to how strong some of the playfields are that it started climbing out of the cellar of the rankings. There’s four tables that are each split into two screens, with targets and goals that sometimes carry over between the upper and lower playfields. Like Pinball Action and Speed Ball, the twist is that you can warp from table to table by shooting the “Time Tunnels.” The game is supposedly themed around time travel, at least I think so, but there’s nothing inherently time travely about it. One table is themed around a volcano, another an engine-like machine that has a f*cking heat sink on it.

The predictable Ancient Egypt theme is here (if you had to take a drink for every Egypt-themed table in this feature, you would die, so please don’t). They’re all tables that have exciting multiballs tied to them. I mean, I literally had everybody out of the pool moments with each of them because the outlanes are brutal, but it did happen.

By far the strongest table was the special one. The upper playfield is the first time I’ve seen brick breaking combined properly with pinball in a way that works. You can either hit the bricks in the corner one at a time OR you can use rebounding and allow the ball to fall through an inlane, as either inlane rollover will clear an entire line of bricks. I also want to say that placing the bricks off-center was SO wise because it actually works with the less than perfect physics. Seriously, this totally kills the Magic Pixel/AtGames Legends Pinball version of pinball brick breaking, an Arkanoid-themed table, by light years. And mind you, I liked the Arkanoid table, so that’s saying something. This was maybe the best original table in this feature so far. Okay, so the lower field isn’t as strong, but it even has a satisfying horseshoe loop. So what’s the problem? I mean besides the fact that the multiballs pass through each-other (that might be why so many multiballs end so quickly. No hero balls).

The sheer amount of effort to unlock the special table is INSANE. It took me multiple games. Time Scanner allows for unlimited continues, with every light you’ve activated across all tables remaining lit when you continue. At first, I wasn’t doing that and was starting each game fresh. It’s pinball, for God’s sake. I want to play from scratch and go for high scores. That’s why I play pinball. Of course, I wasn’t making a ton of progress. Even with the best defensive nudge in this feature so far, the limited shooting angles led the outlanes being serial killers and, hell, even the drain was tough to defend against. Most of my multiballs ended in literally a few seconds when all three balls did sucker plunges down the outlanes.

When I tweaked the settings to the easiest, it didn’t help, so I finally started using Time Scanner’s unlimited continues, not even aware there was a special stage. I agreed to play five rounds with continues and then finish the review. I got the Special on the 4th. It’s a grind, folks, and one that the physics aren’t quite good enough for. It’s SO close, but not close enough. With that said, I hate that Sega gave up on it because it feels like they could have turned this into something very special on the Genesis. My rule is that I have to like a game more than not, and I’m about 49% like versus 51% dislike for Time Scanner. Alas.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #46 of 125 – Highest Ranking NO! Game
Percentile: 63%

Fire Ball
Platform: MSX2
Released in 1988
Developed by Hummingbird Soft
Never Released Outside of Japan
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Despite the name, Fire Ball shares no connection to the legendary 1972 Ted Zale table from Bally. In fact, the name “Fire Ball” makes zero sense for this table. In the wacky world of pinball, that type of superficial stuff does kind of matter, right? If you don’t believe that, try getting excited for Fire Ball on MSX2, a table that does legitimately have the most exciting shot in this feature so far, but a theme that’s so generic that it’s hard to get your adrenaline flowing. In the above clip, you’ll notice that the orbit labeled SPECIAL has a kicker that sure has the speed and impact of the legendary Yagov Kicker from the Steve Ritchie masterpiece F-14 Tomcat. It’s a thrilling shot that’s so satisfying to both make and to defend against. So, like, why is the rest of the table’s pace so sluggish?

And when I talk about “sluggish” I’m talking about the game on the default settings. Fire Ball has a hidden menu with extensive options. My father and I spent some time tinkering around with them and we were NOT happy with the results and I don’t recommend them as anything but a curio. You cannot improve the slowness without compromising other elements. Adjust one setting and you’ll need to adjust a dozen other settings just to make up for it. For example, when we changed the slope, we couldn’t even clear the shooting lane, so we also had to adjust the plunger, and then the flipper’s punching power, and we had to especially change the punching strength of the bumpers because they were basically dead. Going the opposite way, where we lightened the gravity, made for a silly experience, but the novelty wore thin quickly because the ball would find the outlanes too fast. So yeah, this is a weird but welcome bonus, but don’t expect any tangible gameplay results without having to spend a lot of time adjusting everything. My verdict is based only on the default settings.

Part of Fire Ball’s slow pace is probably from the scoring sheet. Fire Ball is the rare table that uses single-digit base scoring. For what it’s worth, the values, balance and risk/reward factors are really well done. When all is said and done, this is in the discussion for Classic Pinball Video Games: The Definitive Review’s best scoring sheet. But when you’re dealing with single digits, it can also make the pace feel slower than it actually is, and that combines with ball speed and physics that are legitimately slow outside of the Yagov Kicker. Thankfully the table isn’t a one-shot wonder. There’s an eye-catching turnstile spinner that made all the silverballers in my family giggle with joy because it’s just so f*cking cool to see such a rare element represented so well in an old school video pinball game. There’s also a satisfying little boomerang lane and a double camel hump lane.

It sounds great, and it can be even with the slow ball movement. That’s why it sucks so very badly that the visual feedback and sound design for made shots is so badly done. Hitting the stand-up targets should offer more stimuli than this. It’s too subdued. But, there’s one last awesome aspect about Fire Ball. Originally I didn’t think there was a nudge, but after completing this whole feature, I quickly ran through each game and found that it can actually nudge up, left, and right. I already gave the table a YES! but this shot it right up into the top 25. This could have been so much better if they had been able to get the ball tempo up without screwing everything else up. Still, Fire Ball is proof that a good score sheet and a couple very satisfying shots will get you very far in pinball. This was THE sleeper of this entire feature, easily.
Verdict: YES!
Ranking: #23 of 125
Percentile: 82%

Moon Ball Magic
aka Mark Flint’s Moon Ball Magic
Platform: Famicom Disk System
Released July 12, 1988
Designed by Mark Flint
Directed by Kazuyuki Takasaki
Developed by System Sacom
Published by SquareSoft
Never Released Outside of Japan
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Before I get started, I should note that since the game didn’t have a box or packaging, I used the title screen for the header. The thing is, the title screen is an interactive prelude. Neat idea, except the graphics and physics are even worse than the main game, and the layout suggests you’re doing a game at least partially based on Pachinko, even though you are not and nothing resembling the layout ever happens again. I actually really like the idea of an interactive title screen for a game like this, but the execution was an ominous sign of the unimaginable horror I was about to experience.

For a while, I thought I might put Moon Ball Magic as the worst game in this feature. Upon replaying it and doing the final rankings, it just barely missed the bottom ten. That’s not a positive for the game. It’s a damning indictment of the video pinball genre. Moon Ball Magic combines some of the absolute worst pinball physics in this feature with some of the worst layouts in this feature. It’s one of those “pinball adventure” style games. The object is to either hit the ball to the exit of each stage or collect the angel statue and then hit the ball to the exit. It sounds fun, and it kind of even looks like maybe it won’t completely suck in some screenshots, but there’s not a single thing positive about the gameplay.

Moon Ball Magic is so similar to Panic Road that I actually wonder if Mark Flint had played Panic Road, loved it, and decided to do his own take on it. The amount of things I can say about Moon Ball Magic that start with the words “Like Panic Road” are startling. Like Panic Road, the nubby flippers are pretty dang useless. Like Panic Road, the game is clearly designed around using nudging to create the angles to succeed more than actual pinball flipping. Like Panic Road, there’s elements on the playfields that redirect the ball so as to completely detach the movement from reality. UNLIKE Panic Road, at least Moon Ball Magic represents these elements with graphics. That’s the little “=” marks you see in the screenshots. Of course, sometimes the ball passes directly over them and nothing happens. Then again, sometimes the ball passes directly over the exit and nothing happens, even when you have the key already. Collision is terrible. EVERYTHING is terrible in this.

I don’t know why they even bothered making a pinball game that seems to have no love for what makes pinball work. The biggest problem by far is, the maps aren’t optimized for the horrible physics. You can’t directly shoot the key or the exit in many stages and are expected to rely on the chaotic bouncing that happens with the nudge, timing it with the surfaces so that you bounce high enough. So, does anything make up for the shortcomings? How about the combat? Well, it seems like most enemies are indestructible and only exist to block your shots or deflect your ball off course so that you have to work your way back to the spot you were aiming at. They look like normal enemies too, so I don’t know what to say. It’s so trollish. I only seemed to kill the larger enemies, and even those took far too many hits and didn’t offer satisfying death animations when they finally died. They just blink out of existence without so much as a poof.

Seriously, am I sure this isn’t a bottom ten game? (checks) I’m sure. Good lord, sometimes video pinball f*cking sucks.

Moon Ball Magic was a budget release for the Famicom Disk System. In Japan, they had kiosks that you could insert a blank FDS disk into and, for a small fee, get a copy of a game. There’s no box art or anything. And, unlike America, there wasn’t a “five games per publisher per year” limit to games so a publisher could offer as many games as they wanted in one of these kiosks. My theory is that Mark Flint shopped the game around and Square Soft was like “no skin off our back! Sure, we’ll publish it!” While I admire the indie spirit of it, which felt fitting for my site’s fifteenth birthday, come on.

Moon Ball Magic is so obviously a terrible game with haphazard design that never feels close to pinball and maybe is counter-optimized to create maximum frustration. But if you’re not going to revere the pinball genre and try to make a game like this based around flipping and orbits and ball movement, who is this made for exactly? Because non-pinheads wouldn’t likely bother trying a game like this at all. A pinball adventure like this should be wish fulfillment for fans of the sport, but this? If this is wish fulfillment, that wish was made on a monkey’s paw.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #114 of 125
Percentile: 9%

Super Pinball
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released August 23, 1988
Developed by Soft Machine
Published by Coconuts Japan
Never Released Outside of Japan
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

This is technically the first game in this feature to be called Super Pinball, unless Speed Ball is considered to be named “Super Pinball” because it was the one and only game released on a platform where the backglass said “SUPER PINBALL.” Super Pinball is also not related to games like Super Pinball, Super Pinball Action, and Naxat Super Pinball, nor is Super Pinball II a sequel to it. Got all that? Good. THIS Super Pinball certainly doesn’t deserve the title of “super.” Visually, it looks like a big upgrade over the Nintendo/HAL game “Pinball” and I assume publisher Coconuts Japan was trying to present this as a sequel to that game. Except, the physics are absolutely f*cking terrible. Super Pinball features the heaviest ball yet, at least sometimes. It’s weirdly inconsistent. Sometimes it literally feels like playing pinball with a bowling ball, and other times (especially with slap shots) it feels almost normal and lifelike. It’s the inconsistency that’s the issue.

The only way to consistently pop the ball in the air is via conversion shots, either off a rebound or a bounce. Otherwise, there’s no certainty you’ll get enough height to reach the targets. Oh, and did you notice how in those two screenshots, the ball looks like it’s been speared by the flippers? That’s because the ball (checks notes) has been speared by the flippers. Yeah, it’s really stuck there, like it can’t decide if it’s floating in midair or laying on the tip of the flipper. It’s not a rare thing, either. It happens constantly with the right flipper regardless of which of the four screens you’re on, and is so common that it should have been easily discovered and fixed in play testing. And what is that progress? Well, since two out of the four screens are themed around cars, body shops, and gas stations, OBVIOUSLY the main goal is collecting mahjong tiles.

I mean, obviously, right? But the actual goal is to get to the fourth screen and just hit rollover targets until the tile appears, then you have to collect it. Now, in the primary screen with the car that you’ll start every life on, you have to hit a saucer three times and then take an exit gate. The saucer is easy enough to hit, but the exit? It’s so absurd how difficult it is to find the angle on it that initially I thought the only working angle was a backhand off the left flipper. It wasn’t until my final game before writing this that I finally converted the shot off the right flipper, which would be the primary shooting angle on a real table.

So I didn’t find the physics to be remotely good. And, on top of all that, there’s no nudge, which means no means to defend against bad bounces. I don’t actually want to play pinball that’s missing defense, especially when shooting angles aren’t intuitive. Granted, I wouldn’t want Pinball FX or Zaccaria to have no defense either. It’s as silly to me as saying you want to watch baseball, only without pitching and fielding. That’s half the f*cking sport! “Now you get why I hate the designated hitter rule!” says Oscar. Touché.

And it’s not like the game has strong targets or thrilling shots to make up for its shortcomings. The bottom and second screens, where you’ll spend the majority of your playtime, are pretty dull in their layouts and shot selection. The third and fourth screens, despite the inconsistent theming, are much stronger. Both have what I’d consider to be drop targets on both sides of the playfield, with the top most screen having rollover targets as well. Okay, so it’s not a VAST improvement, especially since those levels have tougher shooting angles which, I can’t stress this enough, you can’t defend against. So yeah, Super Pinball is another “one of the worst video games I’ve ever played in my life” video pins. And seriously, why all the mismatched themes? If the table wasn’t interconnected like in Speed Ball or Pinball Action, that would be one thing. But the idea is supposed to be you’re traveling one continuous table. It makes no sense at all.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #104 of 125
Percentile: 17%

Alien Crush
Platform: TurboGrafx-16
Released September 14, 1988
Developed by Compile
No Modern Release

History belongs to Alien Crush. As far as I can tell, it’s the only video pinball game in the entire history of the medium to be considered, by acclimation, the killer app of a major gaming platform’s launch lineup. Not that its competition was particularly fierce since the US release of the TurboGrafx-16 was a sh*t show. In Japan, the PC Engine soundly defeated the Sega Mega Drive, easily claiming the #2 console position and even briefly taking over industrial leadership from Nintendo’s Famicom, something that was thought to be impossible. But any momentum for a global rollout was lost as NEC squandered their head start by spending an entire year redesigning the look of the console instead of shoring-up US software and partnerships, resulting in Sega being able to beat them to North America with the rechristened Sega Genesis by two weeks.

As if that’s not face-palmy enough, the North American TG-16 launch lineup was truly pitiful. The title selected to be the pack-in, Keith Courage in Alpha Zone, was just about the worst possible game that could have been bundled with it. The Legendary Axe would have been a better bet thanks to the fact that it won a ton of Game of the Year awards, even if it deserved none of them because it’s a bland, boring, basic game. Ask gamers today what was THE game of the TG-16’s launch and they’ll all say “Alien Crush.” Or “Bonk” but Bonk’s Adventure didn’t make the US launch, or even its first holiday season, not releasing until April 1990.

All those circumstances are probably why Alien Crush has a case for being the most famous video pinball game ever made. It’s also one of my most requested retro reviews. Probably in the top five, and I’ve tried to complete that review before. It’s one of those features that I’ve started and stopped multiple times, and in fact, I even finished a review that I junked. It wasn’t my best work. I’m very happy that I finally finished reviewing Alien Crush in THIS format. It was both the 1st and the 25th game I played for this feature (even if you’re not reading it in that order), and the context of having played the sequential evolution of video pinball that led to Alien Crush has given me a level of appreciation for it I could never have gotten otherwise. Like I couldn’t have known that Alien Crush offers more shooting angles than just about any video pinball game up to this point.

The ball feels more free and less confined to preset invisible trails than any other game. Oh, it’s totally an illusion and after about an hour you’ll certainly start to notice and predict the bounces on empty screens. It’s more of a perception thing based on smooth animation and free-floating enemy targets that defect the ball. But perception is reality. It also helps that the table has an effective nudge that works for defense. Perhaps a little too well, actually.

The biggest problem with Alien Crush, by far, is that the game is too damn easy. Most of the targets are placed in a way where rebounding isn’t going to be particularly challenging. That means the risk/reward factors that pinball needs for excitement just aren’t there. While the theme and satisfaction of hitting targets is elite among early video pins, the only time the game puts up a fight is when kickers launch the ball straight at the drain. Even that you can adapt to with a well-timed nudge and slap shot. And there’s the mini-game problem.

Some of the mini-games can be very fun, but they’re too easy to unlock, take too long to load, and if you die, the game takes its sweet time registering it. This causes a major stop-and-go problem with the gameflow. I know the exact moment when I knew Alien Crush wasn’t going to ultimately be one of the higher ranked games in this feature. One of the mini-games has you shooting a series of robotic centipedes or snakes that crawl out of the holes. You have to destroy every segment of every centipede to get the maximum bonus. Two would have been the right amount to not completely kill the pace of Alien Crush. Three would have been pushing it.

The actual amount of centipedes? Six. It’s boring, but in one of my games, I had a moment where I entered the centipede room, completed it, then reentered it within just seconds, and then re-re-entered it a third time. For that stretch, maybe twenty seconds were spent on the table where the actual fun pinball stuff happens and five minutes were spent shooting these awful centipedes, and it f*cking ended when one of the segments got stuck on an angle that was impossible to shoot.

Now here’s the good news: even after nearly forty years, Alien Crush does hold up in enough ways to make this one of the best video pinball games of the 1980s. It does that by going all-in on its theme. Alien Crush has the “I have GOT to see what this thing does” vibe that the best real life tables do, and then it has good enough physics to allow players to immerse themselves in it. Which isn’t to say the physics are close to life-like. The game sets up a variety of targets that look like they’re meant to be shot off the toe, but the toe shooting angles aren’t even close to realistic (and they didn’t fix this for Devil’s Crush). There’s also a lack of tension, as the overall pace of what should be fast-paced gameplay is made slow from all the constant breaks from the core table.

And mind you, that’s playing the game with the ball speed set to “FAST.” I would not recommend anyone of any skill level play on slow. Even if you’re a novice, it’s not going to make the experience better for you, even to learn the angles. Hell, I’d give Alien Crush a NO! on the SLOW setting. Thankfully, the primary table never feels like a grind, which was enough to put this well over the top for me. Is Alien Crush one of the best games of all-time? No. Is it a solid pinball game that has aged better than expected? Oh yes, and when I was finished, I couldn’t wait to play the sequels.
Verdict: YES!
Ranking: #19 of 125
Percentile: 85%

Rollerball
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released December 20, 1988
Designed by Leo Izumi and Makoto Kanai
Directed by Makoto Kanai
Developed by HAL Laboratory
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Rollerball on the NES seems like it might be an improvement over the MSX original, but is it? There’s still no nudge, which means no defense, which means the shot selection better be amazing. Rollerblade’s shot selection is so not amazing. I found Rollerball to be plagued with an incredibly bland layout that just doesn’t offer enough of a variety. Look at the above screenshot. Your options are roll the slot machine, shoot one locker that has two saucers, one of which is blocked with the most awkwardly placed bumper imaginable. Finally, you can shoot the spinner. And that it’s.

The fourth shot is transferring to the next screen up, or you can drain deliberately to shoot the screen below. Compare the slot machine in the NES game to the MSX one, where each reel had TWO targets tied to it, giving you six shots for one toy. The NES game has only two shots, and both spin all three reels. Oh, and you have to keep the ball in play when both slot machine shots are highly dangerous and there’s no post-shot manipulation of the ball. It either returns to the flippers or it drains, but those reels turn slowly. It’s hard to imagine bungling a marquee element more than they did with this.

NES Rollerball’s physics aren’t very intuitive in general. The flippers have a shallow radius, and the trajectory never quite matches your expectations. It’s another aspect where I think the MSX build scores a decisive victory. Not that it matters. Look at the above screenshot. You can see the eight targets, but without the Italian bottom and no means to defend against the outlanes, you’re really just sort of crossing your fingers on every shot. Since this is how multiball is unlocked, it’s kind of important that you be able to shoot it. If you’re not going to have a nudge, you need intuitive shooting angles. One out of four screens does. It’s the bottom one. The best screen would be the second-from-the-bottom screen. Angles? Not so intuitive AND highest risk of the three actual pinball screens that isn’t just a lottery tumbler with flippers. I can’t believe four screens of pinball could have so little action, but that’s Rollerball on the NES. It’s possibly the dullest layout in this entire feature.

Now, for anyone who thinks I’m being too negative, I do have one silver lining that makes Rollerball almost worth a look. It has a two player versus mode that’s actually not the worst idea. Two sets of flippers are placed on a single mirrored pinball table, and each player is given X amount of points (you can decide if it’s 500, 1,000, 3,000, or 5,000). The object is to subtract points from your opponent by hitting their targets. There’s two balls at once, and in a first for this feature, the balls actually interact and clank off each-other. There’s also a slot machine that can add some trickery to it action like removing a flipper from one of the players or making the gravity harder. Every ball drained is also a one hundred point penalty.

This is a tremendous idea that we all liked in principle. In practice, the game is still limited by the unsatisfactory physics of NES Rollerball. (Side note: why the f*ck are the players represented by a donkey and an elephant. WHY DOES POLITICS HAVE TO POISON EVERYTHING?!) We’d both love to see this same concept redone with today’s physics and a much winder variety of arenas. This has legs, people, and if any indie developer out there wants to do something silly and fun, check this out. But only as inspiration. Even with this novel versus game, Rollerball NES is actually one of the bigger disasters in this feature. A major step backwards from the MSX game that feels small and empty inside, sort of like if someone made a pinball table out of me.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #71 of 125
Percentile: 43%

Advanced Pinball Simulator
Platform: Commodore 64
Released in 1989
Designed by Philip Oliver and Andrew Oliver
Green Ranger: Tommy Oliver
Developed by Codemasters
Never Released Outside of Europe
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

After I finished the initial lineup for this feature, someone buzzed me that I actually was missing what they considered to be the worst pinball game ever made. Advanced Pinball Simulator is from the famous Oliver Twins, who created the Dizzy series of games. Yeah, the egg. They should have stuck to the egg, as this is one of the worst games in this feature and one of the worst video games I’ve ever played in my life. Which I’ve said so many times in this feature that it’s lost all meaning, but seriously, look at this:

I wrote this review months after I wrote the upcoming review for a Game Boy title called Hero Shūgō!! Pinball Party, which is the only other game I can really compare this to. Both have issues with invisible walls that create unplayable balls, but Advanced Pinball Simulator does it far more often. That ball in that clip SHOULD have easily been playable, and it wasn’t SEVERAL TIMES IN A ROW! Invisible wall to the left, invisible wall to the right. This is not a rarity. If you play long enough, you are GUARANTEED to have this type of glitch happen, and it’s hardly the only glitch. The ball is capable of passing through just about any wall. Failing that, on two separate occasions, I experienced the ball teleporting from hitting the flipper to falling straight down the inlane drain.

And can’t stress enough how often the basic structure fails. The ball constantly clips through flippers, walls, and targets. So you can’t really plan for any shot because success or failure has little to do with how you play. Frankly, there’s nothing all that “advanced” about Advanced Pinball Simulator. The amount of shots off the flippers is very limited. So limited, in fact, that when I played a game while cheating so I could try to hit every target to see what that “END” target was in the upper left corner, it took me hours to hit the final target. For me, it was this one:

It actually has to be hit twice, since it starts as a letter “C” and doesn’t become an asterisk until after you’ve cleared all four rollovers on that slope. It took me so long to hit the “C” the first time that I genuinely wondered if it was even possible, and when I actually did hit it (“I” hit it, meaning the ball took a random favorable trajectory), I literally gasped, and that became the game I chose to begin cheating to see if it was possible to beat the game. It was, by the way.

I wish the emulator counted how many times I had to rewind or load a save state to replay to reach that point, but I can confidently say that eventually every ball that you manage to keep in play will eventually succumb to an unforeseen glitch, and you might even reach the point where every shooting angle a flipper offers will result in a lost ball, one way or another. There’s no point in planning ahead. I had aimed shots pass right through targets and the flipper.

I normally admire ambition even if it fails, but Advanced Pinball Simulator is so uniformly broken that complementing its ambition is like complementing Stockton Rush‘s ambition for the Titan submarine. Uh, no, the f*cking thing exploded with him in it, and he’s a first-rate asshole for killing a 19 year old kid who didn’t even want to be in the sub and was just trying to make his father happy, so now we can’t even point and laugh at Rush without feeling like a monster. Advanced Pinball Simulator likewise imploded. Nothing works in it. The flippers. The ball itself. The targets. The f*cking walls fail. Seriously, the only point of a wall is to stop things and they can’t even do that. In this screenshot, I circled every spot the ball passed through a wall at least twice:

That’s a LOT of high traffic areas for the ball to just pass through a solid object, and there’s even more that it passed through at least once. The ball is also capable of doing some truly wonky things. Again, at one point it was launched through the flipper hinge with so much force that it ricocheted off the scoreboard and almost made it back to the flippers! I wish I had gotten a clip of that one but I was so stunned that I screwed it up. I did get pictures:

In the debate in my head for what game should go dead last in the rankings, I had no shortage of contenders. This was one of the last games I reviewed for this feature, and after the dust settled, I was left with nearly twenty games I would consider to be bad enough to be in the debate for the worst video game I’ve ever played in my life. Of all them, Advanced Pinball Simulator made the most different arguments. The amount of ways it went wrong were stunning, but it also fails as a pinball game. Unreachable targets and boring scoring are bad enough, but combined with the unstable engine and near certainty of experiencing some form of a glitch make this a game so bad that, when given the option between playing more of it or playing games I softlocked, I’d take softlock games. The Oliver Twins left their mark on gaming, but they also made the single worst home video pinball game in this feature. By the way, how bad are Real Pinball (3DO) and Panic Road? I’d take this over them.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #123 of 125
Percentile: 2%

Power Pinball
aka 3-D Pinball
Platform: Amstrad CPC
Released in 1989
Designed by Steve Walters
Developed by Mastertronic
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED 

Another last second addition that turned into one final reminder of why I was hesitant to do a feature like this. Power Pinball doesn’t lack ambition, having a different camera angle (though Fire Ball on MSX did the same thing better) and a nice variety of targets, like inline drop targets and a U-turn smack dab in the center of the playfield. This is a fun layout! But the ball physics feel like when you fill a beach ball halfway with water. There’s a strong lopsided wobble to the ball that makes it incredibly unpredictable, and on top of that, the flippers are pretty horrible.

I never did manage to hit more than the front two inline targets. The 3D perspective doesn’t enhance the gameplay but instead makes it too hard to gauge the depth. The ball sure seemed like it went right through the flippers multiple times. I’d rather had played this same table as a typical 2D playfield. It might not stand out in a crowded market, but at least it would make sense when to flip and not to flip. There’s certainly the potential for a good game here and I admit I was charmed, but this isn’t a very good game at all. It’s actually pretty awful. Every major scoring burst I had felt like it was luck from the wobble not blocking my shots, and I would never want to play a game like that for fun.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #103 of 125
Percentile: 18%

Time Scanner
Platform: Amiga
Released in 1989
Developed by Foursfield
Published by Activision
Never Released Outside Europe
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED 

What you’re seeing in those above pics is a ball curving around in mid-air and entering the saucer. Yeah. You’re reading this fairly early in this feature, but this is actually the 125th review I did for Classic Pinball Video Games: The Definitive Review. I quit Time Scanner after about fifteen minutes and dropped it from this feature. It’s terrifyingly bad. After finally finishing this project, I realized that I had to plug my nose and replay Time Scanner for Amiga again and add it to this feature. It’s broken. It’s unplayable. It’s torture. But, it is video pinball that I know is bad enough to swim in the sewers, so I kind of have to do it.

Time Scanner features a whole new level of living ball, as the damn ball doesn’t roll at all. It bounces erratically, at different heights, speeds, and trajectories. Not off the flippers. Just existing, the ball does all these things. It’s like a two year old that was given all the sugar in the world. Just full of energy, and likely not to be long for this world. Combine that with flippers that really are just there to keep the ball in play. You obviously can’t aim with a ball this hyperactive. Except, the ball clips right through the flippers all the time. The plunger also fails quite a lot even with a max power plunge. The ball gets hung up on the exit and tumbles back down.

So Time Scanner for Amiga is a game with an unpredictable ball, bad flippers, all based on a game that I never loved in the first place. How could it get worse? Oh, how about CLIPPING THROUGH THE WALL INTO THE DECORATIVE SCOREBOARD! The first time I played this and quit, this didn’t happen! I just found this out while waiting for the game to break in other ways!

Holy smokes! What? My jaw was literally hanging loose. And it’s not like the pinball elements work, either. The ball can hit the drop targets and not trigger them. It spends more time at least partially inside the playfield than it does on top of it.

I know it’s not nice to say a game should have been cancelled, but it’s outrageous they released Time Scanner in the state it’s in. This is broken. In screenshots, it looks the part of a port of Time Scanner, and that gives the whole thing a real sinister vibe. The mechanics don’t work. The flippers really don’t work all that well. The engine is completely unstable. So the one positive thing I could say, that the arcade targets are all here and it looks just like the coin-op, becomes a dirty trick on players. In two goddamned hours of this sh*t, I got ONE multiball. One.

That table pictured above is the easiest to keep the ball alive. By far. The one where the ball clips through the flippers the least (it still happens). Probably half my time spent playing Time Scanner Amiga was spent on this screen. Not the whole table. This one screen. There’s no way to deliberately shoot the multiball lock. You just have to wait out the ball getting the right bounce without the vibrating from the living ball cancelling out the shot. For my efforts, I was rewarded with a multiball that lasted about two seconds when the balls clipped through the flippers on the significantly less stable lower playfield.

I never did get the other multiballs. I locked two balls on the factory table pretty much every game I played, but I never did lock the third. It requires you to hit the drop targets and complete the orbit. The only time the ball actually entered that orbit is when that insane “ball bounces through the scoreboard” glitch happened. The coin-op version of Time Scanner is probably the most complex video pinball game released up to this point. If you want to replicate that at home, every shot better work every time. And to be clear, the flippers absolutely do fail on that screen.

In this feature, there’s at least two games with easy-to-trigger soft locks that end your game without even getting to post a score. Time Scanner is so bad that under my “you only get one game to take with you on a desert island” scenario, I would take my chances with those. This is un-f*cking-playable. Now from what I can see, other home computer ports of Time Scanner play somewhat better than this. So this is the worst port of an already middling-at-best coin-op. It’s stunning in how shoddy it is. Some executive at Activision green lit packaging this and putting it in stores, and that pisses me off because this is as bad as ANY video game gets. But I’d rather play this than Advanced Pinball Simulator.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #122 of 125
Percentile: 2%

Family Pinball
aka Rock ‘n Ball (North America)
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released March 24, 1989
Developed by KID
Included in Namcot Collection* (Japan Only)

*In Japan, the collections we know as Namco Museum Archives was released as a much larger À la carte collection called Namcot Collection that got a variety of games North American audiences did not. Family Pinball is one of those games. Since the publishing rights to the game are still owned by another company in North America, it was not included in Vol. 1 or Vol. 2 here. But hey, we got Legacy of the Wizard. (stares off into space) Joy. In case you didn’t know, you can actually set up a Japanese eShop account on any Switch and download games that are exclusive to that region, as long as you use eShop cards from Japan (and ONLY on that account). Also, the rock ‘n roll themed table in the US version is Pac-Man themed in Japan, as seen below:

This is one of the more bizarre releases in this feature, and one that I don’t think was meant to be “pinball” as we think of it. There’s only one traditional table, which is seen above. As you can see, the layout isn’t ENTIRELY identical between the two releases. The Japanese game’s bumpers are more spread out while the US release has a bumper uncomfortably close to the flippers. This seems to have been done to make the shooting angles for the drop targets and the reward roulette more obvious, I guess. But it’s a boring layout that lacks enough stuff to do either way. If you hit the roulette with the key active, you’ll open a bonus screen that’s a giant Pac-Man in Japan and a pink Cadillac in the US. The bonus round is just shooting moving targets in a bland empty room. Sink holes appear but, as far as I could tell, they don’t really do anything and barely catch the ball anyway.

I don’t know what I expected from a game that’s technically in the same franchise as the infamous boxing game Ring King (which is called Family Boxing in Japan). I have a hunch that the above table was added to Family Pinball as an afterthought and, instead, Namco and KID’s primary goal was to create a multiplayer-focused hybrid of pinball and foosball. There are four total head-to-head tables. In three of them, you and your opponent try to flip a ball into the opponent’s drain. It’s actually not an original idea as there’s a few real life tables designed like this (here’s a video on them), but the kind in Family Pinball/Rock ‘n Ball come with a twist. The playfields are bigger than the screen, but instead of having flippers at every station, each player only gets a single pair of flippers that they have to manually transfer from station to station.

Each player gets a few drain posts, but if you can hit an opponent’s outlane, it’s basically an automatic point, which baffled us both. In fairness, they didn’t build-in angles to shoot the outlanes, but in the chaotic world of pinball, eventually the ball will find its way to one. Once it’s in the outlane, the point is made, and it’s not very visually satisfying. It’s like scoring a run in baseball on a walk. It’s lame. Really, for this idea to work, they needed to abandon pinball tradition and create a playfield that worked for a movement-based ball sport. A field, not a table, with clean shooting and rebounding angles, but there’s none of that. It’s too cramped and the same issues with the shooting angles being limited by preset pathways are present.

The fourth head-to-head game is essentially what I just said: an open field, with a flipper. It feels like foosball, only with a single character on the field and angle changed so that you hit the ball from the side instead of top-down. It’s confusing, unintuitive, and a disaster. Finally, there’s also a casino style game that is likely a tribute to old time bingo machines (which are exactly what they sound like, a cross between pinball and bingo that were used for gambling and one of the primary reasons why pinball was banned across America for a long time). You’re given money to place bets and try to make tic-tac-toes using 9 balls. I showed this to Sasha the Kid (who was amused by the developer’s name), the Vice family member most fascinated with the woodrail era of pinball, and even she wasn’t into it. “I think if they wanted to do something like this, it would have been better to remove the flippers and do a real Bagatelle game, with a plunger, scoring pockets, and nudging only,” she said.

And it doesn’t even matter because, although Rock ‘n Ball has pretty good physics, including having the ball slow down on the flipper to allow for off-the-toe shots (a first in this feature), they’re not so good that you can do complicated sports hybrids. So many of these early games would probably be pretty sick today, with modern physics. I admire that Namco and KID rolled the dice on a multiplayer-focused pinball. But going all-in on that when the technology wasn’t even close to ready leaves Family Pinball as one of the worst games in this feature.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #84 of 125
Percentile: 33%

Casino Games*
Platform: Sega Master System
Released September, 1989
Developed by Compile
Published by Sega
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

*This is a full review of the entire game. I call this the “Bayou Billy Rule” since I did a full review of The Adventures of Bayou Billy in a feature focused on light gun games.

Going off the name or cover art, you wouldn’t realize that Casino Games features the one and only pinball sim released in North America for the Sega Master System. It is NOT the only pinball SMS games, as Europe and South America also got a Sega Master System port of Sonic Spinball that’ll appear in this feature much, much later. But that’s a pinball-themed action/adventure game, so this is really all the SMS offered as far as pinball goes, and I had a reason to be excited. It’s developed by Compile, the company behind the Crush series. Unfortunately, like the card games included in this package, the pinball game offered is horrendous.

A table that probably could have been good. Seven drop targets. An off-center Italian bottom. A roundabout, which is a cute little element that would be so visually satisfying to shoot in real life. The problem is the living ball is too bouncy. The ball vibrates so badly that completing any orbit, including the roundabout, is harder than it should be. Even the plunger doesn’t work right, as the ball bangs off the walls and loses momentum even before reaching the spinning on the left side. Plus, the collision is not great. How not great?

THAT not great, and what you see in that clip isn’t a one-off either. Not only did the ball constantly ghost through the bumpers, including the bottom one (so it wasn’t just a perspective thing), but sometimes it would register a hit on a bumper only to continue to travel along the same trajectory. That should be physically impossible. It’s kind of insane that I’m now right on the cusp of the 1990s in this feature and I’m playing a pinball game that’s so detached from reality that bumpers can function like gates. On top of all that, it’s just a dull looking table, isn’t it? The backglass is themed like a casino, but there’s no theme at all in the layout. Just lights and elements without any context, making the whole thing look unfinished. Judging by the poor physics and ball behavior, maybe it is. Hell, maybe the whole game is. The rest of the casino games in Casino Games play this poorly as well.

Take the poker game. Not only is the bluffing system nonsensical and broken as stated in the above caption, but unless I’m fundamentally not understanding the interface system, the game doesn’t even know the rules of poker. The only game offered is basic, ho-hum five card draw that can only be played heads-up, one v one. It took me one hand to realize something was horribly wrong. I go first. I check. The computer bets. I call. That’s the end of betting, right? Wrong. The computer then raised after I’d already called their bet, before we exchanged cards. What the actual f*ck? And it works both ways too. Initially I thought maybe the act of checking (which is called “passing” in this) or the ante was causing the program to become confused, but that can’t be the case. In the above hand, we’d already exchanged cards and I ended up converting a two pair into a full house and betting begins. The second round of betting begins. I bet. The computer, which was bluffing, called. That’s the end of that hand, right? Wrong. After the computer called, I was able to then raise it, and I did. THAT’S NOW HOW POKER WORKS! YOU HAD ONE JOB, COMPILE!

The other three games are Baccarat, Slot Machine, and Blackjack. Blackjack is the classic game of trying to get 21. This version offers double downs on 10 and 11, insurance bets (which are for rubes), and splitting. The only commonplace prop bet not offered is surrendering. Still, Blackjack is easily the best game in the collection.

Baccarat is “punto banco” which means it’s played completely automatically with all drawing choices made by the rules of the game and not player choices. All you do is make the bet. For the unwashed, the object of Baccarat is to come as close to a score of 9 as possible, with face cards being worth nothing and aces being worth 1. Only the final digit in your total matters (“modulo ten”), so for example, cards totaling 23 points would only count as “3” points because 3 is the final digit in 23. Each player starts with two cards and if either player has a score of 8 or 9, which is called “a natural” both the player and the dealer (usually called the banker) must stand.

If the player has a score of 6 or 7, they also must stand. Anything less than 5 and the player draws a third and final card. What the banker does is super convoluted. If the player stood with two cards without scoring a natural 8 or 9, the banker treats their hand like a normal player with the same drawing rules the player has regardless of what the player is holding. If the player draws and the Banker is holding a score of 2, they draw a third. If they have 3, they draw a third card UNLESS the third card the player got was an 8 (the card, not the point value), at which point they stand. They also draw a card based on your third card in a variety of other conditions which I’ll just link to here.

You know what? When a game requires this much instruction, you can see why the game with by far the statistical best odds for players in any given casino (the player wins 49% when you factor in pushes, nearly coin-flip odds), isn’t more popular! It’s one of the most convoluted games, and one that you don’t have any agency in besides what you actually bet. Even scratch tickets offer more suspense than Baccarat. I enjoy real poker but I don’t enjoy gambling in general. But if I were to burn a couple hundred bucks in a casino, I would not head to the Baccarat table even though it offers the best odds. Most people wouldn’t. That says it all, doesn’t it?

And finally, the above nine-coin slot machine is offered. It’s the literal basic, boilerplate slot design with bells, bars, sevens, etc. They didn’t even offer any expected Sega themes like Alex Kidd or….. Alex Kidd (this is before Sonic). So Casino Games for the Sega Master System is pretty f*cking bad. The fact that the theoretical marquee game, poker, doesn’t even know the f*cking rules to five card draw, the most basic and bland version of poker in the entire world, is pretty damning. Baccarat and Blackjack play accurately, but Baccarat, like slot machines, is just a spectator sport. That leaves only blackjack, and if you really want to enjoy the thrill of fake, no-stakes gambling, it offers most of the popular prop bets.

Finally, the reason I played this game, the pinball, is among the worst video pins ever made. If the ball was calm enough to complete the orbits and the roundabout with consistency, I’d probably jump anywhere between ten and twenty positions on the standings. But you can’t even plunge the ball without it sometimes failing to clear its trajectory, depending on when you plunge in the living ball’s wobble cycle. That is why Casino Games has one of the worst video pins ever made, and it’s found within what has to be a contender for the worst Sega Master System game.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #115 of 125
Percentile: 8%

Revenge of the ‘Gator
aka Pinball: Revenge of the ‘Gator (Europe)
aka Pinball: 66-hiki no Wani Daikoushin (Japan)
Platform: Game Boy
Released October 18, 1989
Developed by HAL Laboratory
Published by Nintendo
NO MODERN RELEASE

Revenge of the ‘Gator is probably one of the most famous video pinball games of all-time. Although it’s not listed among the million-plus sellers, I think it’s likely to be one of the top-selling video pinball games ever. Also, unlike NES Rollerball, THIS is the true sequel to the NES black box Pinball from HAL. A few key targets from that game carry over, including the slot machine that HAL always used in their pins and the triple spot targets that light the drain posts and kickbacks. It’s a true evolution of NES Pinball, with a much bigger variety of targets and a consistent theme that works. At four screens and three different bonus rooms, it’s also a much bigger game than HAL’s previous efforts.

The biggest problem, and actually the only real problem, is that Revenge of the ‘Gator is yet another early game injured by the lack of a nudge. Now, someone rightfully pointed out to me that saying a table lacks defense isn’t technically true if there’s options to plug the drain or light kickbacks. Gator does have them for all four screens, and in fact, every one of them lights the kickbacks and the pin. In the bottom screen, you have to shoot the gators on the wall until all four of them have their snouts smashed.

The second screen requires you to hit every roll-over once. The third screen are the three-tier spot targets just like the eggs/chicks from NES Pinball (that can also take away from the drain pin if you remove all three). For the top screen, you just have to shoot drop targets. But if the ball takes a weird bounce off the awkwardly shaped targets, there’s nothing you can do about it.

Now the good news is that, despite having no nudge, the physics are the best in this feature so far. By a big margin, actually. There’s plenty of shooting angles, including toe shots that feel naturalistic, a first for video pinball. The toe shots are reliable enough to also provide some protection for the drain. It’s an impressive evolution, especially for an early Game Boy release. And the variety of targets that you have to shoot at is also impressive. One screen is themed like a brick breaker. Another has dual roundabouts. The bottom two screens stick with conventional solid state pinball, while the top two screens don’t even have Italian bottoms. And then the bottom, third, and fourth screens each have bonus rounds attached to them.

The first bonus around is another brick breaker where you try to free an alligator and then shoot it while it falls. The second one has you shooting eggs that match into gators that you then must kill. The third is like whack-a-mole where you also have to trigger the gators to pop-out by rolling the ball over their holes, then hit them before they submerge again. All three are really fun, though I think the brick breaking one was a little redundant since that’s also one of the gimmicks an entire screen on the main table is based around. Honestly, I kind of wish the table was seven screens tall and had somehow reworked these so they were part of the main flow of the game. I don’t think it would make the game too easy to have such a tall “table.” I had plenty of instances where a series of bad bounces took me from the top floor to the bottom floor in a matter of seconds. Gator is much tougher than it looks, but it grew on me. If it had a nudge, I really think it would have had a chance to finish in the top twenty. Thankfully, another sequel, this one starring Kirby, is coming up. And hey, HAL is finally on the board!
Verdict: YES!
Ranking: #32 of 125
Percentile: 74%

Pinball Quest
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released December 15, 1989
Designed by Katsuhiko Motono and “Art 13”
Developed by TOSE
Published by Jaleco
Sold Separately on Nintendo Switch

Pinball Quest is another attempt at creating a linear adventure game with a pinball theme. I suppose congratulations are in order since this is the best example of that style of game made up to this point. Of course, since the previous two some of the worst games I’ve played, Pinball Quest didn’t have the highest hurdle to jump over. It’s actually not entirely an adventure style game, either. In addition to the “RPG mode” (which doesn’t play like an RPG), it has three large traditional tables that look fine but are so unimaginably boring that they don’t really help the overall package. This includes a table so easy that it was the first time in this feature I had to lay a game down because I genuinely didn’t think I would have ever lost if I kept playing it. For “Pop! Pop!”, the first table, placement of targets and entrance point for “modes” was as close to no-risk as you can get.

That was the worst sim-style table in this feature so far even if the physics weren’t the worst because there’s no stakes, no tension, and no excitement. Pinball Quest also has a golf themed table and a circus themed table. They’re not that much better. Circus is probably the best layout of the three and has a slot machine toy, but it also has a video mode that takes you away from the table. In it, you throw balls at animals trying to cage them. The golf table has a nonsensical layout with bumpers blocking shooting angles. Oh, and you have to transfer your flippers manually from screen to screen, just like in Rock ‘n Ball. Their hearts were in the right place when they decided to build three additional tables to make up for the relatively short RPG mode, but it’s pretty obvious the physics and elements were made for the RPG game and not for a pinball sim. As a result, all three tables are too easy.

The real reason to play Pinball Quest is for the “quest” part, though it’s not much better. The layouts are kept really simple as you make your way through six levels that have you trying to kill basic enemies. Unlike the previous two games, this is the first action-game with a pinball theme where nudging is purely defensive. The flippers do all the work for both combat and navigation. This is what I’d been wanting, at least in theory. In practice, the layouts are kept simple and dull. Each level is split into two screens where you have to perform a specific task or hit a specific saucer to transfer to the upper playfield, where you fight a boss (or bosses).

To Pinball Quest’s credit, the game actually does have physics that are dialed-in enough to accurately aim. It feels like they fine tuned the shooting angles to work against the variety of enemies and bosses. The problem is it’s just a f*cking dull game. Once you get over the idea that you’re playing an action game with pinball crap, the layouts and enemy design better be fantastic or else it’s going to get repetitive, especially since the penalty for a single bad bounce is too stiff. Forcing players return to already beaten levels was beyond stupid. There’s just too many resets in this game. They should have made it so once you’ve passed a checkpoint, you can’t return to the previous screen unless the player chooses to in order to grind up money.

But let’s assume you play well. Because of the nature of pinball and the fact that what you can do for combat is limited by two flippers, the bosses feel samey. The RPG mechanics aren’t particularly well done. Really, the entire RPG element is just a shop where you can buy better flippers. Better flippers don’t change the physics but instead cause more damage to enemies. Or, you can roll the dice and try to steal from the shop. Even the instruction book says this is realistically the only way you can get flippers early in the game, since the enemies don’t pay off even close to enough to afford the better flippers.

In my first game, I never successfully stole from the shop, which costs you half your gold. In my second game, I successfully stole the best offensive and defensive item in the game: the drain plug and the devil’s flippers. Now the devil’s flippers come with the catch that, although they cause the most damage to enemies, they sometimes don’t flip. That sounds like a deal breaker, but playing the game with them five out of six levels led to me beating Pinball Quest’s “RPG mode” in about fifteen minutes, give or take, even though the other items like kickbacks wear off. The first time I played the game, this boss took about ten million billion shots, give or take:

In my second and third playthroughs, with the devil flippers, I won in a matter of seconds. Even the last boss only took three hits, and by the way, the last level is the easiest outside of the first stage. Despite having decent physics and, I guess, satisfying combat, it’s the level layouts that fail the game. There’s a lot of downtime. Of that fifteen minutes my second game took, most of it was spent on this level:

That weird triple saucer in the upper right corner lays out like the skillshot in Taxi, with the ball spinning around a cup. Only you don’t do anything to make it spin. It travels to that “saucer” automatically and then takes forever to actually go into the hole and you can’t control the spin at all. It’s not the worst idea for an element, but without a plunger or something that’s in the player’s control to try and decide which of the holes you’ll fall into, it just creates busy work.

And that level also has a river above it where you have to wait to catch a boat. This happens automatically, and if the wrong kind of boat is seemingly randomly selected, the boat sinks and the ball is returned back to the level’s starting screen. Again, there’s nothing YOU do to control this. I would like to see someone try Pinball Quest again with modern physics and a widescreen playfield that can accommodate more pinball elements. Like so many games in this feature, they had the right idea but the tech wasn’t ready. When the time came to do the rankings, I really expected this to finish higher, but the three stand-alone tables were so unimaginably boring that Pinball Quest plummeted. Again, remake it.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #81 of 125
Percentile: 35%

Hero Shūgō!! Pinball Party
Platform: Game Boy
Released January 12, 1990
Designed by Tomoji Omotani
Developed by Jaleco
Never Released Outside of Japan
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED*

*Some dedicated consoles in the Bit-Generations line have this, but I consider re-releases to be for game consoles or heavily-promoted mini-consoles.

I think I just played the worst handheld game I’ve ever played. Hero Shūgō is still tunneling through the bottom of the barrel, and this is far enough along in the history of video pinball that there’s no excuses. Even the fact that it’s an early Game Boy title doesn’t help, because the Game Boy already had a YES! for pinball. Besides, Jaleco might have just earned a NO! with Pinball Quest, but they were still an established company cranking out a lot of games AND they already have a YES! with Pinbo. They had plenty of experience, so not knowing what they were doing doesn’t fly. There are no excuses for releasing a game this bad.

Where do I begin? The “living ball” is taken to slow-motion extreme here, and it’s so damning. Of the two tables offered, only one offers the ability to nudge, but the nudge literally does nothing because, our theory goes, the living ball is synced in a way to cancel out the nudge. Why the hell would one table offer it and another doesn’t? Probably because they realized it didn’t do anything to change the trajectory of a moving ball. It only really affects it when you’re “trapping.”

In the above screenshot, you can see the historically awful collision detection. Bad collision is always problematic because it breaks immersion, but for pinball? I’m of the opinion that it’s almost an automatic deal breaker. What you’re seeing in the above screenshot isn’t rare. It’s the norm for Hero Shūgō!! Pinball Party. If there was a way to clock this, MAYBE it wouldn’t be so bad. I mean, of course it would be terrible and inexcusable, but at least you would be able to plan for it. But it’s not like that at all. Here, the ball is going down, then it bangs off an invisible wall well above the actual wall with enough force to bounce over the sinkhole.

Regardless of the table or screen you’re on, the ball constantly registers solid surfaces that aren’t there, but it also sinks into the surfaces sometimes as well. In addition to things like having the ball just lose all momentum and stop right above the drain, the flippers constantly fail to make contact with the ball even when the ball is literally in the center of the flipper for a prime, run of the mill shot. All these screens are from one single instance of trying to flip the ball

Wow. This actually got released. Someone at Jaleco played this and said “ship it!” But at least there’s things like bumpers and drop targets to shoot. You probably think you know where this is going, but it’s so much worse than you can imagine. In addition to the ball just going straight through bumpers, it might do worse than simply go through the drop targets. Oh, it does that too, but check these screenshots out. This is one of the bonus screens where you’re trying to get Tic-Tac-Toes with number targets. Yes, you can shoot the numbers in any order. In this screenshot, the ball is clearly a direct hit on the #4 target, but it didn’t count.

You can see the ball is unambiguously making contact with the #4 target. It passed right through it and nothing happened. I went back and checked to make sure that the #4 light hadn’t previously been lit and I was undoing it with this shot. That wasn’t the case. Now sometimes it seems like the numbers and not the targets behind them are the actual things you’re aiming for, but I assure you the ball did touch the #4 as well as the drop target behind it. Now, from the same room, here’s me hitting the upper left corner of the table with no targets anywhere in the trajectory the ball took. Although the ball wasn’t close to either the #1 target or the #1 on playfield, this counted as a hit and checked off the #1 box.

That is absolutely f*cking astonishing! Holy sh*t! HOLY SH*T! Here’s a clip from an entirely different play session of it. Try to figure out the rules for this, because the numbers and the targets don’t activate consistently. Sometimes hitting the target works. Sometimes it’s the number. Sometimes neither. (shrug)

From direct hits on targets not working to the ball bouncing off the air well above the walls to the flippers sometimes not working, Hero Shūgō!! Pinball Party really does nothing right. On the second table introduces a slot machine that might take the flippers away, or it might replace the flippers with a Breakout-style paddle without any warning, so the transition happens with the ball about to hit the flipper when BAM, it’s a paddle game now, and the paddle is on the other side of the screen, so you instantly die. This goes so far beyond being clunky. The game as it exists feels like a very early alpha build that’s maybe 20% finished. The layouts are complete but the physics have a long way to go. Only, this is the finished product, and it’s just so clearly broken that I’m actually mad it was released.

Maybe they should have had a telekinetic theme since the ball rarely makes contact with anything, and even when it does, it doesn’t necessarily register that contact is made. I don’t know what else to say. I guess I need to stop saying “I can’t imagine a game can be worse” because I felt that way twice before in this feature and lo, a game that’s even worse showed up. I can totally understand Jaleco’s reputation as a lower-tier company at this point, but it’s not like they were complete hacks. I enjoyed Bases Loaded just fine and gave it a YES! They also scored a YES! with Pinbo. It’s not like they had no talent at all. They should have known better than to release a pinball game with collision this bad. PINBALL! A f*cking game where the ball making contact is the whole f*cking point! If you can’t get that right, cancel the damn game! Don’t slap a price tag on it and ship it!

It might seem like a “so bad it’s funny” situation, but I never really get that from video games. Games are expensive. If this was $1 on the eShop, it’s still gross, but whatever. This wasn’t a $1 game. It was a full Game Boy release in 1990 with excellent cover art that promises exciting pinball action on the hottest gaming device in the world. Not just pinball, but portable pinball that you can play anywhere. Imagine being a pinball fan, a gaming fan, and an owner of the Game Boy that’s still in its first year of existence paying full price in 1990 dollars and getting THIS. It’s really not that funny anymore, is it? Actually, it’s f*cking reprehensible. Everyone involved Hero Shūgō!! Pinball Party should be ashamed of themselves because this is the worst gaming gets, whether it has a pinball theme or not. We are well over ten years into the evolution of video pinball and for a game in this genre to be THIS broken is disgusting. It doesn’t even have the excuse of experimenting with a new form of pinball, like Panic Road and Moon Ball Magic. This is a fairly basic pinball game, and it couldn’t even do that right. I can’t believe I can still name six pinball games worse than this. This genre kind of sucks, doesn’t it?
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #119 of 125

Before this next review, I want you to imagine this: you’ve always wanted to own a Porsche, but you can’t because they’re really expensive and impractical and you don’t have any place to park it anyway. Someone knocks on your door and says “for the cost of what an NES game cost in 1990, I’ll build you a Porsche using an old Toyota Yaris I have!” That sounds impossible and you know in your heart that you’re not really getting a Porsche, but you’re curious, so you give them the money. The next morning you’re drinking your coffee and reading the newspaper when you hear the honk of a car horn. You open your door and it’s the guy who offered to turn his Yaris into a Porsche for you, driving something that, if you squint your eyes, looks kind of like an actual Porsche.

Then it hits you: that’s not just any Porsche. That’s YOUR Porsche! The one you paid for! You walk out into your front lawn, still wearing your robe, in an awestruck daze. He takes you for a test drive and you think “the son of a bitch actually did it!” Sure, you can tell it’s a Yaris, but it’s impressive nonetheless. It doesn’t handle like a real Porsche, but it’s closer than you would think. It doesn’t look like a Porsche either, but it’s close enough that it’s as close to your dream coming true as you ever imagined possible. You’re so happy you almost cry, and the guy sees this and gives you a hug and you tearfully say “thank you!” What an unexpected treat, and all for the price of a new NES game in 1990 dollars (hypothetically speaking).

The guy says “you’re welcome” and reaches into his pocket. You think he’s going to give you the keys but instead he pulls out a pocket knife and starts puncturing the tires on the car. You’re so stunned you don’t even know what to say. It was just so unexpected that it’s like an out of body experience that left you powerless to stop him. You finally come to your senses when the guy pulls out a sledgehammer. You scream “WAIT!” but he ignores you and begins smashing the hood and screaming “YOU’RE WELCOME!” with frothing insanity. Now frantic as you watch your dream turn to a nightmare, you plead with him to stop before it’s too late to salvage what had been a damn fine piece of engineering. Instead, with one final swing, he smashes the steering wheel off with the sledgehammer before tossing it aside and, with madness in his eyes, says “you’re welcome.”

Lips quivering, you survey the damage, lying to yourself that a good mechanic and body shop could make this right, but then the guy turns and whistles with his fingers. You turn your head and you can’t believe your eyes. The actual manure truck from Back to the Future pulls up next to your almost-Porsche. You scream “NO! STOP!” But it’s too late, as the truck dumps its full load of horsesh*t all over your new car. You fall to your knees, tears pouring down your cheeks, and watch helplessly as the guy starts to pour gasoline on the entire stinking mess. When the canister is empty, he looks at you and strikes a match. You hold eye contact for just a moment, then the guy tosses you the keys and says “you’re welcome.” He flips you the bird, then walks away with your forty dollars, casually flicking the match over his shoulder. You turn your head just in time to see the thing you were so excited for just a moment ago burst into flames. Your dream is dead, and in its place is a wreckage of burning sh*t-smelling foulness that you paid for.

On one hand, it was impressive engineering. On the other hand, what kind of complete f*cking asshole would do such a cruel thing?

Anyway, here’s the next review:

Pin⋅Bot
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released April, 1990
Directed by Paul Proctor & Tim Stamper
Developed by Rare Ltd.
Published by Nintendo
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

I spent more time with Pin⋅Bot than any other game up to this point. Nearly ten hours trying to make sense of what exactly the gang at Rare Ltd. were thinking. In fairness, some of that playtime wasn’t actually me but watching my family. Everyone who plays pinball in the Vice Household enjoys the real life Pin⋅Bot and its modern digital conversions. Sasha the Kid especially is a Barry Oursler and Pin⋅Bot super fan. All four of us took turns playing this NES port and marveling at what it accomplished. Before giving them the controller, I primed them by selecting three comparative video pins: Hal/Nintendo’s Pinball, Sega’s Time Scanner, and Revenge of the ‘Gator (this was before we got the Atari coin-ops working). Then I showed them 1990’s NES Pin⋅Bot. All four of us were shaking our heads in disbelief. Pin⋅Bot’s ball speed, shooting angles, and ball behavior are all the best video gaming had seen up to that point, and all for a video version of a real table. All of Pin⋅Bot’s targets, shots, and scoring system are here. So, the best video pinball game up to this point, right?

And then this happened:

For whatever reason, Rare Ltd. decided what this state of the art, highly complex table’s home simulation really needed was video game style enemies. The above thing waddles around the table and eventually plants itself where the Sun is. When the ball draws near it, it begins to suck it up and, if it catches it, you have to violently shake the table (using START and SELECT, with Player 2’s controller having the pause button) to have any chance at freeing it. It rarely worked for me and, once the “muncher” had my ball, that was usually the end of that ball. Yep, it chews it up and destroys it. There’s no way to kill it, either. You simply have to “beat the level” which means scoring a jackpot in multiball. There’s six levels total with level one being basic arcade Pin⋅Bot, and by “basic” I mean an astonishing, hall of fame worthy conversion of one of the best selling, highest earning, and most beloved pinball tables of all-time. Level two has the “muncher” seen above. Level three introduces flies that drop hard-to-see missiles on your flippers. One missile hitting a flipper slows it down (the effect is negligible). The second one, ahem, blows it up.

The missiles are not only hard to see but hard to kill. The collision is not one-to-one “touch them and kill them” which, if it were that way, it would actually be tolerable. Instead, they each seem to have a single pixel for a weak point and nobody in my family could pin⋅point exactly where it was on the sprite. Sometimes the ball rolled right over the missile and nothing happened and sometimes it rolled right over the missile and the missile blew up. (shrug) We’re stumped and Angela suggested they might take multiple hits to kill but have no damage sound or animation. Everyone agreed the missiles were total bullsh*t that, by themselves, ruined the entire Pin⋅Bot NES experience. Sasha flip-flopped between YES! and NO! and it was the missile collision that sealed it for her. Level four is still the missile-dropping flies, but now they’re more aggressive AND capable of grabbing the ball and flying away with it, which is an instakill unless you hit them with the other ball in multiball. Allegedly you can also nudge the ball free but nobody ever pulled it off with the level four flies.

Finally, levels five and six introduce snakes that hang out in the slingshots and eat balls going down the inlanes. Again, while technically you can nudge it loose, everyone had instances of nudging non-stop from the moment the grab happened until the snake instakilled the ball. ONE TIME I successfully shook it loose on level five. Angela also did it twice on level five, but nobody ever once successfully saved the ball on level six and most of our games ended at level four. If I wasn’t already playing a live multiball, no matter how many lives I had, I always game overed on level four, and same with everyone else. To survive, I needed to keep multiball alive from the moment the transition happened until, at the very least, I opened the visor. If I lost even one ball before that, that was all she wrote. Every single time. It’s just too hard and it’s not fun because so much of what the video game additions to Pin⋅Bot do to kill you are completely out of the player’s hands.

Mind you, no adjustments were made to the physical structure of the table to make Pin⋅Bot: The Real Life Pinball Machine work as Pin⋅Bot: The Pinball-Themed Video Game for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Every shot from the coin-op is here, and with that, all the logic of gameplay. In terms of game structure, Pin⋅Bot is actually a relatively simple game with a two-flipper layout that isn’t remotely compatible with the type of video game elements Rare added. These physics are great by the standards of 1990. While things like post transfers aren’t possible (close, but close isn’t good enough), the shooting angles are sometimes pretty damn realistic. The ball does go dead sometimes, and it other times the ball picks up too much speed when you hold the ball and then release it for a set shot. You absolutely cannot do deliberate toe shots because the ball just gets a burst of speed once it clears the halfway point of the flipper. You can see what the basic physics look like in this full game clip.

But what that clip also should make obvious is that too many key shots take you away from the flippers. The ramp can deliver the ball back to plunger through a relatively slow peg board, both of which take a while to resolve. The plunger has a spiral skillshot where you want to aim for the middle hole, which is the max value (sometimes VERY high), and that takes several seconds to resolve (the ball tends to wobble a little before falling through, especially if you do max plunge. DO NOT do a max plunge on this game, ever). Regardless of which of the three holes you get on the skillshot, the ball will fall to the bumpers and THAT can take time to resolve. When you activate multiball and lock the first ball, you get a new ball in the plunger and everything I just said plays out yet again. All of this is fine for the real table. While it does make for a more, how shall I say, deliberate pace, it works because of the intensity, the stakes, and the notoriously brutal (in a good way) outlanes. The problem is, NONE of the video game elements Rare Ltd. added stop in the multiple instances of downtime a player would expect from an accurate port of Pin⋅Bot.

And that’s on the DEFAULT physics. The physics change as the game goes on. That’s what’s up with the ball turning into a triangle or a cube. One of the objectives in Pin⋅Bot is to light the planets using the three side targets and then hitting the target just above the right outlane. That right target is especially tough on this given how badly Pin⋅Bot NES handles toe shots, but whatever. Completing a full trip of the solar system lights the special, and completing the specials in the NES game transforms the ball. The first special is the triangle. The second is the cube. The changes are permanent, even if you lose a ball. This SUCKS. You can see in the above clip that the impressive simulation the game starts with is out the window, replaced with a novelty rubber ball. There’s a debate on whether the angles also change. Wikipedia says the physics don’t change, only the speed, while myself, my whole pinball-playing family, and a GameFAQs FAQ say the ball’s behavior clearly changes. After all, the shooting and rebounding angles are what the physics are, right?

And thus a historic milestone in the history of video pinball physics is turned into a horrible engine literally mid-game. That is absolutely unbelievable. I’m stupefied by the decisions made with Pin⋅Bot. Just completely flabbergasted. All the crap that I just whined about is not optional. There’s no “arcade mode” that’s just the normal Pin⋅Bot and “enhanced mode” that has the enemies and the physics and speed changes. If they had done that, I would be declaring this the greatest video pinball game made up to this point, and I might have even taken a more positive stance on the additions. I mean, they’re stupid and poorly thought-out and absolutely should back-off when the ball is in the plunger or peg board, but as extra value additions to complete the package, they could have worked. As the one and only version of Pin⋅Bot on the NES? They completely ruin the whole game. I’m genuinely sad that a game that advanced the art of video pinball so much didn’t even end up with a positive review. The video game elements of Pin⋅Bot are self-sabotage on a level I didn’t know existed. What the actual f*ck, Rare? Pin⋅Bot for the NES is filicide in gaming form.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #76 of 125
Percentile: 39%

Devil’s Crush
aka Devil’s Crash (Japan & US Title Screen)
Platform: TurboGrafx-16
Released July 20, 1990
Developed by Compile
NO MODERN RELEASE

Although not quite as famous as Alien Crush, Devil’s Crush is probably the single most critically acclaimed video pinball game, well, ever. It’s a staple of “greatest games ever made” lists, and people screamed bloody murder when it was left off the lineup of the TurboGrafx-16 Mini. It was pretty obvious pretty quickly why that is, too. The fandom, I mean, not the snub. Devil’s Crush is a much stronger game than Alien Crush, and a much bigger game too. The table is now three screens large and has six bonus screens hidden within it, and on top of that, the primary table now features smooth scrolling from screen-to-screen. It makes the table feel epic in scale in a way no other video pinball game has done yet, and it has the theme and targets to live up to that scale.

The sheer amount of targets and moving parts was unprecedented at this stage in the evolution of video pinball. Every screen has a wide variety of enemies that tend to circle around a central object and are very satisfying to shoot, with physics that are solid enough to handle the action. Solid, but not amazing. The ball feels, for lack of a better term, greased. It runs far too fast and too easily runs up and over the rails to reasonably be expected to control the ball at all times.

I should note that, like Alien Crush, you can play on FAST or SLOW, and like Alien Crush, I’m going to recommend that anyone who has any amount of pinball experience just play on FAST because the game is clearly made for it. Hell, SLOW’s physics and gameplay is so tedious that it’s in the same boat as Alien Crush: if it were the only sped, I think I would have given the whole game a NO! Thankfully, FAST has a frantic, defensive-oriented take on pinball that requires sharp nudging reflexes. Just don’t expect it to resemble real pinball. Devil’s Crush is a pinball-themed video game with “video” in Rushmore-sized letters carved into granite. And, as a video game, Devil’s Crush is also deeply flawed in ways that have nothing to do with the test of time. The biggest problem is the kickers. Have a look at the top screen:

I’ve circled the four saucers, each of which acts as a kicker. I’d say four is too many for such a compact screen, but what’s even worse is that they don’t immediately spit the ball out. No kicker does. They suck the ball in, wait a second or two, and then spit it out. There’s no resistance for entering the kickers and the lower two are especially hungry thanks to the way their entrances are carved out. Far too many shots will immediately lead to one of the two lower kickers getting the ball, and that means the action is going to slow down while the table does the work for you. The druids are actually very fun targets to shoot. Hell, most targets in Devil’s Crush are. But for the most part, it’s not going to be you shooting them. It’s going to be the table itself.

Personally, I’m not a fan of that. *I* want to be the one shooting the targets. That’s why I’m playing the game! And it’s not just this screen either. Because there’s so many enemies, every kicker has this problem attached to it. I don’t feel like *I’m* hitting a combo or whatever they were trying for with this. It just feels like the action has stopped and things are happening while I wait for my next crack at the ball, and it’s not exciting. It actively works against the excitement because by the time I get the ball back, many of the fun targets I could have shot are already dead! Maybe it could have stayed exciting if there wasn’t that intolerable two second delay from the time the ball enters the saucer to the time the ball is shot out of it. If it had been like the Yagov kicker in F-14 Tomcat, hell, it might have actually enhanced the gameplay instead of making it feel so stop-go. The kickers also wound the bonus rooms. At least sometimes.

The bonus rooms have two major problems, the first of which is the rooms are round in shape, which makes all missed shots and high-impact deflections do round-the-world orbits along the walls. This is the very thing that will badly hurt Mario Pinball Land later on. The second is those damn kickers. Any shot or deflection that sends the ball to the left or right is going to inevitably lead to the ball falling into the kickers and potentially starting a cycle where it keeps falling back into the kickers. Like on the main table, there’s a delay in the ball entering and being shot out, which means tons of downtime and watching the game beat itself for you.

Especially in bonus rooms 3 and 6, the kickers usually did the overwhelming majority of the damage while I just sat back and watched. Alien Crush had the same problem and it’s insane they double-downed on it. I’m the player! That’s supposed to be me shooting these enemies and having fun! And what’s truly bat sh*t is they seemed to have figured it out, because sometimes, the rooms don’t have that two flipper setup. Instead, they look like this:

I can’t say 100% for sure why it happens, but sometimes there’s a four flipper layout. I think when you beat a bonus room once it changes, though I can’t swear to that because I think sometimes I got the two flipper design back-to-back. Either way, the tedious kickers are replaced with dual flippers and the drains to go with them. Instead of being a slog, the four flipper bonus rooms, which contain the exact same objects with the exact same attack patterns, are intense, relentless, and awesome. That should have been the default of the bonus room. I mean, why not? And they’re all fun. Well, five out of the six are, and one is broken. Bonus Room 2 has an 8-shaped grid of lights and the object is to kill the enemies as they march over the lights. Except, the collision detection of what counts as “walking over a light” is too goddamned fickle. Even if the enemy sprite is unambiguously touching a light, it’s no guarantee it’ll actually work. This is the worst bonus room in the game.

For all of its problems, and there’s so many, Devil’s Crush earned all the cookies in the world for a reason. It’s a visually busy video pinball epic that is mostly a ton of fun. Alien Crush had a lot going on, but it’s nothing compared to Devil’s Crush. Sometimes there’s dozens of targets at any given time to aim at. The sides of the tables are covered in targets. There’s targets dead-center. There’s a parade of moving targets that constantly refill. There’s not one, not two, but THREE tiers of bonus points. On top of that, beating the bonus rooms grants you a blue ball for about a minute that multiplies all scoring by four. FOUR! There’s also supposed to be a red ball that gives you x6, and to give you an idea of how hard Devil’s Crush is, none of us were able to ever get it. One of the FAQs at GameFAQs was in the same situation where they actually couldn’t verify it exists.

On the other hand, Devil’s Crush never actually feels like real pinball. Hell, EGM’s 1997 top fifty ranking said “the best video pinball game of all time—mainly because it didn’t try to be anything like real pinball!” Which I thought sounded a little snotty until I realized, for the majority of this blog’s existence, that’s how I talked about retro games. Besides, I get the anti-pinball attitude. When I started covering digital pinball, a lot of my readers got annoyed by it, hence moving it to its own site. When I say I have a pinball playing family, I really mean my Dad, sister, and niece. The rest of the family, including my mother, don’t get our love of it.

So in a sense, it’s weird to call Devil’s Crush the greatest video pinball game that had been released up to this point, because it’s made to appeal to non-pinheads. And it totally does. I saw this firsthand, when my niece and nephew Shay and T.J. and even my mother, a non-gamer, saw Devil’s Crush in action and wanted to play a round. Just to try it. That completely blew me away. Devil’s Crush, a pinball game, is so enticing visually that it demands to be played. It just plain looks fun, and that’s because it is.

I went back and forth on whether this should go above Solar War or not. I’m not entirely sure I’ll ever fire up Devil’s Crush again once I hit publish on this feature, but I know for sure I’ll play Atari’s Solar War again. But that’s not what I use to rank the games. In my Desert Island scenario, while Solar War would give me a more “pure” pinball experience, Devil’s Crush not only gives me more to do but more ways to do it, and I’d be nuts to take Solar War over Devil’s Crush as my one and only game I have to play for the rest of my life. So Devil’s Crush, at the time it was released, was the greatest pinball video game ever made, and upon deep reflection, it really isn’t that close. Devil’s Crush deserved all the accolades it got and then some.
Verdict: YES! – Ends the split of the Greatest Pinball Video Game title.
Holds title of Greatest Pinball Video Game Ever Made from July 20, 1990 to November 25, 1994
Ranking: #9 of 125
Percentile: 93%

Pinball Pinball
Platform: Sharp X68000
Released August 10, 1990
Developed by Softec
Never Released Outside of Japan
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Originally I had Pinball Pinball combined as one review with the next game, its sequel Lucy Shot. Both games use the same engine and were released just a little over three months apart. But actually, they’re so far apart in the rankings that I had to break them into separate reviews. Pinball Pinball wasn’t even originally set to be part of this feature. The name “Pinball Pinball” is also sometimes the Japanese name of Pinball Dreams. But this is an original game that’s sort of like an old school version of Pinball Action, only that game wasn’t bad. Pinball Pinball, on the other hand, is one of the worst games in this feature. When you complete the rollovers, the ball speed doubles. Here’s what that’s like:

You might have noticed the flippers, ahem, suck. And the physics. And the living ball. Three terrible combinations of things to go wrong. Then multiply all those with the physics becoming gradually worse as the rollovers increase the ball speed, which actually decreases the strength of the flippers. By the time I reached x4, the flippers could barely even pop the ball up. But even when the ball is at its starting speed, sometimes the flippers basically love tap the ball and there’s nothing you can do about it. The living ball is far too erratic to work with. So there’s no aiming, or at least aiming doesn’t matter because the flippers working or not is entirely luck based. I’d even go so far as to describe this as a tarted-up version of Atari 2600 video pinball because the physics are so insane.

I actually played Lucy Shot before I played Pinball Pinball, and Lucy Ball was straddling the line between good and bad before its fatal flaw revealed itself, so I was stunned by how truly awful Pinball Pinball is. It’s now clear to me that Lucy Shot was an attempted make-good for what a pathetic game Pinball Pinball is. In over twenty games played, I only transferred out of the first table three times. The transfer is stuck in a hard to reach corner that’s basically impossible to deliberately shoot. You’ll only get it by a lucky bounce. But in the table above, my second time reaching it the ball bounced off the bumper and went right back into the transfer hole. I spent maybe a second in the screen and was teleported here:

I had a similar experience with the black and white table: the ball was released, bounced around a few times, and then went right back into the transfer and sent me back to the starting screen. What. The. F*ck. 99% of my Pinball Pinball experience was spent on starting screen, which is fine because when I actually did get to play the other two tables, they were some of the worst I’ve played, and then they always ended quickly anyway, once from a game over and a few times from the transfers being right there in the open. There might actually be more tables but after over three hours, I had to move on to the next game. Pinball Pinball is absolutely one of the worst video pins ever made. But at least they learned something from it.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #98 of 125
Percentile: 22%

Lucy Shot
Sometimes Listed as “Lucky Shot”
Platform: Sharp X68000
Released November 16, 1990
Developed by Softec
Never Released Outside of Japan
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

What a difference three months makes. Lucy Shot isn’t one of the worst games in this feature, unlike its prequel from the review directly above this one. But it’s still pretty bad, and for a very strange reason. Lucy Shot might have been JUST good enough to get a YES! if not for its unique problem. The living ball has been toned back slightly and the “multipliers also multiply the ball speed” crapola from the first game was removed. The flippers and physics still aren’t very good, but now aiming is kind of possible. The superhero theme is more fun, and there’s more special effects, including whole backgrounds lighting up one layer at a time.

You know what? I think that works as an incentive to hit targets. It’s visually interesting and feels true to the EM era of real life pinball. Good stuff. Lucy Shot could have been low in the YES! pile, easily. Sadly, it plummeted well into the NO! pile because of one stupid decision that was repeated multiple times. So, what’s the problem? The placement of the table transfers and the fact that nothing has to be done to activate them except hitting them.

That’s ridiculous. Hell, I must have reached the table pictured below thirty or more times today and I easily spent under two minutes playing it. Half those thirty times I would be stunned if my entire time was even a full two seconds, as the very first thing the ball did was go right into the transfer.

I never even reached the bumpers on that table, and not for a lack of trying. There’s so many enticing, bonkers layouts that are ruined by those transfers requiring nothing to activate. The shame is, they actually did create the perfect “lights” for those saucers in the form of those layer-by-layer artwork lights. Had those been the key to activating the saucer, I could get behind the placement of those transfers. Something that makes you earn them.

But as they are, the transfer saucers not only MURDER the flow, but they suck the excitement out of the game because they force you to bank all your accumulated bonus points and resets the post-ball bonus. Okay, so you might not be losing any points, but you’re also denied the satisfaction of seeing the number grow large, which every pinhead strives for, myself included. If the bonus points carried over from table to table, it might actually enhance the intensity since you constantly have to adjust to new layouts. Same if the transfers were instantaneous, but that wasn’t an option back on a 1991 home computer like the Sharp X68000. Sigh. I won’t deny that Lucy Shot is charming and has some interesting layouts, but this is a pretty bad pinball game that needed someone in charge to remove the transfers and just let you play each table by itself. This might have been a good game then.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #70 of 125
Percentile: 44%

Pinball
Platform: CD-i
Released in 1991
Designed by John Hight
Developed by CapDisc
Published by Philips Media
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Pinball is my first CD-i review, probably to the disappointment of my readers who want me to play three specific CD-i games, and you can probably guess which three. I’m sure I’ll do them one day because the lowest hanging fruit is often the tastiest. But, it’s kind of a shame those Zelda games are the only thing CD-i is really remembered for, at least to the general population. CD-i has a very loyal following to this day but never caught on with the mainstream. And, just my luck, it has a pinball game designed by John Hight, who worked on games like World of Warcraft, Diablo III, and the God of War franchise before landing his current job as the f*cking president of Wizards of the Coast. In fact, CD-i Pinball might have been his first game, which should make him a first ballot candidate in the failing upward hall of fame. In fairness, Pinball CD-i isn’t quite as bad as its reputation suggests (IE worst game ever material), though I totally understand WHY it has that rep. Look at Dogfight:

Yes, that really is the entire table. Five glorified bumpers and one target that appears after you hit all five. It’s such an empty, lazy design that I literally can’t believe this exists as a full commercial product. CD-i Pinball sincerely, no joke, feels like a game design school student project that was whipped out over a weekend and then given a full retail release. The shame is, the physics aren’t bad at all.

They’re not amazing physics or anything like that. There’s no nudging, so no defense. It’s all shooting and rebounding with no finesse at all. You can’t pass the ball, not that you would need to with most of these layouts. But hey, angles are reliable and predictable and backhands work better in CD-i Pinball than most video pinball games made up to this point. The pinball engine they created could have hosted a historically good (for its time) pinball game, and I’m kind of peeved by how badly they phoned-in the table design. This might be the most passionless game I’ve ever played.

Of the four tables in Pinball, three of them are so lifeless and dull to shoot that it’s actually hard to imagine that anyone could confidently say this is a completed project. Go figure that the fourth table is okay. It’s called Meltdown and, unlike the other three tables, it has a no-doubt-about-it modern solid state pinball layout. Oh, so they are capable of ambition. Of the four tables Meltdown is the only one that has an Italian bottom, a variety of targets that feel like actual pinball targets, and exciting shooting angles. It even has a toy in the center and, get this, an open inlane like in the 1981 Bally classic Fathom. Good scoring, too.

Now, all is not rosy with Meltdown. It makes zero sense to have a Fathom inlane without nudging, yet here we are. No nudge. That’s pretty close to being a deal breaker by itself, but there’s more. The physics and shooting angles for the upper flippers feel different than the normal flippers. We all struggled to find an angle to shoot the middle target. Had those flippers been just a little better programmed OR had nudging been an option, Meltdown might have been good enough to drag the other three tables, kicking and screaming, over the finish line. But as it is, it’s just not good enough to save the whole set.

Plus, it’s so bland looking that you’d swear it’s unfinished too. The lack of upper shooting angles along with the missing nudge renders what should be a pretty good table into one that’s barely okay. And one fated to get old quickly thanks to the terrible sound design and lackluster theme. Still, Meltdown was good enough that if the rest of Pinball CD-i had just one more table equal to it, I think I could have gone YES! If you could somehow combine the other three tables into one, that probably would have been enough. Then again, when the time came to do the final rankings, CD-i Pinball finished much, much lower than my original off-the-cuff rankings. I had to replay Meltdown and I wasn’t as high on it once the novelty of a not completely half-assed table had worn off. It’s not terrible but clearly feels rushed and unfinished by people who don’t love pinball.

I really do want to know what the story on CD-i Pinball is. Perhaps the first three pins were sample tables to test the physics for Meltdown and the design team decided to just put them in the final game to add value. Or maybe this whole thing was an experimental game that the team at CapDisc used to familiarize themselves with CD-i development or break-in new hires to the development process and they had enough fun with it at the office that they decided to just release it. The third option is, since this studio did Sesame Street games, maybe they designed this as a plaything for toddlers. Except Spring Break seems to rule that out.

Yeah, that doesn’t seem to be made for the Sesame Street crowd, does it? Oh, and you probably should have muted before playing that clip. That’s like ear surgery without being numbed-up first. So I don’t know what happened with CD-i Pinball. What I do know is that Meltdown proves they were capable of better pinball layout design than what the full package suggests. And by the way, making a decent pinball physics engine in 1990/91 isn’t nothing. An argument could be made that CD-i Pinball’s engine is the best in this feature so far, and if only they had the ambition to do more, it could have been special. They didn’t, and Pinball CD-i isn’t.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #96 of 125
Percentile: 23%

Super Pinball Action
Platform: Arcade
Released in 1991
Developed by Tecmo
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

I didn’t even know about this one before starting this feature. Apparently after six years, Tecmo did a sequel to Pinball Action that retains the annoying “warp between four different tables” design, but with vastly improved physics and more “modern” layouts. Very, very fun layouts with a wide variety of modern targets. Unlike Devil’s Crush, this one tries to be an outright simulation of the ball sport, and the shooting physics and rebounding angles are pretty damn impressive. The best in this feature so far, even more than Pin⋅Bot. That makes sense, since this uses a more powerful CPU and is dedicated to just playing video pinball. It’s still not close to “modern” physics. The weight is a little heavy and you can’t do basic passes like post transfers, but the reliable rebounding angles and interaction between the balls in multiball that allowed for air defense shots made the game a thrill. So why isn’t this talked about more? More importantly, why doesn’t THIS have an Arcade Archives release? And what is up with the table select screen?

Huh. That’s odd. I mean, it’s Tecmo so I don’t know why I’m surprised. I remember the Dead or Alive games. Anyway, I’ll just pick a table and…………

She’ll be happy to do what? Did I load up the right game? (checks) Wait, and this got a US release too? Are you sure? Okay, well, there’s no way the game actually has OH MY GOD LOOK AT THE BOOBIES!

While I’m sure you’re laughing your ass off that Tecmo made a video pinball game specifically for people going steady with Pamela Handerson, it’s actually a little heartbreaking because all this, ahem, extracurricular stuff all but assures Super Pinball Action will never get re-released. There’s not a lot of information about it out there but one of the things I read was that the nudity could be toggled on and off, but after trying multiple versions across multiple MAME releases, I never found that DIP switch toggle. It’s not a nothingburger either, as the nudity directly affects the gameplay in the most annoying way. As a video pinball game, Super Pinball Action is really good, but be warned: you can’t actually see what your score is during the game. The real game would also have an alphanumeric display on the backglass. There’s a prototype floating around out there that uses both screens and that version doesn’t have nudity, but I don’t have it.

The incredibly impressive shooting angles have four really fun tables to play with. Three of the four tables have pretty good drop target placement. The fourth, “Border” is inspired by the Williams classic F-14 Tomcat, which is a Vice family favorite. It’s even Angela’s #2 all-time pin. Shame she couldn’t play this version because Tecmo was trying to appeal to those who manhandle the ham candle. Border even has similar ball locks to F-14 where the ball trades places. No Yagov Kicker, though. Sniper (the table in the first pic) has a satisfying snapshot loop and something sort of like a veri-target, though it’s hot potato slingshots are very annoying. Carnival is a split level with a translucent upper floor and a slot machine. It’s probably the weakest of the tables, and it’s still pretty good.

Finally Monster has a peg board and a capture-ball target that’s just delightful. What the hell does this have to do with naked women? Each of the tables has letters that must be collected. Collecting them all gives you a letter for another word. Each letter of the second word leads to the women taking off their clothes one article at a time when you shoot the saucer that takes you back to the table select screen. And this is what kills the game. Not because I’m a prude or anything like that. It takes thirty-five seconds for the striptease to play out and it’s unskippable. Here’s Border’s striptease in its (censored) entirety:

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It starts with the first screen and lingers on it. Then the article of clothing being stripped blinks on and off before being removed. Then the game pauses for quite a while before the next article of clothing is removed. Repeat this until their bare top is exposed (nothing below the waist) or you run out of letters. The stripping happens whether you get all the lights or not, and if you didn’t get them all, you have to eventually return to that table and keep going. If you actually want to play to see make believe boobies, the sheer amount of work it takes is pretty tedious. For Carnival’s twin girls, in the time it took for me to get the full CARNIVAL lights lit and then actually hit the warp, I could have written several chapters of my Pitt erotic fan fiction that involves Whitaker and…. me (he’s so dreamy).

Super Pinball Action wasn’t going to beat Solar War or Devil’s Crush for the #1 or #2 positions up-to-this-point anyway because I don’t like the warping format. But if I penalized Devil’s Crush for downtime, I have to penalize Super Pinball Action for its going-downtime. Still, fun is fun, and Super Pinball Action is a ton of fun and one of the breast BEST I meant best video pinballs of all-time. My only problem is nobody wants to be interrupted playing pinball when you have a hot hand. Okay, poor choice of words.
Verdict: YES!
Ranking: #22 of 125
Percentile: 82%

Dino Land
Platform: Sega Genesis
Released January 25, 1991
Developed by Wolf Team
Published by Renovation Products
Sold Separately by Ratalaika Games on All Current Platforms

Dino Land is the first video pinball game ever released for a genuine 16-bit console 16, and it’s proof NEC had no clue how to market the TurboGrafx-16. They should have had TV ads comparing Dino Land on the 16-bit Genesis to Alien Crush and Devil’s Crush and say “who exactly is 16-bit, bitch?” Dino Land looks like a barely-upjumped Sega Master System game, though the gameplay can’t say the same thing. After several years worth of innovation and improvements to the evolution of video pinball, Dino Land is a major regression with very limited shooting angles and a ball that feels like it’s made of sandpaper. After the free-flowing, fast-paced Devil’s Crush, we’re now back to the ball just being unable to take certain basic trajectories off the flippers.

It’s a really sloppy game too. The amount of elements that simply do not work with these physics are staggering. Take the slot machine seen in the above picture. Because there’s no real way to aim for the entrance and the bumpers often get in the way, most of the time the ball limps into it and, sometimes, even comes to a full stop right on the first dot of the entrance. What happens then? After an awkward second or two, the invisible finger of God just shoves the ball to complete the circuit. Or like in the water level where there’s orbits that take such a sharp turn that the ball often just awkwardly stops by clanking off the corner. The amount of full-force shots that actually completed this orbit were rare compared to the amount that just banged off the ceiling and returned.

So why the hell does Dino Land have a cult following? The layouts are insanely dull and the NES was doing physics on-par with what it offered. Is it the bosses? Oh, God, it’s the bosses, isn’t it? Okay, let’s talk about the bosses. There’s three of them, each of which pays off a million points if you beat it. You just bat the ball at them, but there’s a twist. A creature walks around the circumference of the room and if it reaches the damsel at the top of the screen, you fail the battle. Shooting the creature with the ball does nothing. No, instead you have to transform the ball into a dinosaur that then walks into the creature, which makes it change direction.

But, touching the boss with the dinosaur ALSO damages it, not to mention that you can transform back into the ball before the meter runs out. So, hypothetically, you could turn into the dinosaur, move above the boss, transform back into the ball, and score a ton of damage. Surely they would have done something to prevent this besides the damsel saving mechanic.

Actually, it’s even funnier than in that screenshot because one time I transformed back into the ball with the boss so close to the wall that I scored far more hits than needed. If the damsel hadn’t been there, I could have maxed out the scoreboard because we were both stuck in a damage loop. The other two bosses I never cheesed quite like this first one, but they weren’t exactly fun either. Only the underwater boss seemed different as it spends the start of the fight sleeping in its shell before coming to life. But once it woke up, besides the claws, it didn’t really do anything that different.

I don’t get the love for Dino Land at all. Nothing about it except maybe the boss sprites feels “next gen” compared to the previous console video pins. In terms of gameplay, it’s such a major step backwards. The ball behavior is never even a little life-like, and by this point in gaming history, multiple 8-bit games came closer. The best aspect of it, an item that makes a trail of supplemental balls follow you, is neat, but when the engine is this bad, neat only lasts until the millisecond your brain needs to remember you’re still playing Dino Land.

Wolf Team would later go on to create Namco’s “Tales of” series before being absorbed into Namco. So at least most of the people involved went on to become quality developers, but you’d never know that from Dino Land. The choppy frame rate and the ball stopping on a dime on the flipper turns a fun premise into a total bore and one of my most joyless gaming experiences. It really does deserve to be a bottom ten ranking, but really anything in this feature’s bottom twenty could be recognized as a one of the worst video games ever made, and that is an honor Dino Land deserves.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #112 of 125
Percentile: 10%

High Speed
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released July, 1991
Designed by Chris Stamper and Tim Stamper
Developed by Rare Ltd.
Published by Tradewest
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Take everything wrong with the Stampers’ vision for Pin⋅Bot and apply it to a pinball machine even less suitable for live enemies, and then make it even worse by including a pair of bonus games that slows down the speed of a game called HIGH SPEED. Unbelievable. Just absolutely f*cking unbelievable. Now, for the unwashed masses, High Speed the coin-operated pinball machine is one of the most important pinball machines ever made. At the time it was produced, it had the highest budget of any pinball table’s development. The final product, naturally, cost more to arcade operators than other pins. It was mockingly called “High Cost” by competitors. It went on to be one of only seven pinball machines that sold more than 17,000 units and was a top earning machine for arcades. It ushered in the final peak of the arcade era of pinball by being the first Williams table to use an alpha-numeric display which moved gameplay information onto the scoreboard. By the way it deserves ALL that history, as it’s legitimately a fantastic, timeless table. You wouldn’t know any of that from this NES game, which is, frankly, horrible.

Unlike Pin⋅Bot, I don’t think High Speed had any chance of getting a YES! even if they hadn’t ruined the gameplay with enemies. The physics don’t lend themselves to this type of shooter/finesse hybrid (Angela proposed Jokerz! as a better fit for the engine, Dave said Fire!, I say Rare should never make another pinball game again). High Speed has tight, tight squeezes and requires precision timing that frankly, neither of which this engine is great with. The enemies just turn a bad idea into a nightmare. When you kill enemies in High Speed NES, they instantly respawn. For the tumbleweeds, any contact but a direct full speed shot will result in the ball being caught, at which point the tumbleweed will move directly over the drain and let go of the ball.

Even constant pumping of the nudge didn’t break me free of it. I had to use autofire to do it, which earned me a tilt warning. Since High Speed is a game of tight shots and the physics aren’t even close to lifelike even with the same state of the art physics engine that Pin⋅Bot, the ball is going to spend a lot of time returning to the flippers, and it’s not really possible to anticipate where the enemies are going to be. It’s possible to kill one tumbleweed and have a second one grab the ball on the way back. F*ck that.

Then there’s the bonus games, which take forever to play and have even worse physics. Why don’t they use the same physics engine? Getting three helicopter icons summons a helicopter that drops a ladder that takes you to a race car pinball mini-game. When you hit your car, it goes faster. When you hit other cars, they spin out. First to complete eight laps wins. I’ve literally never lost it despite the physics being among the worst video pinball physics I’ve played yet in this feature. How the hell do you have both cutting edge physics and historically bad physics IN THE SAME GAME? The second bonus round is opened by collecting three safe icons, which spawns a safe which takes you to a version of bagatelle where you fire balls up into scoring pockets. Some of the layouts for these are ridiculous and, like the race car game, it takes forever to finish.

I can see why Pin⋅Bot is the more famous of the two Rare Ltd. pinball games for the NES. I don’t like either game and think the enemies are too overpowered, but Pin⋅Bot, with its wide-open playfield makes a LOT more sense for Rare’s engine than the much more crowded High Speed’s upper playfield does. In fact, I’d be hard-pressed to think of a mid-80s Williams pin less suitable for these movement physics. I get why it was picked. It’s #6 on the all-time pinball sales list and one of the all-time earners pinball ever had in arcades. But surely popularity can’t be the only factor in choosing which tables get adapted for a not really close to realistic NES engine. Populating THIS game with enemies that can catch balls returning to the flippers was lunacy. I’m going to guess a lot of Pin⋅Bot and High Speed’s contemporary reviews were from non-pinheads. Adding enemies to these tables, with no option to play without them, is the silverball equivalent of a deadly sin. I can’t believe they made a game worse than Pin⋅Bot.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #80 of 125
Percentile: 36%

Dragon’s Fury
aka Devil’s Crash MD (Japan)
Platform: Sega Genesis
Remake of Devil’s Crush (TurboGrafx 16)
Released October 10, 1991
Developed by Technosoft
Published by Tengen
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Genesis fans: don’t take this personally. A Genesis game will eventually hold video pinball’s “best game” title, and two of the top ten games in the rankings are on Sega consoles. Cool?

Dragon’s Fury is a port of the TurboGrafx-16 classic Devil’s Crush. Now, at this point in the feature, Devil’s Crush had my #1 position, which matches what contemporary critics said about the game. Devil’s Crush was known far and wide as the greatest video pinball game ever, a title it would hold onto for many years. I wondered why Dragon’s Fury didn’t get the same love. Oh it gets love, but the TG-16 game is far more famous. I didn’t have to wonder for long. Just looking at it, despite the extra horsepower of the Sega Genesis (again, a true 16 bit console against the beefed-up 8-bit muscle of the TurboGrafx-16), it’s a much, much uglier game. The colorful graphics that make targets so much more fun to smack are completely gone. Compare roughly the same screens. On the left is the TG16 original and on the right is the Genesis remake.

Oof. That……….. That………. That’s rough right there. Jeez, that made me feel depressed. Sega fans, seriously, just keep reading because Sega finishes strong in this feature, but this game? What the hell is that? Whatever. Gameplay is king and I can deal with catastrophically uglier graphics if the game played better. Dragon’s Fury’s gameplay is NOT better. The ball’s friction is noticeably dialed-up, and yet that doesn’t prevent it from going up-and-over rails. It’s just a less smooth, less fast experience. Where the hell is the Blast Processing™?

Most of the six mini-games have been either reworked or replaced with new games, as if Technosoft looked at them and said “we can do better.” They couldn’t. Now in fairness, the first mini-game I played, #6, is just about one of the worst pinball experiences of my entire life and started my Dragon’s Fury experience off on the wrong foot. A fight against a dragon worm and the thing it came out of that has not one, not two, but three spongy-ass phases.

If you could hit EVERY part of this worm, that would be one thing, but only its head is vulnerable. It moves fast, and the amount of shooting angles the physics engine provides isn’t enough to really aim with any consistency. After a trillion hits (give or take) the monster gets its tail unjammed from the statue’s mouth in the background and starts traveling on and off the screen. After another trillion hits, you then have to hit the statue, which thankfully is always vulnerable. It’s a truly boring mini-game made worse by the fact that the engine isn’t good enough for this level of sponge. I’m almost certain that the hypothetically more powerful Genesis version of Devil’s Crush has fewer angles than the TG-16 version. The flippers are certainly not the same.

Oh, but the same miserable dual-kicker layout made the trip over to Sega land. If you’re going to create new mini-games, why not also change the layout? Why leave the worst part of the game? By the way, I got sent back to mini-game #6 more than any other five. Go f*cking figure.

I have no clue why they didn’t just copy and paste the TG-16 game. Okay, so the Genny can’t display as many colors. So what? I’ve not been the biggest fan of the bonus rooms in any of the Crush games so far, but the original Devil’s Crush games were just plain better, and for a prettier game. You don’t need me to tell you that. Just look at the screenshots. Who do you believe? The “Genesis Does” commercials or your lying eyes? If the side-by-side isn’t bad enough, take a look at bonus level #1:

That is such an eye sore that I seriously thought the f*cking thing was glitching! If not for Sega Retro’s post on Dragon’s Fury, I seriously would have thought something had gone wrong. When I realized that, yes indeed, it’s supposed to look like that, I wondered what the thought process was. It’s so tacky. And by the way, that mini-game is one of the few that doesn’t take forever because the ball can get stuck above the dragons and do enough damage to finish them off. Unlike bonus game #6, this one didn’t have multiple phases, so I only needed a few flips because the kickers and a single lucky bounce did most of the work for me.

Sigh. I know I’m winning no Sega fans with this review. If this had been the only version of Devil’s Crush, this review might have turned out a lot different, but it’s not. I don’t know what else to say about Dragon’s Fury. If this were 1991, I’m certain this was better than not having access to Devil’s Crush at all due to it being on a less popular platform. In a vacuum, it’s a YES! game, but I’m not reviewing in a vacuum and it’s not 1991 anymore and I didn’t have fun with this downgrade at all. Thirty-five years later and Dragon’s Fury’s only value to be is as a weird curiosity. A Sega Genesis game that, right from the start, felt like a downgrade over an existing TurboGrafx-16 game when by all rights it should be the other way around. Worse graphics. Worse gameplay. Boo me all you want, Genesis fans, but I have to give this round to the TurboGrafx-16. It’s okay. When I compare Altered Beast some day, trust me, Genesis will win.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #60 of 125
Percentile: 52%

Mechanicus
Platform: Commodore 64
Released in October 20, 1991
Designed by Andrew Miller
Developed by Hitech Studio
Published by CP Vertag
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Mechanicus is sort of like someone asked “what if you did a Crush game with physics more like the Atari 2600 build of Midnight Magic?” Like Midnight Magic and fellow Commodore 64 game Slamball, it’s one of the games I’ll wave as proof that I’m willing to give a YES! to a game that doesn’t exactly have amazing physics. Or good physics. Or even decent physics. The ball in Mechanicus is hyperactive to the point that it rarely feels like you’re playing pinball. It really doesn’t help that the game’s orbits tend to be too tight, so satisfying shots that clear the full orbit are rare. Too often in early video pinball, I felt surprised when orbital shots actually cleared the whole thing. Ideally it should be satisfying, not shocking. Frankly, the tech wasn’t ready for narrow orbits at all.

It might sound like I didn’t like Mechanicus. However, there’s just enough ball control and shooting angles in two out of the three layouts to drag the game over the finish line. The third table (pictured below) is especially very strong and works WITH the physics engine. A big, wide-open table where all the shots have access points. Okay, it does have that one tight orbit to block the wobble caused by the living ball, but otherwise this is making use of the engine to its maximum potential, and the bits with the wheels I thought were very clever. So that table was actually a whole lot of fun. The first table is a little clunkier and scores too slowly, but it’s enjoyable enough.

It’s not all rosy, which is ironic given the second table’s theme. While playing the second table (pictured below) I don’t think I ever once completed the upper left orbit. It’s too punishing a table, and the exit is especially hard to hit without using the nudge. I didn’t enjoy that layout at all. Thankfully, Mechanicus has some legitimately pinball bits to make up for its shortcomings. You can earn shields for the outlanes/drains by hitting the right targets, and they wear out after repeated usage. But I did use the drain pin successfully with dead flips.

And there’s one last clever twist: you build up time in Mechanicus, and as long as you have time, you can’t game over even after your last ball drains. However, you’re penalized time when you drain and time ticks away if you don’t keep the ball active and hitting targets. Mechanicus, for all its warts, left me wanting more. It’s not a masterpiece by any means, but I enjoyed it as a unique, very bouncy but downright charming early indie experience that deserves to be released in a modern setting and celebrated.
Verdict: YES!
Ranking: #40 of 125
Percentile: 68%

Time Cruise
aka Time Cruise II (Japan)
Platform: TurboGrafx-16
Released November 8, 1991
Directed by Kaname Igarashi
Developed by Sankindo
Published by NEC (US) Face (JPN)
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Time Cruise II? What the fudge? At first, we thought someone was trying to trick consumers into thinking Time Cruise was somehow connected to the Sega coin-op Time Scanner. Similar name, similar theme, similar “activate time portals” gimmick, and similar weird ass target placement and angles. But no, it turns out that Time Cruise really was meant to be a sequel developed side-by-side with another Time Cruise game, but the first game got cancelled and, since they’d already advertised it, they just called the game they actually released Time Cruise II in Japan. (shrug) By the way, if I had located the prototype ROM I would have included it in this feature, and if I eventually do, I will include it in any future follow-up. I did look for it, because what a strange development story, right?

Oh, and when I said “some weird ass angles” I was really understating it. Every single screen in this f*cking thing is weird. This is the first game in this list to scroll horizontally in addition to scrolling vertically. The vertical scrolling is done smoothly while the horizontal is done one table at a time. Ideally, this should make it an even bigger adventure than Devil’s Crush, but when is anything ideal in this feature? Time Cruise only sounds like it has an exciting gimmick, but trust me, the idea is so much more interesting than the actual game.

The problem with Time Cruise 33 1/3 is that it includes a ton of angles, targets, and tight squeezes that would probably be a lot of fun to shoot with real physics, or hell, I’ll settle for Devil’s Crush’s physics. But Time Cruise’s physics are a major step backwards. Time Cruise has a bouncy living ball and shooting physics and angles that feels like a pinball game released four or five years earlier. Some key shooting angles simply do not exist in this, and that just lets all the air out of what’s some pretty exciting layouts. Look at this:

That looks like it would be hella fun to shoot. But what little shooting angles Time Cruise provides players can’t really reach the T-I-M-E rollovers. I never completed them or even came close despite the two games I played of this lasting several hours. Yeah, that’s the really weird part: despite the physics feeling like those of an early NES game, Time Cruise is possibly the easiest game on this list so far. So, here’s where the whole time travel thing comes into play. There’s six total that can be activated by hitting the switches enough times (don’t mistake them for vari-targets, because they move automatically regardless of the angle you hit them). When the power is activated, you just have to shoot into the corresponding time machine which takes you to a Crush-series-like bonus room. Only, the bonus games here might have nothing to do with pinball at all.

Like entering the time machine in the above screenshot takes you to a tilting maze where you control the X and Y axis to lead a ball through a maze to get an extra ball. I failed at this my first three or four times, but eventually I reached the point where the extra ball was easy to get. And since the act of turning on the machines is equally as easy, Time Cruise has a major problem. Other games I didn’t even need to practice up to score extra balls. Like this one:

You just tilt the platforms left and right and guide the ball down platforms. More than once I screwed this game up only to watch as the ball took a series of lucky bounces and landed right in the center slot, which is the extra ball. I was excited the first time it happened, but when it happened twice more in repeat visits to the game (each of which has a smaller time limited, granted), it was less thrilling. Plus, by that point the “new game excitement” had worn off and I realized that Time Cruise is actually a very mediocre game of video pinball.

After Devil’s Crush, it feels like such a regression to a more limited era of video pinball with such clunky, narrow shots. Compared to most NES pinball games, I could see how it would have fans. Well, actually no because it’s so easy that it becomes boring. Time Cruise was actually the game I played the fewest rounds of for this feature during my primary play session. Yet, despite that, it’s in the top half of all the games in terms of actual time I put into it because those rounds lasted so long that I got everything I needed to comfortably complete this review in just a few games. It’s so limited in angles that it’s among the most clockable and easy video pins I’ve ever played.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #56 of 125
Percentile: 55%

Pinball Dreams
Platform: Commodore Amiga 
Released in 1992
Designed by Olof Gustafsson*
Developed by Digital Illusions
Included in the A500 Mini†

*Actual credit is “Original Concept” which I’m not sure if that means he just said “we should do a pinball game!” or if he directly designed tables.
†Since the A500 Mini is technically out of print, this could be considered NO MODERN RELEASE, but I found multiple online retailers who still have their original stock at what I’m pretty sure is the original price.

The first couple Amiga/Amiga CD32 games I played out of order, and so I’m playing this right after starting the SNES version of Pinball Dreams. Initially I didn’t plan to include any post Apple II home computer games because there’s SO MANY. But then the Super Nintendo build of Pinball Dreams, no joke, gave me motion sickness. This isn’t a bit I’m doing for comedy. I’m not normally prone to getting dizzy playing games. I only recall one game making me green in the gills and that was the 2007 re-release of Marathon 2 for the Xbox 360 when I was 18. If it’s happened since then, I don’t remember it, but my streak nearly came to an end because Pinball Dreams SNES doesn’t just scroll up and down like the Amiga original. The resolution is so off that the game actually also scrolls left and right, which causes a chaotic shaking of the camera. Tried it. Got dizzy. Took nausea pill (good ole ondansetron. Tastes like bubble gum mixed with a dirty penny). Felt better. Tried it again. Nearly puked and had to lay down. When I woke up seven hours later, my father told me to drop the SNES build and not worry because he got the Amiga emulator working (thanks to Amiga Forever).

So was it worth the wait to play Pinball Dreams? Yes and no. The bad news is that, by the time I played this game, I’d already played, wrote, and edited the review for Pinball Jam for the Atari Lynx (up next chronologically, go figure) and I sh*t all over that game for its scrolling and not being able to see the targets I aimed at. Pinball Dreams has the exact same problem, almost to the same degree as Pinball Jam, and fair is fair. Pinball Dreams ushers in scrolling era of video pinball where you’re expected to shoot blind. I just plain don’t like only having the ball’s position on the flippers to go off of when I shoot. Look at how little you can see of each of the four playfields when you shoot in Pinball Dreams:

That’s two visible targets for Ignition, only one for Steel Wheel, four for Beat Box, and three for Nightmare. Now, to Pinball Dreams’ credit, three of the four tables were smart enough to align the progress lights with the shots. But the game’s first table, Ignition, forgot to do that part. You can’t even use the exhaust from the rocket to aim like I thought because it doesn’t quite line-up. It’s a really sad oversight because, of the four tables, Ignition is the most changed from its original table. You see, each table in Pinball Dreams is a reworking of real life pins. Three out of the four pins are really close in terms of layouts. Ignition is the most original in that it only shares a little bit of DNA with its inspiration, the 1987 classic Space Station, but the layout and angles are very different. The split-level is missing. The toy is missing. The ramp is missing. It has fewer targets and a full f*cking bumper is missing. Ignition has an Italian Bottom when Space Station does not. So it might as well be an original table.

The changes have transformed Space Station into a sharpshooter-style pin focused on target shooting and rebounding. That’s a good thing because Pinball Dreams has a physics engine that does shooting and rebounding really good but not much else. Ball handling? Forget about it. Passing? Not really. Most importantly: none of the tables in Pinball Dreams have multiball, though only one scroller ever did multiball right anyway and it turns out it was Pinball Jam. Again, go figure. But even Ignition, an all shooting/all rebounding table is hurt by not having the satisfaction of, you know, seeing what you’re shooting at. And the loss of the iconic themes, now replaced with the most lifeless generic themes possible, sure stands out in a table like Beat Box. It’s a major strip-down of The Machine: Bride of Pin•Bot that removes the eye-catching theme, sound effects, and the unforgettable transforming Bride. What’s left is really just the targets and ramps and they aren’t that interesting or even challenging to shoot. It really shows how middle-of-the-road Bride has always been and how utterly dependent it is on its theme and one of the most clear-out-heavy multiballs ever for excitement. On the other hand, at least Beat Box isn’t a one-shot wonder, I guess.

The table that sticks the closest to the original while also making the most sense is Steel Wheel, a remake of Bad Cats. It keeps basically all the targets and Bat Cats never had multiball to begin with. The fourth table, Nightmare, also sticks very, very close to the original, including the scoring system. I hold Terminator 2 in very, very high esteem (I ranked it #1 out of the 100 tables in The Pinball Arcade). But here’s the thing: Terminator 2’s most exciting stuff is the multiball. The table does everything right. It’s basically a perfect table, but more specifically, it’s designed with juggling, ball management, and the potential for air defense during multiball while also providing challenge in the form of the gun start. Like, no exaggeration, it was literally Steve Ritchie’s goal to outdo his own High Speed and create the ultimate challenging but manageable multiball table. Pinball Dreams has no multiball at all, but it has Terminator 2, including the rule sheet, but no gun, and no multiball. At this point I wrote a series of swear words but instead I’ll just quote my friend, pinball designer Dave Sanders. “”Nightmare is a decent knockoff but there’s definitely a sense of copying the homework without fully understanding it,” he said, which is 100% spot-on because if you understood T2, you would wait until you figured out how to do multiball.

Seriously, T2 without multiball is like a crime against pinball. Oh, there’s ball locks that send you back to the shooter lane, but they just don’t actually release the locked balls onto the playfield. They just increase the multiplier of the jackpot, which lights immediately after you lock the first ball. Also, because the score is done with an alpha-numeric display, obviously there’s no video mode. That’s fine with me, as it’s the one thing that keeps T2 off my shortlist of literally perfect games. For all my whining, I’m giving Pinball Dreams a tepid YES! Unlike Pinball Jam, which is the most comparable game to Dreams, I did ultimately have more fun than not. Even with the scrolling, there’s more shooting angles and three tables have the lights to help with aiming. Just don’t expect a true pinball sim though. This isn’t even a little close to that. But the whole Vice family, all fans of T2, all like Nightmare. I imagine, for many Amiga owners or owners of other ports, Pinball Dreams was a dedicated Nightmare player. It speaks volumes to how damn good Terminator 2 was that you could strip it of its license, strip it of its personality, strip it of its call outs, strip it of its toy, and give it a completely uninspired makeover and it’s still fun. Pinball Dreams might not live up to its legend, but it does solidify the legend of Terminator 2’s pinball table.
Verdict: YES!
Ranking: #24 of 125
Percentile: 81%

Pinball Jam
Platform: Atari Lynx
Released in 1992
Designed by Joel Seider
Developed by Atari
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Possibly the strangest licensed game in this entire feature, Pinball Jam is a compilation of two adaptations of pretty famous 1989 pins: Mark Ritchie & Barry Ourlser’s Police Force and Dennis Nordman & Jim Patla’s Elvira and the Party Monsters. Neither of these was a MEGA hit in the way previous real life tables like Firepower, Black Knight, Pin⋅Bot, or High Speed were, but they became especially popular in their post-arcade life among those who owned coin-op routes for being tough shooters with short play times for novices. Also, neither of them would be remotely suitable for the tiny Atari Lynx screen or the engine created by Joel Seider.

I have to give HUGE props. I played dozens of scrolling-based pins for this feature. Pinball Jam is the only one that places arrows on the playfield during multiball to show the relative position of balls that can’t be seen. I would have KILLED for that in other scrolling pins, especially the Pinball Dreams games and Psycho Pinball. Plus the balls clank off each other, which is sadly rarer that it should be. Good stuff, Mr. Seider. He has my infinite respect for carrying over nearly every shot from two real life Williams System 11B tables (basically the engine that powers the scoring and modes of the table. Read about that here). These are pretty complex tables that are, frankly, faithfully recreated as best as possible given the limitations. Elvira and the Party Monsters is limited to two balls instead of three during multiball but otherwise, these are pretty spot-on.

Well, in terms of layout at least. That’s not necessarily bad by itself, but both tables only have two flippers and the ability to nudge. Regardless of which table you play, the outlanes are BRUTAL, and by the time the ball is going to go into one, it’s too late. You have to begin the nudging well before the ball is on its trajectory towards them. You just don’t see enough of the playfield.

Of the two tables, Police Force lends itself better to the physics engine, which, in fairness, isn’t horrible. The ball isn’t overly active once you settle it down with the flippers, and settling it down is easier than real life. So why didn’t I enjoy the game more? It’s really the defensive game that sucks the fun out of Pinball Jam. What goes up must come down, and when shots brick, even with an effective nudge, there’s nothing you can really do to defend yourself since you don’t have enough time to judge whether the ball is going straight down the outlane or if it’ll be a rail dancer that can be saved with a nudge. I can’t stress enough, you see so very, very little of the playfield at once. Because look at the screenshot below. THAT IS WHAT YOU SEE IN THE FLIPPER ZONE! There is literally not a single visible target on the screen. Not even one.

This means that all aiming is done using only the ball’s placement on the flippers. Which yes, pinball is played at a high level via muscle memory, but I realized while playing Pinball Jam how unsatisfying it is to not see what I’m aiming at. I want to use bowling as a comparison. Imagine if you did a bowling video game that didn’t show the pins until the act of making shots. Or imagine a basketball game where the camera is set so low that you can’t see the hoop until the ball is in the air, on its way to the rim. Or a billiards game where you can see only the cue ball and pool stick but not the pockets until you’ve committed to a shot. I don’t think anyone would like any of those games. After imagining those comparisons, remember that pinball is a ball sport, just like everything else I named.

The decent shooting angles of Pinball Jam are let down by a miserable defensive game, ugly graphics, and the inability to actually see the targets. If the ball sport thing is overplayed, Angela compared it to playing a dart video game where you only see the player’s hand. Even with two remarkably accurate layout recreations of famous pins, I feel like channeling my inner Jeff Goldblum and asking everyone involved if they ever thought to ask if they should. An Atari Lynx attempt at recreating any real table is so obviously doomed to fail. They should have taken advantage of the Lynx and made a vertical-oriented screen. Actually, no, they should have created an original game that plays to the strengths of the Atari Lynx instead of recreating real tables that expose its weaknesses.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #63
Percentile: 50%

Crüe Ball
Platform: Sega Genesis
Released December 26, 1993
Designed by Mark Sprenger
Developed by NuFX, Inc.
Published by Electronic Arts
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Crüe Ball is based on the heavy metal band Mötley Crüe. Only, that was never the actual intent of Mark Sprenger, who did the artwork for such famous pinball machines as High Speed, Getaway: High Speed II, Banzai Run, Diner, Space Shuttle, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Sprenger’s intended license was an MTV show called Headbangers Ball. Presumably MTV played the game and told him to go f*ck himself. Crüe Ball is a slog of a game. It would seem they took the whole “heavy metal” thing literally because it feels like pinball played with a cannonball. The gravity is so heavy, and the playfield isn’t exactly optimized for it.

Meanwhile, I know exactly jack and sh*t about Mötley Crüe. This is where having a mother who learned English mostly from MTV comes in handy. Oh, she’s not remotely a gamer, but her music fandom has helped me out on many occasions. When I did the Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker Definitive Review, she was my test subject, as I used her to identify the chiptune versions of his tracks. She ended up playing the Genesis game and liking it a lot more than I did. She wasn’t interested in even trying Crüe Ball, but she did offer to listen to the tracks.

Mom claimed not to be the biggest fan of the Crüe, but then she identified all three songs that were included (Live Wire, Home Sweet Home, and Dr. Feelgood), and then proceeded to lose her sh*t by what songs were NOT part of Crüe Ball, including ones that she thought lent themselves specifically to not only chiptune adaptation but to the actual pinball theme. Specifically, she was aghast that Shout at the Devil wasn’t part of this for a battle against devils. It makes sense though since everything contained within this is so utterly generic.

The gameplay is trying (and failing) to be one of those pinball/action hybrids that uses live enemies instead of traditional pinball targets, but the layout just completely sucks the fun out of everything. There’s only three screens, each of which is shaped like an octagonal diamond. There’s nine “volumes” (levels) and the screens (the second screen especially) have different challenges that you must clear to allow you to break through the wall on the top most screen. But the god awful physics combine with outlanes to cause the ball to constantly fall back down to the previous level. Like in the fifth “volume” you eventually unlock this:

Which will fire the ball up at the wall, but the ricochet, literally every time, sent me back down to this screen. I don’t know if they did that on purpose or if they just had no clue what they were doing when they programmed it, but it turns the entire experience into a mindless grind that’s NEVER fun. It really doesn’t help that the bottom floor is almost always empty and the actual targets you have to aim at are between the first and second screens, meaning you can’t see them. What the F*CK is up with that in recent pins in this feature? Suddenly the industry decided that video pinball didn’t actually need the targets to be anywhere near the flippers, satisfaction be damned. So here’s the bottom floor:

That diamond occasionally fills with targets. How do you do that? You shoot the drop targets. What drop targets? These drop targets:

Oh, and even though the physics are heavy, the ball is INSANELY bouncy. Like seriously, it feels exactly like those early Apple II games where the ball is made of rubber, only it’s now also super heavy and the flippers have even fewer shooting angles. Those triangular structures coming out of the wall I think are supposed to be like slingshots but they behave more like trampolines and the ball is suddenly coked out of its mind and has so much energy it can’t stop bouncing up and down. It makes an already mediocre physics engine almost unplayable. Now in fairness, hitting the drop targets raises targets where the big diamond is:

And they WOULD be okay targets, but you mostly don’t shoot them. The ball is already above them when they spawn so gravity wipes out most of them for you. And then, to get up to the next playfield, you have to just shoot the ball between the flippers. That’s how it works for most of the game, but there’s no “cherry bomb” angle to shoot straight up. And as a reminder, the ball controls more like a person riding a pogo stick AND the physics are heavy AND there’s enemies constantly respawning and blocking your shots, and all of it culminating in a last boss where finding an angle to shoot its mouth is the only challenge. Hell, the finale was probably the easiest part of the entire game.

I feel now that we’re well into the 16 bit era, video pinball should be better than THIS. I was genuinely excited for Crüe Ball, too. Why wouldn’t I be? It has quite the pedigree behind it. Plus, I actually played this out of order because I had the wrong release date on it, so I’d already played the upcoming Virtual Pinball, also by EA and also on the Genesis. Virtual Pinball isn’t very fun either but it has an excellent physics engine, so I was hoping Crüe Ball would use the same physics engine. It doesn’t. It actually has one of the worst engines in this entire feature, and we’re so far into the 16 bit era now that I feel there’s no excuses left for having this few of shooting angles and a ball this hyperactive.

Initially, I was going to blame the engine for everything bad about Crüe Ball, but that’s wrong. If Crüe Ball had perfect physics, it would have still been boring because the layouts are just no fun to shoot. Granted, a lot of my problems were related to the ever-bouncy ball, but the most advanced Crüe Ball ever got was a double-sided tunnel with spinners that just vanished after I did a certain amount of spins. Since the rails leading to the flippers control like a child who got into a bottle of caffeine pills and then climbed into a bouncy castle, it’s not like you can actually aim at these targets. Even if you could, the physics aren’t accurate enough that the shooting angles match the placement of the targets. So for things like the double-sided spinner or this target that looked like an empty pot that had to be shot among other empty pots, *I* didn’t hit the targets. The random bouncing from the rails did it for me.

I literally can’t believe this got decent reviews in 1992/93. Did we even play the same game? Hell, I didn’t even mention how the ball seemed to be drawn to the tips of the flippers, and sometimes those tips would strike the ball and sometimes nothing would happen at all. Seriously, this is a tip-of-flipper based game. Sigh. The worst part of all is that it took me a full day to beat Crüe Ball and I was unhappy pretty much the entire time. The only fun I really had was seeing the look of satisfaction on my mother’s face when she correctly guessed the tunes. I would NEVER have guessed someone involved in real tables that are among my personal favorites designed this, because Crüe Ball is just one of the most empty, ugly, boring games in this entire feature. MTV made the right call declining this piece of garbage. Bad physics, bad playfields, bad targets, and a theme that was shoehorned in at the last second because the actual intended theme didn’t come through. Crüe Ball is a cynical, soulless disaster.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #91 of 125
Percentile: 27%

Jaki Crush
aka Naxat Super Pinball: Jaki Hakai
Platform: Super Famicom
Released December 18, 1992
Developed by Compile
Published by Naxat
Never Released Outside of Japan
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

I was SO excited for Jaki Crush, the third and final game in the original Crush trilogy, the only Crush game to appear on a Nintendo console, and the only game in the franchise to not get a global release (I’m not counting the unofficial sequel Dragon’s Revenge for the Sega Genesis, coming up very soon, as an official Crush game). That niggling little voice in my head was screaming “you should have known better! If Jaki Crush were any good it would have gotten a global release!” And indeed, the physics are somehow worse than the vastly technologically inferior TurboGrafx-16 Crush games AND the mini-games are even longer, easier to unlock, and more boring than ever. All of that happens on a significantly worse primary layout. Look at the middle of the table:

That’s it. It’s really more of a transitional area between the lower playfield (seen in the first pic of this review) and the upper playfield, which looks like a slightly more open remake of the Devil’s Crush’s upper screen:

What a massive f*ck up this whole design was. After the fairly busy Alien Crush and Devil’s Crush, the third and final game in the franchise feels very empty. It’s weird that I literally just finished Pinball Jam, a game defined by having too much table for too little screen, because Jaki Crush has the same problem, even though it shouldn’t. Remember that transitional area? The camera usually doesn’t allow you to see both flippers. For the most part, it looks like this:

So you have a mostly empty playfield that you can’t even see all at once, and that’s before you even look at the physics. Jaki is the first game in this feature to suffer from Air Hockey Syndrome, the sensation that the ball is more like an air hockey puck that you’re sliding around instead of rolling. It’s going to be such a common problem going forward in this feature that the Virtual Boy’s lone pinball game said “f*ck it” and just went with it by making the ball a puck. A convincing rolling ball must be harder to program than it sounds, but Jaki’s problem isn’t just that the puck ball moves too fast, but that it gets caught on walls too easily. This is especially problematic in the bonus rooms. Other Crush games had the same problem with their bonus rooms, but nowhere near to the degree this does. That’s assuming they even work. One of the rooms just broke on me.

No, that enemy isn’t supposed to be invincible, nor is it supposed to be frozen in place. I don’t know what the hell happened. For all I know, it didn’t glitch out and the developers just decided to dramatically increase the amount of hits required for the final character, and also have the characters that previously walked around just stand in place after unfreezing him. Oh right, I forgot to mention that the thing started out frozen.

As if the lame ass primary layout isn’t bad enough, the bonus rooms are some of the most sloggy in this feature so far. The best of the bunch (by far) is a nightmare fuel take on Space Invaders that has multiple different waves as the person in the background becomes more and more devil-like. The best thing I can say about it is it can be beaten VERY quickly since the ball doesn’t react at all to the targets except to kill them. By the way, do you enjoy sleeping? I’m so sorry, but you will never, ever sleep again now:

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Jokes aside, it looks like maybe it could be fun, but the physics in the bonus rooms are even more puck-like than in the main game so the real nightmare is ball control. That becomes a problem when the game features enemies that only have a very brief window of vulnerability. Like in the room shown below, there’s two large devils that you have to strike X amount of times. However, they only stay on the screen for a couple seconds before vanishing and leaving several small fires that you have to knock out before they reappear. In addition to that, the devils, in that teeny tiny window where they appear, are both capable of firing very large rings of fire that further block you from striking them. This was the first mini-game I encountered and, by the time I’d finished it, I spent a lot more time trying to beat these devils than I had on the main playfield.

Jaki having the worst playfield of the franchise despite being on its most powerful platform yet was disappointing enough, but on top of that, not one of the mini-games is fun. One of them has a roulette spinner underneath the playfield and you have to time it so the ball goes up a ramp and is delivered to a head that you haven’t already blown up. One is another strike the enemy thing with a brief window of vulnerability and a means of blocking the ball (by the way, the frozen creatures in that other mini game also only have a brief window where they’re unfrozen before being sucked up and refrozen). I don’t even know what the hell is supposed to be the theme of the last game. You hit these things that walk around a circle and then four spirit animals (lacking any animation) appear. All of them but the Space Invaders game is a chore and even the Space Invaders game isn’t actually fun. It just doesn’t stay around long enough to be boring. There’s a difference.

Now, in fairness, both of the other Crush games would have been a LOT better if they had ditched the mini-games or, at the very least, sped them up so they were brief video-mode like distractions to break up the monotony of the main playfield. I’m not a fan of the formula at all. Angela, who watched with bemusement as I played several games in this feature, compared my experience in the Crush series to her all-time favorite table, Attack From Mars. “I love the video mode in Attack From Mars, but I wouldn’t want it to interrupt the game every two minutes, nor would I want the mode to last ten minutes.” Exactly.

Some of the mini-games in Devil’s Crush I could get into, but for the most part, I just put up with them because of the excellent primary tables. Jaki doesn’t even have that going for it, and the end result is one of the worst games in this feature. I’d even go so far as calling the main table’s shooting angles and transitional screen mean-spirited. It’s a joyless conclusion to the series, which is why I’m guessing it was the end of a relatively successful franchise. Based on how fun Jaki Crush is, I assume Compile was over pinball after Devil’s Crush, and now I’m crushed. No pun intended.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #83 of 125
Percentile: 34%

Pinball Fantasies
Platform: Amiga CD32
Released in 1993
Developed by Digital Illusions
Published by 21st Century Entertainment
NO MODERN RELEASE*

*Versions of Pinball Fantasies from other platforms do have modern releases.

This was a treat. Pinball Fantasies is the sequel to Pinball Dreams, only there was no borrowing from real tables that would inevitably draw unflattering comparisons. Fantasies features four original tables that are much more optimized for the improved but still shooting/rebounding-focused physics engine. Getting the obvious out of the way first, Pinball Fantasies has the same “can’t see the shots” problem. Here’s the flipper zones of the four tables:

Total shots you can see from the flippers across all four tables: ZERO. On top of that, not every table has the key shots charted with the lights. Bones doesn’t. Game Show doesn’t. I mean, this isn’t a nothingburger, people! I’m not making a mountain out of a molehill over here. You’re shooting almost entirely blind against much tougher, much busier tables, which means a bigger time investment just to get a feel for shooting angles. Sure, you brute-force memorize where the targets are, but doesn’t mean that’s the ideal way to play pinball. Why is it okay for Devil’s Crush to scroll but not these games? Because most of Devil Crush’s targets are in view of the flippers. Yeah, it’s really that simple. Not being able to see what you’re shooting at puts a relatively low ceiling on the potential for the Digital Illusions/21st Century Entertainment engine. That ceiling is felt in Pinball Fantasies a lot more than Pinball Dreams. This could have taken the #1 spot currently occupied by Devil’s Crush.

To make up for the scrolling, three of the four tables have a lot of upper playfield gameplay. Only Stones ‘n Bones, pictured above, doesn’t. It speaks to the strength of the table design that even this two flipper layout, for all the problems that comes with shooting blind, is really fun. Excellent selection. Fun theme. Stones ‘n Bones only real flaw is that it’s a bit on the stop ‘n go side. The same can’t be said about Speed Devils and Party Land. Speed Devils was probably my favorite table in the collection. It’s what I call a “finesse” table in that you can change up your shot rhythm on the fly and still maintain the consistent flow to the ball, the shooting angles, and the rebounding. Think something like Theatre of Magic or Medieval Madness. Meanwhile, Party Land, ahem, kicked my ass. Pinball Fantasies did in general. This was the 50th game that I completed and ranked, and easily the game that took me the longest to clock. Hell, I can’t even really say I clocked Party Land. Ahem…….

That picture was taken even after I finished my first hour with Party Land. I was still taking a sh*t between the sheets and rolling in it by having shots that immediately drained following the plunge. By the way, this ball also went down the drain and, the second time around, the table took mercy on me and gave me a ball save, I think because I didn’t hit anything. This was still happening to me well after that should have stopped, and I can’t even blame the blindness. Well, not entirely at least. Like I said, you certainly need to put a lot more time into Fantasies. While I had fun, God, what I would give to play these tables in tate mode where I can see the whole playfield. Three out of the four of them were a lot of fun.

As much as I struggled, I enjoyed the switch over to dot matrix display scoring and contemporary (well, for 1993) gameplay and modes. Only Billion Dollar Game Show (mind you this was five years before the first version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire started) I found to be outright bad. To their credit, they improved the concept of the “billion point shot” over how Bride of Pin•Bot did it (it’s based around completing all six prizes via target shooting rather than one ramp over and over), but I still don’t love the idea of a wildly imbalanced “all-or-nothing” lack of balance in scoring. Seriously, don’t do wildly imbalanced scoring. You’re back-ending all the excitement into one single moment when pinball is meant to be a series of moments. Originally, I planned to review every version of Fantasies, but since none of them improved the original build, I moved them all to the bonus section. The Amiga version is never really topped, only equaled.
Verdict: YES!
Ranking: #21 of 125
Ranking: 83%

Virtual Pinball
Platform: Sega Genesis
Released in 1993
Directed by Bill Budge
Developed by BudgeCo., Inc.
Reviewed by CathyCo. Ltd.
Published by Electronic Arts
NO MODERN RELEASE

In the first screenshot above, you can see the ball travel up past targets. In the next screenshot, the game is letting me know that it’s time to play the next ball because the previous ball, ahem, drained out of the ceiling. Mind you, that’s literally the first table in the game. It was a sign of things to come.

Virtual Pinball is essentially a console remake of Budge’s famous Pinball Construction Set, with one key difference for the purpose of this review: there’s 29 preset table layouts, sixteen that can be unlocked with a password (I sampled them and decided it wasn’t worth the effort of putting in the codes to play more) in addition to the do-it-yourself creation tools, meaning I actually have something to review that interests me. I want to first draw attention to the sheer volume of options you have with those tables. You can change the theme to the pinball components AND the backgrounds for all 29 tables. So, let me show you the first screen once the game loads:

This slideshow will change just the parts, which means there’s six total options including “Gore” as seen above and the blue prints that I already showed:

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And this slideshow will change just the background, which combined with “Bathroom” means there’s twelve total backgrounds:

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I wanted to show you all these options because you’ll notice that the tables themselves mostly look a little interchangeable, and that’s because they’re not really trying to be like the type of pinball you would expect to play in a pinball game. It’s more like a pinball-themed Rube Goldberg device creation system. None of the twenty-nine preset tables feel like earnest efforts at creating pinball tables like you would see in arcades. That’s tragic because this is easily the best physics engine so far. Virtual Pinball made history by allowing the first reliable fully manual passing:

There’s also a ton of shooting angles including naturalistic backhanded shots. This should have cruised to being the best game in this feature so far with this engine. Instead, it’s not even getting a YES! In fact, it’s in the bottom 25% overall. Why? Twenty-nine tables and not a single one of them feels anything like actual pinball. These are contraptions you play around with using pinball mechanics, but none of them have particularly fun target shooting. They’re toys that you mess around with for a couple minutes, but there’s no actual thrill in building high scores.

The above video is every single table that doesn’t require a password. The construction aspect of Virtual Pinball assured that every preset table would feel, frankly, generic and soulless. Twenty-nine cracks at using the tools and THAT is what professional game designers came up with? It doesn’t matter what tools were provided. The amount of targets is limited and they’re not visually exciting because they’re literally generic by design.

So what do I do with Virtual Pinball? Well, I give it a NO! because I didn’t even have a teeny tiny bit of fun with it. And yes, I tinkered around very briefly with the creation feature and lasted about five seconds (more like ten minutes) before I wished I was doing anything else. I genuinely feel like the original Pinball Construction Set offered the ability to make something closer to pinball than this. This is the board game Mouse Trap with flippers and a pinball.

And I’m genuinely heartbroken over that because the physics engine is so good. But once I realized that this wasn’t the type of pinball I was looking for and, in fact, wasn’t even a clever enough twist on pinball, I struggled to stay interested. Virtual Pinball is just straight-up boring. And why the hell is every preset table a double-sided or even triple-sided table, like two tables that were sewn together? Twenty nine tables and it would have really killed them to include JUST ONE that was like a boring old target shooter? Instead, there’s sh*t like this:

Really? That looks like something a 5 year old would make. So wait: you included sample tables…… LOTS of sample tables…… and they’re all terrible. Every single one of them. I can’t stress enough that, despite being a construction set, Virtual Pinball has the most built-in tables of any game in this collection, and it’s not even really close. You would think one of them would be good. None are. And that’s why I question the potential of Virtual Pinball. If professional game designers either couldn’t make a quality table with the tools provided or just didn’t give a f*ck to try, why should anyone else be expected to have fun with this “play set” at all?
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #95 of 125
Percentile: 24%

Epic Pinball
Platform: MS DOS
Released June 11, 1993
Designed by James Schmalz Terry Cumming, and Joe Hitchens
Space Journey & Toy Factory designed by Misko Iho
Developed by Epic Games (not THAT Epic Games)
Published by Wizard Games
Sold Separately
This review is for Epic Pinball: The Complete Collection

The team behind Epic Pinball will be showing up many more times in this feature. Joe Hitchens is also the co-designer of the next game, Dragon’s Revenge, while Cumming and Schmalz did at least one more, Extreme Pinball for the PlayStation. This was a very late addition to this feature (seriously I just finished Sonic Pinball Party) and I want to thank my friend Adam for reminding me of it. I actually did have this in my notes and somehow forgot to list it, then made it over a hundred-and-ten games into the writing process before Adam said “uh, I think you forgot one, Cathy.” Indeed I did, and it’s not bad. Well, most of it. Half of it. It’s more like a little over half of it is total f*cking garbage BUT the good tables are really good.

Epic Pinball’s take on the Pinball Dreams format is pretty strong in terms of the physics. It’s got better ball handling, being one of the first games where you can consistently pass the ball. There’s also a wide variety of tables that all feel different from each-other, and I don’t mean in terms of theme. Oh, I’ll get to the themes. But I mean in terms of cadence and shooting stroke, they seem to have really set out to make sure that no two tables felt like they shared too similar of targets and pacing and just general vibes. For a thirteen table set, that’s commendable.

But, eleven out of the thirteen tables are as generic as video pinball gets. Just totally dead in terms of eye-grabbing themes right out of the starting gate, leaving the actual layouts with an uphill battle to make up for the lack of originality. One of the only two standouts is a table called Enigma, a high concept action pinball hybrid that really tries to be spooky and eerie, and at first it is. The playfield is empty except a series of twisty-turning orbits at the top of the screen. Eventually extra targets and even instakill hazards spawn that, unlike Rare Ltd.’s instakill enemies, the players can shoot around to avoid.

Hey, it had my attention, but it didn’t last because, with the exception of a disembodied, bloodied teddy bear, nothing interesting actually happens. The targets are generic jewels. If it goes beyond those jewels after level four, I didn’t hit the ten trillion of them seemingly required to progress. I kept myself alive as long as I could and had what I thought was a pretty damn good final game. But I literally LOLed when I saw what the titular Enigma was, and then after locking the ball, all I did for the next twenty minutes was collect red jewels one at a time until my last two balls drained. The concept had me. The execution is as boring as pinball gets.

Enigma was one of seven tables I ultimately concluded were bad or worse, but at least it tries to be different. Six other tables specifically stood out for janky shot selection, bricklaying gameplay, house balls galore, and zero excitement. The really bad ones are Magic, Android, Jungle Pinball (aka Jill of the Jungle), Pot of Gold, Pangaea, and African Safari. Not only do these shoot incredibly clunky but they’re full of house balls galore and terrible shot selection. The houseball issue is a real problem as tons of balls from plunger to playfield ended in under two seconds on the bad tables. Jill of the Jungle was probably the worst in that regard. Feel free to crash into a tree, Jill.

Magic really stands out as one of the all-time stinkers in a good pinball game (spoiler, Epic Pinball is getting a YES!) as it feels like a table whipped out in an afternoon as a +1 to the set. Don’t rule that out, as it might actually be the case. Epic Pinball is arguably the prototype of modern video pinball’s à la carte business model and was released in three packs. Magic, Enigma, and Jill of the Jungle were part of Pack #2. It’s a nothing table that I assume was aiming for a late 60s/early 70s vibe. It’s lacking in targets, slingshots, or even lane switching, and ultimately there’s no action at all. At least the other bad ones feel like actual effort was put into them, but you can add “brutally punishing” to their list of problems. If you want to make a punishing pinball table, you better be stimulating. Again, these themes are completely uninspired, so they have nothing going for them.

Now that the bad stuff is out of the way, let’s talk about the good stuff. Epic Pinball’s best table by far is Crash and Burn (pictured above), which ironically does anything but crash or burn. Sure, it’s the same worn-out racing theme that we’ve seen before and will see again, but the shot selection is fantastic. This thing has some really inspired angles that really let the physics engine shine brightly. A frisky miss of conventional drop targets and unconventional orbital angles that only has one true weakness: the “blow out” short orbit in the upper right corner is a little too easy to grind on. Thankfully, they didn’t overload its value, so there’s no incentive to. My family has NOT wanted any part of most of the Pinball Dreams-like scrolling games in this feature, but everyone enjoyed this table so much that, right now as I’m typing this, they said “hey, throw that racing table back on!” So what I’m saying is it’s pretty good.

Oddly, two of the tables were designed by notable filmmaker and Finnish skydiving champion (not f*cking joking) Misko Iho. Space Journey comes dangerously close to being a bricklayer, and if you don’t like it I won’t argue passionately against you. I enjoyed its unconventional layout in small doses. The better of the two is the also imperfect Toy Factory, which is the other of the two tables that has an interesting theme.

Like many Epic Pinball tables, it’s too punishing for its own good, but it also has a snappy layout with satisfying high-angle shots. Plus I’m a sucker for inline targets and the ones in Toy Factory are genuinely exciting. The tops of the slingshots are total serial killers, but Toy Factory is a lot of fun. So much fun, actually, that I reached out to Iho and encouraged him to try his hand at pinball again. He certainly didn’t make any mistakes the regular pinball designers of Epic Pinball made. Look at Cyborgirl.

Don’t worry, as the action in Epic Pinball isn’t normally that slow and floaty. What you’re seeing in that clip is actually the Anti-Gravity mode in Cyborgirl. The layout is probably the strongest of the entire set, with the Ice Breaker shot being incredibly satisfying. Myself, along with everyone else in my family, was ready to declare this and not Crash and Burn as the best table in Epic Pinball. Then that gravity thing happened, and it didn’t stop until the ball drained, and our enthusiasm cratered. Still a good table, but one that needed someone to say “limit the gravity stuff to thirty seconds or less.” I mean, I’ll say it right now but after 33 years it’s doubtful anyone is in a position to fix it.

Finally, I stand alone among my family calling Deep Sea the second best table, and in fact, Angela really hated this one. It’s the rare clunky shooter that I actually liked, though even after playing this more than Crash and Burn, I’m hard pressed to explain why. It’s charming I guess in how it’s haphazardly laid out yet somehow works despite itself. It alternates between bricklayer and shots that are actually pretty nice. So Epic Pinball isn’t ALL good. Some of the tables in this would sink the game into the bottom of the rankings. Thankfully, I can ignore those altogether and focus on the good stuff.

Only three tables really stood out as having high replay value: Deep Sea, Cyborgirl, and the exceptionally good Crash and Burn. But I think they’re still worth a look today. Crash and Burn especially, which I would love to see remade in Zaccaria Pinball. Hell, the rights holders to Epic Pinball should put in a call to Magic Pixel or AtGames for their Legends V-Pins, because they really accomplished something here. Later on in this feature, I’m going to wipe my ass with the terrible Extreme Pinball on the PlayStation, but let it be known: these guys did have REAL talent for pinball design. Well, sometimes. But hey, even the greats had their off days. I mean, Steve Ritchie made 24!
Verdict: YES!
Ranking: #29 of 125
Percentile: 77%

Dragon’s Revenge
Platform: Sega Genesis
Released in November, 1993
Designed by Peter A. Adams, Joe Hitchens
and Mitzi S. McGilvray, Bill Hindorff, and Steve Klein
Developed by Tengen
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Oh, the Dragon’s Fury fans will scream blood murder over this one. Dragon’s Revenge is an unofficial sequel to Devil’s Crush, but by a team who had nothing to do with the original games. So expectations were pretty low for Dragon’s Revenge, but it’s actually not that bad. Don’t expect an amazing game or anything. Dragon’s Revenge isn’t anywhere near as strong as Devil’s Crush, but I had a lot more fun than I did with the legitimate finale to the Crush trilogy. Plus, the format is somewhat changed, giving the game a goal and an ending that also ends the game itself. Finally, if it counts as a Crush game, it’s the first Crush game that scrolls horizontally, as there’s playfields to the left and right of the main “table.”

Don’t get too excited, as there’s really not anything of true substance to the left of the main playfield. Just a lot of auto-movement type of design. The right of the main playfield has (checks notes) one shot. One. It’s this:

The shot I circled eventually unlocks to allow players to enter one of the mini-games. How do you unlock it? You beat all the mini-games, but I didn’t realize that at first. The game’s biggest problem is how obtuse the targets are. It has lights, but it doesn’t really use those lights. Alien Crush and Devil’s Crush had the same problem of taking a while to figure out what does what, but hell, lots of pinball games real and digital are like that. With Dragon’s Revenge, I still wasn’t entirely sure. It wasn’t until after I finished my first play session and looked up the instruction book at Sega Retro that I started kicking myself for not reading it first.

Like I knew that matching the colors of the three targets surrounding Medusa made her wake up. But eventually she starts moving around and whatever happens is so subtle that sometimes I wasn’t sure anything happened at all. Well, that’s because what happens has already happened and the floating around the table part is just for sh*ts and giggles I guess.The first time you wake her up to the point that she’s moving around,  you get an extra ball, then a x2 scoring multiplier, then millions of points.

Armed with the instruction book, I replayed the game and honestly it didn’t feel any better or worse. Revenge’s main issue is that the physics aren’t amazing. In fact, I’d call them outright bad. The ball, simply put, does not roll. It bounces. It’s like every surface is a slingshot. As if that isn’t bad enough, my immersion was constantly being shattered by having the ball stop and float mid-air for a second when it hit a solid surface, like when Wile E. Coyote realizes he’s been had and holds up a sign that says “HELP” or “OOPS” right before he falls off a cliff. There’s elements to the table that would be really fun, satisfying targets in a game with better physics that lose their charm in this game. The biggest victims of this are a couple roundabouts, specifically this one:

Roundabouts are one of my favorite pinball elements, but in Dragon’s Revenge, the ball is so bouncy that it almost never completes the orbit smoothly. Other elements feel like they’re almost included because they felt obligated too. That “hidden” left side of the playfield is completely nonsensical, lacking in flippers or shots but having things like normal pinball rollovers and bumpers. What the actual hell? It makes the whole main table feel like a normal pinball machine being slowly overtaken by leprosy. It’s such a massive waste of space. Like, there’s a pit that’s on fire and the ball gets stuck all the time rolling back and forth on it. What are you even doing there, fire? That’s what really hurts Dragon’s Revenge most of all: it just doesn’t feel optimized.

The other key difference is that Dragon’s Revenge’s mini-games try to create the illusion that the ball is traveling into the background by having it grow and shrink. If anything, I’d say these games are much easier than the ones that don’t do it. The depth of the characters isn’t important at all to gameplay, so all it does is slow the ball down and make rebounding a cinch. The 3D effect isn’t remotely convincing, and in fact, the effect is so bad that it’s kind of distracting. On the plus side, the mini-games are all “slay the creature” type of games. The first one you enter will only have one ball, but in each of the first three games you’re “rescuing” a warrior who will “join you” by starting each mini-game afterward in multiball. Eventually, mini-games start with four balls. SMART design. I like that a lot. The only thing I would change is moving the things that add extra balls to the mini-games to the main playfield as targets you must unlock.

Having a linear goal, a final boss, and a proper ending was the smartest thing Dragon’s Revenge could have done. Let’s be clear: the physics engine is TERRIBLE, but because of the structure, instead of the mini-games being unwelcome distractions from the main game, they’re like bosses that you’re beating. They feel like bosses, too. Even with these physics, if the main playfield had been as good as Devil’s Crush or even Alien Crush, I’m almost certain Dragon’s Revenge would have cracked the top 25. Maybe even the top 20, but the main playfield is just too nonsensical. Why go to the trouble of having a playfield that also goes horizontally if you’re going to waste the extra real estate?

Still, my take away from Dragon’s Revenge is that if you’re going to be a middle-of-the-road video pinball game, be a linear one that isn’t just traditional scoring points for the sake of points. Since the mini-games don’t repeat once you beat them, none of them get exhausting or annoying like the ones in other Crush games do. For that reason, I actually put Dragon’s Revenge above Alien Crush. I found myself deliberately losing bonus games in the three previous Crush games just to get back to the main playfield, where all the fun is. But Dragon’s Revenge has the fun spread equally between the mini-games and the main board. It doesn’t beat Devil’s Crush because none of its peaks come close to that sublime main playfield of Devil’s Crush, but then again, none of its valleys are as low. Plus the game ends with the villain getting marbleized, which made me think of The Good Place, and I loved The Good Place.

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The result is a game that’s slightly better than the sum of its parts. It’s INSANE that Dragon’s Revenge has a bad reputation, presumably because it’s an unauthorized sequel that wasn’t made by Compile. That’s just snobbery run amok. Tengen totally redeemed themselves for Dragon’s Fury with this one. Given the fact that Compile themselves sh*t the bed with Jaki Crush, I say Dragon’s Revenge deserves a spot in the Crush franchise without the asterisk.
Verdict: YES!
Ranking: #34 of 125
Percentile: 73%

Sonic Spinball
Platform: Sega Genesis
Released November 23, 1993
Designed by Peter Morawiec and Hoyt Ng
Developed by Sega Technical Institute
Published by Sega
Included with Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack

Sonic Spinball is probably one of the most famous spin-offs in video game history. In 2010, Alton Towers, the biggest theme park in the United Kingdom (I’ve been there, it’s beautiful) re-themed a pinball-themed roller coaster named Spinball Whizzer into Sonic Spinball (the name was changed back to Spinball Whizzer in 2015). This happened SEVENTEEN YEARS after Sonic Spinball came out! To put that in perspective, that would be like if Disneyland transformed Big Thunder Mountain into a Plants vs. Zombies roller coaster today, in 2026. That’s insane! And that’s just one of many, many “are you kidding me?” stories related to Sonic Spinball.

It only exists because Sega came to realize that Sonic The Hedgehog 3 was not going to make the 1993 release deadline. They wanted a yearly Genesis installment of Sonic because he was the hottest property the company had ever had and fast-tracked a new game that would have a short development cycle. The Sega Technical Institute decided to make a game that played the way the Casino Night Zone from Sonic 2 played, and Sonic Spinball was born. Then it almost died.

The thing is, Sega STI didn’t have enough time to finish it either, so instead of delaying the game, they switched the language they used to program it from Assembly (which the overwhelming majority of Sega Genesis games were coded in) to C. I’m assured by people who understand this stuff that this decision was absolute madness that was obviously doomed to fail. This should have resulted in a come to Jesus meeting that was “delay or cancel” instead of “delay or bastardize.” While the switch to C did allow them to complete the game on time, the end result is one of the most sluggish and poorly controlling games ever. The slow, janky movement is especially shocking given that, well, IT’S SONIC THE F*CKING HEDGEHOG! Literally a character marketed on speed, with gaming ads based on “Blast Processing™” and making fun of the competition for being slower than Sega, and Sonic Spinball is slower than any major game, well, ever! Sonic Spinball chugs along with a frame rate so low that you’d swear the whole thing could crash at any second.

At this point, I need to note that I nearly didn’t finish Sonic Spinball. The horrible layouts and unoptimized physics were making my blood pressure skyrocket. I think it’s safe to call Sonic Spinball one of the worst programmed video games ever made. NOT the worst designed game, which is why I’m heartbroken. There’s a potentially damn decent game within this dumpster fire of bad development decisions. This is one of those “action pinball games” only Sonic IS the pinball. Except he’s not ALWAYS a pinball. Sometimes you actually have to move him around like a normal platform game, including jumping. The problem is that Sonic physically moves nothing like how Sonic 1 and 2 established how he moves. He walks like a geriatric that threw out his back. Very slow. Very heavy. Like the mafia fitted him for cement shoes and then just left him to his own devices instead dropping him in the water because they realized that this was a crueler fate than death. Evil. Truly evil.

But even when he’s the pinball, you can aim Sonic using the d-pad, making this the first pinball game where you directly manipulate the ball. But when I say you’re “aiming” I mean it’s more like the game’s version of a nudge. Instead of imagining the ability to completely alter a shot’s trajectory, imagine that you’re just barely missing a shot to the right or left. In Sonic Spinball, if you react fast enough, you can possibly turn that near miss into a hit. Big “if” right there. To the game’s credit, the flippers never have any lagginess or delay. But that jankiness that the rush to the holiday deadline caused resulted in a game that is nowhere near as smooth as it could have been. Another problem is that the level design isn’t really tailored to pinball stuff. They claim that they based the concept on the Casino Night Zone in Sonic 2. So I booted up Sonic 2 to give myself a refresher, which wasn’t all that helpful since, intentional or not, it’s an apples and oranges situation.

🍎Apples🍎: Sonic 2 is a platform game based around getting from point A to point B as fast as you can where exploration is purely optional. In theory, the pinball theme works in Sonic 2 because it lends itself to memorable sight seeing with optional stop-and-pop gimmicks. In the case of the Casino Night Zone, there’s flippers all over the playfield and occasionally a segment that’s kind of like the mid or upper playfield of a pinball table. Now, I’m not the biggest Sonic T. Hedgehog fan out there so take this with a grain of salt but I didn’t like the Casino Night Zone levels at all.

Sometimes the flippers just straight-up didn’t work even when I was pressing every possible button. I used rewind to redo them and was blanked multiple times. I don’t get the appeal in these two levels since the layouts don’t necessarily enhance the platforming. Actually, they kind of get in the way of it. But again, apples & oranges.

🍊Oranges🍊: Sonic Spinball is an action pinball game with some platforming elements where you have to search the entire level for the Chaos Emeralds required to enter the boss chamber and exploration is most certainly NOT optional. You’re given no clues at all to the location of the emeralds. There’s no map, nor does the game prevent you from making progress to any point of a level BUT the boss. The first level took me quite a while because I missed the first emerald and I had to figure out how to make my way back to it. That also happened to me in the second and third levels.

Everything within the levels kind of feels samey, so using the structures for navigation is trickier than it sounds. Thankfully the pinball stuff, despite the technical issues, actually works pretty okay. Unlike Sonic 2, the flippers never fail. But this chaotic format isn’t amazing for exploration. That’s because the “platforming” stuff, IE ricocheting off enemies, fails, fails, FAILS again and again. Some of the level design leans heavily into using enemies to get additional lift when you bounce off them. Except you don’t always get that lift. Like right here:

I didn’t even realize it was possible to bounce off these particular enemies at first because I was basically cutting through them with hardly any bounce despite doing the things that platform games traditionally require you to do, like holding the jump button. And you do have to jump sometimes because there’s moments where you can grab onto a platform and stand upright as normal Sonic, like here:

So all the traditional “spring off an enemy” stuff is there and there’s a few parts of every level specifically designed around it, but even after beating the game I couldn’t pull it off consistently. Making contact with enemies isn’t the broken part. Collision seems fine and there’s even a little satisfaction sometimes in destroying ones that get in the way. But Sonic Spinball is very rarely about the act of slaying enemies. They’re usually placed where they’re needed for leverage. During development, the highest possible premium should have been spent on making sure this worked every time without jankiness. But what happens after you hit enemies is so unpredictable that I literally spent hours looking for other solutions because I wasn’t getting lift and figured I needed to “lower the pipe” somehow. Later in the game, I almost quit because I couldn’t aim myself into this:

There’s a flipper several stories below and I spent hours trying to launch myself up through the orbit to reach the Chaos Emerald, only Sonic would wobble out. It turns out, that wasn’t what I was supposed to do. Earlier I’d killed a pair of enemies found in that shaft. The enemies didn’t respawn right away, and the only way to get through that tube without wobbling out of the orbit and being rejected is to spring off an enemy. So like, why isn’t there always a respawning enemy there? Or hell, why does it have to be an enemy? There’s other things in pinball that deflect a ball, you know? Not that the ball behavior is ever predictable off anything but the flippers. When you shoot with the flippers, Sonic Spinball IS pinball. For anything else it’s a historic disaster.

Now here’s the really infuriating part: after three levels of pure misery, with boss fights that lasted just seconds, the fourth level was actually very fun. It played better too, which I really didn’t expect. It had better shots and better objectives. It had creative gimmicks like the above picture, where you have to grab that hook to reveal the flipper in the screenshot. It was genuinely what I was hoping for all along: pinball with mild platforming elements and physics that worked. So go figure I needed only fifteen minutes or so to find every emerald, and then the last boss was a spongy slog that required multiple hits on a central target and had eject holes that shot you well out of the boss arena.

Sonic Spinball is a very short game at only four levels long. Not worlds that are divided into sub-levels like 1 – 1 or 3 – 2, but four LEVELS, period. That tells me they didn’t really have a whole lot of ideas. There’s barely a full game in this at all. There’s also bonus stages that play HORRIBLY. There’s no nudge and no way to defend against the ball going down the drain. Had the entire game played like the bonus levels, it would probably finish second-to-last or third-to-last in the rankings. Also, the bonus levels contain this piece of nightmare fuel:

Still, the fourth level left me staring at the wall feeling dead inside. No joke, that level was some of the best action pinball design in this entire feature, and even the length was spot-on perfect. I don’t want to spend hours searching for stuff. I want it to be intuitive where the stuff is located and have shot progress that makes sense for navigation to those points. Level four NAILS that design mentality and then some. If not for level four, I could chalk Sonic Spinball up to a failed experiment greenlit by Sega in a moment of panic. It’s not the first time it’s happened in gaming and it won’t be the last time. BUT, then that fourth level proved that Sega and the Sega Institute had something with Sonic Spinball. Not just a good game, but possibly a new franchise that would have been good for the entire sport of pinball.

And now I’m kind of pissed. I always get pissed when a game shows just enough promise and doesn’t live up to it, but there’s just so many reasons to be pissed at Sonic Spinball. I’m pissed that 75% of the game is garbage while 25% is “among the best” in a feature with over 100 games. I’m pissed that the game was recklessly switched to a different coding language midway through production. Pissed that a potentially good game was ramrodded through development to meet an arbitrary deadline because of Sega’s notorious communication problems between divisions. Seriously, how could a company with the experience and talent of Sega not know that Sonic 3 wasn’t going to make the Christmas deadline? This sh*t should have been discussed in weekly meetings. They should have known it wouldn’t make 1993 in 1992!

Most of all, I’m pissed that this and the 8-bit version coming up soon were all the Sonic Spinball franchise ever got. Despite being one of four video pinball games verified to sell a million copies, they never did a sequel. The GBA Sonic Pinball Party? That’s NOT Sonic Spinball! That’s just normal video pinball! Maybe they figured that Sonic Spinball was so bad that nobody would ever buy a sequel. I’m a glass is half-full kind of chick and *I* say one million people bought into the idea of Sonic as a pinball in an action pinball adventure, and that makes it an idea worth exploring without a nightmare deadline and developers saying “sure, we can code the game in a language no other developer in their right mind would use at a tremendous cost to performance.” Hey, I didn’t say they should use the same people!
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #68 of 125
Percentile: 56%

Kirby’s Pinball Land
Platform: Game Boy
Released November 27, 1993
Developed by HAL Laboratory
Published by Nintendo
NO MODERN RELEASE

Kirby’s Pinball Land is the final game in the unofficial Nintendo HAL pinball trilogy. Elements from both the original NES black box Pinball and Revenge of the ‘Gator return yet again here, only the ball physics are some of the best in any video pinball game yet. Also, Kirby is the ball and he’s HUGE (though that’s nothing compared to what Pokémon Pinball will do in a few years). It does make aiming trickier than it should be. While there’s a lot of shooting angles off the flippers, judging the position of the ball has never been harder. Still, this is one of the better handling and shooting games in this feature yet.

Unfortunately, the level design doesn’t make the best of the excellent physics engine. Frankly, it’s not a very big game. Three tables is par for the course for video pinball up to this point, but even Sonic Spinball had four massive levels. Kirby’s Pinball Land has only three divided into nine total screens. I’ll just take them in order but first I want to talk about the bosses. Kirby’s Pinball Land is ALMOST a linear action pinball game, though it’s equal parts fixed, traditional pinball style targets (still enemies but in fixed positions) and live, moving targets. The top screen in every level has a star that takes you to a boss fight, at which point the physics seem to change. Probably because Kirby is no longer a ball.

Oh, you’re still playing pinball. That never stops at any point. But, for whatever reason, during boss fights, Kirby holds his arms out. Or flippers out or whatever the hell Kirby has. It’s like he’s trying to break his fall. Now, whether or not the physics actually change was hotly debated in my house. Angela replayed the game twice (it was the first video pinball she said was, quote, “good” since the Atari coin-ops at the start of this feature) and was still unsure if it just felt different because the sprite was creating an optical illusion or if the ball was more floaty.

“It feels like the ball is a ball during the levels, but during the boss battles when the ball is Kirby without being tucked-in like a ball, it feels like Kirby is sliding” Angela said, and yeah, “sliding” is the right word. It’s very weird. Sasha the Kid also beat the game twice, liked it the most of any of us, and thinks we’re nuts. She thinks that the “floatiness” we’re experiencing is caused by the screen wrap. “I can tell what you’re talking about, but it’s not the animation causing that floating feel. It’s the screen wrap. Kracko doesn’t have screen wrap. Dedede doesn’t have it, and the ball feels the same as the normal game.” Except, I don’t agree with her at all. *I* still feel the floatiness in the Kracko battle on basically every ricochet. Same with Dedede. We spent too much time arguing over this.

They’re fun fights, don’t get me wrong. But they’re not really that challenging. Hell, Dedede’s second phase is just blowing himself up to be a gigantic ball. This could have worked if they had made him behave like an oversized pinball that the player has to also play and the object is to avoid letting him clear you out like a typical multiball clear-out. Instead, the attack is just heat-seeking the ball. You can see where this is going. Without even trying, it’s easy to get the ball above Dedede and let gravity just hit him again and again.

Then the third phase is basically a rerun of Kracko’s “lightning bolt the flipper” only with master movement. Again, fun enough fights I guess, but I would have liked them to have a little more grit. Maybe after beating the game, the second go around could have featured beefed-up battles with faster moving bosses and more attacks at the flippers (all of which you can defend by attacking the boss).

You start each level on the middle screen. For Wispy’s stage, that screen has the typical HAL slot machine which works more like a combination of Black Box Pinball and ‘Gator’s. Each reel can be spun by shooting the gigantic Kirby clone in the ass, or you can spin all three reels by shooting the ball across the SLOT orbit above the top. To get the bonus level, a two-ball brick breaker mini-game, you have to get a star on all three reels. The bottom screen has the easiest WARP STAR target which looks like a Mad Ball, along with six side targets that activate the transfer.

The top playfield requires you to knock out the three ghosts, which requires six total hits. The star that takes you to the boss will appear at the top and you have to cleanly shoot the orbit so the ball doesn’t wobble out before completing the loop. Alternatively, you can technically get the star with a straight-upward shot and a lucky bounce but that’s not reliable. In any other game, I’d say this is too easy but it’s par for the course with Kirby Pinball.

Kracko’s level starts with a giant Kirby in the middle of the screen. There’s a cloud moving back and forth over it that you have to shoot three times. It’s not hard, and in fact, if you shoot at the two side clouds you’re liking to still hit it off the ricochet. After being struck three times, the cloud gets mad, parks above the giant Kirby, and starts to rain for a few seconds. The giant Kirby will pull out an umbrella that, if you can hit it, will launch you through the rain cloud and up to the top level.

The two side clouds pass items back and forth, including the bonus level star that takes you to the worst part of Kirby’s Pinball Land: the buffet mini-game. The bottom screen has a pair of ghosts that the WARP and STAR targets are tied to along with an easy-to-shoot Scarfy that splits into three when you fully light it. You have to hit the top one to be launched to the middle screen. The top screen is a two-part battle with Mr. Bright and Mr. Shine, who really should have gotten their own stage. Hit Mr. Bright three times, then clear out the stars to reach Mr. Shine and hit him three times to make a warp star that takes you to the boss. It’s not hard but it’s actually like a mini-boss, which I enjoyed.

Poppy’s starting screen has two giant Kirbys with a food dish between them. The one on the left has a thought bubble that tells you what it’ll spit out. Only one object can be on the screen at once, and if you strike the right giant Kirby, it sucks up whatever is in the dish. The transfer to the top screen is a Squishy (the squid) that will toss you upward. The real prize, however, is the bonus star that appears just long enough to time with reasonable accuracy, especially if you clear out the Poppys near the slingshots first. The bottom screen has a bash toy that you need to strike six times to open the transfer to the middle screen.

The top screen has three eggs that each need to be hit three times before the Poppys reach them to reset them. You can also hit the Poppys to send them back to their hiding hole. After all three chicks are freed and return to the hiding holes (isn’t that where the bad guys are too?) the screen gets spammed with objects that each have different trajectories. The star that takes you to the boss comes from the center channel, going straight down and straight back up. It’s probably the hardest boss star to get of the three levels because it spends the least time on screen and there’s much stuff in the way.

Poppy’s level is easily the best in the game for scoring points thanks to an easy-to-get bonus star that sends you to the easy, high-yielding soccer mini-game. If you can score enough goals, you can start getting a lot of extra balls. There’s also a 1up in Wispy’s brick breaker level but I never managed to actually collect it. Wispy and Poppy’s bonus stages are two-ball multiball that are very fun, though annoying the timer begins immediately when you enter the level even though it’ll be 5 to 6 seconds before any ball reaches the flippers for the first time, so realistically you have 54 seconds in each stage. The Kracko bonus stage is just awful. You only get one ball and the object is to hit food up to the Kirby that’s standing on a cloud. But both the food and the ball can also stun him long enough to not eat the food. Bombs increase the bonus value by 1,000 points but also stun Kirby. The other two games build up both bonus value and multipliers really fast.

While I enjoyed Kirby’s Pinball Land, it’s far too short, far too easy, and far too low on thrills to get all that excited over. All three tables are genuinely fun, but there’s so much more the Kirby universe had to offer even at this early stage of its existence that I can’t believe they couldn’t make a couple more tables. Like, Dedede absolutely should have gotten his own table. Or hell, keep it at three tables but have each table be five screens long and, most importantly, start players on the bottom screen and have them actually have to work to get to the top.

I got to the point where I could beat Kirby’s Pinball Land in maybe twenty minutes, never falling to the bottom screen on any table. And it’s not like I was dialed-in! I was missing my shots plenty, but the game just doesn’t put up enough of a fight. Still, what’s here is quality enough that I can see why this is, no joke, the second best-selling video pinball game ever made. Hey Nintendo and HAL, how about a sequel?
Verdict: YES!
Ranking: #17 of 125
Percentile: 86%

Royal Flush
aka D. Gottlieb & Co: Royal Flush
Platform: MS-DOS
Released in 1994
Designed by Mike Pot
Developed by Amtex
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Folks, I swear that I wanted to do so much more with MS-DOS than I ended up doing in this feature, and I really wanted to do all three of Amtex’s ports of famous pins for DOS. Indeed, we actually had Eight Ball Deluxe, a digital remake of the George Christian classic, fired up on a variety of platforms and couldn’t figure out how to get the damn game started, and once we did, it didn’t play exceptionally well. Except, we don’t think we actually got it running at full speed. What we were experiencing wasn’t matching gameplay footage we found on YouTube. Sasha was crushed because she’s a HUGE George Christian fan.

And apparently there’s also a digital version of Fireball, the 1970s Bally classic with a spinning table with zipper flippers. That would have been interesting to see how they handled programming all those ambitious elements  but we couldn’t find it. Thankfully, I’m guessing we got the best-playing of the trio working 100%. Royal Flush is one of the best selling pinball machines of the 1970s and the last electro-mechanical mega hit of the industry. The Ed Krynski design lends itself about as well as it can to a very limited pinball engine where gaining control of the ball to aim and shoot is the main challenge.

Despite the sharp graphics and 1994 release date, this plays like a table from the late 80s. There’s limited shooting angles, which makes the game highly clockable. It’s not all shooting/rebounding, as there’s a somewhat effective nudge that gives the game just enough defense to drag Royal Flush over the finish line. BUT, of all the games in this feature that I’m giving a YES! to, I think this might have the smallest shelf life. That’s even factoring in the impressive amount of toggles. Seriously, shout out to Mike Pot, because this is awesome:

This is one of the games I didn’t play in sequential order, as I was well into the PS1 era when Dad got this working. Before he handed the controller to me, he said “try to keep this one under two hours.” I’d been taking too long to finish reviews and realized I wasn’t going to make my July 1 deadline (I’m editing this on July 15, so I didn’t even come close). Well, I didn’t need two hours with Royal Flush to get what I needed for this review, even playing around with the settings.

It doesn’t have enough jank to be charming (like David’s Midnight Magic), but it doesn’t have enough gameplay to keep you hooked (like, well, David’s Midnight Magic). Royal Flush was successful because it’s a basic, straight forward shooter that is an excellent trainer table for ball handling skills. Royal Flush on DOS doesn’t have those ball handling abilities. You can’t pass reliably. The nudge is ineffective. It’s an excellent pinball table in real life, but the video pinball version isn’t going to have the staying power thanks to the limited physics and, frankly, overly aggressive outlanes (that Sasha noted are true to the real thing). But it’s good enough to just squeak out a victory.
Verdict: YES!
Ranking: #44 of 125
Percentile: 65%

Super Pinball: Behind the Mask
Platform: Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Released in January 4, 1994
Designed by Takashi Kobayashi
Directed by Norio Nakagata
Developed by KAZe
Published by Nintendo
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

From the director of Zombie Nation comes the first console game of this era of video pinball that’s attempting to create a true simulation of the sport of pinball as people normally think of it. Super Pinball: Behind the Mask features three tables, including the relatively new invention of dot matrix displays. They even look kind of arcade accurate with their single color displays. Super Pinball also has some of the most advanced physics seen up to this point in the evolution of video pinball. At first, I was so excited. “FINALLY I’ve reached video pinball that resembles real pinball!” I thought. Except, Super Pinball never manages to get out of first gear and ultimately just bored me silly, which made quirks in the physics stand out so much more. Like this:

Yep, balls in multiball don’t interact with each-other. That means no need to learn to juggle and no air defense shots, which are often the most thrilling moments in pinball. Once I rewired my brain to remember that balls can’t clear each-other out, multiball wasn’t exciting at all. Which tracks with Super Pinball. The three tables feature the most generic, uninspired themes possible, and then the actual tables are both samey and unambitious. Each of the three tables have the same rule sheets and the same series of shots and goals, only slightly rearranged. So here’s the three tables: Jolly Joker, Blackbeard and Ironmen, and Wizard.

You’ll notice all three tables have a completely identical locker shot in the same location (it’s the far left shot on each table) that provides the same thing: a random award roulette. THAT is f*cking lazy and just sucks the air right out of experiencing new tables by itself, but all the shots on each table are actually there on the other two as well. All three tables have a lane marked with a series of arrows, and completing the full cycle of arrows lights one of the primary lights by the flippers and scores identically on all three tables. All three tables use drop targets to build the multiplier, which caps at x8 and doesn’t reward you after surpassing that. All three unlock multiball by gaining letters from one single shot where the giant yellow arrow is, which doubles as the jackpot shot once you light it after shooting the lane with the giant red arrow. The only difference is how many letters open the multiball (5 for Joker, 4 for Blackbeard, 6 for Wizard). All modes across all three tables are identical, and they even have the same DMD skill shot:

So saying that Super Pinball: Behind the Mask has three tables just isn’t true. It’s one table rearranged three ways. Once you get a feel for the physics and shooting angles, you’re left with a simulation of a very bland pinball machine and its boring scoring system that has two extra arrangements of the same boring shots and boring scoring. This might have just barely been saved from the NO! pile if the multiball had interaction between the balls, but it doesn’t. Without any sense of urgency or ball management, there’s NO excitement. There is a “conquest” mode that has you trying to reach a scoring benchmark and hitting one specific shot, a hurry-up “forbidden door” shot. But since the tables aren’t hard to clock, once you know the physics, this isn’t a challenge at all.

Thus, Super Pinball’s achievements in ball behavior go to complete waste. You can do things like a post transfer pass in Super Pinball, a literal stand-up-and-cheer moment for me. But any version of Super Pinball’s table would be a snore if it were a real life, physical pin. As a mid-90s video pin with a ton of limitations and, frankly, some ugly ass graphics, possibly the best physics yet weren’t worth anything here.

Maybe they were so focused on having accurate physics that they forgot to make an exciting table. With all that said, KAZe will be showing up many more times in this feature, and with much more ambitious tables. Hopefully Behind the Mask’s failure can be chalked up to not focusing on fun tables and just trying to get the physics working. I hope so, at least.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #55 of 125
Percentile: 56%

Real Pinball
aka Fire Ball!!
Platform: 3DO
Released March 24, 1994
Directed by Koichi Ryu
Developed by Nippon Data Works
Published by Panasonic
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

On the surface, Real Pinball doesn’t seem as broken as some of the worst games I’ve reviewed in this feature. The ball actually makes contact with solid surfaces instead of a force field inches above them and doesn’t go through walls or flippers. Well, in my first game I’m pretty sure the ball clipped back into the shooter lane and it counted as a lost ball BUT THAT ONLY HAPPENED ONCE, so technically I shouldn’t even mention it because I have a “two or it doesn’t count” rule for glitches. Granted, I’ve violated that rule like five or six times already in this feature and just violated it again, but you know what? Seriously, f*ck this game in both its eyeballs with a scorpion stinger. As you can see in the above clip and the one below, Real Pinball has the speed of pinball played underwater. And it’s all downhill from there.

I mean that literally too, because the reason I’m sticking Real Pinball in second-to-last in the rankings is that it’s literally physically impossible to hit the ball all the way to the top of the screen in most situations. The ball just doesn’t get enough lift to complete any orbit by directly shooting except in very rare situations where you’re presented the chance for a slap shot off a rebound. Even then, most of the time the ball will just go dead on the flippers and barely even clear the slingshots. When it does pop up, it’s still extremely unlikely to go high enough to reach upper targets. There’s seemingly no bounce at all, rendering dead flips basically impossible. These flippers aren’t just broken. They’re dead.

In addition to not being able to hit the ball high enough to really do anything, Real Pinball’s shooting angles off the flippers are some of the most limited of any pinball game I’ve played yet. When the ball rolls down the inlane, you have two shots you can attempt, maybe three, none of which will clear the upper third of the table. That means the flippers in this REAL pinball simulation are capable of fewer shooting angles than the paddles in PONG in 1972. The only real way to get any height is the cherry bomb “pitch the ball to yourself*” technique. To the game’s very limited credit, is doable in basically every scenario. Oh, it doesn’t make things better because the ball will take basically the same trajectory in the two possible shots you can execute off this, one of which is a backhand that isn’t lined up with anything useful.

*I have no clue what the actual name is but according to my father, “cherry bombing” is what you call it when you toss a ball up to yourself when practicing batting in baseball. I couldn’t find anyone else who calls it that (maybe it’s just a Bay Area thing), but we’ve always called straight-up the middle shots that you tee-up for yourself “cherry bombs” since I was a little kid and now the whole Pinball Chick team and some of my readers call them Cherry Bombs too. 

There’s even more physics problems. All the bat flippers have even less punching power than the normal flippers and don’t even shoot the ball hard enough to reach the top when they’re just below the top. Plus you can’t see the ball to even aim with the upper flippers because of how the chucklef*cks who made this positioned the camera, blocking your view. Any attempt at trapping a ball that has a rolling start will probably fail when the ball just keeps rolling up the flipper. Oh sure, NOW you can climb a slope.

Kickbacks on every table have a tendency to immediately shoot the ball across the lower playfield and directly into the opposite outlane. If that kickback is also lit, it will, you guessed it, immediately send the ball back to the kickback it was just kicked back out of, and this process will continue until the kickbacks wear off OR you nudge the ball loose. Except this game can TILT after just one nudge, like in the above clip, while other times I’ve gotten away with three. It’s never consistent and if there’s any rhyme or reason to it, I never figured it out. Maybe it’s like Night Missions where TILTing is a probability dice roll. You’ll need to nudge too since the slingshots are INSANELY lethal on all five tables. Since there’s no bonus multipliers, only a +1,000 for each target you hit, keeping the ball alive is basically everything.

And there’s an actual incentive to try for high scores since the game starts with the fifth table locked. Each table has a different scoring benchmark, and trust me, they’re hard to get thanks to those slingshots. Since you can’t actually pop the ball up high enough to complete orbits, your only real option is to grind the nearby targets. When “I” did something more advanced like completing an orbit or hitting the ball in a sinkhole, it was usually not me but rather the slingshot knocking the ball upward. Call me crazy, but they should have dialed back the slingshots and significantly dialed up the flippers. For all your unlocking effort, you get this, the worst video pinball table ever made. By far. Seriously, it’s nightmarish:

You’ll notice that you can’t even see most of the targets in the back or to the sides in all these tables. I would change the camera angle but there’s no such option. What you see is what you get, which is one of many, many things that cements a game that has the audacity to call itself “Real Pinball” as the worst “pure” pinball simulation game of all-time and quite possibly the worst video game ever made. Assuming the physics were better, the five layouts don’t even rise to the level of bland. The score sheets are equally dull and do something that basically nobody who loves pinball would do: makes the bumpers the highest yielding targets. Seriously, I only unlocked the fifth table by trying like hell to hit the bumpers. That’s really only easy on levels 1 and 4.

Even when you can pop the ball up, whatever angle it takes is going to be the exact angle that 95% of the shots will travel to. I seriously wonder if the people who made this were like “we nailed it!” Were they proud of this? Did they think this was worthy of people’s hard-earned money? I can’t believe anyone who respects pinball felt this was a completed video game and actually shipped it to stores. I really can’t. My friend Michelle said “it can’t get any worse, right?” and I can’t imagine it could. How can any game possibly be worse than a pinball game played in slow motion with dead flippers? It’s cruel. It’s boring. It’s ugly as sin. And that sound design? Real Pinball makes the most god awful racket of any game on this list up to this point. If anyone is planning on doing a “worst sound design” feature, fire this thing up. I think I have your champion right here.

This is one of those games that’s so bad it made me mad. Mind you, at the time Real Pinball released in the United States, the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer cost $699.99, (or “$599.99” as Trip Hawkins insisted, though in fairness to Trip, my father also insists it was $599.99 at Costco and was soon dropped to $499.99). Assuming Real Pinball cost the standard $49.99 3DO games seemed to cost, that means the cost to play this game in 1994 was about $750, or around $1,685 in 2026 dollars. I’m not holding that against Real Pinball because it’s not 1994 anymore and I didn’t even play this on a 3DO.

But, I’m absolutely holding against it that this is the best its developers could do with the most powerful, most expensive game console on the market at the time. Compare it to Super Pinball: Behind the Mask or the next game, Pinball Dreams for the SNES. You could buy an SNES with both those games and still have around $500 left in 1994. You could also light your money on fire and enjoy the glow for the next few minutes. At least it’ll be prettier than anything in Real Pinball, the worst home video game I’ve ever played in my life. This is why rankings are hard. Gun to my head, I’d take this over Panic Road, but more than likely I’d say “so you’re marooning me on a desert island and all I have for entertainment is either Real Pinball or Panic Road? For the rest of my life? I hope that gun is loaded.”
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #124 of 125
Percentile: 1%

Pinball Dreams
aka Pinball Pinball
Platform: Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Released April, 1994
Developed by Spidersoft
Published by GameTek
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED (?)

Seriously, what the f*ck is going on here? How can two straight games have faulty flippers? Look at this:

That last bit really seals it, doesn’t it? What the hell was that? Now, that type of thing doesn’t happen all the time and so I imagine what’s happening in that video was an attempt to make passing easier, maybe. (shrug) The physics in the SNES build of Pinball Dreams are all over the place, which hey, so is the camera so at least it’s all on the same page! For the most part in SNES Pinball Dreams, you’re not shooting the ball. You’re pushing it. Seriously, that’s how it feels. And you can forget about toe shots because the tips of the flippers fail again and again in this build. Since most of the failures in the punch strength of the flippers happen close to after plunging the ball, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear it’s like the ball has to store up kinetic energy to get going, and sometimes, that energy makes the ball go bonkers in the flipper zone. This port is nowhere near as good at shooting or rebounding as the Amiga build. Frankly, this version is a major step down.

Okay, so if you’ve read every review up to this point, first off, thanks. It means the world to me! Second, you know that I was THIS CLOSE to becoming physically ill from Pinball Dreams on the SNES. This is not a joke or a comedy bit I’m doing. This actually happened, which is annoying because motion sickness seriously never happens to me when I’m gaming. I don’t remember ever becoming just plain, old-fashioned motion sick since 2007’s Marathon 2 re-release on the Xbox 360 and that’s a game that made a lot of people toss their cookies. But Pinball Dreams SNES legitimately wrecked me, so my playtime was so limited that I nullified the original NO! and low ranking I gave it because, frankly, it wasn’t fair. The physics, ball speed, and overall design is just not good compared to the Amiga build. Compare the upper playfield of Nightmare on the Amiga (left) with the night quite identical Nightmare on the SNES (right).

That’s a great big YIKES right there. So the problem with not even being able to see what you’re shooting at is amplified. Combine that with unpredictable ball speed and wonky bouncing and it adds up to Pinball Dreams on the SNES being one of the worst games in this feature. If this is the best they could do on the SNES, they really shouldn’t have bothered. So, because I didn’t put a full play session into this, I’m not rendering a verdict nor issuing a rating. For what it’s worth, I’m not holding a grudge because this thing put me over a toilet, thinking I was about to be reminded of what I had for lunch. But bastardizing a perfectly good home computer game? That’s enough to make me throw up.
No Verdict or Ranking

Sonic Spinball
aka Sonic Spinball 8-Bit
Platform: Sega Game Gear & Sega Master System
Released in August, 1994/November 1994
Directed by Roger Hector
Developed by Sega Interactive
Published by Sega
Game Gear version Included in Sonic Origins Plus

On the left is the Game Gear version of Sonic Spinball 8-Bit. On the right is the same game for the Sega Master System.

Sorry Game Gear, I’m sticking with the Master System version where I can, you know, see where I’m going. Actually, after I finished all 130 games in this feature, my guilty conscience got the better of me and I went back and completed a full game of Sonic Spinball for Game Gear, and I genuinely think it controls more sluggishly than the SMS version. This might be deliberate in order to offset the Game Gear’s blurring. So handheld players give up both better controls and a bigger view of the playfield. That’s too much sacrifice to make this work as a handheld game.

Regardless of which version you choose, the 8 bit build of Sonic Spinball does have some advantages over its 16-bit sibling. The levels are much smaller, less sprawling, and far easier to navigate. Thus a port of a game that took me hours of repetitive searching only took me about an hour to finish on the Sega Master System. There’s also no need to spring-off enemies to get enough lift to enter pipes. In fact, combat is very, very heavily scaled-back in 8-bit Spinball. I could probably count on both hands how many non-boss enemies I saw, and if I’m wrong, I’m not off by that much. And the game is probably better off for it.

Of course, nothing counts before the “but.” BUT, Sonic Spinball, whether you play it on the Master System or Game Gear, is basically just a festering corpse of the 16-bit game. Like so many Sega 8-bit games from this era that started as Genesis games, they just copied their notes from the Genesis and kept stripping down and subtracting until they had a workable game. All four levels from the Genesis game return with no new primary levels. If you played the 16 bit game, you’ll have a rough idea of where the Chaos Emeralds are located in the 8-bit game, only since they couldn’t carry over the methodology, the game goes from being frustrating in a bad way thanks to poor controls to shockingly, stunningly easy to the point of being insulting. I beat the third level that almost had me rage quit on Genesis in about five minutes in my first attempt on the Master System.

Cutting and pasting levels built for a 16-bit processor on a console from 1985 was careless and lazy enough, but to also just keep the relative positions of the emeralds was the final straw for me. In fairness, I think the 8-bit game is a lot easier to control than the Genesis game thanks to the ball slowing down around the flippers, and that’s in addition to players having a lot more direct control over the ball. But after using the first two levels to get a feel for the new physics engine, I think my all-in time investment for the final two levels was maybe twenty minutes. The sublime final level from the Genesis game? Totally obliterated here.

And the bosses are even more butchered. While I didn’t love the bosses in the 16-bit game, at least they had interesting visuals and a sense of urgency about them, and they did successfully feel like a reward for completing the stage itself (except the last boss, which is a slog). That’s gone here because, once again, they tried to copy and paste the boss designs that were made for a machine twice as powerful. So that visually striking giant spider boss from the first stage is now this pathetic sprite barely bigger than the Sonic sprite that I beat in about ten seconds on the SMS and literally a couple seconds on the Game Gear when Sonic just fell on top of it and kept bouncing until it exploded.

And for sh*ts and giggles, here’s the second boss, which goes from nightmare fuel to just something that makes me feel sorry for 8-bit Sega owners.

Pathetic, but it gets worse. They DID add something new, swapping the terrible pinball bonus stages for these three new ones that are like a hybrid of the Sonic Spinball and a normal Sonic game. You have to build up momentum (or just rev up the ball) and make your way through a series of chambers within a time limit. These have the slowest timer I’ve seen in a video game, have NOTHING to do with pinball and are a completely unwanted distraction from what I signed up for with Sonic Spinball. In the first two, you have to scroll right and use your free time to burst open boxes that could contain extra lives you won’t need or extra continues you REALLY won’t need. The third level has the same box-bursting stuff, only the level floods with water for no reason and you have to go down a series of pipes. Since these controls still aren’t made for this type of gameplay, these were universally awful.

It’s not surprising that Sonic Spinball 8-bit sucks. Sega did this type of thing all the time and it really pisses me off. Sega’s 8 bit catalog is full of these hopeless attempts to just transfer technologically advanced games to the 8-bit devices instead of just building a whole new game that follows the spirit of the original while also playing to the strengths of the 8-bit hardware. You can’t make a better game by trying to make a 16 bit game in half the bits. It’s not reasonable to expect this would work.

Hell, I know a lot of people love Super Mario Land 2 but I don’t. I think it looks great, but the fantastic Super Mario World-like gameplay they were aiming for led to an 8-bit game that’s childishly easy and pretty damn boring. If Nintendo can’t pull off SNES-like gameplay on an 8-bit, it’s a safe bet that it’s not really possible. Just look at these screenshots. There’s something sad about them, like what little soul Sonic Spinball had died on the vine:

And what’s most frustrating of all is they clearly had the talent to do better. Look at the 16 bit version of Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse. Excellent game that would be dead on arrival on the Master System with all the cuts that had to be made to the presentation and level design to make it work in 8-bits. So they didn’t strip it down and instead just built a brand new 8-bit Castle of Illusion game that was also an excellent game. There’s no reason they couldn’t have done that with Sonic Spinball except complete and total disregard for Europe SMS and global Game Gear owners getting value for their money.

If Nintendo and HAL can make excellent video pins for the Game Boy, Sega should be able to do the same for Sonic. They should have ditched copying the Genesis and instead copied Kirby’s Pinball Land’s style. I believe Sega in the mid 90s had the talent to make a halfway decent 8-bit Sonic pinball adventure. What they couldn’t do is make a 16 bit game into a decent 8-bits, under any circumstance. It’s INSANE that so many official Sega products come across as off-brand knock-offs of Sega products, but that’s a large portion of their 8-bit library after the Genesis launched in a nutshell. Sonic Spinball 8-Bit isn’t uniquely bad. It’s the Master System’s status quo when it comes to Genesis ports.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #69 of 125 (Ranking ONLY for Sega Master System build. Consider the Game Gear version unranked).
Percentile: 45%

Wizard Pinball
Platform: Sega Game Gear
Released in September, 1994
Developed by Teque Software
Published Domark
Never Released Outside of Europe
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Never mind, I’ll take Sonic Spinball again. Wizard Pinball is like a rerun of every bad video pinball stereotype up to this point. Overly bouncy “living balls” as seen in the earliest video pins? Yep. Not since the Apple II have I had this many swings and misses at balls that were firmly on the flippers because the ball suddenly builds up enough momentum to just hop over the flipper from a rolling position. Hell, there were multiple times where I trapped the ball trying to do a toe shot and, as soon as I released the ball, it somehow bounced over the f*cking flipper.

From no motion to hopping over the flipper. So you can forget about aiming. You can forget about defense too because there’s no nudge. A f*cking pinball game made in the mid 90s with a ball this unpredictable has no means to prevent an errant shot (and most are errant) from draining. Hell, even balls getting stuck on the crease between the flipper and the solid surface, a problem that goes all the way back to the Intellivision game? Wizard Pinball does that too, especially in the bonus stages:

As for shooting angles, I don’t even know what to say about them. There seems to mostly be only two: 90 degrees and 45 degrees, and even that doesn’t matter. The flippers are so inaccurate that, for the most part, the ball just goes in whatever direction it wants. When you can “aim” in Wizard Pinball, you’re really just increasing the probability of the ball going in the desired direction. It doesn’t always. Balls that sure look like upward hits fly off to the sides. Balls that sure look like sideways hits go upward.

But what seals Wizard Pinball as one of the worst games in this feature is the layout. Sometimes it’s just really obvious that the people behind a game don’t love pinball and fundamentally don’t understand it. Someone who actually enjoys it on even a casual level would be able to quickly grasp that this layout is BAD. There’s two base flippers and then, for the middle of the almost entirely empty playfield, the mid-flippers alternate left-right-left-right. It’s like a staircase of flippers that they remembered to sprinkle four bumpers and five roll-overs on top of because they suddenly remembered what pinball looked like.

At least it has an Italian bottom, I guess. But in terms of layout, I genuinely think this is the worst in the entire feature so far because it had the lowest potential even if this had perfectly life-like physics. There’s just nothing to it. It even does annoying things like it has an open shooter’s lane, which is basically a shortcut to get you back to the top of the playfield and eventually opens bonus rooms. That’s assuming you can actually climb up the playfield. The problem with how they laid out the playfield is that the flippers themselves get in the way of the ball. You’re not climbing, because the ball is bonking off the bottom of the flippers. If the people who made this understood pinball even a teeny tiny bit they would have realized that would happen. Then again, they also added too many slanted walls that also block your shots. (shrug)

So Wizard Pinball is a game where you mostly hit a ball left and right but not upward, and even when you do manage to get the ball in the air, it’s just as likely to clank off those barriers or the opposite flippers. The fact that they added enemies is kind of undermined by a layout nowhere near optimized for rebounding even under the best circumstances. The enemies become unsatisfying to shoot and basically just get in the way of what you’re actually trying to do. Teque Software and Domark SO wanted this to be a Game Gear version of the Crush series, but they clearly didn’t understand enough about pinball to actually create that. The best thing I can say about Wizard Pinball is that it does the opposite of Alien Crush or Devil’s Crush: the mini-games are the highlights, saving you from the horror of the main playfield. Like, for just a split second, this room isn’t that bad:

But even that gets ruined. After breaking all the bricks, you have to shoot the dragon in the mouth enough times for it to swallow the ball. It will spit the ball out and you have to immediately convert that into another shot on the dragon’s mouth to defeat it. If the ball hits anything but the dragon, you have to go back to hitting it in the head again until it swallows it. This is a big problem in a game where the physics are this inaccurate and random so when the dragon spits the ball, your volley can fly off in basically any direction. What a truly horrible game.

And of course, the only reason the mini-games are better than the main game is because that primary playfield is so unimaginably bad. I’m so sorry Game Gear fans. You really did deserve better than this, because Wizard Pinball is in that group of video pinball games that’s also in the discussion of the worst video games ever made. This one is just pure nonsense all around. There’s been worse physics, but there’s never been a worse layout. Then again, now that I said that, watch, it’ll happen. Now the good news is not a lot of pinball fans had a chance to get burned by Wizard Pinball. None of my Game Gear-loving European friends had ever heard of this. It seems to be one of the rarest Game Gear games and hasn’t been listed on eBay in at least a year. That means those poor souls who do own a copy have a valuable collector’s item. That or everyone in Europe agreed to shun it. Either/or.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #121 of 125
Percentile: 3%

Grand Cross
aka Power Flipper Pinball Shooting  (Unreleased US Version)
Platform: Arcade
Released October, 1994
Developed by Excellent Systems
Published by Sega
Never Released Outside of Japan
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

As the final arcade game in this feature, I really had high hopes that Sega would finally put it together and wow me with an excellent coin-op that would redeem their legacy of video pinball failure. Instead, Excellent Systems’ sci-fi pinball/action hybrid cemented that Sega never “got it” with pinball. Go figure they bought Data East’s pinball operations literally as Grand Cross was being released to Japanese arcades. Thank God KAZe jumped ship from Nintendo and gave Sega some all-time classic video pinball games for Saturn. What hurts most of all is Sega’s legacy of video pinball before the Saturn is mostly about squandered potential. Everyone knows that Sonic Spinball could have revolutionized the video pinball genre if not for all the behind the scenes crap, but Grand Cross had that same opportunity with even more ambitious gameplay.

Grand Cross is loosely a shmup crossed with pinball, though that’s really dependent on the power-up you get. There’s one that stops the ball in mid-air and makes an arrow rotate around it that launches the ball off in another direction. Another  causes the ball to explode into eight pieces that take out enemies and walls. Another leaves little electric charges where you activated it. The power-ups drop onto the playfield, some of which happen automatically, such as the force field that allows you to one-shot all enemies including, apparently, bosses. Seriously, it took me FOREVER to get to the first boss and, literally as soon as he spawned, the level ended. What the actual f*ck was that? And the real funny part? When I replayed the game with the difficulty changed from NORMAL to EASY, I did the same exact thing!

The second level ends with a wave of normal enemies and no boss, so when the third boss put up a fight, I was briefly excited. About thirty minutes later when I was still fighting it, I would have given my eyetooth to beat it with a single shot, but I’d come to expect it by that point. Everything between the first level of Grand Cross and its final boss alternates between mind-numbing slog and outright wanton cruelty, making this the third game in this feature that I needed emulation tomfoolery to finish (along with Moon Ball Magic and Advanced Pinball Simulator), and I needed cheating features a LOT more than I did for Moon Ball Magic, where I just used save states to keep my life count up and used rewind only a couple times. Here, I had to brute force my way through large sections, resetting one shot at a time to keep my life up to prevent myself from restarting levels from the beginning. I really do try to beat every game I review legitimately, but I couldn’t here.

At times, it’s like they forgot they were making a pinball game. At other times, I assume they were just trying to make a game that shook down players for quarters. The third boss battle takes place on a large playfield. The boss has two shields that circle it AND has an on-again/off-again invincibility period. Since it’s so large and has those two shields constantly circling around it, shots could result in the boss pinning you against the wall and keeping the ball aloft without the ability to shoot or defend your life bar. Like seriously, the boss is capable of keeping the ball up in the air for close to a minute (maybe longer), the ball bouncing off invulnerable spots again and again (you have to target specific parts) while also getting long invincibility phases, all while your life bar SLOWLY drains out and all you can do is watch.

Grand Cross has two types of level design mentality: wide open and maze. Levels 1 and 3 use the typical open playfield while 2 and 4 lean heavily into navigating tunnels using the flippers, and this really didn’t work for me at all. MAYBE if Grand Cross had historically amazing physics for the time, but it has a fairly bouncy living ball and flippers with limited shooting angles, and on top of that, there’s corners everywhere that the ball gets hung up on. Plus, the level design isn’t exactly optimized. Like in this screen:

You have to hit the gates in the following order: middle, upper, and lower. If you do them out of order, the sequence restarts and you have to start over. There’s really no direct shooting angle for the top gate. You have to just keep doing it until the ever-vibrating living ball gives you the make by a lucky bounce. The game doesn’t handle rolling well, either. Sometimes a ball might be literally sitting on a slanted slope and it’s like it’s sticky because it just barely inches downward. Dad said “well it’s space or another planet so we don’t know the gravity.” Fair enough IF it was consistent. It’s not. Sometimes the ball will go from that crawling roll to faster-than-normal out of nowhere.

The above clip is actually from Power Flipper, the unreleased US prototype that’s basically the same game, only it tells you what to shoot.

The developers also seemed to want to keep players from waiting on aimed shots. Sometimes when I trapped the ball to hold it for a shot on a boss, the ball would suddenly spring up in the air for no reason, which matters a great deal against bosses. It wasn’t common, but it happened more than once, so it’s a thing. And then I got to level four. I should note at this point that there’s seven total action buttons: two upper flippers, two lower flippers, left and right nudges, and item activation (also two buttons, left and right, but they do the same thing). So in this screenshot, what flippers are mapped to what buttons?

The answer is the lower flipper buttons control the middle flippers while the upper flipper button controls the top and bottom set. This feels like deliberately unintuitive controls for the sake of additional challenge, but it’s just straight-up dirty pool in my book, and the rest of the level design reinforces that. You have to once again navigate a maze using flippers. This time there’s electric gates that you have to shoot the ball past. Plot twist: the gates aren’t actually on the screen. The camera doesn’t start scrolling over until you make the shot, which will almost certainly result in getting life-slapped by the gates. There’s nothing you can really do about it. There’s no indicator or noise to let you know when it’s safe to go. It’s rotten design. Absolutely inexcusable and cruel.

The fourth level does this constantly, but it gets EVEN WORSE than that. At multiple points in the fourth level, they set it up so that you have to hold a flipper button down to create a solid surface for the ball to sit on so you can then bat it past these electric gates. Gates where the total time the screen is clear is under a second, mind you. But because the physics are so poor AND the living ball bounces so much even when you’re not doing anything and trying to just aim a shot, sometimes the ball might just not move upward. Sometimes it might bounce off the side of the walls but not have the straight trajectory needed to clear the long corridor and all six of the electric gates. IN ADDITION TO THAT, the ball is capable of getting hung up on corners of walls.

By the way, I tried to upload a clip of this but YouTube’s crack AI (meaning it’s actually on crack) decided to rotate my clip. I didn’t ask for this. This was totally unprompted, and there’s no option for me to rotate it back to the correct angle. THE FUTURE IS NOW! Here’s the clip anyway. I decided not to embed it. Just turn your head to the side and try to imagine the image isn’t as stretched out as it is (I didn’t do that either). Eventually a reader named Manix helped me to figure out how to prevent this when doing my coin-op clips, and I thank him, but I’m not replaying this all the way to level four. The physics in Grand Cross don’t just fail for that one corridor. Flippers can fail like that EVERY corridor in levels 2 and 4. Grand Cross isn’t simply a bad game, but a broken one.

So either the developers were complete idiots or they designed the mazes specifically to be a quarter shakedown. Maybe a little from Column A and a little from Column B. At first, I didn’t get a cynical vibe out of Grand Cross, but the more I played it, the more I came to believe that their motives in the level design weren’t pure. Too much blind timing-based stuff, and such a small window of safety for those timing-based areas too. Because the physics in these narrow corridors fail so much, it reduces getting past it to a game of luck instead of skill.

The final insult is, if you die, you have to start the level all the way from the beginning. This includes dying against the boss, with the only kindness offered is that you don’t have to work to reopen the boss door. Plus the combat is just not that good. There’s really nothing you can do to defend against 98% of all the shots fired onto the playfield. If the nudge was more effective, enemy fire might be exhilarating because you could dodge out of the way. But really you have to just accept damage based on where the ball bounces. What a truly horrible concept for a game.

Levels 1 and 3 feel more like something along the lines of Devil’s Crush. Their problem is completely different. At least it’s easy to know where you’re supposed to go in levels 2 and 4, but levels 1 and 3 are more exploratory in nature. The playfields are so big that you can’t see the shots, and the lack of lights or indicators of what you’re supposed to be trying to accomplish makes the game more confusing than exciting.

What’s really frustrating is so much of the real estate in those levels goes to waste. There’s only three main targets in both those levels: two enemies and the exit door, all of which have to be shot a few times. It wouldn’t have killed them to make that clearer. I should note the unreleased US prototype did guide players on what to do in levels 1 and 3. If you’re going to do any form of a pinball hybrid, keep the pinball style lights, even if it’s silly. LEAN INTO THE SILLINESS!

The frustration continues, because when you enter a boss level, you don’t IMMEDIATELY go to the boss. The game presents you with a horrible shmup mini-game first where you have to fly down a corridor and shoot at enemies. You use the lower flippers to move back and forth and the item buttons to fire bullets. That’s dumb. The upper flipper buttons would have made so much more sense. These sequences are a huge waste of time and I’m not even sure what players get as a bonus. There’s also a whack-a-mole bonus round that, again, I never found out what it does besides give you more points and waste time.

The bonus levels wouldn’t be so bad if they provided items, but they don’t. Against that miserable third level boss, no items drop to ease the tedium of the fight. In fact, around the mid-point of the third level Grand Cross gets pretty stingy with item drops until suddenly deciding not to be a complete asshole during the boss rush, when it starts dropping health refills. Yes, there’s a f*cking boss rush. That level 3 boss I hated so much? The rematch happens in a playfield so big you can’t even see the damn boss! Seriously, look at this screen shot. I promise you that humongous Level 3 boss is in that same room. THAT’S HOW BIG THE PLAYFIELD IS!

And because it plays by the same rules as before, the boss fight takes even longer because you’re shooting completely blind against a thing with TWO permanent shields that also alternates between invulnerable and vulnerable in several second intervals. My God. MY GOD! The only nice thing I can say is the game FINALLY has checkpoints after each boss dies. There’s four bosses in the boss rush sequence, the final two of which are brand new and offer constant life drops. That’s helpful because the second-to-last boss is capable of draining your life near instantly with a giant beam that sucks your health quickly. Take a look at the final boss, where the ball CRAWLS down a slope.

There’s NOTHING you can do to defend yourself or make the ball go faster. It’s a typical last chance quarter shakedown final coin-op boss. In addition to all that, you can still drain like in normal pinball, which is an instant loss of life. I honestly can’t imagine anyone has ever actually beaten Grand Cross without cheating because there’s basically no way to defend against the second-to-last boss’ attack. You would have to shoot perfectly using this engine that seems specifically built to prevent aiming. Again, if you trap the ball too long, the ball will just pop high into the air. Oh, and, once again, the playfield is so big the thing you’re fighting often can’t be seen from the flippers. Unbelievable.

There’s a lot of bad games in this feature, but few make as many critical mistakes in physics and level design as Grand Cross. It’s easy to see why Sega passed on distributing this in North America. I had the game hovering around the YES! line as far as midway through the second level before the free fall started, and Grand Cross ultimately ended up being one of the worst games I’ve ever played.

Grand Cross is one of those games where it’s easy to get excited when you see the premise at the start of the first level, then more even excited after you grab your first power-ups. It does get off to a good start, hence the #90 ranking. It seems so promising, and because of its obscurity, there’s this hidden treasure quality to those opening minutes. It’s all downhill from there. Grand Cross needed more time in development to iron out the bugs. This is a game that can’t even do a straight shot with a ball laying flat against a flipper correctly, and it asks for a LOT more from players than straight shots.

My father, who despite all my jokes is seriously a total sweetheart, was stunned this wasn’t the dead last game in the rankings with how badly the flippers fail in the mazes. “You mean to tell me that you’ve already played pinball games that are worse than hitting a flat ball that doesn’t go upward?” he asked. Actually, yeah. Like, as miserable and boring as this was, I discovered that I would choose it over thirty-five games. That’s not a point in Grand Cross’ column. That’s just how awful this genre is capable of being.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #90 of 125
Percentile: 28%

PaTaank
Platform: 3DO
Released November 3, 1994
Directed by Joel Dubiner
Developed by PF Magic
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

I went back and forth on whether PaTaank (pronounced Puh-Tonk which is supposed to be what a slapshot in pinball sounds like phonetically) was going to be part of the sequential timeline in this feature or a bonus review. The question is “is PaTaank even a pinball game?” The concept of the game, essentially taking control of a pinball from within the table, caught my attention. When I announced video pinball was going to be my big anniversary feature, more than one person asked about PaTaank and whether it would be part of it. “Pssh, of course!”

But for a little while, I had moved it to the bonus section because this might not even be a pinball game. The argument goes that if I’m not counting the countless games that are literally named or defined as “pinball” but are, in actuality, paddle games, then PaTaank shouldn’t count either. Only in the case of PaTaank, it’s a lot more of a complicated situation than it is with paddle games, and I could go either way.

It’s Pinball Argument: PaTaank literally identifies itself as a pinball game. It seems to aspire not to be a whole new genre but an EVOLUTION of pinball as a concept. The next logical step in the progress of a sport that has already undergone radical changes from its bagatelle origins. Once upon a time, pinball had actual pins, no flippers and balls were rolled manually. Then came the plunger, then flippers, then solid state electronics, and now PaTaank arrives with “thrusting.” But PaTaank wants you to know, under no uncertain terms, it’s still pinball. To that end, PaTaank retains familiar pinball elements such as drop targets, jackpots, bumpers, roll-over lanes (complete with lane switching), and a goal of staying out of the drain. Plus the levels are literally supposed to be giant pinball tables and there’s pinball-like scoring.

It’s Not Pinball Argument: Saying it has a pinball theme is like saying Sonic 2 counts as pinball because of the Casino Nights levels. That’s absurd. They can say it’s set inside a pinball machine all they want, but PaTaank’s levels don’t look or feel like pinball tables, and there’s no flippers or even balls for that matter. Not that pinball NEEDS a ball. Galactic Pinball for the Virtual Boy also uses a puck like PaTaank does. But it’s the way you move that really leads to the argument that it’s not pinball and that PaTaank has more in common with, say, air hockey or shuffleboard.

Most player-controlled movement is done via “thrusting” which is basically launching yourself forward. You get a limited amount of thrusts (20 in EASY, 10 in HARD) per puck, though that can be replenished activating magnets on the playfield like the one above, which also stops you and lets you aim for your next “thrust.” It’s not the worst idea, but how it handles it just doesn’t work. It’s too fast. You’re blasted ahead at an insane speed like you’re being shot out of F-14’s Yagov Kicker. The best way I can describe what the experience of what playing PaTaank is like is to imagine you’re playing Mario Kart 64, only your Nintendo 64’s frame rate is cut by 95%, controls are mapped to the D-Pad instead of the analog stick, your gas pedal is broken and the only way you can race is to use the mushroom boost to advance forward. That’s really the best possible analog: Mario Kart, with no precision movement, no gas, and all movement tied to mushrooms. If that sounds like gaming hell………

WELCOME TO HELL………… MOTHER F*CKERS!

Whether it counts as pinball or not, PaTaank is actually one of the very worst video games ever made. And I get no pleasure saying that, because the premise is so enticing. I suspect that, following this review, PaTaank will be my go-to example for games where the spirit was willing but the flesh was weak. The 3DO was just plain the wrong platform for this idea. It cannot handle the quick movement through a fully rendered 3D environment AND it has no analog controls. When you activate a thrust, movement and scrolling is so instant and so choppy that precision movement is essentially impossible. Here’s a complete clip of the start of a new game that ends with me completing the first level.

That choppiness isn’t the result of a bad video recording or bad emulation. That’s actually PaTaank pushing the limits of the 3DO’s performance. Yikes. This game is outright broken strictly from a programming point of view, and that’s before you get to the absolute madness that is their design. You’ll notice that I found myself having to aim to the left or right of my intended targets. Shots that feel like you’re making contact dead-center often don’t work. I think that has to do with the camera, which is completely automatic. Like so much of the 3DO, PaTaank is trying to do tomorrow’s technology today (“today” being 1994). But it’s so limited that you don’t even get a feel for a sense of a slope. It just feels like you’re being sucked backwards by a vacuum. Maybe you are. I think this is where I have to get into the nuts and bolts of what’s wrong with the 3DO.

Designed by RJ Mical and the late Dave Needle, the pair who helped design the Amiga and co-designed the Atari Lynx, the 3DO was designed on a cocktail napkin over a morning brunch and then nearly bought by Michael Katz during his tenure with Sega. Instead, EA founder Trip Hawkins bought it and came up with a ridiculous licensing model where multiple companies would license and manufacture a hardware standard. Imagine if the NES was a generic hardware standard like VCRs that had multiple versions of essentially the same machine, only by different companies, in 1985. That’s the 3DO model. It’s a completely asinine model for a video game console. Everyone in the game industry made fun of it and snickered as mainstream media outlets showered Trip Hawkins with completely unearned confetti. Time Magazine named 3DO “product of the year” in 1993, which somehow feels more damning than naming Hitler their Man of the Year in 1938 (and Stalin won it twice, in 1939 and 1942).

To their credit, 3DO was a true 32 bit machine. The problem is, literally right after the final specs were locked (a matter of a couple months) a major breakthrough drove down the costs in something called “floating point technology” that allowed the instant calculation of polygons that would allow the Nintendo 64 and PlayStation 1 to exist at less than half the price of the 3DO. In terms of timing, it was like 3DO had this week’s winning lottery numbers on last week’s ticket. Sure, they would beat PlayStation, Saturn, and Nintendo 64 to the market, but fans knew those were coming and would be cheaper and better, making 3DO obsolete before it was even released.

So the 3DO, despite the name, isn’t exactly optimized for 3D games, and you can really feel that here. But, while 90% of my issues are that the hardware couldn’t handle the gameplay, PaTaank’s presentation and design are also deeply flawed. The video walls are hugely distracting. While I appreciate that there’s arrows to guide you to some targets, it’s still unclear what targets you’re supposed to hit when the game tells you that you’ve unlocked something. You’re actually supposed to crash into specific walls. This is where those distracting video walls were a bad idea, because it’s hard to tell target walls from wall-walls (besides that, the images often have nothing to do with the game and feel random for the sake of coolness, which is NEVER cool). The pathways to reach certain targets are too narrow and were the source of several issues with the camera (which you cannot control). The camera can’t keep up with the action, making it too easy to become disoriented. And don’t give me “that’s the point!” because it’s not a virtue.

Like with Grand Cross, the concept is so much more tantalizing than the actual product. It’s an idea you really want to try if only for the novelty. Unfortunately, PaTaank is practically unplayable. There’s a real tragedy to the whole thing. Had RF Magic developed this same concept for the Nintendo 64 or PlayStation, it would have probably been smoother and able to more clearly define targets. Who knows? Maybe a quality game could have happened. PaTaank has so many problems and the core thrusting mechanic is so sloppy and out of control that the “be the pinball inside the pinball table” idea might as well still be on the drawing board. I would never, ever want a re-release of PaTaank, but a remake? I’d be down to try it, because the idea still sounds novel and compelling over thirty years later. Fun idea. Wrong platform. Horrible results. And yet another contender for the title of “worst video game ever made.”
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #108 of 125
Percentile: 14%

Battle Pinball
Platform: 3DO
Released November 25, 1994
Developed by Nippon Data Works
Published by Panasonic
Never Released Outside of Japan
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Battle Pinball is Nippon Data Works’ follow-up to Real Pinball and the final game they ever developed. Given that Real Pinball finished only one spot above dead last in the rankings, my expectations were so low that they were tickling the cloven hooves of Satan himself. While Battle Pinball is nowhere near as bad as Real Pinball, it’s still a deeply problematic game. Battle Pinball completely ditches the 3D engine from Real Pinball for a top-down 2D perspective, and all gameplay is head-to-head. Want to play the tables solo? You have to play against the CPU. Despite that, it’s actually a promising premise. At least the physics are better. The ball can travel up the full length of the table without the aid of the slingshots, so that’s something.

But the physics still aren’t what I’d consider to be “good” or even “okay.” They’re far too slow and there’s not enough shooting angles. Plus, like Real Pinball, the flippers seem to push the ball more than shoot it, which is why the ball goes further to the left or right than it logically should based on where the ball was on the flipper. The targets seem more interesting, but they’re ruined by a nonsensical score sheet. For all the effort it takes to shoot a ramp, the amount of time that ramp eats up is time you could spend scoring more points shooting faster targets. This idea needed to be done by someone who understands pinball scoring balance on a basic level, and these developers clearly didn’t.

So, what’s with the versus stuff? While you each have your own table, nudging affects both tables. Sounds neat, but this breaks the game because you can’t tilt, and so when I played my family, games inevitably degenerated into one or both of us furiously shaking the playfields out of desperation to turn the tide. This was especially true when the game was played with lives instead of a time limit. In lives mode, the game doesn’t end after one player’s final ball drains if that player is ahead. The other player has a chance to catch up, with the game ending immediately after their total eclipses the other. The only saving grace is that you can’t nudge once your final ball drains.

Time limit is really the only way to play the game that makes sense, but even that’s not that fun. There’s really no penalty for draining besides the time it takes for the ball to be launched back onto the playfield, which isn’t long enough. As noted above, there’s NO balance between the four tables. Hell, four is a lousy amount of options for a game that’s only head-to-head anyway. They try to make up for this with items, and this is where the concept shows the most promise. By the way, getting my family to promise not to nudge so I could get a clean human v human video was like pulling teeth. I had to disable the tilt buttons, no joke.

One item puts up walls on your opponent’s table that block orbits and shots, while another makes a hand (that looks like the Hamburger Helper mascot’s evil twin brother) block the table. Others help you, like a ball save. I wish they made the game better but, they don’t actually matter at all. Battle Pinball is a fun idea but the unlimited nudging at no cost, complete lack of balance between tables, and poor physics sends the 3DO to the dugout 0 for 3 in this feature. But, I really hope to see this idea explored again by someone more talented.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #78 of 125
Percentile: 38%

Psycho Pinball
Platform: Sega Mega Drive
Released in November 25, 1994*
Designed by Paul Adams & Gavin Raeburn
Concept by Andrew Graham
Developed by Codemasters
Never Released Outside the UK
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

*There are two builds of Psycho Pinball that were released, one the “September 1994” build and the other the “October 1994” build. This review is for the October, 1994 build only. In general with these games, I always play the most revised version to give the game its highest chance at succeeding. Unfortunately, Cutting Room Floor has no page for Psycho Pinball so I have no idea what was revised.

Sega fans have taken a beating in this feature, and I swear it wasn’t with malice in my heart. Just a lot of bad luck, really. To those fans, I have good news and I have bad news. The bad news is Psycho Pinball was never sold outside the UK, at least on the Genesis. An MS-DOS build did get a global release, but even then, Psycho Pinball is one of the most deeply flawed games in this feature. The good news is, despite illogical design choices and a scrolling format I’ll never be a huge fan of, Psycho Pinball was the greatest video pinball game ever created at the time of its release. How the hell is that possible in a game where you’re shooting blind?

I’ll get the bad parts out of the way, the first of which is that I just don’t like scrolling in video pinball. A lot of people don’t understand how someone who could claim to love pinball wasn’t a fan of video pinball, and while the physics are obviously the main reason, scrolling played a role in that too. It might allow for higher resolution graphics and larger scaled decorative targets, but the trade-off comes directly out of the gameplay, and I’ll take gameplay any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

And if you need to know why scrolling is never optimal, Psycho Pinball features a variety of multiball modes that really highlight what’s wrong with this format. So how does multiball work when the table is three screens tall? The camera only follows the lowest ball without giving ANY indication where the other balls are. This is a problem because shots on targets might be blocked at the moment by the other balls. You don’t know and even if you played this for years, I don’t think you could know. If the game had some kind of markers like Pinball Jam that gave players information on the relative position of any off-screen balls, something that real pinball would have by, you know, light refracting off them and entering your eyeballs, it would still suck but not be as bad. Pinball Chick team member Matt suggested a Defender-like radar or something like the tracking maps in racers like Mario Kart that pops up only during multiball. Either of those options would have been better than nothing. Codemasters went with nothing. Oof.

The result is you’ll spend most of multiball with the camera barely able to leave the flipper zone. Defense is completely impossible since you have no way of knowing where the other two balls are, making shooting multiball targets a matter of blind stinking luck. After unlocking the multiball in trick or treat, scoring jackpots is done via a two shot sequence of lighting and shooting the jackpot, with the second ball doubling the jackpot if you also hit the charger. Here’s the instruction page for Trick or Treat, with all the shots marked. Which letter do you think lights the jackpot and which do you think scores it?

The answer is E, the Chimney, lights the jackpot and L, the West Passage, scores it. Like most shots in Psycho Pinball, both of those are excellently placed shots in their own right, so their role in multiball might not seem too bad. But take another look at the distance between the flipper zone and the Chimney orbit. That’s a LOT of playfield to cover without knowing the relative position of the other two balls! They could be anywhere, including directly in front of the shot as an incoming rebound.

This would be like shooting blind while your worst enemy is allowed to randomly place any two fingers on the playfield. Additionally, each of those shots has a supplemental flipper along its shot path, which increases the likelihood of interference. None of this would be a problem in real life, where a player can use whatever strategy they like to chart and juggle the other balls. In a scrolling game, the only logical option is the most boring one: settling the three balls and shooting them one at a time, and I didn’t find that successful at all because catching and settling the balls is still kinda blind chance.

I’ll say this for Psycho Pinball: it made me appreciate the choice to drop multiball from Pinball Dreams. Because no matter how well you play Psycho Pinball’s multiball, everything that makes multiball a highlight of real pinball is lost in translation. The almost hypnotic ebb and flow of ball well organized ball management and juggling? That’s not here, because it requires that you see the whole playfield. Technically you can do air defense shots, but they’ll only happen by luck because you can’t possibly hope to know which errant balls are heading for the drain. With that, pinball’s most consistently satisfying shot basically can’t be done as it exists in real pinball. Even if you ignore all that, seeing shots actually hit their marks is part of the appeal of pinball. Why would you ever settle for total blindness if you don’t have to?

That picture seen above isn’t actually an active multiball. Abyss’ two ball multiball takes inspiration from the real life table Bram Stoker’s Dracula. That table features an iconic multiball mode called “Mist Multiball” that you get when a ball eerily starts to float across the table (using a magnet), and if you can dislodge it from its path before it vanishes into the other side of the table, you get the multiball. It’s one of the all-time beloved shots in the history of real pinball, and I get the desire to have something like that in video pinball. But it doesn’t work at all in Abyss. In this picture, I’ve circled where the mist multiball enters and exits the playfield:

The ball that unlocks the mist multiball doesn’t travel in a straight line, either; it curves in an upward path away from the flippers, so it’s not going to be completely in view even in the best case. Look, I admire that they tried to include these exciting real life modes. But at a certain point, better judgment should have been exercised and Psycho Pinball optimized for single ball gameplay. Clearly they understood this to some degree since there’s jackpots not tied to multiball, so they should have trusted the strength of the single ball game they designed.

Psycho Pinball had nothing to gain from trying this disastrous multiball stuff, especially when everything outside of multiball is video pinball designed at such a high level that I honestly didn’t expect a game THIS good THIS early in the feature. Really all multiball can do is make players wish they were playing a real table instead of a digital one. A distraction from what is otherwise the peak of video pinball up to this point.

When it isn’t reduced to a blind shooting gallery with flippers, Psycho Pinball is a wonderland of excellent targets placed in beautiful themes that should be generic but aren’t thanks to art direction that’s inspired. There’s a demented fun house vibe to the game that carries over from table to table. There’s three tables that can be played solo, or you can choose a fourth option that links all three tables by a fourth hub table that’s actually a strong table in its own right. So strong that I was bummed to find out there was no solo option.

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All four tables are well designed, all sharing just a little DNA but still each managing to feel like a unique experience. The hub world is themed like a circus straight out of a nightmare and contains three tents, one for each of the other tables. You can’t just travel to the other tables willy nilly and have to light them three times. For two of the tables, each light earned by a two shot sequence. For Trick or Treat, you have to shoot the smiley face targets, then the ghost train while the tornado loop followed by the big top lights the door to the Abyss table. As for the Wild West table’s tent, the biggest layout design flaw in the entire game is located here:

Unlike the other two tables, you only have to shoot these stand-up targets to earn the Wild West lights. But these targets are placed directly between two high traffic shots. Missed shots on those targets, along with some missed shots from the bat flipper to its right side, will hit these targets. Nobody is going to shoot perfectly, and in my experience you’ll inevitably fully light Wild West through your failure of missing other targets. It throws the balance off because Wild West has some of the easier high-yielding scoring chances and it’s by far the easiest to enter. Even the placement of its tent along a dominant angle makes me wonder if the development team were just really proud of Wild West and were tipping the scales towards it. Personally, I thought Trick or Treat was the best table in the game, and THE best anything video pinball had done up to this point.

If you ask a hundred hardcore pinheads to define “flow” you’ll get a hundred different answers. It’s hard to define, but you know it when you feel it. I’ve not felt anything resembling flow so far in this feature. That is, until now. The physics in Psycho Pinball are a milestone in video pinball. On the default settings, I really thought Psycho Pinball had something resembling realistic shooting and rebounding angles without several qualifiers. It’s not perfect for sure. I couldn’t do post transfer passing and the ball doesn’t run off enough speed when it enters an inlane to take control of the ball. With that said, Psycho Pinball easily has one of the best nudge systems EVER in video pinball. I mean to this day. On the default settings, you hold a button down and press left or right to do it. You can keep yourself honest by changing the TILT sensitivity too. In fact, there’s plenty of other options that juice (or lower) the overall difficulty, and you can play with the ball speed too. Very cool.

The nudge along with the realistic angles makes Psycho Pinball far and away the best defensive game in this feature so far, at least in single ball. Because of that, and because of the accurate flippers and strongly designed shooting angles, at long last, fifty-seven games into this feature, we finally have a game that closely resembles real life pinball. And, on top of that, the tables are actually really, really fun. I figured the first truly realistic pinball game would be something basic. NOPE! Psycho Pinball was so good that it made this whole feature worth it just to experience it. I probably would never have played this if not for this project.

It really opened my eyes to how well the scrolling format can work if the tables are laid out correctly. For all of Psycho Pinball’s problems, I can’t stress this enough: this really is something special. The variety of genuinely thrilling shots is kind of jaw dropping coming from a team of developers who aren’t professional pinball designers. In fact, this was a one-and-done. I think one of them went on to do the sound design in Worms Pinball but otherwise this was their only pinball game. I’m blown away by that, and heartbroken. They have a real talent for pinball design. I hope they reunite for a sequel. Hell, I’ll settle for an HD remake!
Verdict: YES!
Holds title of Greatest Pinball Video Game Ever Made from November 25, 1994 to circa March, 1996
Ranking: #7 of 125
Percentile: 94%

Pinball Dreams
Platform: Sega Game Gear
Released in 1995
Developed by Spidersoft
Published by GameTek
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Damn, did someone poke the Sega devices with a stick or something? After a Genesis game (well, technically Psycho Pinball is a Mega Drive-only game) leapt into the #1 position in the rankings to close 1994, the 8-bit side of the Sega’s legacy finally scored a win too in what will be the only YES! Spidersh*t gets in this feature. Pinball Dreams on the Game Gear is a solid handheld pinball engine that’s fun as its own game. That’s despite missing an entire table, though I think dropping Beat Box was absolutely the right call.

While GG Pinball Dreams still scrolls, you see a lot more of the screen this time around. On the downside, despite having such a small ball relative to the flipper size, orbits are tight squeezes that lack smoothness. GG Pinball Dreams’ orbits needed to be a little bit wider. Actually, they probably should have reworked the angles of the tables. Oh, and the game needed better nudging. In fact, they only seemed to include nudging as a means to free the ball from the shocking amount of maroonings that Game Gear Pinball Dreams is capable of doing. By far the most of any game in this feature so far. In the following slideshow, every screenshot is a picture of a ball that has come to a complete stop:

Yikes. I’m going to just assume that every slingshot is a potential maroon point for the ball. I’m also going to assume that they didn’t put a lot of play-testing into the game because I was doing it constantly. Seriously, the first time a ball came to rest was less than five minutes into my first game, and then it happened again, twice, during my second game of Graveyard. And they clearly had the ability to prevent it. Look at the top of Steel Wheel:

That’s as flat as it gets! I had many, many instances where the ball had so little speed that it probably should have come to stop. But even if the ball rests on the far left side with no momentum, it’ll continue to roll until it reaches the rollovers. It looks janky as f*ck when it happens, but it does it. So clearly Spidersoft recognized the marooning potential in the engine they created was high and took steps to prevent it. Yet, I was CONSTANTLY sticking live balls anyway. The ones on top of the slingshots were especially shocking because the action around the flipper zone is usually pretty lively, yet they were by far the most common spots the ball decided to take a nap.

Now here’s the good news: the actual shooting and rebounding is a lot of fun. Like its big brother, Pinball Dreams on Game Gear lacks a strong defensive game that would have put a hard cap on its potential. But despite being based on the previous Pinball Dreams’ layouts, these might as well be new tables for how fresh they feel in gameplay. Hell, they even manage to shake the feeling of being stripped-down versions of real tables. Despite Graveyard retaining a similar layout to Terminator 2, it no longer feels like T2 at all. It’s also the weakest of the three tables and has a major house ball problem. They should have reworked the plunger since the Terminator 2 angles don’t make any sense without the gun.

Ignition is now the best table, while Steel Wheel is the one you play if you have a little more time to kill and want a slower-paced game. Really, if you want to look at GG Pinball Dreams as a dedicated Ignition player, I won’t argue with you. It basically got the YES! all by itself. Steel Wheel has some cheesy angles that made it a table I barely tolerated. But overall I was happy with the Game Gear build of Pinball Dreams. Okay, so the teeny tiny ball gives the whole thing a “toy pinball” vibe. I won’t deny that. There’s also some jank related to the bumpers. Sometimes the ball didn’t ricochet off them but instead kind of passed through the side. I called it out in previous games and fair is fair.

But the physics are mostly good, which is remarkable given the limitations. Most of all, I really appreciate that they stripped all the graphics down and focused on the best possible gameplay they could squeeze out of 8-bits. Accepting a basic appearance in exchange for better gameplay is a trade off very few games from this era did. It’s not much to look at, but Pinball Dreams GG is a pretty dang good video pin, and that will be the last time I say that about anything developed by Spidersoft.
Verdict: YES!
Ranking: #42 of 125
Percentile: 66%

Pinball Illusions
Platform: Amiga CD32
Released January, 1995*
Tables Designed by Andreas Axelsson
Developed by Digital Illusions
Published by 21st Century Entertainment
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

*The Amiga home computer build was released in January, 1995. In October of 1995 an MS-DOS version of Pinball Illusions with an extra table was released. I’ve opted to not do the MS-DOS build and instead have included the PlayStation remake, titled “True Pinball.* Since the CD32 is a near exact port of the Amiga game, I’m crediting this as a January, 1995 release.

After a few hours of playing Pinball Illusions, I screamed “WHY DOES THIS HAVE TO BE SO COMPLICATED?!” Not the gameplay, but the verdict and ranking. This SHOULD have easily dethroned Psycho Pinball to claim the crown of “best video pinball game” at the time of its release. Pinball Illusion is a massive milestone in video pinball design. If those above screenshots don’t fully give you a clue why, perhaps the next one will. I didn’t realize what happens when you get multiball. The standard Pinball Dreams scrolling camera switches to this:

Was it an inevitable innovation? Of course, but Illusion still gets the credit and does a pretty good job with it. Seriously, for the first-ever multi-camera pinball game, I didn’t really expect it to work THIS good. And actually, you don’t have to wait for a multiball. You can switch on the fly at any time just by pressing RIGHT on the D-pad. When I first saw the option to switch to a full table view, I got teary eyed. And, unlike Psycho Pinball, Pinball Illusions is legitimately trying to create the sensation of playing real arcade pinball machines. Given the limitations of 1995, I’d say they overachieved and created something that could pass for real pinball. Beautiful, timeless pinball. But the more I played Pinball Illusions, the more I realized it couldn’t claim the pole position. Hell, at one point, I even wondered if I should give it to a YES! at all. The physics are pretty dang rough.

Now, in fairness, I was shooting poorly in general in the above clip, but the physics didn’t help. Usually the angles the ball takes off the flippers are spot-on. But every once in a while, a ball that should go left or right based on where the flipper struck it instead will go either upward or backward, like it was backhanded. It especially happens a lot with shots off the tip of the flipper. Like so many games in this feature, the flippers in Pinball Illusion are pushing the ball, not shooting it. Plus, the ball is really floaty, so what we think is happening is the ball initially lifts in the correct direction, but then the flippers move faster than the ball. The flippers then catch the ball and redirect it, so a shot that should be an angled shot changes direction and goes the wrong way. My father actually counted shots in his game and came to the conclusion that roughly 1 in 15 shots is just completely detached from reality. Not a little bit wrong, but cataclysmically wrong, which IS a word despite what my spell check insists.

I was frustrated, but I couldn’t put down Pinball Illusions either. Plus, eventually I adapted to the shooting quirks. They become somewhat predictable. Really, the decision to use multiple camera angles was game changing and, if you squint, you can buy Pinball Illusions as a modern video pinball simulation. When the shooting angles work, they work really well. This is the second game in this feature where recognizable arcade flow was felt. The floaty ball does cause problems though. Illusions also introduces what we think of as “modes” in the modern sense, IE a checklist of high-scoring features followed by a wizard. But because the ball is so floaty while also getting lots of momentum off slingshots, bumpers, and kickers, that floaty ball eats up precious time in the modes.

There’s only three tables, and the bad news is that one of them, Extreme Sports, is just plain not good. The good news is that the other two tables, Law ‘n Justice and Babewatch (obviously based on the TV show Mork & Mindy) could easily pass for a modern Zen Studios table. But be warned: Babewatch and especially Law ‘n Justice are NOT for the faint of heart. These are some brutal, punishing tables that have house balls galore and there’s no options to soften the blow. We were still eating at least one house ball every-other game hours into our play session. Now, this is the part of this feature where I hit a little snag. You see, these same tables were released with a third camera angle as the PlayStation game “True Pinball.” So my gun to head desert island scenario for the rankings gets one of its few exceptions. Were I REALLY put to the choice, Pinball Illusions would probably beat a few games ranked ahead of it, but it’s rendered almost completely obsolete by True Pinball and I can’t pretend like that didn’t happen.
Verdict: YES!
Ranking: #20 of 125
Percentile: 84%

Thomas: The Tank Engine & Friends Pinball
Platform: Amiga
Released in 1995
Developed by Spidersoft
Published by Alternative Software
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

I don’t know what I expected from Thomas: The Tank Engine. I guess I imagined it would feature simple layouts designed for young children. That’s certainly not the case. The only concession made for the preadolescent crowd is that none of the four tables included in this game have outlanes. Well, that and the scoring is done in single-digit intervals, I suppose to make counting easier. Otherwise, this is just pinball, no more or less tailored to preschoolers or elementary schoolers than any other video pin up to this point. Actually, these tables had a LOT of potential to appeal to everyone. Unfortunately, this is the start of Spidersoft making original tables with their own engines, and they really sucked at it.

Thomas either has a gravity problem or a flipper punching problem, because the ball just doesn’t get quite enough POW off the flippers. I have no idea why they dialed the gravity up so much but this is one of the most rejection-heavy video pins in this feature. It’s not completely an exercise in futility. Most targets on the tables are relatively close to the flipper zone, but still, these ball physics feel like they were made for shorter tables. Seriously, it’s like they drew the tables longer than the physics were made for and didn’t make any adjustments because the physics guy called in sick. Whatever happened, with this engine, they could have saved on royalty costs and gone with a Sisyphus theme because you spend most of the game watching the ball roll back down without completing shots.

Despite the rejection issue, James’ table (James is the red one pictured above) is the best table in the game. It even has some interesting trivia attached to it. As far as I can tell, this is the video game debut of the full-sized Japanese fan layout, which, come on, that’s KIND of funny. A pinball design staple finally shows up and it’s in Thomas: The Tank Engine. And it could have been a pretty dang good table if the physics were as strong as, say, Pinball Fantasies. But getting enough pop off the flippers was so rare even with slap shots that I was caught off guard every time the ball completed the ramp to the rollovers.

Actually, all four tables have strong designs that at least look fun and probably would have something resembling flow in a game with better physics. There’s an option screen that allows you to speed-up the ball (and you can play with anywhere from 1 to 10 balls, neat), so I cranked that up the speed, but it doesn’t change the gravity. It just meant the ball lost momentum in the same areas it had before and started to make its return trip faster than before I used the toggle. Now granted, ramp rejections are a part of pinball, but not to the point that the only way to clear a ramp is to bat the ball up and down and hope that the rebounding angle matches the ramp angle. Even the angles off the flippers don’t seem to match-up with the targets. The irony is that no Spidersh*t games feel like they had any quality control, yet that’s exactly what they do for Rockstar today as Rockstar Lincoln Limited. Divine punishment, perhaps?

If all this sounds like I hated Thomas: The Tank Engine Pinball, I truly didn’t. I didn’t like it either. They certainly didn’t dumb down the layouts for the crayon eating crowd, which I appreciate, It also has balanced scoring and the four tables all feel unique from one-another. The variety of targets is fun. I mean, when the ball actually gets enough speed to reach them. But the poor physics and limited shooting angles waste all the good stuff. By the way, although this has nothing to do with my verdict, I don’t think children would like this. The choice to remove the outlanes shows some recognition of their target audience, but the layouts are just normal pinball and the physics are bad enough to be demoralizing. In terms of matching themes to the license, frankly none of these FEEL Thomas: The Tank Engine tables. Besides the slingshots matching the numbers of the characters, this could have been any theme. If that’s the case, why pick Thomas: The Tank Engine and limit your audience to THAT narrow of a demographic? I don’t get it. Thankfully, Spidersoft would surely learn their lessons and make better flippers next time, right? RIGHT?!
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #61 of 125
Percentile: 51%

Pinball Mania
Platform: Amiga
Released in 1995
Developed by Spidersoft
Published by 21st Century Entertainment
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Spidersoft took the under-powered flippers of Thomas: The Tank Engine and said “what if they were even less effective?” Pinball Mania is technically supposed to be part of the same series as Pinball Dreams, Pinball Fantasies, and Pinball Illusions. The problem is the developer of those classics, Digital Illusions, was done with pinball and was moving onto greener pastures. Literally, as they’re still around today as DICE, the studio behind Battlefield, one of the best selling franchises in gaming. Spidersoft stuck around with pinball and never made another good pinball game. Look at the above pic. That ball was one that I trapped, released, aimed, and shot. Where you’re seeing the ball in that picture is at the apex of its climb from a shot made dead center in the middle of the flipper. Pinball Mania’s flippers aren’t just ineffective. They’re dead.

Okay, so Spidersoft’s SNES version of Pinball Dreams was garbage that literally made me sick. But then their Game Gear version of Dreams was good enough that I was cautiously optimistic that the remaining Spidersoft pinball games had a chance to impress me despite Spidersoft’s reputation as one of the most deeply untalented studios of the 1990s. They’re the studio that brought us the Austin Powers Game Boy Color games that were notorious for having no point to them, along with a game that had been the lowest-rated Game Boy release from IGN up to that point in Evel Knievel. How bad was Spidersoft? THEY WERE MAKING EVEL KNIEVEL GAMES IN 1999! I have to believe if anyone had actually reviewed Pinball Mania they would have been equally cruel. We are so far into the evolution of video pinball, yet the shooting angles are completely wrong in Mania.

And I could totally see why Spidersoft/Tarantula Studios would be tapped to do the Evel Knievel game. If the ball goes down an inlane to set up a flipper and you try to shoot it, the ball is likely to fly off to the side regardless of where you shoot it from off the flipper. It’s like they’re not even flippers at that point. They’re functionally ramps and you’re creating a jump for the ball like you would a skateboard, bicycle, or Evel Knievel riding a rocket sled. But actually getting the ball up past the flipper zone can only really be done by slap-shooting rebounds. So there’s no aiming at all in Pinball Mania. None. You really are just trying to keep the ball in play and crossing your fingers it’ll eventually hit a target. See this:

The physics are so bad in Pinball Mania that you can’t even aim from the flippers at this close of a target. The ball just doesn’t get enough lift and mostly will f*ck off to the side. Even if you do get it over the flipper zone, it doesn’t go in the direction you aimed at because the ball continues to roll as the flipper rises up for the shot. The fourth table is the only one that really works because it has four targets that are perfectly lined up with the trajectory the majority of shots go:

I was willing to give Spidersoft the benefit of the doubt after Pinball Dreams Game Gear. But any goodwill it built up is long since gone. Thomas: The Tank Engine Pinball was THIS CLOSE to being good. Pinball Mania is so far away from being as good that only a total engine replacement would work. And the shame is, the tables look like they would be fun to explore, but there’s really no point in even talking about them when the overwhelming majority of my play session was spent trying to get the ball up past the flipper zone. Only slap shots off a rebound work and you can’t aim those. In terms of modern pinball simulations, it’s hard to imagine you can do a worse job of simulating the physics pinball flippers than Mania does. It’s such a major step backward and one of the worst video games ever made. These tables will appear again in this feature, and if you can believe it, it’ll be for an even worse game.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #111 of 125
Percentile: 11%

Battle Pinball
Platform: Super Famicom
Released February 24, 1995
Developed by Banpresto
Never Released Outside of Japan
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

In Japan, Bandai and developer Banpresto worked together to create a franchise called Compati Hero. It’s a series of crossover games featuring famous Japanese superhero shows such as Kamen Rider (released briefly in the United States as “Masked Rider” which they so BADLY wanted to be the next Power Rangers), Ultraman, and the Gundam series. Hell, other Japanese staples like Godzilla and Devil Man even show up sometimes. The franchise mostly comes in three main flavors: The Great Battle (generally action games like shmups and beat ’em ups), Battle Sports (including stuff like dodge ball, soccer, and even Mario Kart-style racers) and Super Hero (usually RPGs). There’s seriously over three-dozen of these games, and Battle Pinball is one of the sports ones. But it’s actually an action pinball adventure that shares most of its DNA with Kirby’s Pinball Land. Seriously, I mean it’s the Kirby Pinball sequel you always wanted and never knew existed.

And it shares a lot more in common with Kirby than just the style of gameplay. I beat Battle Pinball my first time playing in well under an hour. Even in games where I lost a lot of balls, since I was racking-up free lives like they were nothing I rarely felt like I was in danger of actually eating a game over. Much like Kirby’s Pinball Land, Battle Pinball is more of a pinball experience with these characters than an actual challenge, though I’m guessing that concept makes more sense for Compati Hero than for Kirby. The format is almost exactly the same as Kirby too.

Each table is divided into three screens, each of which has you trying to unlock a transfer to take you up to the next screen (or you can aim for the ceiling, which sometimes is viable). You do this by shooting live enemies alongside traditional pinball targets. The third screen will eventually unlock a transfer to take you to a boss fight. Along the way, you earn traditional pinball post-ball bonuses and multipliers and discover special rooms. I told you this was Kirby’s Pinball Land!

Thankfully, there’s some new twists. There’s four tables instead of three, which is nice. In the top screen of each level, you can earn (or lose) multiball balls for the boss fight. Trust me, you’ll want them. The bosses can be the turd in Battle Pinball’s punch bowl, but I’m getting ahead of myself. The playfields are MUCH more busy in Battle Pinball than they are in Kirby’s Pinball Land and (usually) require more work to unlock the transfer. Other times, I was caught off guard by how quickly I advanced screens. And it’s at this point I should note I don’t really know anything about the franchises in this. SOME Gundam stuff, but I never watched Ultraman or Kamen Rider. My Kamen Rider-loving friend Michelle recognized the Kamen Rider characters and enemies. If this had Super Sentai I would have been like that DiCaprio meme. Alas. Okay, with that said:

The game does guide you to what shots will help you progress, and I added a few arrows as well that shows where you’re trying to unlock something. If there’s three major problems with Battle Pinball, the first is that it leans heavily into crowding shots. In the first screen above, that building will eventually have Ultraman burst through it and blow away an enemy. But until then you have to shoot off to the sides. Giving players a little more room to explore instead of making the shot selection obvious would have been more satisfying AND added challenge by increasing the amount of potential defensive angles. But this is a satisfying level that’s a little lacking in personality compared to some other levels.

The crowding carries over to the second problem with Battle Pinball and it’s a MUCH bigger problem: a couple of the boss fights stink. For Ultraman’s level, a continuous stream of tanks waddles across the playfield and all they do is block your shot. Since this is an entirely combat-focused screen, crowding does add to challenge, but this boss would have been bad enough without the tanks. It has an insane amount of downtime where you can’t damage it. It’s made up of four smaller robots that SLOWLY combine and shoot a flipper, temporarily disabling it. While they’re a robot, and while they’re combining, AND while they’re separating, AND AND AND when they’re just waiting for the animation to start between phases, the boss is invincible. The only time you can damage it is when the individual pieces are spinning around, and while you’re shooting at them, those tanks are there blocking your shots. It’s a total slog. The good news is if you drain, all the damage you inflicted will still count.

Gundam’s level has a slightly different format. The bottom and middle screens aren’t taken one at a time and instead scroll smoothly like the Crush series. I think there’s more than one way to get to the third screen, a giant mother ship that you have to take out all the guns for (I’m sure there’s a name for it). I had to play and replay this multiple times to get quality playtime because I kept beating it in just a couple minutes. Even two months after I beat it, it took me under five minutes when I made a clip for this feature.

The transfer to the top screen is actually on the bottom. It’s the little things that scroll across the screen. This also had one of the two easier bosses. This was the dullest level in the game, with a mostly empty mid-field that’s a total snoozer, and on top of that, it’s too easy. Easiest boss too. Sometimes it’s easy to spot the part of a game where you can tell the designers were out of ideas. This is one such level. Really, the only part of Battle Pinball that ever gave me trouble were the shooting angles. This brings me to the third problem: the shooting angles are somewhat limited. To the game’s credit, teeing-up your own slap shots is easy enough, but the ball does tend to go a little too left and right. It’s funny how the more advanced the video pinball gets, the more basic angles become problematic.

Kamen Rider was my favorite table. It’s a frisky design with non-stop action. The bottom screen plays out like whack-a-mole, plus there’s trolley cars that you have to adjust the switch tracks for that can take you to the second, third, or even to bonus screens. The second screen has an enemy advancing on you, and you have to unlock Kamen Rider, who kicks the ball over to his motorcycle, which takes it up to the top screen. The top screen has a magnetic monster that sucks the ball up. You need to get the balls loaded into mine carts to get to the boss, and again, try to lock as many balls as you can. Sadly, the excellent pinball table gives way to another tedious boss. This one is almost as bad as Ultraman’s.

That thing above has hit points the size of atoms, and you have to hit it from angles that you can’t actually shoot from the flippers. You have to get many hits, including the final shot, via a ricochet either off the wall or the ceiling. Even worse is that the balls are capable of getting caught for quite a while against the two guys in the corners, who act like bumpers. Like, in the middle of a boss battle, you don’t want to go twenty seconds between shots, but it happens.

The final stage is based on an original character from Banpresto that acts as the linking character like Sora in Kingdom Hearts. The lead character that makes the crossover happen. His stage is underwater but I don’t think they took advantage of the theme. It could be anything, and it was the only stage that I was circumventing the actual method of transferring. Hell, until I got the above clip, I’m not sure I ever actually did it the “correct” way because it was so easy to reach the top screen.

Okay, so Battle Pinball’s not ENTIRELY the dream sequel to Kirby’s Pinball Land everyone wants, but it still is sort of the unofficial sequel. Battle Pinball has stronger table design, plus an extra table over Kirby. All Kirby has going for it is slightly stronger boss design and MUCH more intuitive targets. In fairness, that’s by virtue of having smaller playfields with less targets. There’s also bonus rooms in Battle Pinball, but they’re nowhere near as fun as Kirby’s Pinball. Hell, I’d even call them boring.

You know what’s sad? Jaki Crush, a terrible game, was apparently the desired trophy for 90s importers. Wrong Super Famicom exclusive video pin, friends. Battle Pinball will probably never get released again unless Namco-Bandai puts together a collection of Compati Hero. Even if they do, I’m guessing Battle Pinball won’t be high on the list of games to include. I hope they do though. For all its many, many problems, this is one of the strongest games in this feature so far. It’s weird and it’s way too easy, but it’s one of the most fun, sincerely joyful video pinball games ever made. I loved it! Spread the word: there IS a Kirby’s Pinball Land 2, in spirit and soul if not in name.
Verdict: YES!
Ranking: #13 of 125
Percentile: 90%

Super Pinball II: The Amazing Odyssey
Platform: Super Famicom
Released in March 17, 1995
Directed by Naruaki Sasaki
Developed by KAZe
Published by Meldac
Never Released Outside of Japan
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Super Pinball II uses the same engine as Behind the Mask did. Multiballs still don’t interact with each-other, which puts a very, very hard cap on the potential. David’s Midnight Magic (which was STILL the second-best home video pinball games ever made at the time Super Pinball II was released) could get away with it because there were also satisfying drop targets to shoot thanks to being Black Knight. Nothing in Super Pinball II is as good as Black Knight, and it retains the same engine that already scored a NO! with the original Super Pinball: Behind the Mask. So what’s different? I mean besides wanton disregard for likeness rights. Look kids, it’s Sean Connery!

And Audrey Hepburn!

And Marilyn Monroe and Cary Grant! I think that’s Cary Grant, at least.

Well, that’s tacky and distracting and makes the whole thing feel like a cheap bootleg. I’m guessing this is why Nintendo didn’t option the sequel for US release like they did the original. Or maybe they played the game and were unimpressed by the shooting angles. An alarming amount of balls fly away at 45 degree angles. It’s basically impossible to shoot straight upward off the flippers. The only way to shoot up is by teeing the ball up, though it’s harder and less accurate here than in the original game.

So that utterly ended any hope of flipping Behind the Mask’s NO! into a YES! for the sequel. Crying shame about the physics. While Super Pinball II does have the same problem with carrying over scoring systems and modes from table to table, it avoided the feeling that it’s one table remixed three different ways. All three tables have a different feel to them. The weakest of the three is Space Sister, which wants to do a split-level layout despite the viewing angle not being appropriate at all for it.

You can’t really see it, but the upper right part of the split level is exposed. This was a horrible idea that nearly gave poor Dave a stroke when he saw it. The whole benefit of split level tables is how they can be used for ball management during multiball, something that doesn’t matter when the balls don’t interact with each other. At that point, all you have to do is keep one ball in play while taking all the time you need to aim the other.

Spy Eyes features a very stripped-down version of Pin•Bot’s visor that removes most of the unlock targets. The 5×5 grid of lights is now a 3×3 grid. It’s clear the designers didn’t understand the elegance of Pin•Bot’s design at all but thought the lights were pretty. This is the table where you feel the limited shooting angles the most, by far. Apparently KAZe thought those lights were so pretty they didn’t want anyone to turn them off, because actually finding the shooting angles to hit them is like pulling teeth.

Showtime is the best table in the Super Pinball franchise which is faint praise in this series. It’s also the simplest layout in Super Pinball II, but that’s a good thing. It plays to the strengths of the engine by creating a two flipper design with tight shots. With this type of design, it really doesn’t matter if the multiballs interact because rebounding and shooting angles are where the challenge is regardless of what mode you’re on. Oh, it’s still boring as f*ck, with overly aggressive slingshots and return angles.

As a franchise, I just don’t like Super Pinball’s graphics, viewing angle, physics, or scoring system at all. Not only does the sequel play worse than the original, but the scoring isn’t improved even a little bit over Super Pinball: Behind the Mask. Easy shots pay off in increasingly higher amounts, removing any lingering satisfaction. The good news is Super Pinball as a franchise was KAZe’s training in pinball. Sacrificial lambs for better video pinball games yet to come from a studio who will go on to make 3 of the 10 best video pinball games ever. And since they did a game called Necronomicon, I assume these were sacrificed in brutal, painful ways, and I applaud that.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #65 of 125
Percentile: 48%

Kyūtenkai: Fantastic Pinball
Sometimes Spelt “Kyuutenkai”
Platform: PlayStation, Sega Saturn
Released March 31, 1995
Developed TechnoSoft
Never Released Outside of Japan
NO MODERN RELEASE (PlayStation)
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED (Sega Saturn)
Review Played ONLY on PlayStation

TechnoSoft is the company that did the disastrous Sega Genesis port of Devil’s Crush. The lead producer of Kyūtenkai was also Dragon’s Fury’s lead producer, and presumably there’s other members from that game’s development team who worked on Kyūtenkai. That’s why I’m stunned that Kyūtenkai feels like the rightful heir to Devil Crush’s throne. After a half-decade of waiting, finally a true sequel to the Crush family arrives with this action-packed Japanese exclusive. And I’m not just spewing a buzzword like “action-packed” on a whim. Seriously, Kyūtenkai (roughly translated: “abrupt change”) is the most densely-packed video pinball game made up to this point. As you can see in the above clip, the three main screens are overflowing with targets, hidden mini-games, and hazards. It’s the most overwhelmed I’ve been with a new game so far in this feature. But when that wears off, is the game still fun?

First off, knowing Japanese will help a little with this one, but you don’t need it. The basic idea is the same as the Crush games: there’s one primary table that’s three screens tall. The game does have a linear ending that’s unlocked by defeating all four mini-games and a final boss, but after beating that boss, the game continues so you can play for a high score. So far, so Crush. The first difference is that you can choose between three different characters. When the ball builds up enough speed or momentum (including every full-force plunge) it temporarily powers-up and transforms into the character’s ball. What each character does is in the caption below:

Because I wasn’t playing for a high score and trying to finish the game, I mostly opted for the first character. I thought my logic was sound since the mini-games are lost on a single lost ball and have relatively short time limits so I needed to cause as much damage as quickly as possible. It didn’t matter, because eventually I threw in the towel and used the game’s built-in password system, which is how continues work, to beat Kyūtenkai using multiple games. Yeah, unlike the Crush games, Kyūtenkai is insanely hard to defeat. Part of that is how you unlock the mini-games. They’re all tied to the bumpers:

The bumpers are each a roulette that cycle through the four different boss characters (each of whom is present on the board itself) along with money symbols and crabs. The crabs are whammies that you have to defeat via multiple hits. They also spit bubbles that slow down your momentum and could push you down to the bottom screen.

If you can get two of the three bumpers to match a character, it will unlock the entrance to their mini-game. The only way to unlock all four mini-games is to match all three bumpers, which none of us ever did even once to the best of my knowledge. It’s the dullest way to open mini-games, especially on such a busy table. And even if you did match all three, I’m almost certain it wouldn’t matter because the other three close after the ball enters the first mini-game.

Thankfully, the mini-games don’t dominate Kyūtenkai the same way mini-games previously dominated the Crush franchise. In my entire play session, only once did I enter back-to-back games in a span of under a minute. It was the soccer game seen above, which is also far and away the mini-game I played the most. That’s because the doors to the mini-games aren’t evenly placed. Two of them require little to no effort to reach. I played the soccer game the most because its door is right in the center of the bottom of the screen:

Because it’s pretty hard to defend against the outlanes in the upper and middle screens, the ball is significantly more likely to cross over its door even if you don’t want to play it. The same goes for the room cleaning game, which is located in the wing a little bit above where the soccer game’s entrance is. It was my first mini-game and I wasn’t even aiming for it. Meanwhile, the other two games are located in spots that are kind of hard to reach.

At one point, I had the Vine Game’s entrance open and tried every possible shooting angle between the two flippers on the center screen, and the ball never came close, nor did I get any help from the bumpers. The only time I ever entered the Vine Game was via a completely lucky bounce. And if you end up spinning the bumpers and getting a different mini-game, which you might since they’re on the same screen, that door closes. This was just a bad design choice made worse by how difficult the two hard-to-reach mini-game rooms are. While I never lost at the soccer game, I frequently failed at the other three. Hell, I only legitimately beat the Vine Game twice out of around twenty plays. It’s just too f*cking hard:

Those bunny women quickly climb the tree trunks and you have to hit them a few times before they fall off. Hitting them barely slows them down. If one of them reaches the top of the screen, you lose. You don’t get the character’s gem, and thus can’t get to the final boss, unless you actually complete each game. This is the one that prevented me from reaching the final boss. When I finally did beat it, it was because I got the ball above the creatures in a way where it hopped across the bunnies. Even doing that is no guarantee. in the above picture, I did just that and I still lost. They really needed to dial back the difficulty of that game. I also lost my first time playing the mini-game below in about one second:

A single drain ends the mini-games, and my first ever shot in that game deflected off an enemy and went into the drain. The same thing happened a lot in the vine game as well. On one hand, at least they provide a challenge and don’t feel like a massive waste of time. On the other hand, CHRIST, these games destroyed me. Then again, the main table was capable of that as well. I lost count of how many times the ball went almost instantly from the top screen to the bottom. It happened from drains AND outlanes too. Nudging is just not that effective for defense here, and the outlanes especially are pretty soul destroying on every screen. Oh, and unlike previous Crush games, you can TILT in this if you hold the button down too long.

So maybe the linear side of Kyūtenkai is a little too mean spirited sometimes, but from the perspective of a fun, scoring-driven game, there’s no denying that Kyūtenkai is one of the best games in this feature. I didn’t even have to think all that hard whether I’d place it above Devil’s Crush in the rankings. I was so close to putting it #1 ahead of Psycho Pinball, but Kyūtenkai got in its own way with some truly baffling design choices. The mini-game unlocking method hurts a lot, and the distribution of those rooms hurts even more. Including the ability to trigger a TILT was foolish. This game made more mistakes than most bad games do. But the worst of them is a violent wind that comes and goes on the top screen. You can see it at the end of this clip:

It was clearly trying to be this game’s version of the magnetic modes in Addams Family. But when the magnets in Addams turn on for Seance or Multiball, eventually they turn off. If there’s a way to permanently disable the wind in Kyūtenkai , we never figured it out. Maybe it’s tied to the bells at the top of the screen, which are barely visible most of the time and we never figured out what they did either.

The camera doesn’t quite follow the action as well as you would hope. It makes shooting the targets on the top screen pretty miserable and is one of the most ill conceived gameplay elements in any YES! game in this feature. It pretty much single-handedly cost Kyūtenkai the #1 position. What were they thinking? WERE THEY THINKING AT ALL?! And while I’m complaining, after three pretty hard mini-games (and one lay-up) the last boss was stunningly easy.

And if I sound angry, it’s because Kyūtenkai had that #1 rating and let it slip away with that wind stuff in the top screen. Such a letdown when the rest of the game is so much fun. I’m rooting for every game in this feature when I first boot them up, but I was really rooting for Kyūtenkai because what a great comeback story it might have been for Technosoft. In a way, it still ended up being a great story. I know Sega fans hate my opinion on this, but I thought their port of Devil’s Crush wasn’t a good effort. But, they figured out what went wrong with Dragon’s Fury and got the most out of the PlayStation/Saturn’s horsepower to make a better Crush game. I’m mad because when you have a game that’s good enough to be #1 and then self-sabotage to the degree they did here, even placing it #8 is a let down. Folks, this could have been #1. The good stuff was better than any other game’s peak in this feature. With that said, I had a ton of fun. Kyūtenkai was re-released in Japan in 2010 as a PSOne Classic. I really hope someone reads this and gives Kyūtenkai: Fantastic Pinball a global release today.
Verdict: YES!
Ranking: #8 of 125
Percentile: 94%

Obsession
Platform: Amiga
Released June 1, 1995
Designed by Peter Zetterberg and Magnus Zetterburg
Developed by Blade Entertainment
Published by Unique Development Sweden
Never Released Outside Europe
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Once the Amiga started delivering one YES! after another, I found myself adding more and more Amiga games to this feature. Obsession was added during the same round I added Pinball Mania. Oops. Really, it feels more like a Pinball Fantasies expansion pack than its own original game, only with a touch of Thomas: The Tank Engine’s struggles with flipper strength. Well, at least for a couple tables.

The above table, Aquatic Adventure, is a fairly basic top-heavy pick ‘n flick layout that isn’t exactly exciting but is solid enough to put Obsession in the upper tier of the NO! pile. Plus the game wasn’t having one rejection after another in that table. Even then, it’s problematic because you can’t see ANYTHING from the flipper zone. No markers to guide shots. Nothing. But, it’s an okay table. The other three are, ahem, weird.

And I’ll start with the weirdest of them all: Balls ‘n Bats, which genuinely does try to mix baseball with pinball. When you hit the pitcher’s box (a large front-and-center target), the normal pinball gameplay stops and the game pitches you the ball. Yes, it throws a variety of pitches like curve balls, fast balls, and even something that looked kind of like a knuckle ball (I assume this is the “slow ball” referred to in the manual). If the ball drains, don’t worry, because it’s baseball now! You get three strikes! Once you have control of the ball, you have X amount of time to advance the runners by hitting the outer HOME RUN orbit. You only have to get all four bases lit to “win” a game, and the object is to advance to the World Series. Basically, score four runs. It sounds so neat and I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

The problem is Balls ‘n Bats’ layout is SO BORING that I just wanted it to be over with. That home run shot, a round-the-world orbit, couldn’t be more dull, yet it’s the key to everything in Balls ‘n Bats. It reminds me of Al’s Garage Band, one of my personal least favorite 90s pins, and when you make someone think of their least favorite tables it’s NEVER a good thing. This really needed a bigger variety of targets and to ditch the wide-orbit. This is where the flipper punching problem comes in. Unlike some other video pins that feature the same issue, Obsession’s flippers DO seem to be shooting the ball instead of pushing it. But the orbits are too long and have too much room for the ball to run-off its momentum before reaching the apex of the loop.

Desert Run has a similar issue with these out-and-back circular orbits, especially the PIT STOP loop. Desert Run also has some odd shapes for its other orbits, including one bends twice and is perfectly flat for a long stretch. This is a racing-themed table that is certainly better than Balls ‘n Bats, but the placement of the entrance to the orbits is really haphazard. I’m guessing that the team behind Obsession liked pinball but didn’t understand basic pinball design principles. None of these shoot well even when you find a rhythm. Were any of these to be real tables, they wouldn’t have anything resembling “flow.” Yet, Desert Run isn’t necessarily an awful table either.

Desert Run and Aquatic Adventure kept Obsession out of the cellar completely by themselves. Don’t mistake that for being fun. Desert Run is an exhausting brick layer with a run-of-the-mill racing theme. The best thing I can say about it, and Obsession in general, is that it features nicely fine-tuned scoring balance. Seriously, as unhappy as I was with Obsession for being mostly poorly-constructed tables played with bad physics, all credit where it’s due: these guys did a great job with the rule sheets. That’s not nothing, and hell, there’s plenty of professional designers during the golden age of pinball that couldn’t do scoring balance half as good as Obsession has. Like, 1990’s Gottlieb could have used this development team.

Finally, there’s X-ile Zone, which SO badly wants to be Terminator 2 but it’s just not good at all. I’d call X-ile Zone a slog, but “slog” suggests being able to keep the ball alive for more than ten seconds. I didn’t have very many long games on this table because seemingly every return angle is aimed directly at the drain. The drain pins in all four tables are just about the most worthless drain pins in the history of pinball because there’s little-to-no bounce to the ball. But most of all, the punching power screws X-ile Zone, which probably could have been okay if not for the fact that every single ramp seems to only exist to kick the ball back down before completion.

I don’t know what’s with these recent video pinball games and turning up the gravity so high that completing even a single shot is a struggle. I can’t believe Obsession got raving reviews upon release. If the gravity had been better, I’m still almost certain two of the four tables would have been crappy anyway. I’ll give Obsession this: it’s better than Pinball Mania, because at least Aquatic Adventure is halfway decent. The rest of the game? Not so much. BUT, I would like to see something like Balls ‘n Bats, only with a better layout.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #82 of 125
Percentile: 35%

Galactic Pinball
Platform: Virtual Boy
Released July 21, 1995
Directed by Kenji Yamamoto
Developed by Intelligent Systems Co., Ltd.
Published by Nintendo
Included with a Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack Subscription
Requires Virtual Boy Accessory on Switch Online

Serious question: do you think they intended Galactic Pinball to have a ball only to realize the physics weren’t coming along, WOULD NEVER COME ALONG, and decided to just call it a feature instead of a bug and change the ball to a puck? I’m not joking! I’m hand over my heart sincerely curious if something along those lines happened. Galactic Pinball, aka Virtual Boy Pinball-Themed Tech Demo ver 4.0, underwent four name changes during development, starting as “Space Pinball” and at other times having names like “Virtual Pinball” and then “Pinball VB” before settling on the ultra generic “Galactic Pinball.”

It feels like the odds were stacked against Galactic Pinball from the start, being a Virtual Boy launch title directed by a guy more known for his music. Even with all that going against it, I was surprised by how bad Galactic Pinball is. It’s sincerely one of the worst games in this entire feature and a legitimate contender for the worst physics of any 1990s video pinball game. I can’t believe this has fans. It’s eyeball-nuking garbage.

I don’t really care why they used a puck, but the results of that choice are disastrous. Pinball is meant to be played with a ball on a surface that simulates wood, not with a puck on a surface that simulates an air hockey table. The sacrifices made for the puck are galling. Dead flips, one of the most important aspects of defensive pinball, are basically non-existent in Galactic Pinball because the one surface the puck doesn’t react to on a drop is the flippers, GO FIGURE. All rebounding has to be done by trapping, which is far too easy because the flippers catch a puck so much easier than a ball. It’s also so much floatier than a ball, bounces far too high off non-flipper surfaces, and lingers in the air far too long. And sometimes, the physics are totally detached from reality. Explain this to me:

That looks like rewind in an emulator, but it’s not. That kind of immersion-breaking puck behavior happens constantly. I honestly wonder if the space theme was a cover to explain physics anomalies like that clip. When the game decides to give the puck bounce and when it doesn’t feels totally random. Bumpers are dead. The puck often just sort of limply falls through them like Plinko. Meanwhile, slingshots are very, very alive and it’s not rare for the puck to reverse-thread up one inlane and go down another. Since many of the shots have time limits attached, all this unpredictable behavior and high flying, slow-moving ricochets eat up precious seconds. BUT, it never creates a sense of urgency. Just frustration. Lots and lots of frustration.

Three of the four tables are slogs that don’t lend themselves to puck physics. Or really any physics. These would be bores in the best circumstances. Alien is easily the worst in the game as it starts off so dead and empty that it would be considered overly-conservative by the design standards of 1955. Even when you unlock things like a giant alien bash toy, it doesn’t do anything besides block the shooting angles, which the bumpers were already doing. Alien’s two corner spinning bumpers were a reminder to me that Galactic Pinball only exists to be a tech demo for the Virtual Boy’s 3D capabilities. It couldn’t be more obvious that Alien was a total afterthought. A +1 to bring the table count up to four that was likely rushed through production. It’s one of the most boring tables in Classic Pinball Video Games: The Definitive Review. It’s stillborn. Dead on arrival. Boring before the first plunge.

UFO isn’t much better. It starts with a humongous UFO that looks more like a not quite finished batch of Jiffy Pop. Like Alien, it lacks shot selection and is just a total bore of a table. The UFO is eye-catching, but it was a bad idea to devote so much real estate to one gimmicky element that doesn’t stay on the table. Once it’s gone it gets replaced with mundane rollovers and it’s like, seriously? No, SERIOUSLY? That entire massive space was blocking one of the most basic starting elements in pinball? Rollovers like that should be saved for the plunge and making the UFO appear should be a reward.

Actually, UFO and Alien should have been combined into one single table. The Lair is a terrible target in Alien. UFO didn’t need two side-cellars. Combine UFO’s roll-overs with Alien’s corner spinning bumpers and the drop targets and you might have a decent table. I mean if the physics weren’t crap, of course. The other two tables are far more ambitious. Colony is the one that gets interrupted constantly by the incoming comets, but it does have a traditional pinball layout with a variety of shots and a heavy emphasis on table touring. Taking a key from Pin•Bot, you’re traveling across the solar system, though it’s done by shooting cellars. Specifically, these five cellars:

While that is a nice selection of angles, the physics engine off the flippers takes the glory out of them. On trapped shots, the puck will practically load for the flipper and give you plenty of time to aim. It slooooowly rolls down the flipper (there’s clearly artificial gravity assistance for this), and since the shooting angles are so limited off the flippers, clocking the above five shots is a cinch. By the way, that’s true of all four tables, but it really hurts this one. It’s also super easy to discover the angle off a trap that gets the puck to fall down into the center VUK, which grants a random award.

Cosmic was the table I played last, though it’s usually the table people think of when they think of Galactic Pinball. While it’s the strongest design in the game, it’s still not very good. The fake Death Star doesn’t have anything exciting about it except a single hurry-up shot that has to be unlocked. Actually, I don’t know if you can call it “exciting” since the only time I completed it was thanks to a lucky bounce. You only have twenty seconds to shoot the Not-Death Star with THESE physics, which is like 3 or 4 shots, maybe. Actually, if you hit the random award shot, even if you press the button to stop the roulette immediately, it FOREVER to finally stop spinning around and tell you what you won, and the whole time the hurry-up timer is still going because they couldn’t bother to have it pause when the puck isn’t even active. I don’t know what else I expected at this point.

Like Alien Crush, Galactic Pinball is a review I started and abandoned multiple times. I got a lot of requests for it after publishing reviews for Wario Land and Mario Clash, but I just couldn’t put up with the physics. Now that I have the context of the evolution of video pinball, I have a much better appreciation for what Alien Crush accomplished in 1988. Conversely, I know now how badly Galactic Pinball sh*t the bed in 1995. It’s embarrassing how bad this game is. How wrong the physics are. How misguided using a puck was. Maybe I’m wrong and they didn’t give up on having the ball be a ball. Maybe instead someone said “these prototype physics feel more like air hockey” and a light bulb went off about how nobody had ever thought to use a puck before. Instead of giving up on the ball, they deliberately made the switch so that they could save development time by just going with the hockey puck-like physics.

Whatever happened, Galactic Pinball is one of the worst Nintendo-published games. I do wonder if this was earmarked to be the pack-in title for Virtual Boy since it was one of the first games shown for the platform and has “glorified tech demo” written all over it, only they realized how bad it turned out. Galactic Pinball is one of those games that shows Nintendo expected the 3D effects to do a LOT of the heavy lifting for Virtual Boy. That’s just the wrong attitude to have. Gameplay should always do the heavy lifting and special effects like stereoscopic 3D should augment gameplay. Virtual Boy was doomed by being red and black, but it really doesn’t help that Nintendo forgot all the most important tenets of game development with its launch lineup. All Galactic Pinball has going for it is depth. Ooooh, depth! That thing healthy eyeballs do at all times anyway! How quaint! But in terms of gameplay? Galactic Pinball is a major regression for video pinball as an art form. Which is fitting because that’s what Virtual Boy was to video games.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #113 of 125
Percentile: 10%

Space Pinball
Platform: Virtual Boy
Work-in-Progress Prototype of Galactic Pinball
Directed by Kenji Yamamoto
Developed by Intelligent Systems Co., Ltd.
Published by Nintendo
NEVER RELEASED

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I wanted to very briefly give a non-review to Space Pinball, the original tech demo that eventually grew into Galactic Pinball. If the plan was ever to do the Virtual Boy’s pinball game with an actual ball, those plans had already been abandoned by the time this prototype was working and being shown off at trade shows. The puck is here and it’s even worse than the final game. As bad as Galactic Pinball was, Space Pinball showed me how much worse it could have been. The puck is even floatier here, and I’m guessing they hadn’t fully programmed its rebounding angles because they’re total nonsense. Plus, since they hadn’t included nudging yet, there’s absolutely no defense at all. The only notable feature is that, early on, they seem to have planned for the puck to transfer between tables like Pinball Action or Speed Ball. Good call moving away from that concept. On the other hand, the Alien prototype table has a much smaller but better layout in the prototype. It’s always neat to get to play a prototype, but this project was doomed from the start.

Full Tilt! Pinball
aka 3D Pinball for Windows: Space Cadet
Platform: PC
Released August 24, 1995 (3D Pinball) November 16, 1995 (Full Tilt)
Designed by Kevin Gliner
Developed by Cinematronics
Published by Maxis
Space Cadet was Included Free with Various Windows Operating Systems from 1995 – 2001.
NO MODERN RELEASE

Behold: the single most played pinball game of all-time. Not just pinball video game, but Pinball ANYTHING. Neither myself nor a friend at Microsoft could find any hard data on exactly how many people played Space Cadet, but we worked out a ballpark estimate based on another game famously built into Windows: Solitaire. Now, whether any of us like it or not, Solitaire is unbeatable as the single most played video game of all-time. Sorry folks, but it ain’t Tetris. It’s STILL popular, too. To this day, 35 million people play billions of games of Windows Solitaire every month, and it was EVEN MORE plays back in the days of Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows ME, and Windows XP.

Now, here’s the good news: if you went to load up Solitaire on those old computers, you would inevitably see the pinball game 3D Pinball for Windows: Space Cadet. If we only assume a fraction of Solitaire players completed ten complete games of Space Cadet in the entire time it was preinstalled in Windows, we can still comfortably guesstimate that over fifty BILLION games of Space Cadet were played. That’s a conservative estimate, too. I’ve heard plenty of stories of kids playing it in computer labs at school or while they were supposed to be doing their homework, and yes, also adults who played it at work. My gut tells me it’s closer to a hundred billion games. Those are huge numbers that lack context, so how many games is fifty billion, exactly?

Addams Family is the undisputed best selling solid state pinball machine at 20,270 units. So it must have been played a lot! But to reach the conservative estimate of Space Cadet’s fifty billion games played, each Addams Family pinball machine would have to have been played 2,466,699 times since it was released. This is (checks notes) all but physically impossible. If you’re reading this on July 1, 2026, that means from the time Addams Family was released, every single unit of it has to have been played, on average, 196 times every single day between March 1, 1992 and today, without fail. That’s eight games an hour, every single hour, on all 20,270 units, from the very moment they left the factory, and if any one of them breaks down, one of the remaining machines has to do its 196 a day AND the broken machine’s. None of this has anything to do with how good Space Cadet is, but I wanted you to appreciate how unbeatable its record is.

Space Cadet is also one of the most nostalgic games of the 1990s. I’ve met plenty of people who have never played a single game of pinball on a real coin-operated pinball machine or purchased a pinball video game who have said something to the effect of “you have a pinball blog? I loved that one pinball game that used to be on computers!” For literally millions of people, their only pinball experience is Space Cadet. It’s THAT game for them. People are legitimately excited about the possibility of a person turning it into a real machine, as seen in the above clip. For better and for worse, it’s one of the most famous video games of all-time. It’s also a game I get asked about a lot. “What do you think of that old pinball game on computers?” But I barely played it, because it didn’t play exactly like real life pinball and I was a snob (to my credit, I was a little kid). Maybe, maybe, I played a game or two, but I didn’t remember anything about it. So, how is Space Cadet?

It’s…………. Pretty fun, actually.

While we’re still very firmly in the all shooting/all rebounding era of video pinball, I have to admit that Full Tilt! has some damn decent shooting and rebounding physics. You can tell the developers put a LOT of stock into having accurate shooting angles off the flippers. So, the basic physics are good enough to have a solid pinball simulation. What stands out to me the most in terms of the layout is how Space Cadet actually is the definitive jack-of-all-trades video pinball table that leans heavily into basic target shooting. It’s pretty bonkers how much stuff they packed into a basic two-flipper layout.

I might have enjoyed my time with Space Cadet, but it does lean into the “pinball is chaos” mentality that, ideally, is not true. This really feels like it should have been a three flipper design, as the table is full of blind angles where you need a lot of help from bumpers, especially with those rear drop targets. On the other hand, you can tell the designers were pretty proud of their physics engine when it does some pretty kooky stuff that made me grin from ear to ear. Shooting the upper-right tunnel unleashes a kicker that, if you don’t interfere, will often knock the ball off a slingshot and up the ramp. It’s completely silly and, yes, very satisfying.

While Space Cadet gets all the attention, the team actually made three tables, two of which were included in the full package and one of which is a much, much stronger table than Space Cadet. And I’m not talking about Dragon’s Keep. The more I played it, the more I realized it just has a really poor flow to it, and I’m not sure what the hell they were doing with that lower playfield. “I think they were fans of Whirlwind without totally understanding it” said Angela, and indeed, the tables share kind of similar layouts (minus spin discs, of course), but Dragon’s Keep suffers from total flow dissonance. Thankfully, there’s one other table, and unlike Dragon’s Keep, it’s a keeper.

The highlight of the set isn’t Space Cadet, at least if you’re a fan of pinball. Skullduggery proves that the team that made Space Cadet actually “gets” pinball and is capable of making a table that plays to the strengths of the engine while still feeling like a true 90s coin-op pin. Had I played Full Tilt in the correct order, it would have been only the second game to achieve “flow” as I define it. Skullduggery features a delightful variety of shots spread across its four-flipper design. The transition shooting and some drop targets boldly placed along a curved wall are just fantastic, especially with this rebound-heavy engine. Despite CLEARLY being the stronger table, I think I get why Space Cadet was chosen as the Windows pack-in. Skullduggery lacks the pick-up-and-play, casual mayhem of Space Cadet. Still, it’s such a shame that so few people experienced Skullduggery, which was easily Gliner’s best pin.

Still, it’s Space Cadet everyone remembers. Is it a great pinball table? Probably not by the standards of elite real tables, as Space Cadet requires a little too much luck. But there’s no denying Space Cadet is legitimately fun as a casual video pin, and it actually makes perfect sense why it’s so memorable. It has just enough exciting shots to be addictive and, as far as I could tell, no outright cheapness to be demoralizing. It’s like how the two highest grossing movies are Avatar and Avengers: End Game. Not exactly the pinnacle of achievement in the annals of cinema as an art form, but something about them holding the all-time box office title isn’t embarrassing, either. That’s Space Cadet in a nutshell. That’s why I’m totally fine with it being the mental image of pinball for a generation of PC owners who had no idea they were actually playing one of the best video pinball games of all-time.
Verdict: YES!
Ranking: #15 of 125
Percentile: 88%

The Getaway: High Speed II
Platform: Game Boy*
Released December, 1995
Developed by Unexpected Development
Published by Williams
Never Released Outside United States
NEVER BEEN RELEASED

*Despite what the box art says, there’s no Super Game Boy support. In fact, if you attempt to override it, the placeholder data used by Unexpected Development will load the border and colors for PGA European Tour.

From the studio that brought you Shaq Fu. Not even the famous versions of Shaq Fu! The Game Boy Shaq Fu! Unexpected Development’s credits page made me feel sorry for them. Imagine you’re all excited to be a game maker and the only assignments you can get are Game Boy ports nobody would want. Stuff like Spider-Man/X-Men: Arcade’s Revenge or Beethoven (the St. Bernard movie). Getaway: High Speed II, a port of the real life 1992 Steve Ritchie classic, was the studio’s final Game Boy title before they attempted to move on to porting 3DO games to Saturn/PlayStation. They immediately shut down after one game. And that’s a shame because, given the limitations of the Game Boy, they did a really good job porting a fairly difficult table. Seriously, this was a LOT better than the NES High Speed. No game-killing live enemies among other things.

This really is a straight-port of Getaway, a table that consistently earns MASTERPIECE ratings by the Pinball Chick team regardless of the platform and is one of the most beloved and cherished pins ever. Not exactly a table you would expect an angle-for-angle Game Boy remake that plays well enough to not suck, but that’s exactly what this is. The degree of difficulty was so high and there were so many ways this could go wrong. The fact that they turned out a fun game is astonishing. They kind of nailed the layout and the angles related to it! I mean, as much as you can within the limitations of the Game Boy. They even included some Getaway-specific idiosyncrasies that define the table, like the kickback launching the ball straight into the Burn Rubber saucer. Or like what’s happening right here:

On a real Getaway table, that orbit rejects shots that aren’t made at a high speed. When the Game Boy title did the same thing, it made me do a double take. It was as lifelike as you could expect on this hardware. But hell, I don’t know why I’m so surprised. Many of the shots off the flippers in Game Boy Getaway feel true to the real table, and even the rebounding angles feel correct. I literally couldn’t believe it as it was happening. It’s certainly not perfect, as you can’t pass or do live catches. If you try to do a post transfer, you’ll be disappointed to see the ball go up and down like a reverse yo-yo. Set your expectations accordingly.

But in terms of the shooting angles and defense, you can totally tell that Williams provided the studio with an office copy of Getaway that they played the sh*t out of and adjusted their port accordingly. If the Game Boy had just a little more horsepower, this could have contended for a top 15 ranking. Okay, so you get five balls instead of three and the table provided way too many extra balls. So many extra balls that I kind of wondered if the table gained sentience and was holding me hostage. But once the novelty of playing a shockingly accurate original Game Boy port of Getaway wore off, I couldn’t help but feel heartbroken by all the technical limitations they couldn’t overcome that nearly ruined the overall experience.

Simply put: GB Getaway can’t handle multiball physically or spiritually. In the physical sense, balls don’t interact at all (except one time it sure seemed like one knocked another towards the flippers). That means no juggling and no air defense. As if that’s bad enough, the performance of the game takes a massive hit. Slowdown during multiball is BRUTAL, which sucks the excitement out of what is normally one of the sport’s most exciting multiballs. In the spiritual sense, there wasn’t much excitement left without ball interaction anyway. Granted, most 90s tables rely heavily on the difficulty that comes with managing three balls at once for excitement, but Getaway is especially reliant on multiball and the timing issues it introduces. All of that is gone in the Game Boy version.

It’s a total bastardization of one of the sport’s all-time great multiballs. In fact, it goes the opposite direction. When you put a ball in the supercharger in the Game Boy title, it takes FOREVER to complete its laps and provides you with plenty of time to settle down the other balls. Assuming you can even see them.

Without the camera showing enough of the screen, too many multiball sessions ended when balls just came flying into the flipper zone from off-screen. The nudge is effective but you don’t have enough time to react and can’t possibly know where the rebounds are coming from. And when you do have control, you’re likely shooting blind because the camera is too far away to see the targets.

Once that initial shock that the angles were right wore off, I have to admit that Getaway wasn’t as good as I thought it was turning out. It’s still a very easy YES! but don’t expect too much from it. I have to admit that the studio name behind Getaway was fitting. Unexpected Development really missed their calling doing ports of pinball machines. When it’s just one ball, Getaway plays relatively fast and accurately. Too bad Getaway is NOT a single-ball game. Dammit. It’s so deflating how much fun is lost when multiball starts. It just kills the buzz GB Getaway has going for it. Did I still have fun? Sure, but I mostly wished these guys had better hardware to work with, or a table more suitable to this engine.
Verdict: YES!
Ranking: #38 of 125
Percentile: 70%

Ruiner Pinball
Platform: Atari Jaguar
Released December 15, 1995
Designed by Mike Baker and Scott Corley
Developed by High Voltage Software
Published by Atari
Included in Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration

Co-Designer Scott Corley only had one other known gaming credit before transitioning to the boardroom. He was in charge of programming for Lego Racers on the Nintendo 64. I f*cking loved Lego Racers as a kid! So, no matter what I say here, Mr. Corley, you’re a-okay in my books! I wanted to say that before I said that Ruiner Pinball lives up to its name. It’s one of the absolute worst video pinball games of all-time in a vacuum. When you consider it’s a game released a couple weeks before the calendar rolled over to 1996, on an allegedly powerful game console, yet it has physics that would be embarrassing on the NES, Ruiner Pinball becomes genuinely pitiful.

PATHETIC! Absolutely pathetic. It’s like they realized at some point they had created a pinball engine that would be embarrassing in the late 80s, let alone the mid 90s, AND they didn’t include enough stuff on the table to actually shoot at (or couldn’t get the shooting angles quite right) so they just decided to flood the game with live targets. Except they’re not even really targets. They’re just just things that get in the way of the actual pinball action. It’s like a bunch of miniature toddlers waving to get your attention in the middle of the game. Hey dropping bombs, you’re distracting me from these terrible shooting physics!

Ruiner Pinball is bad in every way you can imagine video pinball going bad. It’s incredibly ugly even for a Jaguar game. The shooting angles are too limited and the ball behavior off the flippers is often detached from reality. Part of that is the ball is bouncy instead of rolling smoothly, and part of that is the flippers sometimes feel dead. Their desire to have large sprites was especially foolish because the actual scale of the table makes almost all the shooting completely blind AND the table is too big for this layout.

That’s actually only the bottom screen of the absolutely massive Tower table. It’s so big that I thought this was one of those games like Family Pinball or Pinball Quest where you have to manually move the flippers up to the next level. But that’s not the case. You just have to shoot the ball up multiple screens to see the targets. Not that there’s many targets to shoot. It’s so gimmicky. Ruiner made up for the lifeless table by stapling a second crappy table to it. Tower makes up for its crappiness by nailing a second crappy table on top of it.

Tower plays even worse than Ruiner. Most of these scrolling pinball engines see you shooting blindly, but Tower requires you to shoot REALLY blind. Yes, in real pinball, there’s tables that are built around long shots (my dad calls them “Long Johns” after the golfer John Daly, who was famous for his long drives). Red & Ted’s Road Show or Zen Studios’ Mandalorian table come to mind. But what you’re shooting at on the top most screen are bumpers and roll over targets. If you shoot the ball too hard up this screen, the round wall will grab the ball (because that’s what round walls do in pinball, even pinball with sh*tty physics) and send it back down to the bottom screen via a chute. This is the top screen:

This is a fairly basic design question: what is even the incentive to attempt to climb it? If you’re going to have a gigantic pinball table and not start players at the top, you better f*cking have some exciting shots up there. But the top of Tower features the type of targets you would expect a ball to encounter in a normal-sized table. Only, you don’t plunge to reach these. The plunger puts you well, well below them. To give you an idea of how big this table is, when you die and the camera pulls back, you can’t even see the full table. Now with that in mind, look at all that playfield and remember that YOU CAN’T EVEN SEE FLIPPERS IN THAT SCREEN!

Ruiner Pinball broke my spirit. This is so illogically designed that I don’t even know why they wanted to do a pinball game. They clearly had no clue what they were doing from a design perspective. I suspect a lot of the problems with it come from its main gimmick. No, not crazy gluing two tables together. No, not having one table sit on another table’s shoulders. Ruiner Pinball has a state-of-the-art picture-in-picture display that shows you what you’re supposed to be aiming at. It pops up whenever you light something. I supposed if I HAVE to say something nice about Ruiner, it does make it clear what’s lit. But maybe they wouldn’t need this if they hadn’t made the gap between the flippers and the targets multiple screens tall.

Ruiner Pinball doesn’t even have the excuse of being a launch game. This came out over two years into the Jaguar’s lifespan, and it’s so ugly and it plays like such an old, old game. By the time Ruiner came out, video pinball physics had reached the point where they were starting to get really good. This throws all that progress out the window, and it’s a long way if that window is on the Tower table. It doesn’t even shoot or scroll as smoothly as Devil’s Crush from a half-decade earlier. It’s the worst possible throwback. I’m not penalizing it for how bad it looks or how the sound effects made me think of a 3 year old with access to one of those wacky noise sound boards or even for having physics that feel out of date by the standards of 1995. This is a feature about playing old games so it really doesn’t matter to me when it came out. If Ruiner had come out in 1988, it would still be one of the worst pinball games ever made. I’m flat-out f*cking pissed that this limped onto Atari 50 while Atari’s arcade pinball games didn’t even really get so much as a mention. What a travesty that is. You have got to right this wrong, Digital Eclipse.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #107
Percentile: 14%

Pinball Hazard
Platform: Amiga
Released in 1996
Designed by Adam Slosarski
Developed by Magic Image
Published by Mirage Interactive
Never Released Outside of Europe
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

I think at this point it’s safe to say that Pinball Dreams was influential on the home computer scene. Pinball Hazard is yet another game that copies its formula, though it thankfully doesn’t have the heavy gravity issue that the last couple Amiga games had. Actually, Hazard has other quirks that led to us calling it “Pinball Haphazard.” The flippers worked and never failed to send the ball up the playfield. If you think that’s a weird thing to mention, I’m saying that because literally almost every flip, this happens:

It’s so strange. There’s been lots of weird behavior in this feature, but the ball looking like it’s going to clip right through the flippers nearly every damn shot is among the most bizarre things I’ve witnessed in working on Classic Video Pinball Games: The Definitive Review. Oh, the ball never actually goes through the flippers. They always reliably shoot the ball. This also only happens when flipping. For rebounds and trapping, the ball rolls across the top of the flipper like it’s supposed to. Again, weird, and totally immersion breaking, but not a deal breaker overall. In fact, Pinball Hazard was fine. Okay, BARELY fine, but “barely fine” still counts as “fine.” You can tell that the designers weren’t exactly students of pinball design. After a fairly conservative first table, Vampire, the second table gets a little more experimental. Look at these:

Speed, the second table, has not one but two short ramps inserted in the most awkward possible spots on the walls. They totally feel like band-aids added when the designer realized the physical outline of the wall would result in a table that had all the flow of a backed up toilet. Those two elements broke my father, who could not stop laughing at how clumsy they are. Literally tears streaming down his cheeks from laughing, but you know what? They worked!

Speed might be the most surreal table in this feature. It’s like a scrap heap of elements that make sense for other tables that were thrown together in a way that should be miserable to shoot. Dave was CERTAIN this would be unplayable. On top of that, like all four tables in Pinball Hazard, the scoresheet makes little sense. I’m not even joking when I say the first thing that happened off the first plunge on all four tables was I got an extra ball. Like, it might as well be a feature that you automatically get an EB every game. Maybe the developer did that because it takes at least one ball to come to terms with the bouncy physics. Pinball Hazard has such an erratic living ball that it feels like a game that fell out of a time warp from 1990.

The third table, Tomcat, is almost as wacky with the placement of its elements. It was probably too easy as the ramps are so much bigger than the ball itself and laid along angles that makes them a total cinch to shoot. For all the problems with the angles and physics of Vampire and Speed, at least there’s a challenge to making their shots. Tomcat (which Angela dubbed “F-This Tomcat.” She wasn’t a fan) is one of the easiest wood chopping tables I’ve played yet. You might have also noticed that most of the inlane/outlane walls are taller than the slingshots. Only Vampire didn’t do this, and consequently it’s really the only challenging defensive table. For the other three, getting rebounds is too easy and you don’t really have to defend against the slingshots because of those tall walls.

The final table, Fight, features a variety of video modes. Too many, actually, that are too easy to activate and distract from the act of shooting. Then again, maybe it’s a welcome distraction. This is an equally nutty layout that has a cup that really kills the pace of the table. It takes FOREVER for a ball to spin around the inside of the cup before the shot is actually sunk. It has the same problem as Tomcat in that the defense game is nonexistent. In both tables, too much of the upper playfield directly feeds the flippers without the need to stress whether or not you can grab a rebound, so there’s no tension or urgency to them. My father’s theory is that the guy who designed these tables was so proud of all the ramps and elements he arranged that he wanted people to make the shots and made it as easy as possible. Like I said, it’s pretty clear this is made by people who like pinball but don’t really understand it all that much.

Really, all four tables are boring and three of the four are kind of janky. I originally had Pinball Hazard as a YES! and the lowest-ranked YES! game. Sadly, I always replay games before hitting publish. I replayed it, was bored to death, wondered what I was thinking, and, to the relief of my family who thought I’d lost my f*cking mind, changed my verdict and kicked it down the ranking, though not as far down as you would think. Pinball Hazard has an indie vibe and it’s far from the worst I’ve played, but it’s boring and kind of awful. But I’d choose it over quite a few pretty famous video pins, for whatever that’s worth.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #54 of 125
Percentile: 57%

Pinball Prelude
Platform: Amiga CD32
Released in 1996
Designed by Philip Sharpe, Ian Jenkins, and Valan Chan
Developed by Effigy
Never Released Outside Europe
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Another late addition and one of the more obscure games in this feature, Pinball Prelude has the single greatest cover art in the history of video games. Hang this sh*t in the Louvre.

And what’s really weird about that absolute masterpiece above is that they clearly put real effort into the graphics and table designs within the game. The pre-rendered backgrounds, visually loud and distracting as they are, look fine for the time period and the limitations of the Amiga. The idea is there’s three tables, one that represents the past, one the present (of the mid ’90s) and one from the future. The Past is the dullest table. It has a giant triceratops bash toy in the front but most of the other targets are unmarked and hidden by a bland rock wall and a slightly less bland waterfall.

But, the sheer insanity of Pinball Prelude is still on full display. This includes things like transforming the ball into a rubber ball that bounces like flubber around the table. The second table can do this too. The ball can still drain while this is happening, mind you. It’s sheer chaos and such a bad choice that it actually had us howling with laughter. What’s really bonkers is the layout doesn’t lend itself to this idea at all and it lasts for twenty seconds of just watching this ball hop off the walls like it’s on crack. There’s just nothing in the center of the playfield but that one dinosaur. It’s dead space and a total slog to play. Maybe they added the rubber ball because without it the players might have slipped into a coma.

Present is the best of the three tables, and even it’s just pure, unadulterated lunacy. The rubber ball can be activated here too and it’s even tougher to keep the ball alive with it. Again, it lasts twenty seconds! That’s a long time to keep a ball that’s demon-possessed alive on any table, let alone this one that’s so visually cluttered. It looks like one of those I Spy books that someone stuck flippers on top of. This is the second game in a row that has a cup, which is weird, and the best thing I can say about it is that it doesn’t take fifteen seconds for the ball to sink on it. It has what might be the most nonsensical element in the history of pinball: the foosball table.

There’s a target in front of the table that activates a timer, then you have to hit a ramp that delivers the ball to the table, which becomes a soccer ball that bounces around. When the timer starts, the game tells you if you want the home team or away team to win. The ball does the rubber ball thing AGAIN and bounces around the soccer field until it goes into a goal or just leaves. It might just leave. The thing is, you can’t move the players, so it’s just random chance whether or not you win or lose points in this element. It’s so stupid and it eats up so much time, and the worst part is it’s not worth the points it scores if you win. Their heart was in the right place because it’s something new and different but the execution couldn’t have been worse.

The biggest problem with Prelude is not marking any of the shots properly. The dinosaur table has basically no shots marked at all. The camera above points at a ramp, but otherwise, it’s not entirely clear what the object is. The same goes for Future, the final table and one of the most baffling pinball layouts in history. It’s nonsense. I still don’t know what the object is. I never got multiball on it. I presume it’s done by hitting these targets:

The problem with those targets is they seem to be the most flat saucers in the history of pinball. Sometimes they catch the ball and sometimes they don’t, and there’s nine of them. Because of how both the targets and the single flipper are placed, there’s not really shooting angles for all of them. Prelude’s overall physics are typical-for-the-era. All shooting, all rebounding, with no finesse like reliable passing. Stronger than, say, Pinball Mania, but nowhere near as smooth as Devil’s Crush from half-a-decade earlier. Prelude’s layouts aren’t really built to the strengths of its engine. As for the rest of Future, holy crap, where do I begin?

Christ, what a mess. Future is just a totally incomprehensible clusterf*ck of pre-rendered graphics with nothing to guide players. What’s the object? The f*ck if I know! As messy as the Present table was, I reached the point where I could break for 100,000,000+ points every game. But even after over an hour with Future, I had no idea what targets to aim for or how to get multiball going. I even did the unthinkable and turned the difficulty down to EASY and all that seemed to do was make the gravity lighter, which made the other two tables almost impossible to lose on.

But in Future, I kept losing balls to the mini-field with the nine saucers because the ball tends to hug the left wall, and if a ball drains on that mini-field, you lose the entire ball like it’s a normal drain. While I don’t think Pinball Prelude is a total wash since Present actually turns into an almost-okay table once you know what you’re doing, Past is too bland to be fun and Future was, ironically, anything but future proof.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #64 of 125
Percentile: 49%

Slam Tilt
Platform: Amiga
Released March, 1996*
Designed by Daniel Strandgren and Klaus Lyngeled
Developed by Liquid Dezign HB
Published by 21st Century Entertainment
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

*This is an estimate based on media coverage.

Slam Tilt was yet another Amiga game I didn’t originally have on my list because I didn’t realize it’s considered the final game in the Pinball Dreams series. “You’re going to do Slam Tilt, right? You have to do Slam Tilt!” the Amiga fans said. Guess what? The Amiga fans were right. At the time of its release, Slam Tilt was the greatest video pinball game ever made. And frankly, there’s nothing even close. The gap between it and the current #2, Psycho Pinball, is HUGE. Combining the best video pinball physics engine developed up to this point with the best tables designed up to this point, Slam Tilt feels like a turning point in the history of video pinball. It really helps that all four tables are VERY strongly designed. Outstanding job by Daniel Strandgren, a non-professional pinball designer. I’m blown away by his work here.

Now, set your expectations accordingly. Liquid Dezign clearly focused on having the best shooting and rebounding possible over anything resembling ball handling. That’s fine. That’s exactly what every other elite video pinball developer was doing during this era. Hell, Zen Studios has that same problem now. Passing in Slam Tilt is basically shooting in a way that you know you can grab the rebound with the other flipper.

With that in mind, the shooting angles and rebounding are very lifelike. VERY lifelike. I was especially impressed by the most reliable dead flips in this feature so far. What a difference it makes too. Along with the fine tuned shooting angles and layouts that complement those angles, Slam Tilt became only the second game in this feature to achieve no-doubt-about-it flow.

And the designers clearly recognized that they had flow too, because these tables put the heaviest premium on shooting combos. Every table has a mode that’s only “keep the combo going until we tell you that you’ve won.” Usually there’s something chasing you on the DMD that you’re trying to outrun. I’m not the biggest fan of those types of modes, but for what it’s worth, Slam Tilt certainly has tables good enough to accommodate that style. Every table also rewards you heavily for combos with an extra ball on your 20th and post-ball bonuses. Since all four tables are joy to shoot, honestly if Slam Tilt had better ball handling, I think it’d run the table from here and be the #1 classic video pinball game.

Besides not being able to pass, Slam Tilt has two fairly big flaws. The first is poor scoring balance. Take Pirate, the second table. There were non-lit shots that would score 500,000 points when super jackpots to complete modes score 50,000,000. That’s AWFUL scoring. All four sheets need a major overhaul with complete rebalancing. This goes for the after-ball bonuses too. Scoring can be extremely back-ended.

This is the first time I’ve had to say this in Classic Pinball Video Games: The Definitive Review, but the score sheets in Slam Tilt make for a terribly boring dueling experience since players aren’t incentivized against taking the lowest risk shots, lit or not lit, because they pay off either way. Since myself and Angela are competitive to the point of mental illness, our duel was a total slog that was only amusing because my father got angrier and angrier by how cowardly we were all playing. I really thought the veins in his forehead might burst. He came in 3rd, by the way. It’s because he didn’t play safe!

The second major problem is that three of the four tables pull the Super Pinball “one table re-themed and slightly remixed” design. Actually all four tables use the same style modes (except different style video modes) but specifically Mean Machines, The Pirate, and Ace of Space feel like they have similar shots laid out slightly differently. You can really feel it in the bat flippers, as all three of those tables really do feel like they’re repeating the same shots as the others. If I complained about that with Super Pinball, I have to here. Fair is fair.

With that said, they do a better job of feeling different than Super Pinball. Mean Machines is the best of the four tables, though it’s closer than I initially thought it would be. It’s a Japanese fan layout that doubles as the toughest shooter of the four. Oh, it flows like fine wine, but you have to earn that flow. It has a nice left/right cadence to it that feels reminiscent of a Dennis Nordman table. Seriously, it might be racing themed but it shares more DNA with something like White Water, a table I’m not normally a big fan of. But Mean Machines isn’t punishing like Nordman tables tend to be.

If you want punishment, try The Pirate, another Nordman-like with a few tight shots. Okay, so the theme integration is laughably awful. It’s a generic high seas theme that we’ve seen done a million times. The modes are pirate-themed. The DMD graphics are pirate themed. Only, for some reason, the main icon of the table is dressed like a f*cking superhero. It’s so jarring. Dave, a professional designer who puts the heaviest premium on proper theming, blew a gasket over it, comparing the character to Terrance and Phillip and ranting and raving in a language that I think might be English but I didn’t have a thesaurus nearby.

Pirate might have sh*t theming, but the shot selection is a lot of fun. My only knocks are that it shares a little too much DNA with Mean Machines and has the worst hot potato slingshots in this entire feature so far. It’s comical how much they’re capable of passing the ball before you get another shot.

Ace of Space is the third table that feels very similar to the other two, though it has one element that spoon-feeds the drain. It this:

Any shot that misses and rolls off that is likely to go straight down the drain unless you’re ready to nudge. I ate multiple TILTS thanks to this thing and, at first, I really didn’t like Ace of Space very much. Once I found the flow for it, it grew on me. It’s got some tricky shots to it, but again, it’s ultimately just a remix of the superior Mean Machines. Don’t mistake that for being bad. None of the three samey tables are bad at all. It’s just frustrating how similar they are.

Only Night of the Demon shares minimal layout DNA with the others. It’s the only two-flipper layout in the set. I should also note that I was the only one in my family who voted for Mean Machines as the best table. Everyone else voted for Night of the Demon, with Angela enjoying it so much she threatened bodily harm on me if I didn’t give Slam Tilt a YES! At this point, Pinball Hazard had a YES! so she was right to be worried, I guess.

As the Brian Eddy superfan Angela put it “it’s like how Attack From Mars would play without the saucer.” She’s not wrong. It’s like a pinball fantasy thought experiment come to life. But its simple layout and shooting angles pair perfectly with this all shooting/all rebounding engine to make one of the most satisfying pinball experiences anyone could have in the mid-90s. OKAY FINE, in replaying I changed my vote to it for best table in the game.

I’m totally gutted that Slam Tilt never got a console release. I’d never even heard of it before I started this feature, and if not for passionate fans insisting I include it, there’s a chance I would have missed it. At the time of its release, it ran away with the title of “best video pinball game ever made.” I’m genuinely curious what ever became of the designer? Daniel Strandgren’s game credits end in 2008 with a Barbie game. If he reads this, seriously Daniel, awesome job on Slam Tilt but what the f*ck, man? You seriously missed your calling as a pinball designer.
Verdict: YES!
Holds Holds title of Greatest Pinball Video Game Ever Made from circa March, 1996 to April 5, 1996
Ranking: #6 of 125
Percentile: 95%

Extreme Pinball
Platform: PlayStation
Released March 28, 1996
Designed by Terry Cumming and James Schmalz
Developed by High Score Productions
Published by Electronic Arts
NO MODERN RELEASE

Extreme Pinball is a port of an MS-DOS game, only that’s really no excuse for how boring it is. There were some good MS-DOS pinball games. Extreme Pinball would not be among them. What exactly is “extreme” about it? Besides the gravity, I mean. We’re back to heavy physics and limited shooting angles like it’s 1991. The physics never quite shake the sensation of playing pinball with a cannonball. At first, I wondered if that was tied to the medieval theme of the first table, but truly awful physics dominated the entire Extreme Pinball experience. Look at this hop the ball makes (every after the hop is me rewinding to see it again):

I didn’t nudge the table there. The ball just….. Hopped! It was like the ball itself wished it was in a platform game. And a crowd cheered, as if the sound waves raised the ball off the ground. Stuff like that frustrates me about Extreme Pinball (Austin Powers and KISS will eventually do the same thing with a different engine, so maybe’s a PlayStation quirk?!). Not that it could have been amazing, but the terrible decisions with physics and gravity assured a NO! despite some fun elements and genuinely good shots.

Yep, that’s a loop de-loop in the middle picture. Monkey Mayhem made me roll my eyes at how obviously it wanted to be based on Donkey Kong Country, but I have to admit that there were multiple shots in it that made me sit up in my chair. It’s too bad the physics and shooting angles are so poorly programmed. There’s no backhands. You can’t pass. The tips of flippers constantly fail. And LOOK HOW FAST IT MOVES!

I don’t know if they thought that a fast ball would make the game more exciting. It doesn’t. Like, at all. Assuming it doesn’t outright give you a headache, the snapping camera just sucks the fun out of making shots because you don’t have any time to process what you’re doing. It’s up and down and up and down and it’s so exhausting. It makes me appreciate what Pinball Fantasies and its ilk accomplished, because getting the speed right is apparently hard to do. And is that f*cking Garbage Pail Kid in the third pic?

Thankfully, you seem to get unlimited nudge, even though you’re not supposed to. The instruction book says you can TILT, but one of the first things I did in every single game review you just read that features a nudge is to shake the  sh*t out of a table to get a feel for how effective it is and how much it can handle before TILTing. If I do enough to assume there is no TILT, that’s telling. Maybe the instruction book’s warning of a TILT is as sincere as when my parents threatened that Santa Claus wouldn’t come if I didn’t behave, but Christmas always happened right on schedule even though I was so bad.

The generic, by-the-numbers themes, slow gameplay, and boring shot selection made Extreme Pinball genuinely exhausting to play. You can have boilerplate pinball themes and still give them energy and pizazz. The closest Extreme Pinball comes is probably the Urban Chaos table, but even it flows like a bowel obstruction. There’s just no exciting shots at all and the highest-yielding shots are low risk because they separate the table into two zones, with the upper one being not just low risk, but zero risk, and that’s just boring.

Look at Medieval Madness. Nobody can accuse that of lacking in personality, because, get this: you can start with a generic base theme and finish somewhere above that. Now compare Medieval Madness to Medieval Knights, which is Extreme Pinball’s take on the swords and sorcery trope that’s practically as commonplace in pinball as the ball itself. The nonsensical split at the top of the playfield that makes it look like one table ripped itself out of another table is bad enough, but what’s your goal besides just making the point counter go up?

What are you shooting at? I had to consult the instruction book, but the whole point of pinball and having lights is to make it intuitive and guide the players. Because the table goes up and down as much as it does, good luck spotting targets at all. On top of all that, this is far more limited in shooting than, say, Pinball Dreams from years and years earlier. It’s very unimpressive for a 1992 game, but for a 1996 PlayStation game? It’s downright embarrassing.

Pinball Extreme isn’t intuitive at all. It’s also not suitable for multiball AT ALL, yet every one of these damn tables does a terrible multiball that you shoot completely blind, and the Jackpot shots are especially misguided. They’re placed in spots that require the supplemental flippers, which only makes sense if you could see the whole table at once. To not shoot it completely blind, you have to launch both balls at the same time. That’s Extreme Pinball in a nutshell: flailing blindly for “fun.” Hell, in four hours of gameplay, I never even figured out why the balls change shape. The instruction book doesn’t say. You know what? It might look like a 1991 game, but Extreme Pinball would have still been a slog in 1991, or any year for that matter.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #75 of 125
Percentile: 40%

True Pinball
aka Tekkyuu: True Pinball
Remake of Pinball Illusions (Amiga)
Platform: PlayStation, Sega Saturn
Released April 5, 1996 (Saturn) May 31, 1996 (PSX)
Table Designs by Andreas Axelsson and Olof Gustafsson
Directed by Fredrik Liliegren
Developed by Digital Illusions
Published by Ocean 
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Dave confidently predicted True Pinball would snatch the crown as the greatest video pinball game ever made at the time it came out. He was right, though he makes no promises it’ll reign for very long. So how did a remake of Pinball Illusions rise to the top of its genre? You’ll remember that Pinball Illusions had issues with shots that had no attachment to reality. Not every shot, but enough to be notable. That has been completely fixed with True Pinball. Every shot off the flippers goes where you want it to. True Pinball is also the first no-doubt-about it example of realistic ball handling. On some tables, including Law ‘n Justice (seen above), passing in the form of post transfers is finally possible. So, the perfect video pinball game? Nope, but we’re getting closer.

No, True Pinball might be the new #1, but it’s VERY beatable thanks to its massive problem with nonsensical rejections. The ball will fly cleanly up a ramp on any of the four tables with the speed and momentum to easily complete the shot, only it’ll throw on the brakes and reject on a dime at the apex of the climb. It doesn’t look realistic at all, because it’s not. True Pinball appears to be the first game in this feature that programmed spin into the ball, but this also seems to be tied to what’s happening with these nonsense rejections. When the ball rejects, it’s spinning downward while traveling upward. This should not cause a rejection, and to explain why, I have to get into the weeds of real pinball.

In real life, pinball plays the way it does because the stainless steel balls have no grip on the wooden table or any surface that doesn’t have rubber (like slingshots or the flippers). They don’t generate enough friction, so when you shoot the ball, even if it’s rolling counter to the direction you shot, if the shot is a flush hit that experiences little to no interference from walls, the speed of the shot should be greater than the amount of friction the spinning generates. These aren’t rubber tires on a car. There’s nothing in a stainless steel pinball that should be able to grab the surface to cause the stop. Also, although the ball is spinning, it’s also sliding thanks to the lack of friction. But none of that matters in True Pinball. Take a look at the following clip. The funny part? The rejections look EXACTLY like what happens to new tables in Pinball FX before they get patched, and it’s probably the same thing happening. It’s hard to program realistic pinball, then and now.

So what’s actually happening? We didn’t come to a clear understanding. In True Pinball, either the spin causes rubber-like gripping or the gravity itself has too much friction OR they simply miscalculated the gravity at the peaks of the ramps. Possibly some combination of all three. When the rejection happens, it doesn’t slowly reject, but instead looks like a ball ricocheting off an invisible trampoline that sends the ball back at the flippers with a return speed that’s just as fast as the original shooting speed. You can see it prominently in the full game clips in this review.

The shadow of those rejections looms large over True Pinball. It shatters immersion and it’s common enough that it absolutely gets in the way of what should be a near-perfect video pinball game. There are rejections in True Pinball that look lifelike. But rejections that have the speed and clearance needed to complete the shot and rejecting suddenly at the peak of a ramp happens uniformly across all four tables. As Angela said with sadness in her voice “ain’t no patch coming for these.” Indeed.

I need to stress that not every shot rejects that way, and when it happens, it tends to happen in streaks. There were games where it was relatively rare (a fourth option: Angela thinks it starts happening more once you need to nudge defensively, causing something to change in the ball behavior). But it happens often enough to be very frustrating. As annoying as it is, True Pinball is still breathtaking in how well it plays. It really helps that all four tables are especially strong. That’s in part thanks to the new 3D camera angle, but these were already elite table designs.

Law ‘n Justice, a futuristic police theme, has a layout that feels exactly like a tangled sci-fi highway and a selection of shots that perfectly mimic a high-speed chase. It really is something special and, if not for the rejection issue, this sucker would flow like melted butter. It’s SO good. If Pinball FX did an ideal port of it without any technical issues, it would immediately jump into their top five non-coin-op pins.

Babewatch feels exactly like a tribute to Data East/Sega Pinball from 1992 to 1996. Especially the works of John Borg, who went on to be one of Stern’s main designers and one of the greatest pinball designers of the 21st century. Although this was the second strongest table in the Amiga build of Illusions, this was everyone’s least favorite of the four tables in True Pinball. It’s still strong but makes for a weak multiball game. It just generally lacks exciting shots except the casino shot on the balcony (where the roulette wheel is). It speaks volumes that the worst table in True Pinball still is a very solid table, but not a thriller by any means.

Neither is Extreme Sports, but what Extreme Sports lacks in exciting shots it makes up for with exciting modes and a layout that lends itself so much better to ball management. Again, it’s very Data East/Sega Pinball-like. Extreme Sports actually has a legitimate design flaw with the pop bumpers (third pic above). Our theory is that they were trying to create their version of a Lawlor Trail like in Funhouse/Addams Family but didn’t understand the geometry of it. The ball gets caught in those bumpers for far too long, killing the pace of the table. They’re just too close together, so there’s no room for the ball to knock itself away from them without an extended bang cycle.

Despite this, Extreme Sports plays so much better in True Pinball that we all voted it third best. Meanwhile, the table that got the most first place votes wasn’t, in fact, Law ‘n Justice. While Angela and myself preferred it, Dad, Dave, and Sasha the Kid all enthusiastically voted for Vikings, which was in the MS-DOS version of Illusions but NOT the Amiga version. Ouch. Personally, I preferred Law ‘n Justice’s ultra-fast-pace and silky-smooth transition shots, but I also totally understand why Vikings won the vote. It’s the ultimate pinball all-star game with elements from all kinds of famous designers, old school and new school. It’s a table that lends itself specifically to multiball, which is a good thing because it’s VERY multiball heavy. But both Angela and I felt it was too easy.

In fact, Angela reached the Wizard on literally her second game and actually had to lay down the game so that I could move on to the next review. She was only on her second ball (still technically Ball #1) and had banked four or five extra balls. I genuinely believe she could have kept that game going indefinitely. Angela is also the best Pinball Chick team silverballer by far, so take that with a grain of salt. Vikings DOES have the widest variety of shots and a unique flow that’s a lot of fun. With its easy-to-achieve multiballs and a layout that lends itself to juggling, I think Vikings could make a great trainer table for newcomers.

So with four strong tables and the best physics engine video pinball had seen up to this point, True Pinball stands tall as the best video pinball ever at the time it was released. Thank God that, with at least forty games to go, there’s still so much room for improvement that I won’t get bored with everything left. True Pinball’s issues aren’t just limited to the rejections, either. There’s a lack of scoring balance as well, and while it’s not as bad as Slam Tilt, the risk/reward factors are just not there. Basic lit-shots in modes pay off too much and post-ball bonuses pay off WAY too much.

What is with overloading bonus points in these high-quality video pins? If Lyman Sheats had worked Law ‘n Justice’s scoresheet, it’d probably be hands down my favorite video pin ever. I mean if they fixed the rejections too. Still, I would love to see these tables make a come back. Flow is a timeless aspect of pinball, and these tables, especially the first and fourth ones, have flow to a degree video pinball hadn’t seen up to this point. I loved Slam Tilt, but True Pinball blows it completely away. Hail the new champion, at least for now. Pro Pinball is literally about to debut.
Verdict: YES!
Holds title of Greatest Pinball Video Game Ever Made from April 5, 1996 to February, 1998*
Ranking: #4 of 125
Percentile: 97%
*Technically it might have lost the title in October of 1997 but I didn’t play the PC version of the ultimate champion of this feature.

Pro Pinball: The Web
Sometimes called simply “Pro Pinball” or “Pro Pinball 1”
Platform: PlayStation, Saturn, Windows
Released July, 1996
Designed by Adrian Barritt and Graham Rice
Developed by Cunning Developments
Published by Interplay
NO MODERN RELEASE 
Review Played ONLY on PlayStation

We’re now entering the single-table simulation era of video pinball that will dominate the landscape for a while. This business model for pouring all resources into one single table that strives to simulate the look and feel of a real physical pinball machine was created by Pro Pinball: The Web. It’s the first of four Pro Pinball tables, and it’s the most old school of the group. Most of the table feels like a 1980s widebody with a couple token ramps thrown in for good measure to make it feel modern. Modern being by the standards of the mid-90s. The problems with Pro Pinball: The Web are entirely on its physics engine. If True Pinball was the ancestor to Pinball FX, THIS is the ancestor to The Pinball Arcade. It’s VERY floaty. How floaty? Look at this screenshot:

In this mode, I have to hit the drop targets in the upper right side of the playfield. This screenshot is me missing the drop targets so badly that the ball ended up in the bumpers. It’s a timed mode, and so look at the timer at twenty-nine seconds. And mind you, I didn’t take a screenshot the very moment it went into the bumpers so you can add a second or two.

After over twenty seconds were eaten up, the ball is finally coming back down to the flippers. This is not a rarity in The Web. It happens all the time. It’s not like the ball was banging constantly off the bumpers, either. It was only a few bounces up and down the rollovers, really. The ball is too floaty and too slow for timed modes that have such a short timer. This could have easily been fixed by made shots adding time, but they didn’t go that route. And frankly, the shooting angles are a little on the limited side and we’re back to having limited ball handling abilities. So the nice variety of modes feels kind of wasted by the whole table coming across like an unfinished prototype of a pinball engine.

A bigger problem is that The Web is that the shot selection isn’t amazing. Their commitment to making a realistic table was admirable, but common sense should make it obvious that some pinball elements are only charming if done on a real life physical table.Take the magnetic shot, where the ball is stopped by magnets and teed-up perfectly for the bat flipper to shoot the loop with in a way that’s impossible to miss.

It sounds fun on paper, but it’s only fun if it’s real life and you’re seeing a real pinball frozen to the middle of the table in defiance of gravity. It’s a magic trick, and those are fun if you present them cleverly. But the idea doesn’t translate at all digitally because it’s not a real ball being caught by a hidden magnet, and it’s not even fun for nostalgia because The Web isn’t based on a real table. A better use of magnets, even fake ones, would have been using them to contribute to defense, like a magna-save feature. Slam Tilt utilized them to great effect and those aren’t real tables. Here, the magnets are basically free points you earn by shooting a less difficult target to light them. That’s boring.

If The Web had been a +1 for a larger collection where it didn’t have to stand on its own, I would have liked it more. As a stand-alone table? Meh, it’s okay. We all really liked dueling on it, as it was competitive and fun. But once you get the timing down on the nudge, it’s absurdly clockable. The key shots are set along primary angles with no real stand out angles or targets. With its hodgepodge of targets that don’t connect well to each-other, it really comes across like a glorified prototype, because that’s exactly what it is. It’s a decent prototype. I’ll give it that, but when I had what I needed for this review, I was also happy to be done with it.
Verdict: YES!
Ranking: #27 of 125
Percentile: 78%

Pinball Graffiti
Platform: Sega Saturn
Released July 12, 1996
Directed by Hiroshi Fukutsu
Developed by Pack-in-Video
Never Released in North America
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Because the famous Saturn pinball game Last Gladiators got an updated re-release in 1997, I decided to drop the original from this feature and play only the updated game. Consequently, that makes Pinball Graffiti my first ever Sega Saturn review. AND, it came out the day after my 7th birthday. That means if I had been into gaming at the age of 7 and I’d lived in Japan and had been a Sega Saturn owner, I STILL would not have gotten it for my birthday! I keep telling everyone that July 11 is the greatest day! I also used to get a free Slurpee on my birthday because 7-Eleven, get it? But then they made it so everyone gets a free Slurpee on July 11, and I’ve never gotten over that. THAT WAS MY SPECIAL THING! I’M A JULY 11 BABY, NOT YOU, YOU F*CKING SLURPEE MOOCHERS!

Anyway, Pinball Graffiti is pretty f*cking terrible. It features three tables that you can play separately OR you can play over and over with an RPG/visual novel framing device. The story is about a college basketball star who rescues a child by pushing them out of the way of a speeding car. The car instead hits him, making it so he can no longer play basketball. He hits rock bottom, drops out of college, and spends his time hanging out in bars, where he spots a pinball machine and decides to become a world pinball champion. I’m not making any of this up.

Given the quality of these machines, he should have just opted for the alcoholism. After the story is explained, you’re dropped off on a map and have to decide how to spend your time. You have $10,000 and, if you need more money, you can.. hustle basketball? Wait, hold on, because I thought the whole point of the story was he couldn’t play basketball anymore. He can still throw-down a two handed dunk even though his leg got run over? What the f*ck?! Then again, the “basketball” is laughably bad. It’s framed like a one-on-one mini-game where you can work your way past the defender and dunk the ball. If the defender ever actually tries to make a stop, I never saw it. Maybe he studied under James Harden.

For this time investment, I lost a day of in-game time and quite a lot of HP, and got a measly $100 for more than doubling the goal of scoring 15 points. A hotel in the in-game city, where you recover lost HP, is $90. As far as I could tell, basketball is the only mini-game, though the rules change from town to town. In another town, it was “make five shots.” I was going to quit the RPG sooner than I did but I saw that the shop sold a pinball table for $10,000, and I’d already spent money on other things so I flew to San Francisco to enter a pinball tournament.

Except the tournament was on the 15th day of the month, so I just slept until the tournament. And here’s where the problem with the whole framing device is revealed: there’s only three tables in Pinball Graffiti. A story mode like this would have made sense for something like Pinball FX or Zaccaria where there’s hundreds of tables. Playing these three tables over and over would be agony. Pinball Graffiti is trying to do a full 3D, polygon-based pinball simulation, but it’s so slow and so clunky that I had to actually play other Saturn games to make sure my emulator was working at full speed. It was. Yipes.

The physics are actually not as bad as I expected given the jankiness of it all, but the layouts are actually pretty terrible. You can tell Basketball Legend was the table they were proudest of, but it’s so bland and basic, with small flippers and limited shooting angles. The main hook outside of the RPG stuff is that there’s dynamic camera angles. When the ball does something, the game gives you an “action shot” like so:

That might have been a nice feature in Pro Pinball: The Web, but for Pinball Graffiti, it’s just a reminder of how ugly and bland the tables are. All three tables have a very heavy emphasis on multiball, but they’re too easy to activate. They’re literally just saucers along common angles, then you shoot ramps for a jackpot. You can REALLY feel how limited the table designs are in Card Master, the casino-themed table which allows you to keep adding balls in the middle of multiball as long as you knock down all the drop targets that are just lining one side of the center of the playfield. Just the act of keeping the balls alive will inevitably lead to them being knocked over. Believe it or not, this isn’t even the easiest multiball to get in the game, but it’s the easiest to keep going. You’ll notice in this screenshot that there’s a second score on the right side:

That was the top score of the tournament. The gag is that you don’t play last, so technically you don’t know what the winning score will be, but the game gives you a rough idea. They presumably did this so players keep going after they pass the high score. I still ended up laying down my game not long after this was taken because I really think I could have kept the multiball going forever. Or, if I did happen to lose, I could have just restarted it anyway since the drop targets are super safe to shoot. Additionally, I also got like 500,000,000 points in the after ball bonus. The players after me all scored in the 400M range. When I went to the next tournament, I had to wait sixteen in-game days to enter it, and when I did, it was the same table AGAIN and roughly the same goal scores even though it was the next class of tournament. And when I bought the table in the store:

I found out I couldn’t play it. It’s just a thing you get to say you got it. So it really is just these three tables. Then I stayed away from my home town of Los Angeles too long and my parents died. Again, I’m not even f*cking kidding. Frankly, if I was the only thing keeping them alive, I’m curious how THEY survived the main character getting run over by a car? Wouldn’t that have required an extended hospital stay on his part? Anyway, I quit the RPG and just fired up the final table, Circus Fantasia. It literally starts with a two-ball multiball. In only my second game of it, I got a ball stuck on a ramp and had to TILT to get it loose. In my fourth game, it happened again.

Circus Fantasia has two upper flippers that require the action camera because you can’t see what you’re doing with them otherwise. If you separate a table into two sections, there needs to be some logical flow between them, like in Black Knight or Black Knight 2000. Pack-in-Video obviously recognized that some parts of pinball are cooler than others but just threw those elements in without actually assembling them in a way that creates tension and a sense of urgency.

The whole premise of Pinball Graffiti is beyond stupid. Apparently there’s only three lame as f*ck tables in the entire world, none of which feel like they’re made by anyone who has even a basic understanding of table design. By 1996, I feel like all the excuses for why video pinball can exist without any redeeming qualities are used-up and there should, at minimum, be at least one decent shot. Nope. Three tables and not a single exciting shot among them.

I hope my readers give me a pass for not finishing Pinball Graffiti’s RPG. I have no idea what kind of time investment finishing it requires, but it took me almost an hour to get through two tournaments, both of which I won even though I laid down the games after one single ball. So I did have an idea of what I had to look forward to in the RPG: wasting time waiting for the specific days the tournaments are active and playing the same three tables I stupidly played before doing the RPG. I screwed up because I should have just played the RPG mode. Or maybe not. In the time I did spend on the story, I played in two tournaments. They both used the same table and the whole experience was a complete slog. I tried to get to Montana, where the game told me to go, but it never highlighted Montana as a travel option. Eh, f*ck it. This is one of the worst pinball games ever. Thankfully, the Saturn exclusives with good reputations are coming up soon.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #93 of 125
Percentile: 26%

Power Rangers Zeo: Full Tilt Battle Pinball
Platform: PlayStation
Released September 27, 1996
Directed by Naruaki Sasaki
Developed by KAZe
Published by Bandai
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Everyone knows I have a special place in my heart for Power Rangers. I was 4 years old when it debuted so I don’t even remember watching it for the first time, but it was always part of my life despite the fact that I was terrified of some of the monsters. Eventually I gave the original 8-bit/16-bit Power Ranger franchise the full Definitive Review treatment in what was the worst winning percentage of any Definitive Review ever: 2 YES!, 10 NO! and one of those YES! games wasn’t even a Power Rangers game. It was Jetman, a Super Sentai game.

Oddly enough Power Rangers Zeo Pinball was marketed in Japan as the US version of the show instead of Ohranger. Makes sense since Ohranger was the Super Sentai that was THIS CLOSE to killing the franchise. By the way, none of this matters for this game. Ignore the platform in the header, because Power Ranger Zeo: Full of Sh*t Pinball is an SNES game in every way that matters for gameplay.

I actually wonder whether or not it started life as an SNES game before Sony convinced them to switch to PlayStation. When I say that this is one of the Super Pinball games from KAZe, I’m not being snotty. IT LITERALLY USES THE SAME ENGINE! Not a 32-bit upgraded version of the Super Pinball engine, but the same engine as the two Super Pinball SNES games. The same physics, same gameplay speed, and the same quirks. Multiballs not interacting, allowing the balls to pass through each-other? Yep, we’re still doing that sh*t.

The shooting angles off the flippers are the same. The ball movement is the same. It’s the same engine, period. The only difference is the structure of the game. Instead of an attempt at simulating arcade-style pinball tables, this is a linear, level-based action pinball game with live targets. The result is a better game, but still not a good game.

Zeo Pinball has eleven levels, or twelve if you count the bullsh*t true final boss which is really just a rerun of the EASY mode’s final boss with a different sprite. If you do attempt to play Power Rangers Zeo Pinball, make sure to turn on HARD mode before starting. EASY gives you unlimited kickbacks and longer drain posts, but the shots aren’t harder. Once you realize that the combat is completely inconsequential and no pressure, really you’re just shooting the lit lanes and targets until the game tells you that you don’t need to anymore, which usually means hitting a ball into an exit one time.

Because the physics are 16 bits and very, very outdated even by the standards of 1996, the game gets old quickly. Most of the key enemy targets and bosses are placed in the center of the playfield, and then KAZe just didn’t program an off-the-flippers shooting angle for them. You have to tee-up cherry bombs to be able to shoot straight up the middle, realism be damned. That’s how you make pinball challenging, right?

Mind you, that above clip is on HARD, and the enemies aren’t attacking the flippers. They’re just cannon fodder, which, okay fine, that’s what the Cogs were on Zeo. But come on! The cogs punch back and absolutely do land punches in the show and there’s plenty of give and take in the fights. Zeo Pinball has none of that. It’s all offense, and that makes for a boring pinball game and an even more boring Power Rangers game.

I’ll also concede that I didn’t play particularly well in that clip, though that’s in part because I was nudging almost the entire time, including when the ball was on the ramp, and I was not triggering a TILT. The game basically requires rotating the D-Pad like you’re playing a Track & Field game before it even issues you a warning, so if you play it right, defense is a cinch. Oh, and don’t worry about all the lives I lost, because lives only apply to each specific level. You get them all back all the ones you lost in addition to plenty of extra ball opportunities in each level. Yep, even on HARD. Look, this is the next level:

All the balls are back. Stakes? What are those? Even on HARD, this is probably the easiest action pinball game in this entire feature. Now, I’m not completely crapping on Zeo Pinball. It has a fairly fast pace in some of the levels. Others, like the Egypt level, are slogs that lack targets. But most of the proper levels are non-stop one-sided action. It’s not exactly wish-fulfillment since it never feels even a little bit like a Power Rangers game, but most of the levels don’t leave enough time to be outright boring. It’s more about how pointless the whole thing is. Despite having bosses straight from the TV show, hell, this could be any property. It’s the first of what will be many “INSERT INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY -HERE-” cash grabs that are about to become commonplace in the rest of this feature.

And if you’re a fan of Power Rangers, this game probably has the most characters from the TV show of any Power Rangers game. Many monsters-of-the-days show up as mini-bosses, like Leaky Faucet, the evil sentient leaky faucet (Christ, how did I ever like this show?). But again, they don’t actually fight back. They’re just targets given the shape of familiar characters. The same goes for the big bosses who mostly feel samey. Shoot straight up the middle or maybe a little to the left or right of the middle.

Even the final bosses ultimately end with “shoot straight up the middle” crap. I always start each game on the default setting and work from there. Zeo Pinball starts on EASY and the final boss is Prince Sprocket. After beating him and seeing the end credits, King Mondo says to fight him, play the game on HARD. So I did, and after beating Prince Sprocket, Mondo said he was going to fight. And it was literally the same fight, on the same level. Take out the hands, then the head. If they were going to have Mondo be the same fight as Sprocket, they should have had you fight Prince Gasket for the HARD finale and, when people familiar with Ohranger realize it’s the same as Sprocket, they can do the Captain America “I understood that reference” thing.

At this point, I was really confused by all the KAZe fandom. They’ve not really made a terrible pinball game yet, but their work up to this point was so mediocre and lazy. I would not have guessed how good thing were about to get with them. Seriously, it’s the PlayStation era now! They couldn’t figure out how to have balls clank off each-other? And if you’re going to do Power Rangers, shouldn’t multiball be five balls instead of three? Hell, they tease the Gold Ranger on the cover art but he only appears as part of the table art once. Here:

Actually, the lack of Gold Ranger makes sense. The game was released September 26 of 1996 in Japan and September 30 in the US. The Gold Ranger had FINALLY debuted on the TV show just a couple weeks before this released and the character of Jason (the original Red Ranger) wouldn’t claim the Gold Ranger power until a few days after this came out on October 4, 1996. That kind of tells me that KAZe and Bandai rushed this sucker out as fast as they could. Kudos to them I guess for getting a complete Power Rangers game into stores in the middle of the single season of Zeo Rangers. A game that isn’t a dumpster fire and probably ranks as one of the better games in the Power Rangers gaming franchise.

Don’t mistake that for being a good game. Power Rangers is one of the worst gaming franchises in the world. It’s so cursed that even Digital Eclipse couldn’t make a good Rangers game. Power Rangers Zeo Pinball is just another crappy Power Rangers game, and this might be the most annoying one of all. It’s a 16-bit game shoved onto the 32-bit PlayStation. It might have decent looking FMV cutscenes, but it’s still the same crappy Super Pinball engine and layout design mentality I’ve given two NO!s to already. Here’s a third NO! for that engine and my 12th NO! to the Power Rangers gaming franchise. Power Rangers as a gaming entity is so soulless that the Z-Wave would have turned it to dust.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #47 of 125
Percentile: 62%

Now technically the next game is the sequel to Last Gladiators, but I dropped the original Last Gladiators in favor of a 1997 re-release of it. So rest assured, Last Gladiators is coming. The sequel is better either way.

Digital Pinball: Necronomicon
Platform: Sega Saturn
Released November 15, 1996
Directed by Takashi Kobayashi
Developed KAZe
Never Released Outside of Japan
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

With the recent news that Last Gladiators is getting a re-release, I really hope whoever scooped up those rights doesn’t forget about Necronomicon. I admit, after Power Rangers Zeo, I had my doubts about KAZe. They’ve never really made an offensively bad pinball game, but they’ve never managed to get out of the NO! pile either. Necronomicon clearly uses an evolution of the same engine that powered the Super Pinball series and Power Rangers Zeo. Thankfully, Necronomicon showed how close that engine was to hosting not just a quality video pinball game, but a phenomenal video pinball game. Necronomicon and Last Gladiators had a TON of expectations and hype from my readers, and at least one of them lived up to that.

Digital Pinball, be it Last Gladiators or Necronomicon, takes the same engine as Super Pinball and beefs it up. The objects are larger, the flippers have slightly more shooting angles and the gravity is more realistic. All of those changes might have been enough to push Necronomicon into the YES! pile by themselves. But the biggest change is that multiballs interact now, which means ball management actually matters, which means stakes. You can tell KAZe was proud of finally figuring out how to get two moving objects to actually interact with each-other because Necronomicon goes insane with multiball modes. Seriously, I can’t stress enough how bonkers the multiball is in this game. Practically Pachinko-like at times.

And yes, I suck at multiball. Hell, I get panicked when there’s three balls to manage at once, and Necronomicon is like “three? What kind of f*cking loser are you?!” The good news is that all three tables in Necronomicon are well-suited for ball management and juggling. However, there’s still plenty of room for improvement. The nudge is one of the least effective in this feature and the game still struggles with up-the-middle shooting angles. So naturally the designers put lots of key shots up the middle. I did eventually find the right shooting angle to hit those shots but it never felt lifelike. Finally, three tables isn’t much, especially when one of them sucks. This one:

Dreamlands is a stop-and-go slog that tries to do the widebody-like layout. But once you get the timing down for the balcony shot, it’s just a massive waste of real estate. In a four-table set, this wouldn’t hurt so much, but Necronomicon only has three tables, so Dreamland presents 33% of the game. Ouch. It also has one of the most hilarious ideas I’ve seen. Dreamlands features a magna-save-like magnetic stabilizer just above the rollovers. That’s right: not the outlanes or a bat flipper, but the rollovers. It’s there to make multiballs all reach the flippers at the same time. This is what it looks like:

It really comes across as gimmicky for the sake of being different but ultimately has minimal effect on the gameplay. It would have looked really cool on a real life table, but the magic of magnets doesn’t translate to a digital table. Thankfully, the other two tables are exceptionally strong. Arkham is probably in the top three tables in this feature and yes, it’s really called that, and yes, it really has an “Arkham Asylum” mode that might make re-releases of this problematic. Apparently the name “Arkham” is from the Lovecraft stores and is like the main setting. Like I said in my Eternal Darkness review, I never read the stuff.

Disappointing lack of Batman villains aside, Arkham is an incredibly fun two flipper layout that feels like it could actually be a real pinball machine other than the ramp that extends past the physical boundaries of the table. The multiball lock is an eye-catching asylum toy, while the angles are perfectly tailored for ball management. We all really liked this table. It does have one problem related to the engine, and it’s this shot:

That should not be such a difficult angle to hit, but neither of the flippers can really reach it. The second and third table have rails that help assist the shot. There’s no such help here. Power Rangers Zeo did the same thing and it’s just as annoying here. Part of the faulty shooting angle is likely tied to the viewing angle of the flippers.

But the way they set this up feels like they were fine with the engine not being as good as it could be because it adds to the difficulty, but that’s the wrong way to do it in my opinion. It’s not a deal breaker and these flippers are a LOT more accurate than Last Gladiators. You can find the angle by teeing-up the ball. It is what it is. It helps that the other shooting angles work amazingly. Seriously, Arkham is fantastic. One of my favorite tables so far. So is the second table. It’s called…….. I don’t feel worthy of this honor……

Cult of the Bloody Tongue! WHAT A NAME! Just end this feature now! It’s over! Flawless victory! Fatality!

Bloody Tongue features a delightful reverse-harp layout that, once again, perfectly lends itself to ball management. One of the multiball modes is a very fun, very intense add-a-ball where you have to hit X amount of switches within a time limit (for the unwashed a “switch” is any element on the table that as a censor attached to it, even ones that aren’t lit), and it’s the perfect layout for that. The stand-up targets are well-placed for excellent risk/reward for such a mode.

There’s no weak shots on this thing and the only reason I have Arkham higher is because of the tighter, more compact design that I think makes Arkham just a little more exciting. Ball management on Cult MIGHT be a little too easy, though we didn’t agree on this. Dad, Angela and Dave actually picked Cult #1 and think Sasha the Kid and I are nuts for voting Arkham, though everyone (including Dave) agreed Dreamlands was pretty awful.

What didn’t work for me at all, besides Dreamlands, was the mode where you play each table until you reach the wizard mode, then exit out a ramp. Nope, it’s bad. There’s no point to doing this as it doesn’t unlock a fourth table. Your balls or score don’t carry over from table to table. It’s a huge waste of time AND it climaxes on what is by far the weakest of the three tables. But, overall, I’m very happy that KAZe has finally arrived as a quality video pinball designer. This is SO much better than Last Gladiators, by the way.

NOW I get all the admiration from digital pinball fans. It’s a damn shame Necronomicon never came out in America. The themes and the running commentary are hilariously cheesy. It’s one of the best video pinball games ever made. After playing this, I was genuinely stoked for Last Gladiator, which I most certainly haven’t accidentally typed as “Last Guardian” a million times. Why would you think that? Anyway, that game is a pitiful shadow of this, one of the best video pins EVER made.
Verdict: YES!
Ranking: #5 of 125
Percentile: 95%

Hyper 3-D Pinball
aka Tilt!
Platform: PlayStation, Sega Saturn
Released January, 1997
Designed by Steve Beverly and Jon Harrison
Developed by NMS Software
Published by Virgin Interactive
Never Released in North America (PlayStation only)
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
Review Played MOSTLY on PlayStation

Yep, this one hurts. (nods) It hurts quite a lot. Based on the above screenshots, you’re probably thinking this is yet another Pinball Dreams-follow up. Spiritually, it’s sort of like that, only with nowhere near as much playability. The shooting angles are even more limited than Pinball Dreams and the whole 2D experience is like the ultimate pinball bricklaying experience. Believe it or not, that’s not even the worst part, either. The worst part is that the game moves far too fast. So fast that it not only had me and Angela having to stop and take long breaks, but even Pinball Chick team member Matt got a little motion sick. Be warned: the following footage is known to make people a little queasy.

Despite this being a game first developed in 1995 that’s being ported to 1997’s 32-bit console lineup, it’s almost a typical Pinball Dreams all shooting, all-rebounding game. Almost. As the European name “Tilt!” implies, Hyper 3-D Pinball puts a premium on effective nudging. This is the first game in a long time that has a major emphasis on defensive pinball. The nudge works really well too, but when the game shoots as poorly as Hyper 3-D does, it kind of takes the luster out of defense. Thankfully, all the 2D gameplay is optional. The real hook is that this tries to utilize a groundbreaking 3D camera. So the same table as seen in the clip above, with the press of a button at any time you wish (except multiball, where it becomes mandatory) turns into this:

What’s astonishing is the 3D versions of the tables don’t feel like they share any DNA with their 2D counterparts. It doesn’t even matter if they have the same shots and layout. It’s night and day. Or in the case of these tables, night and darker night. Yeah, the bad news is the 3D versions of the six tables are even more detached from reality than the 2D ones. I’m going to guess their physics engine just plain never worked the way they hoped, so they cheated. You might have noticed in the above clip that balls actually GAIN speed while traveling up ramps. Well, that’s certainly a unique gameplay feature that I’ve never seen before. It doesn’t just happen in the racing-themed table either.

What the hell am I supposed to do with a pinball game that gives you CPU assistance the moment the ball crosses the threshold for a ramp? Especially one like this where the game has so many ramps. If you’ve ever played pinball where the ramps are too rejection heavy and wondered what it would be like to play something that does the opposite, this is it. That’s not the only quirks with the physics, either. In both 2D and 3D, the ball gains unnatural speed constantly, making timing rebounds too unpredictable. And yet, the flippers have actual brake power capable of stopping the ball when you trap it. Overall, Hyper 3-D Pinball has some of the worst physics in the history of video pinball.

And that’s a real heart breaker. While most of the tables were nonsensical garbage that wouldn’t have been fun even if you could transplant Slam Tilt or True Pinball’s physics into this game, Hyper 3-D Pinball does have a pair of tables that could have been really good. The Gangster, pictured above, has such an enticing layout that looks like it could be a professionally-designed machine. Not only does it avoid the bonkers ramp-spamming like Hyper’s Roadking USA or Monster tables, but it has well-measured traditional targets, including a beautiful inline target. Too bad it plays, to quote my normally jovial father, “like sh*t.” They also wasted Star Quest 2049, which seems like it could be decent.

The problem I’m having with this review is that Hyper 3-D Pinball’s physics are so far removed from real life ball behavior or any other video pinball game’s physics engine that it’s really impossible to tell how good these tables could have been. I’ve played plenty of pinball machines that I thought would be awesome based on the first impression of how they appear that turned out to play “mid” as the kids say. Real life tables like Stern’s Stranger Things or digital pins like Pinball FX’s Princess Bride sure passed the eye test, but then you play them and they’re kind of crap. So, this was one of my tougher reviews because none of the six tables are fun. Not even a little bit, because this is like pinball played with cheat codes turned on that you can’t turn off.

My gut tells me that Roadking USA (a really poor attempt at doing High Speed), The Monster (a really poor attempt at doing a mid-90s Data East/Sega Pinball table) Myst & Majik (a really poor attempt at turning No Fear into a sword and sorcery theme) and especially Fun Fair pictured above were fated to be sh*t either way.

But there’s plenty of games in this that would crawl on hot coals to have two potentially high quality tables like The Gangster and Star Quest 2049. And hell, maybe I’m wrong about the other four. No matter how nonsensical they look, they certainly don’t lack ambition.

I’m even more shocked that I didn’t end up placing this lower in the rankings. My own Hyper 3-D Pinball ranking baffled me so much that I went through the list with it three times, and replayed a few of the tables, and my result kept coming out the same. This might be the only game in this feature that’s carried completely by its unfulfilled potential. Hyper 3-D Pinball is a mind boggling disaster that fails in every way video pinball can fail.

Even the scoring system is terrible. The bumpers pay off too much. Chopping wood (grinding low-risk shots) is viable on every table. Hyper 3-D Pinball fails, fails, FAILS, again and again. In speed, in design, in logic, and in gameplay. But, it fails in ways so unique to only it that it stands out clearly among the NO! games. Apparently that counts for something, I guess. That or video pinball is a sh*t genre. It’s probably that.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #72 of 125
Percentile: 42%

Digital Pinball: Last Gladiators Ver. 9.7
Platform: Sega Saturn
Released September 11, 1997
Directed by Norio Nakagata
Developed by KAZe
Sold Separately on Steam, Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2*

*Coming soon.

Despite coming out first, Last Gladiators has one more table than Necronomicon, and all four tables are quality pins. Unfortunately, we’re back to the Super Pinball vibe of poor shooting angles and the four tables really being one table that’s then slightly remixed three different ways, and it’s unmistakable this go around. Speaking of remixing, the above table, Gladiators, is a slightly remixed take on what was probably Data East’s best table ever, the 1992 John Borg classic Star Wars, only altered to work better with the game format and camera angle.

That’s fine, by the way. As a reminder, both Magic Pixel and Zen Studios still sell reworked real pins as original tables. For example, South Park: Super Sweet Pinball on Pinball FX is just a mirrored version of Simpsons Pinball Party with a new scoresheet. It’s a time-honored tradition in video pinball. Here, not-Star Wars produced what was Angela and Dave’s favorite of the four pins, both noting “it’s not even close.” For everyone else, it was closer.

In fact, the balance between the four tables was so strong that three different tables were named someone’s favorite of the collection by the group. The only one to not get a vote was the unanimous choice for worst table in Last Gladiators, the above-pictured Knight of the Roses. But it really tells you how solid a video pinball game Last Gladiators is that even Knight of the Roses has some nifty ideas. Like this bumper here:

The bumper is placed in a recessed wall, which functionally turns that right-most angle into a kicker. WELL I THINK THAT’S NEAT AS HELL! It’s just too bad that the trajectories the balls take off the flippers are, you know, bad. Necronomicon had issues up the middle, but it’s hardly alone in video pinball with those up-the-middle issues. But Last Gladiators has a LOT of shooting angles that feel completely wrong. Again, we don’t know if Necronomicon used the same engine and optimized more for the angles or if Last Gladiators is just kind of badly programmed.

Originally, I had Digital Pinball: Last Gladiators in the Top 10, but I think I realized that I was caving into popular demand and while I might not make any new readers, I’ve never been one to care what others think of video games. In my opinion, Last Gladiators is good but not great. The layouts clearly do the heavy lifting here. Dragon Showdown is a better version of Rose, with ramps that can’t be used as dumpers during multiball. But this is where the sameness of the tables really sticks out. All three of the first tables have what we call Krynski Avenue in the center of the table. See:

And they all have the same amount of modes (nine). As Dave put it, I think they were big fans of Data East’s Tales from the Crypt table because the modes and pace are kind of similar. All three of the first tables have the same triple-bumper cluster, only placed somewhere different on the board. Gladiators and Rose have literally the same copy-and-pasted ramp, only with different scaling.

Necronomicon does this too, but it has more fun modes (shrug). The only table that MOSTLY escapes that “recycled/remixed” vibe is Warlock. While it also has the same nine modes as the other four, it’s the only of the four with a fully open playfield. Warlock utilizes a standard Japanese-fan layout and was the only of the four tables that had a Williams or Stern vibe to it. I actually don’t love the Data East/Sega Pinball era. I don’t hate them either, but they’re just sort of decent but not spectacular. Warlock has a better flow and more intense shot selection. It just worked better for me.

The whole remix thing is why I felt that Necronomicon was a much stronger game, even though it does the same thing. Of any “remixer” in this feature, Necronomicon hides it better. But it’s not just that. Maybe all four tables in Last Gladiators are solid, but none truly stand out. They’re good, but I don’t think any of them are great. “Safe” Dave called them, and that’s spot-on. Meanwhile, while Necronomicon has one REALLY BAD table in it (seriously, Dreamlands f*cking sucks), all three of that game’s tables are much more ambitious, feel different from each-other, flow differently, and just had more effort put into them.

As a result, the two best tables in Necronomicon are so much better than any table in Last Gladiators. I really think the only reason this is considered the better game is because it got a global release. Had Necronomicon gotten that same global release, I have no doubt it would be remembered as the superior game and Last Gladiators would only be remembered on the same level of the Super Pinball series is for SNES: a good step in the evolution of video pinball but also one that isn’t as good as you remember.

Hell, I just played this last month and, as I’m typing this, I dropped it nine spots in the rankings. Last Gladiators is getting a re-release, and I think anyone who hasn’t played it who knows its reputation is likely to be disappointed based on the shooting angles alone. My unofficial motto of 2026 has been “set your expectations accordingly.” Last Gladiators, a legitimate quality video pinball game, personifies that. Expect to have fun, but don’t expect lifelike pinball shooting.
Verdict: YES!
Ranking: #18 of 125
Percentile: 86%

Dragon Beat: Legend of Pinball
Platform: PlayStation
Released November 27, 1997
Developed by Map Japan
NO MODERN RELEASE

I really thought I was going to be done playing games this bad at this stage of Classic Pinball Video Games: The Definitive Review. Well, at least on consoles. Some of the remaining Game Boy Color/Advance titles look dreadful, but I figured I was home free on console games. Hah. Dragon Beat, aka Dollar General Off-Brand KAZe, is not only one of the worst games I played for this feature, but another game that’s legitimately one of the worst video games I’ve played in my life. That should give you an idea just how bad the bottom 20 games in this feature are. Dragon Beat is the brick layer to end all brick layers, with three miserable layouts, horrible physics, poor shooting angles, all topped off by ugly, UGLY graphics and the most generic soundtrack imaginable. Take a look:

You’ll notice a few things in that clip. Even though we’re right on the verge of video pinball’s second decade of existence, Dragon Beat’s multiballs clip right through each-other. So we’re back to balls that don’t interact. That table is called “Legend” and yes, its auto-plunger sends the ball straight down the left outlane. Every. Single. Time. Unbelievable. That, my friends, is an all-time “out of f*cks to give” design moment for video pinball right there. The shooting angles don’t match the flippers. Targets are placed in a way that the flippers can’t reach them. A flipper is placed completely out of sight from the one camera angle. This is bad, folks. It’s as bad as video pinball gets. And it’s not just this table. Here is Dragon Beat’s best table, Castle:

Those constant “LET’S DO IT!” call outs are like washing your ears out with boiling oil. Balls don’t lock when they enter targets completely. Balls clip right through solid surfaces when they’re not “active” like the catapult. Kickbacks send the ball into the other outlane. Again, targets are placed behind all shooting angles. On top of all those mistakes, the layouts are just f*cking boring. Now, I didn’t hit the upper stand-up target for a long time because there’s no direct shooting angle for it. You need a ricochet that I never got in that clip. When I finally cut the video, a few minutes later it did hit it and the “combat” began. Okay, well, maybe some fun live targets could salvage this from the bottom of the rankings. Except, there’s NO combat.

Angela called that thing “Monty Python meets Slenderman” and it DOES look creepy, but after you get over how neat it looks, its impact on the gameplay only solidifies Dragon Beat’s status as one of the very worst video pins of all-time. When monsters appear (any monster) the object is simply “don’t drain.” The ball doesn’t interact with them at all and they don’t interfere with the table except to stop all active modes. A timer starts and, if you survive, it says that you slayed a monster. It couldn’t be more obvious that they intended to have combat but didn’t have the talent to actually program it and gave up. Or, as Dave put it, Addams Family if Seance happened every mode without a magnet or actually scoring points. A stoppage. Nothing more.

Take everything I said about the first two tables, give players even less sh*t to shoot at, AND add a “spin table” like in the 1972 Bally classic Fireball and you have Old Town, the third table and one of the worst tables in this entire feature. There really isn’t much to shoot, and what limited targets are there are incredibly tough to find the shooting angles for. And this time around, there isn’t anything to ricochet the ball into the targets, either. This table is dead inside, but then again, the whole game is.

The only nice thing I can say about Dragon Beat is that you can disable all the interruptions, turning the modes off and just playing pinball. Only, they didn’t adjust the scoring for that mode, making it the same three tables with even less to do. Spectacular. I’m STUNNED that of all the Japanese exclusives, this got a global release? THIS?! Seriously?! Completely lacking in charm or logic, I have to assume Dragon’s Beat’s subtitle “Legend of Pinball” is purely sarcastic.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #106 of 125
Percentile: 15%

Pro Pinball: Timeshock!
Platform: PlayStation
Released February, 1998
Directed by Adrian Barritt
Developed by Cunning Developments
Published by Empire Interactive
Remade in 2016 as Pro Pinball Ultra

It looks like Attack From Mars f*cked Centipede, but Pro Pinball: Timeshock! is a pretty big improvement over Pro Pinball: The Web. This despite the fact that Timeshock’s biggest problems were both carry-overs from the original Pro Pinball game: short mode timers and floaty physics. Maybe that’s what the whole “time shock” thing is about, because I’m shocked they didn’t recognize the timers were too short for physics this floaty. If making shots added time, that would be one thing, but they don’t. Floaty balls also make multiball tougher because the balls linger longer, clogging up the flipper zone and shooting angles. In fairness, I’m a mediocre-at-best multiball player to begin with, but I especially struggled with this one.

Maybe I just suck. I probably suck. BUT, that short clip really does make it clear that a single slip-up can quickly lead to the flipper zone getting completely jammed. My biggest problem with Timeshock is it just asks for too much perfection from players. Just like The Web, I watched multiple modes end because of one early-in-the-mode missed shot that simply got caught-up in table mechanics, so by the time the ball returned to the flippers there was no hope of winning. It really doesn’t help that the nudge is incredibly ineffective, so there’s essentially no defense. And some of the modes are just completely f*cking brain dead. There’s a multiball that does my least favorite gimmick: reversing the flipper buttons. I’ve always hated that sh*t, but Timeshock has the worst version of it ever, because the upper flipper doesn’t reverse. So pressing the right flipper activates the left flipper BUT ALSO the upper right flipper. But hold on, because what happens when the lane that the upper right flipper blocks is the lit lane?

That one took my breath away. It’s just such a careless design, but at this point, it tracks with everything I’ve seen from the Pro Pinball series. It’s pinball made to look like real pinball to non-pinball fans. But the physics aren’t good enough to pass and the nudge isn’t good enough to defend most situations. So, no, I don’t think Timeshock really deserves legendary status. It’s just kind of okay. Maybe even good, but certainly not great. It looks fantastic, I’ll give it that. It’s probably the best looking game in this entire feature so far. I really like the green and red. Attack From Mars superfan Angela said they were clearly trying to mimic the look of it, and she didn’t mean that as a knock on the game. So, that’s Timeshock! It’s okay. Oh, except one thing. If you play Timeshock! with this angle:

It becomes easily the greatest pinball video of its time. After a game of that angle, I called my family in to play just one more game of Timeshock. It didn’t end up being just one more game. Had it not been late already, I probably would have lost a full day to my family wanting to play more of it. Everyone sat in wide-eyed shock at what we were experiencing. Angela was the first to say what we were all thinking. “Honestly, I like (these physics) more than Pinball FX.” Yeah, me too. Timeshock! is amazing. The floatiness? Gone. Ball handling? Possible. Defense? So well done. Timeshock! in this camera angle, and only this camera angle, is an incredibly convincing arcade pinball experience, in gameplay if not in looks.

Playing Timeshock with these very convincing physics made me appreciate just how well designed Timeshock! is as a pinball table. I could totally buy this as a sequel to Attack From Mars that isn’t made by Brian Eddy but has some input from him. The Japanese fan layout is similar and it has a prominent driver placed smack-dab in the center. But the evolution of the concept is the addition of a third flipper with a Steve Ritchie loop that’s just a joy to shoot. Excellent scoring balance, too, with proper risk/reward considerations. If there’s any lingering problem with the physics, it’s that the ball CONSTANTLY gets caught in extended bumper cycles. Sasha the Kid had one that lasted over a minute. Honestly, I think the bumper situation is even worse with this camera and it still causes problems with the mode timers. I don’t know what the solution to this could be. Maybe spread the bumpers out a little bit, but otherwise, this sucker has better flow than central air conditioning.

Timeshock is, for all intents and purposes, the true start of “modern” video pinball. The spiritual father of The Pinball Arcade, Pinball FX, and Zaccaria Pinball. Though I’m going to continue the feature up through the PlayStation 2/GameCube era. I consider Pinball Arcade and its DLC model to be the start of video pinball as it exists today, so we have some time left to go. But what Timeshock accomplishes in this camera angle feels like a watershed moment in the evolution of video pinball. There’s really no asterisk to go with it. I didn’t expect lifelike physics in this feature at all. This is a true pinball simulation.

To give you an idea of how overjoyed everyone was when we played this, the kids recognized the Pro Pinball name from my Steam library and, when I told them it was THIS table and only this table, only updated, they all were like “let’s play that.” Make no mistake: the original Timeshock lived up to the hype. It was, at the time it was released, the greatest pinball video game ever made, and nothing topped it until the modern era.
Verdict: YES!
Final Holder of “Greatest Pinball Video Game Ever Made” before the Modern Era
Ranking: #1 of 125
Percentile: 100%

ParanoiaScape
aka Screaming Mad George’s ParanoiaScape
Platform: PlayStation
Released May 28, 1998
Directed by Joji “Screaming Mad George” Tani
Developed by Jorudan
Published by Mathilda
Never Released Outside of Japan
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

You might not have heard of Screaming Mad George, but you know his work. He did the special effects on movies like Big Trouble in Little China, Predator, and the 3rd and 4th Nightmare on Elm Street films. After looking at his filmography, I was positively stoked to see what that guy came up with for his one and only video game. Oh, actually playing it? My spidey sense told me it probably wasn’t going to be all that good. The concept sounded a little too ambitious for the capabilities of the original PlayStation: a first person shooter set in a surreal world that replaces guns with flippers and a ball. Sounds neat! Make it for modern platforms! Oh, only PS1? Yikes.

Well, hold on. That doesn’t look too bad. I mean it clearly looks like a PS1 game and also what I saw when I accidentally chemically cooked my eggs in lysergic acid instead of citric acid. Hey, the bottles looked similar (I ate the eggs anyway because waste not, want not, and then came the rampage and people died. You know what? It’s a long story), but my point is the above game looks cool. That blue fireball you see on the right between the ear and the sentient golf tee is the ball, and the object of ParanoiaScape is to move forward, batting the ball up and down to take out enemies and the occasional boss using pinball mechanics instead of a gun. Okay, okay. Cool. And here’s level 1-2, the second of nine total levels, in its entirety:

Yeah, so it’s not exactly Doom, is it? You can’t turn around. You can only see straight ahead, even if the level isn’t a straight line. While the flippers do bat the ball up into the level, the ball might launch whether you flip or not, sort of like a paddle game. Or hell, maybe the ball will just not react to the flippers and drain. It CONSTANTLY gets hung up on flippers, whether you flick or not. And when the ball travels deep into the playfield, it could be quite a while before it returns to you, so you don’t get to experience the satisfaction of what it’s hitting. You can play with ten balls or unlimited, but really, the main object is to just never walk in front of the ball. As long as you can keep the ball in front of you and avoid bullets and enemies, the game’s a cinch. I beat it on my first try in under an hour and only needed one continue. So the good news is, it’s short. The bad news is ParanoiaScape just fundamentally doesn’t work.

I ended up looking for the Japanese instruction book because I was convinced I was somehow playing the game wrong. ParanoiaScape provides a HUGE variety of nightmare fuel targets to shoot, but the problem is, the ball physics don’t really allow aiming, and the collision detection isn’t so hot. It’s a bad combination. In the above screenshot, I basically waited out the level, charging into enemies and flipping them, hoping they would fly back and hit other things since presumably that was the object. The game doesn’t exactly tell you. The aiming physics are proven to be a disaster by a later boss who shoots a chain of energy balls at  you. I used save states to check this one and tried every possible angle to see if there was a way to rattle off a string of hits.

Nope. They just fly off in whatever direction regardless of my position or which flipper I used. I replayed this boss, oh, a dozen times. I think the most hits I ever got in a single pass was three. I also did a full game replay and tried hard to find shooting angles for the more monster heavy levels, like these awesome-looking, terrible-playing stages:

All those screenshots look sick and I wish the gameplay lived up to how cool they look. I don’t think there’s a single game in this feature I was rooting for harder than ParanoiaScape. Plus it came with a reader recommendation because it didn’t even show up on my genre search for pinball-related games, and I always want to be able to reward fans of games with positive reviews. But GOLLY this plays like sh*t. You just can’t aim the f*cking ball. It spends most of its time hugging one wall or another, especially when the playfield is crowded with enemies. You really feel the lack of being able to aim during this boss:

If the boss stayed in one central location WAIT, HOLD ON………… (rubs eyes)

Russell T Davies imported PS1 games. Who knew? Anyway, if this boss stayed still, it would be tough enough to hit it, but the fight drags on because it moves around, yet the ball stays to the left or right. I only beat it by allowing the ball to drain when it was up close and basically launching when the thing was in the center from point blank range.

I also don’t think the engine is very stable, as the ball was constantly clipping through enemies or walls or just plain stopping on the flippers. At least two balls were lost through the drain when I had a drain shield. Even though I was flipping trying to get the ball to shoot, the ball just sort of slid right off the flipper and through the shield. Worst of all is it never really feels like the area where you’re hitting the ball with the flipper actually matches up with what you see on screen. It’s always a little left or right of where you think you need to hit. It’s not intuitive at all. Thankfully, after about forty minutes, the game ends with a completely different engine that has nothing to do with pinball where you just search a crypt for the ghost of a king and queen and escort them to a bed in the center of the room.

I really would love to see someone try this again in the 2020s because there’s SOMETHING here that could be awesome. I think, at least. Like PaTaank, this was an attempt at a new, experimental video game format that could never have worked with the available hardware. Except, I don’t think it was JUST the hardware. Part of the problem is Screaming Mad George had never done a video game before, but I’m also not (completely) blaming him., because he didn’t exactly have an elite programming team to lean on. The main programmer of ParanoiaScape’s most famous game? Probably the NES version Hydlide. You know, that game that’s often listed as one of the worst video games ever made? He also did Alien vs. Predator. No, not the coin-op. No, not the Jaguar game. The SNES Alien vs. Predator. The one that sucks.

So I don’t think this is a case of ParanoiaScape being an intriguing concept that was just too far ahead of its time. The idea of replacing first person shooter guns with pinball stuff is so bonkers that I think even elite programmers in 2026 would struggle to get the idea off the ground as a functional video game. And I literally mean JUST a functional one, never mind a good game. I honestly don’t know if this idea is any good or not. ParanoiaScape is so far removed from a fully working example of its own concept that it’s impossible for me to evaluate the concept itself. All I can safely say is that in 1998, on the PS1, with THIS programming team? Yeah, it wasn’t going to work. Period.

ParanoiaScape has devoted fans and it’s easy to understand why. There’s never been anything like it and the visuals are haunting and brilliant. Plus it was a Japanese exclusive that had a relatively small print run that fetches hundreds of dollars on the open market today, and since it never got a re-release it has what I call a “forbidden fruit” quality about. Even I get excited for those types of games. But I really think, deep down, most of its fans are more fans of the visuals and the core concept instead of any raw gameplay. I know that’s where I am.

I get no pleasure saying this, but I really thought the gameplay was so horrible and so broken that I found ParanoiaScape to be just kind of boring to play. Especially the second time around, after I’d seen and experienced all the creature designs. It looks great, but ParanoiaScape plays exactly like I would expect a completely new style of game to play if it was directed by a Hollywood visual effects specialist who had never made a video game before and programmed by the guy who did Hydlide and SNES Alien vs. Predator. Exactly like that.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #92 of 125
Percentile: 26%

Hollywood Pinball
Platform: Game Boy Color
Released in 1999
Developed by Tarantula Studios
Published by Take-Two
Never Released in North America
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED 

Hollywood Pinball is by Tarantula Studios, the former Spidersoft. It’s pretty obvious given how terrible this game is. Without having the basic layouts of a more talented studio to follow, they churned out this collection of seven of the worst pinball designs I’ve ever seen. Seven shambling slogs, only one of which presents anything resembling a challenge and six of which I would call baby’s first pinball game. Except I think even babies would get bored with these seven (yes, SEVEN) tables based on movies, only without any licenses.

Now, I was open to the possibility that Spidersh*t could surprise me. They already did once with the Game Gear version Pinball Dreams. But these layouts are complete nonsense. There’s too many bumpers and the random awards don’t seem particularly well-programmed. In the Indiana Jones ripoff table, four straight random awards gave me an extra ball. I’m not kidding. FOUR STRAIGHT! Meanwhile, the physics are like playing pinball underwater. I think MAYBE Shark and Motel Hell could have risen to the level of decent if the engine had a little bit more speed. But the other five tables are truly worthless. The limited shooting angles make some shots almost impossible to miss.

Even the two “good tables” (good being relative to the other five) are completely ruined by bumpers placed too close together and awarding so many extra balls that it felt like a hostage situation. Since there’s modes that award you big points for every switch you hit, those close-together bumpers that can catch the ball for over a minute suddenly overpay to an absurd degree. The flippers are too big and the ball too small, which yeah, the Game Gear game did that too, but those were decent enough tables and at least they put up a fight. With the sole exception of Hotel Hell, I had to lay down every single game of Hollywood Pinball with over nine figures in points or I would still be playing it.

Assuming you don’t mind insanely easy pinball with nonsensical design, Hollywood Pinball still is likely to become boring pretty quickly. The visuals are quite ugly and the music is grating. The layouts are Hollywood Pinball is the game I played the tables the least amount of times, yet it’s not even close to being the game I put the least amount of time into because the games were so easy and gave me so many extra lives that I couldn’t f*cking lose. And it’s not like there’s exciting shots to make up for this. Hollywood Pinball’s collection feels like user-made create-a-tables and not professional designed tables that someone charged for. It’s one of the worst games in this feature. And why the hell does the Robin Hood table play March of the Swiss Soldiers from William Tell? That’s the Lone Ranger’s theme, not Robin Hood, you dolts!
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #87 of 125
Percentile: 30%

Pokémon Pinball
Platform: Game Boy Color
Released April 14, 1999
Designed by Masaru Kuribayashi, Hiroyuki Goto, and Norichika Meguro
Developed by Jupiter Corp.
Published by Nintendo
NO MODERN RELEASE

Maybe Space Cadet in Full Tilt Pinball is the all-time most played pinball anything and Addams Family is the all-time best selling coin-op, but in verifiable earnings, there’s a different king of pinball. Since I couldn’t determine how much total money popular coin-ops like Addams Family, Terminator 2, or their kin earned in arcades and after-market routing, Pokémon Pinball is, in truth, the biggest money making pinball product of all-time, be it a real machine or a video one or a toy. At 5.31 million units sold, it’s the best selling pinball video game of all-time, more than doubling the runner-up Kirby’s Pinball Land. Pokémon Pinball is also the only video pinball game to be in any major system’s top 10 sales list, or even top 25 for that matter (Kirby’s Pinball Land is JUST short at 26th on GB’s best seller list) and was, for a brief window, the record holder for fastest selling handheld game ever with 262,000 units sold in the first twenty days. Also the cart had a rumble pack built into it. But does Pokémon Pinball deserve any of this?

F*ck no.

The best selling video pinball game of all time has two terrible tables with terrible shot selection, all of which plays with terrible physics. Oh my God, the damage this must have done to pinball in the eyes of the young people who owned this. It makes me want to cry. I was stunned by how badly Pokémon Pinball plays. For the sake of looking good in screenshots, the knuckleheads at Jupiter decided to make the biggest ball (in proportion to the size of the flippers) of any video pinball game I’ve seen. Consequently, Pokémon Pinball is so limited in its shooting angles that it plays like a game from ten years before it came out.

But what really wrecks Pokémon Pinball is just how boring the methodology of catching Pokémon is. Ideally you would expect sprawling tables with a wide variety of different targets, each with a unique Pokemon tied to them. Hah, yeah no, that’d be a LOT of work and why bother? There’s two teeny tiny tables, and to catch Pokémon, you shoot the right orbit three times. It doesn’t matter which table, because it’s the same on both. After three orbits, you have to hit the right sink hole, which is a cinch on the blue table since it’s in the middle and there’s a gravity-altering arrow that will push the ball into it. On the red table, it’s a little tougher in that you actually have to hit an aimed shot. That starts the capture sequence, which you have two minutes to complete.

Regardless of which Pokémon it is (with the exception of Mew, who you “capture” just by staying alive during its appearance) you capture ALL of them the same way: six bumps from the bumpers and four bonks of what is essentially a bash toy of the Pokémon. And that’s it. The fourth hit will capture whatever Pokémon it is every time, never failing. Evolving is a little more complicated. You start it by shooting the left orbit three times, then hitting the left sink hole. You can pick any Pokémon you want to evolve, though more valuable ones are harder to do. A variety of arrows will mark shots on the playfield, some of which are whammies that make your Pokémon “tired” require you to complete an orbit. When the correct one is found, you find either the experience or item that evolves it on the playfield, then repeat the process until you have three EX points. Then you hit the sinkhole at the top and it evolves.

Unlike a lot of games in this feature, I actually had Pokémon Pinball as a kid, but I never played it. I’d forgotten why, but it didn’t take long to figure out. In addition to how repetitive and boring the act of catching Pokémon is, the game is CONSTANTLY interrupted by gateways to travel to “different cities” which changes nothing about the pinball itself and only determines which pull of Pokemon you can encounter at random. The “targets” for this are laid out along the sides of the lower playfield and will be hit whether you want to hit them or not. These begin a 30 second HURRY UP that requires you to hit that swirly drain at the top of the lower playfield. Yes, the same one you use to evolve Pokémon.

Even worse than the traveling is the unlocking of mini-games. Catching three Pokémon (or evolving one and catching one OR evolving two) opens the next mini-game. There’s three to a table that come in sequential order with two unique games to each table and then a battle against Mewtwo that is NOT Mewtwo’s capture sequence. On the red table, you have to clear a field of Digletts, which was the best mini-game because you can end it early by deliberately draining, and you won’t advance further until you beat it. That’s a good thing late in the game, at least if you’re trying to catch Pokémon. All the remaining games give you unlimited balls and a time limit, so it’ll be a while before you get to play the actual game It’s followed by a graveyard setting where you have to hit ten Gastlys, ten Haunters, and then a giant Gengar that must be hit five times. Those are actually better than the offerings of the blue table, where you have to hit Meowth to make him drop coins or Seels as they pop their heads out.

After beating the unique games, the third and final game is a miserable “battle” against Mewtwo regardless of whether you’re playing blue or red. It’s the same fight on both tables. He’s a completely stationary target that they didn’t map a shooting angle for. Apparently a lot of owners never beat him once, and I get that, because it takes, I sh*t you not, TWENTY FOUR HITS TO BEAT! And he has a shield! This probably made me madder than anything in this feature. It’s a mindless grind. It’s busy work. It’s tedious. It’s a slog. I was legitimately angry how lazily designed this is. It’s BORING! How can people working for Nintendo not recognize when something is THIS boring? God, it pisses me off! And to make things even worse, once you figure out how to manipulate the ball using the nudge to hit it, all the scoring balance is thrown out the window because it scores a billion points, all but negating everything else you do playing the game.

The other major baffling aspect of Pokémon Pinball is how bad the balance is between the two tables. The blue table is far, far easier because the center of the playfield literally blows the ball around, including directly into catch/evolve holes. The playfield is easier to navigate for collecting evolve points too. Not that Pokémon Pinball is a hard game in general. You get unlimited nudging and it’s a cinch to light the Pikachu kickbacks (which take forever to activate because they play a voice sample “PIKACHU!” every time), and every catching/evolving sequence is pretty generous with ball save. On top of that, the game is VERY generous with extra balls. In fact, I accumulated so many extra balls on the blue stage that, when I decided to lay down my game at 22.5 billion points, it took over fifteen minutes to complete that process. In fairness, part of that was also because of how much protection a player is given at the start of each ball.

It’s telling to me that the sequel to Pokémon Pinball on the Game Boy Advance had roughly a 75% drop off in sales, 5.31 million for the original down to 1.37 million. Sure, you can chalk some of that up to Pokémon no longer being the hot new property, and some of that is no doubt thanks to the crappy physics. And, make no mistake, they ARE crappy physics, but it was totally worth it so the ball could look like a Pokéball I guess. But I think most of the lost sales is owed to how unexciting the act of catching Pokémon is. Who the f*ck would ever want to do THAT again?

It’s a small game, too. Kirby’s Pinball managed three tables, nine total screens, three bonus stages, and four bosses. Over half a decade later and Pokémon Pinball only has four screens, four mini-games, and one boss. This despite the world of Pokémon being so much bigger and densely populated than Kirby’s was in 1993. Sticking to the Red/Blue format was probably foolish, but then again, Pokémon Pinball is one of the laziest games Nintendo has ever published anyway so it’s not like a third table would have been any good. I haven’t yet played the sequel yet, but the drop-off in sales for it was well-deserved. Pokémon Pinball is a completely soulless cash grab and one of the worst Nintendo-published games ever. The only thing keeping this from being the absolute worst Pokémon game is the fact that Pokémon Channel exists.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #49 of 125
Percentile: 61%

Power Pinball
aka Golden Logres (Japan)
Platform: PlayStation
Released July 22, 1999
Designed by Yoshikatsu Fujita
Developed by Little Wing
Published by Success
Never Released in North America
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED 

This was one of the very last additions to this feature. Originally it was supposed to be a bonus review if I had time while the “enhanced” Dreamcast remake Neo Golden Logres was going to be the sole representative of this game AND the career of prolific video pin designer Yoshikatsu Fujita that got a full review and ranking in this feature. And then I found out that the PS1 game was a lot better than the Dreamcast game, which is an unimaginable sh*t show of sadness and gloom with some of the worst physics in this feature. It’s so different from Power Pinball’s original build that, JOY TO WORLD, I have to review both! So I’m going to go a little out of order and lump in the Dreamcast game’s review here.

Neo Golden Logres
Platform: Sega Dreamcast
Released October 26, 2000
Designed by Designed by Yoshikatsu Fujita
Developed by Littlewing
Published by Success
Never Released Outside of Japan
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Full disclosure: I didn’t put anywhere near as much time into the Dreamcast build as I did the PS1 build, and not just because it plays worse. The Dreamcast game has the same three tables as the PS1 game, but you can play the three in any order. The PS1 game is a linear game where you have to complete twelve modes. You start on the Camelot table, then eventually transfer to the Land’s End table until you complete all its modes, then BACK to Camelot for more modes, then Fisher King, then back again to Camelot for the world’s most annoying version of Lost in the Zone, then the game ends. No post-credit gameplay, and your score is your score. It felt like it took forever to get to the finale, but it wasn’t even two hours. That’s never a good sign. Also, both Sasha the Kid and Dave separately asked why Mickey Mouse was making call-outs during this God awful sounding grand finale:

All that story mode stuff doesn’t seem to apply to the Dreamcast build. The quests from the PS1 game, the RPG facade, and seemingly the whole point of playing the game are apparently missing from the Dreamcast game. If they aren’t, it’s not obvious from playing it. For all its problems, the PS1 game makes your progress clear. That’s not the case with the Dreamcast version, which replaces the status screen with the laziest, blandest DMD scoreboard from this era of video pinball. So while the three tables look great, the trade-off is, you know, the whole f*cking point of the game.

All three of the tables are actually very strong in their layouts, and had they played with Pro Pinball’s physics, we might be talking about maybe the best video pinball game just from the shots. There’s no bash toys or gimmicks. Just basic old school sharpshooting, and really, it’s hard to imagine three strongest layouts. That’s why Golden Logres and especially the Dreamcast remake are such heart breakers. Ugh, those physics. On the PlayStation, they’re bad. This is yet another sandpaper flippers game where the ball slows down on the flippers. Maybe everyone who has done this thinks they’re making pinball better by slowing down the ball so you have more time to aim. But it just comes across as janky. That alone threw my timing off really badly, but it gets worse: it’s NEVER consistent whether the ball will slow down or just carry on at the same speed.

So this is yet another fifth generation video pinball game that got the friction all wrong. And I do mean all wrong, as the ball sometimes has trouble interacting with solid surfaces. There were a few times where full-force shots that hit a target right in the sweet spot just went totally limp anyway. A game where you can hit a drop target dead center and not have it register is going to get a NO! every f*cking time. So I’m angry because even adequate physics would have been good enough to get these three tables a YES! So you would think that a remake would seek to just improve the physics. But the Dreamcast build had all the same issues AND it had much, much heavier gravity, making it significantly less fun to play. Thus a game that was practically straddling the YES!/NO! line on PlayStation is buried in the NO! pile on the technologically superior game console. Sad, that.

Replacing the scoreboard on the Dreamcast are these two swords that encourage you to shoot combos. Except, these tables (especially Fisher King) don’t lend themselves at all to combo shooting. I’m not even sure what the point of Neo Golden Logres is at all. Really, the only notable aspect of it is that it’s the second smallest full-release Dreamcast game in terms of how much space it uses in the disc. The only smaller game? Namco Museum. So it’s not like they took advantage of the additional horsepower. The resolution is better. That’s it. What a lazy, pathetic effort.

While the PS1 game has interesting ideas, the game is actually too easy even with the pathetic physics. Such mundane tasks as the inlane lights, the rollovers, or a bank of drop targets can light extra balls. In the session where I beat the game, I finished on my “first ball” with a stockpile of five extra balls AND balls two and three still to burn. In reality, I lost plenty of balls, especially on Fisher King, which is the only of the three tables that’s got multiple lethal angles. The other two tables heavily rely on their slingshots for challenge, but for every ball I lost I usually got an extra ball almost immediately. Had the flippers not given me the timing issues of not knowing when the ball would slow down or when it would keep going, I wouldn’t have needed hours. I’d like to see this remade with better physics. It could have been #1, and it didn’t even get a YES! I’m positively depressed over that.
Verdicts: NO! and NO!
Rankings: #48 (PS1) #73 (Dreamcast)
Percentile: 62% (PS1) 42% (Dreamcast)

The Pinball
aka Simple 1500 Series Vol. 11: The Pinball
Platform: PlayStation
Released July 22, 1999
Developed by Nekogumi
Published by Culture Publishers
Never Released Outside of Japan
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

The Simple franchise was a series of budget-release PlayStation games, some of which will be VERY familiar to US audiences. Did you ever go into a gas station or drug store that, for whatever reason, had an assortment of PlayStation games mixed in along with music CDs? Probably games published by a company called Agetec? I can tell you this: in the Bay Area, these were EVERYWHERE, especially Billiards and Tennis. The gas station closest to our house had a spinning CD kiosk, and that kiosk had multiple copies of PlayStation Billiards and at least one copy of bowling FOR YEARS. Drug stores tended to have Snowboarding and Tennis. There were more but those four specifically had distribution like I’ve legitimately never seen from any other budget games.

All four of those games seen above are part of the same franchise as “The Pinball.” Tennis? It was Volume 26. Billiards was Volume 10, while Snowboarding was 27 and Bowling was 18. There were even more too, including PlayStation 2 games, one of which is still to come in this feature (oh joy for me, especially after THIS piece of sh*t). The “1500” part of “Simple 1500” referred to how much yen they cost. At the time, 1500 yen was about $11 in US money. These days, $11 can buy you a LOT of quality video games. But during my childhood, whether anyone admits it or not, there absolutely was a stigma that “budget label” meant “bad.” It wasn’t true. I actually DID buy a budget-priced gas station PS1 game that I loved very much called Starsweep (it wasn’t part of the Simple 1500 franchise). But I think most people assumed these games were no good. I can’t speak to the quality of the rest of the Simple 1500 franchise, but The Pinball sure lives down to that. Good call not grabbing distribution rights for this one, Agetec.

These physics are straight out of the Apple II era from 1981, but this is 1999 now, and on the PlayStation! How the hell are we back to hoppy, wobbling ball physics and flippers that have the gripping power of a fly strip (thank you Sasha for that one)? Seriously, this game has some WEIRD issues with friction, especially off the flippers. The ball sometimes just loses all momentum just by touching a dead flipper. Now the above clip was taken before I tinkered with the options, so that’s the game set to 3 in speed. I mostly played with the speed set to 5. There’s two tables, both of which can be played in what is basically a tutorial mode and a normal mode. For those who don’t read Japanese:

The two arrows point to the tables outside the tutorial modes. The top arrow is for the pilot-themed table and the bottom for the war-themed table.

Setting the speed to 5 didn’t improve the game. Really, it just makes the ball reach the flippers in less hops before resuming the tiny hopping on the flippers. This will be one of the final “living ball” games of this feature, at least for consoles (still quite a few Game Boy Color/Game Boy Advance games to go), and it’s one of the more energetic living balls yet. But then the ball slams the brakes when it rolls against any surface, be it an orbit, the inlane, or the flippers. I really expected to be past this type of sh*t by now. The Pinball features physics that would rank among the worst of any game in this feature, and that’s truly shameful when you factor in the advantage they had of being able to model their physics after twenty years of video pinball evolution. Surely they could study the difference between good games and bad ones. It becomes even more damning when you remember The Pinball is on a 32-bit console that was considered easy to program for.

What’s even worse is that they didn’t build tables to the strengths of these physics. Really, they just built normal 90s pins that you play with 1981 Apple II physics. When I say you can’t aim in this game, I mean LITERALLY YOU CAN’T AIM! So the second table having two sets of three drop targets might sound like a nice, traditional pinball on paper, but in practice, you can’t shoot them. The only way to hit them is by a lucky bounce. The ball hops too much on the flippers and takes trajectories that don’t match the shooting angles. It’s like playing pinball with a rubber ball that leans a little to the side. The first table gives you too easy of a multiball too. All you have to do is light the rollovers at the top. Anyone who loves pinball instinctively wouldn’t design a table that does that.

There’s a lot of bad games in this feature that clearly weren’t cynical and did the best they could with the talent, hardware, and resources they had to work with. None of that is true of The Pinball. It’s obviously just a +1 for the Simple 1500 series that was rushed out without a care in the world. I don’t give a squirt if it was cheap, because there’s other things that aren’t completely phoned-in that you can buy that cost around ten bucks. Comics. Toys. Used video games. So this one actually makes me mad because some poor kid who loved pinball took a chance on this, maybe skipping over the manga they had their eye on or a movie ticket that would have been a better use of their money. Or hell, just getting $10 worth of coins and playing a pinball table at a local arcade would have provided them more joy than they would ever find in The Pinball. It has no redeeming qualities at all. A genuinely loathsome cash grab and one of the worst video games ever made.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #105 of 125
Percentile: 16%

Worms Pinball
aka Addiction Pinball (Windows)
Platform: PlayStation
Released November 12, 1999
Tables Designed by Tony Senghore
Directed by Stefan Boberg
Developed by Team17
Published by Infogrames
Sold Separately on Steam*

*The version currently sold does NOT have the second table, World Rally Fever. For this reason, Worms Pinball’s ranking in this feature applies ONLY to the PlayStation release. This review is invalid for all other versions. For the current build sold on Steam, check the bonus section.

If Worms Pinball had more than one camera angle, I’d almost certainly be crowning it the new champion of this feature. Two excellent tables played with very modern video pinball physics, shooting angles, and ball handling. I guess I just owned the wrong video pinball games as a kid because this is pretty sick. As my father said “how come we never had these games?” Well, that’s easy to answer for Worms Pinball: I didn’t play PC games until my teens and Worms Pinball never came out in America. There were going to be North American ports for the PS1 and even Dreamcast but they both got canned. Crying shame that is, because the two tables, Worms and World Rally Fever, are fantastic.

Worms is of course based on the famous turn-based action games that I adored. While it absolutely does an admirable job of feeling like a pinball adaption of the game franchise, as a pinball machine, it clearly takes inspiration from the works of Pat Lawlor. For the unwashed masses, for a five year period from 1989 to 1994, Pat Lawlor was the hottest pinball designer in the world.  His winning streak? Earthshaker, Whirlwind, Funhouse, Addams Family, and Twilight Zone. Wow. The final hit of Lawlor’s streak was a table called Red & Ted’s Roadshow that’s a favorite of mine and especially Angela. A member of the SuperPin line of complex widebody tables, Red & Ted was like an all-star game of Lawlor’s tables, and Worms clearly took inspiration from it. Hell, it outright copies one of Red & Ted’s signature shots, the Blast Zone. They didn’t even bother to rename it, either. It’s the Blast Zone, and LITERALLY THE SAME SHOT!

It actually caught me by surprise. From my experience, a copied signature shot only works if you copy the whole shebang. Usually famous shots only work in relation to other shots. Again, both Zen Studios and Magic Pixel have been known to copy whole real tables, either mirroring them or slightly changing the angles while retaining the entire flow. But Worms’ upper playfield is much more of a Japanese fan like you’d see from a Brian Eddy design (Attack From Mars/Medieval Madness) mixed with more shots from Red & Ted. Roadshow’s cellar is roughly the same, only pushed back a bit. The shot that would normally target Red in Red & Ted now shoots a very nice Ritchie loop. This weird hodgepodge of key shots should be incompatible. Instead, Worms is one of the best tables in this feature. Go figure, right? Hell, we liked the Blast Shot in Worms better than Red & Ted, and that flipper also keeps you honest as it defends the outlane. This is a seriously inspired design, but believe it or not, it wasn’t even the best part of Worms Pinball.

World Rally Fever is likewise a mashup of popular pins, especially sharing DNA with tables Indianapolis 500 and Terminator 2. But what’s really surprising is that it was unanimously voted as the better of the two tables. For me, the decision wasn’t even close. This sucker flows like a dream. UNQUESTIONABLY the best combo-shooter of this feature so far. I can’t stress enough that stringing together transition shots is intuitive and fast-paced. All shots connect smoothly to each-other, but the game doesn’t make the mistake of having blind combo-shooting be overvalued, either. The scoring balance is a little better for WRF.

What’s remarkable is that the two tables couldn’t be any more different. Worms does have transition shots, but it’s more of a slower pick ‘n flick type of table built around big shots. There’s no real signature shot or mode for World Rally Fever and instead it’s built around keeping a fast pace. Maybe that’s why World Rally Fever comes dangerously close to being generic or “flavorless” as Angela put it. Actually, when we first started, she used her phrase for generic pins that everyone gets a kick out of: “Pinball: The Pinball.” She didn’t know that this was based on a video game. Neither did I, really. The personality is lacking. It does have more multiball modes, or at least it feels like it. Within seconds of my first ever game, I was already shooting multiball. I usually don’t end up loving pins that are like that. Here? It felt logical.

What World Rally Fever lacks in personality it makes up for in being a nearly flawlessly laid-out table that’s SO fun. So is the Worms table too. How the hell did this not get a global console release? And how come Team 17 has done more pinball games? They really have a talent for it. Okay, maybe their tables aren’t exactly bringing anything new to the table, figuratively or literally. But designer Tony Senghore showed an incredible aptitude for assembling the best parts of famous tables in ways that are optimized for a (relative to real life) limited video game physics engine. It’s a damn shame that they walked away after this one, and a bigger shame this didn’t get a full multi-console rollout. It’s an even bigger shame that the modern release is missing the best part of this original 1999 build. Let’s do the right thing here, Team 17, and restore your masterpiece.
Verdict: YES!
Ranking: #3 of 125
Percentile: 98%

Pro Pinball: Big Race USA
Platform: PlayStation
Released July 31, 2000
Designed by Adrian Barritt
Developed by Cunning Developments
Published by Empire Interactive
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Back-to-back games inspired by Red & Ted’s Roadshow. Who knew it was so influential? Certainly not me. But it’s really only the modes and theme of traveling across the country that carry over from the famous Pat Lawlor-designed SuperPin. Now, after Timeshock, my entire family was hyped. Clearly the team at Cunning Developments knew what they were doing. But, before our second game was over, the excitement had plummeted. Not that Big Race USA is bad. It’s really not. It’s not that good, either.

Big Race USA is in the same situation as Timeshock. The above camera angle plays too slowly to complete many of the timed modes. While it doesn’t have the full table view like Timeshock (what’s up with that?), the game plays a lot faster in the third view. The physics are perfectly fine when you set it to look like this:

But, even though the physics are fine and fairly modern, the actual table layout is a jumbled mess of disconnected shots and hard rebounding angles that makes transition shooting too difficult. I won’t go so far as to call Big Race USA a bricklayer, but it’s not exactly overflowing with satisfying shots. Some of the decisions made were positively head scratching. Take a look at the upper right flipper.

The grill of the taxi is one of the key shots of the game, and on its own, it’s not a terrible idea as far as bash toys go. BUT, when you factor-in its location, how close it is to the targeting flipper, and the fact that there’s no risk factors, the taxi shot not only lacks satisfaction but it becomes a downright clunky element. A bash toy absolutely needs to have SOME risk associated with it. Even though the table opens up next to it, the shot is totally safe even if shot from the lower left flipper, and thus a major shot in the table has no excitement. That is, unless the shot opens up for something like an extra ball hurry-up, but I’d argue the mode is the exciting part and not the shot itself. “Would be pin

So what’s the best shot in the game? Well, there isn’t one. That’s another problem is that, besides the taxi (which stands out for the wrong reasons), there’s no real signature shot that Big Race USA builds around. “This really needed an electric chair” Angela said, and she’s totally right. The gameplay incentivizes touring the table, but tour-the-table layouts that try to be greater than the sum of their parts need that one key shot that ties it all together. For Big Race USA, arguably the left most orbit is that. But that’s part of a fan layout and not really strong enough to base the game flow around.

Mind you, I’m not arguing that Big Race USA is a bad game. As a stand alone classic video pinball game, it’s good enough to crack the all-time top 20 at the time it was released. But if this same table came out in Pinball FX today, it’d be forgotten about after the next update. This wasn’t totally unanimous. Sasha the Kid REALLY liked Big Race USA, saying that she found it to be defensively better than Timeshock. “It might not have memorable shots, but you can’t say they didn’t make a great rebounder!” And she’s not wrong.

I’d argue the defense and the remarkable scoring balance are actually even better than Timeshock. But the rules with the items and the purposes of the different cars are confusing and the instruction book wasn’t much help. Timeshock was remarkably intuitive. Big Race USA feels like a game that plies on complicated rules just for the sake of justifying a single table disc release. So while Big Race USA is fine, it’s no Timeshock. Not even close.
Verdict: YES!
Ranking: #14 of 125
Percentile: 89%

Pinball
aka Play It! Pinball
aka American Arcade (Japan)
Platform: PlayStation 2
Released September 7, 2000
Directed by Kazuhiro Sakai
Developed by Astroll
Never Released in North America
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

What a bizarre game. It might be the first 6th generation video pin, but it’s not what you would expect. The game known as “American Arcade” in Japan (I’ll refer to it as “Play It! Pinball” from here out) is a tribute to what’s known as the Wedgehead era of Gottlieb pinball. The name comes from the shapes of the back box. The tables have literal wedge heads. Like this:

Wedgeheads represented the undisputed golden age of Gottlieb pinball, led by legendary designers like Ed Krynski and Wayne Neyens. Between the 1960s and 1970s, wedgeheads hosted some of the most exciting, fast-playing layouts in pinball history. It’s very disappointing that The Pinball Arcade didn’t do more conversions of them when they were still around, because there were several very creative ones that never got their due. As far as we can tell, all the tables in Play It! Pinball are original, but there’s clearly some famous shots that were recycled or beefed-up. One of my favorite tables is the 1977 Allen Edwall classic Centigrade 37, which gained fame from Pinball Arcade. I’m guessing the team behind Play It! Pinball were fans too. Take a look at Surf King:

Talk about a weird design. Triple flipper bottom, one of which is an open flipper (meaning you can’t trap, the ball will drain), triple-deep rollover cage, triple bumpers, and a special hole too. Wow. Okay, so fans of modern Italian bottom tables might not find this is their cup of tea, but don’t mistake these for Zaccaria’s retro pack. Of the eleven tables in Play It! Pinball, ten of them are at least solid and a couple are really good. My family rarely makes unanimous selections for bigger sets like this, but we actually were unanimous on the best, the runner-up, and the worst. The best was Miracle Homerun, which does the base-running theme much better than Obsession’s attempt at it earlier in this feature.

And if that looks a little familiar, it’s because they nicked the bottom from the all-time Ed Krynski classic Spirit of ’76. But all the shots are exciting and the base running lights and bonuses are also a solid, easy to understand foundation to build around. We really loved it. The unanimous runner-up is possibly the strangest layout I’ve ever seen. It’s called October 31 and it has a Halloween theme. They were clearly going for a trick or treat vibe as the table has two distinct halves, one of which has high-yielding bumpers and the other a wall of drop targets and a supplemental flipper.

If this all sounds too good to be true, well, it is. There’s multiple catches to Play It! Pinball. The first is that you have to unlock nine out of the eleven tables, with the best tables taking quite a while to unlock. Yes, over 80% of the game’s content has to be acquired by playing the challenge mode and beating a benchmark score, and some are actually pretty tough. You start the game with 50 credits that you have to spend in the challenge mode to unlock the tables. Presumably if you run out of credits your Pinball disc self-destructs like Mission: Impossible. Don’t worry though, because unless you’re exceptionally bad at the sport of pinball, it’s unlikely to happen.

You gain a credit for reaching scoring benchmarks and for every SPECIAL you score. Since all the tables are built around the coin-mechanic and the idea of building-up replays, SPECIALs are plentiful. Even though we were spending 4 credits a game (x4 players) plus I was playing each table a couple times by myself to get media for screens, we started with 50 credits and finished with over 90 even though as many as three of us were missing the replay scores. So it’s not hard at all to build-up credits. Now apparently there is a known glitch that can crash the game when you save your progress in the challenge mode, which is the only means to unlock the tables permanently. We used save states to keep the progress, but beware.

But the biggest problem with Play It! Pinball is the physics. When we first fired up Western Sheriff, I sincerely thought my emulator wasn’t working. It wasn’t until checking YouTube that I realized, oh crap, the physics really are that lightweight. While the shooting angles are pretty accurate, it’s the weight of the ball, the bounce of the ball off surfaces, and the force of the flippers that’s completely, utterly wrong. While playing her first game, Angela described Play It! Pinball as “pinball played with a cotton ball.” The ball not only often fails to gain any height but it feels feathery, for lack of a better term. The only time this doesn’t happen is when you shoot from the base of the flippers, which sends the ball flying. Why would the base of the flippers hit the hardest?

That’s why Play It! Pinball has put me in an awkward position. These physics are not good. There’s no way around that. But the table designs are absolutely f*cking amazing. And it totally makes sense how that happened. Play It! Pinball hired the two foremost experts of pinball in Japan, Kazuyuki Dei and Kenji Ishii, to help create era-authentic original pins. These guys need to design more pinball tables. Seriously, they did a fantastic job. Wedgehead superfans Dave and Sasha the Kid were especially awestruck. The layouts for Play It! Pinball are probably the best original designs in this entire feature so far, and going 10 for 11 in fun designs in any circumstance is a seriously impressive accomplishment.

The physics though. They’re such a downer. The lightweight ball slows down what should be some damn fast-paced tables. Sigh. You know what? Despite them, I had more fun than not so I’m going YES! But it’s tragic that I had to actually think about it, but unlike Golden Logres, these bad physics are at least consistent and predictable, so I can deal with them. Mind you, I’m not even a huge fan of the Wedgehead era. I don’t hate them or anything, but I’m a child of the solid state era and I prefer the Williams/Bally layouts of the 1980s and 90s. That should give you an idea how good these layouts are, because if Play It! Pinball had physics as good as Pro Pinball, I think it would have taken the #1 ranking from Timeshock and probably held onto it for the rest of the feature. Ten really fun tables sounds unbeatable to me. Dave wants to see these tables remade with modern physics. I’ll second that.
Verdict: YES!
Ranking: #28 of 125
Percentile: 78%

Little Mermaid II: Pinball Frenzy
Platform: Game Boy Color
Released September 25, 2000
Designed by Robert Hemphill
Developed by Left Field Productions, Inc.
Published by Nintendo
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Remember when I reviewed Alice in Wonderland for the Game Boy Color? Nintendo had signed a deal with Disney, who had done research that showed that over 40% of gamers were girls, and this is one of the other games that was part of that contract with Nintendo. Nintendo scored all the big properties: The Disney animated film Walt Disney made that was his personal least favorite and the direct-to-video sequel to Little Mermaid that was completely unwatchable. Seriously, I wore out my Little Mermaid VHS as a young kid and even I wouldn’t touch Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea. It’s not as bad as Aladdin II: The Return of Jafar that replaced Robin Williams with Homer Simpson, but Return to the Sea is pretty f*cking abysmal. This game is probably the only good thing to come out of it. Seriously, this is so much better than Pokémon Pinball that it’s not even funny.

Don’t mistake that for being a fantastic game. I really thought it would be at first. The physics are much better than Pokémon Pinball, with more shooting angles and better target placement. Except Little Mermaid II, and by that I mean the specific table within the game Little Mermaid II: Pinball Frenzy, has several angles that I couldn’t find a shot for. Trust me, I had plenty of time to find those angles, as only my second game took me the good part of an afternoon.

I put up scores of 26 BILLION points for the Little Mermaid II table (Melody’s Table) and another 12 billion for the original Little Mermaid table (Ariel’s Table). Wait, hold on a second. You mean to tell me they ALSO included a Little Mermaid 1 table, but based the whole game’s title and marketing around the certain-to-be less popular (albeit brand new at the time) direct-to-video sequel? Okay. Odd choice but it’s their game. And true to the film series, the original Little Mermaid table is much stronger than Little Mermaid II. Here’s that table:

It looks fine, and in some ways it is, but it’s too damn easy. See those T-I-P targets? They’re super easy to hit and have almost no risk. They’ll get hit just from normal bouncing without even trying for them, and they activate the ball lock. I was averaging a Volcano Multiball damn near every two minutes, which has a very long ball save. Neither table really has any true risk/reward factors with the placement of their key targets. There’s also FAR too much ball save and kickbacks. The random awards are also too easy to unlock and too overpowered. Extra balls are plentiful. Super kickbacks last the entire ball. 30 second and 60 second ball saves happen too. That’s why the first table is so much more interesting. The left outlane has no kickback and requires constant guarding, which you do manually with a supplemental flipper.

Both tables share one pretty big problem: they lean very heavily into multiball but you can’t actually see what you’re shooting. And yes, they actually did map some of the key shots to the upper playfield, which the camera will almost certainly not have the time to scroll to see. Pinball Frenzy for sure encourages bad habits like blind flipping. I lost track of how many times the game just flashed JACKPOT when I didn’t see the shot at all. Plus, you’ll notice that both tables have structures in the center of their upper playfields, so rebounding is really just a matter of luck during multiball. I wish they had focused on optimizing single-ball play. To the game’s credit, both tables base their multiballs on locking balls, and balls remain locked until the jackpot is scored OR a ball drains. So you can eventually see what you’re doing. I guess that’s as good a solution as any.

If multiball’s not the biggest problem, it’s the difficulty of the game’s boss. Technically there’s two bosses but both Ursula and Morgana play identically, and when I say these are the hardest pinball bosses of any game in this feature so far, I’m not kidding. It’s not just the fact that they take a ton of shots, but the lightning bolts they shoot send your ball FLYING. I lost my first several battles with each, sometimes only a single second after the game started. Even when I didn’t drain (and draining ends the game) I timed out a couple times because they’re incredibly spongy. For a game with such easy primary layouts, these bosses are brutal.

The rest of the mini-games are tame, but some of them are actually fun, and none of them are as dull as some of the worst Crush-franchise games. The problem is, just like the boss battle, too many of them are reskinned and repeated on both tables. Like the “Kiss the Girl” mini-game in Ariel’s Table:

Props to Left Field because that looks pretty good. That’s literally the perfect way of adapting a famous scene from a movie to a video pinball game. You hit the fish around until they become fountains, just like they were in the movie. For a Game Boy take on “Kiss the Girl” done with pinball, that’s remarkably faithful to the film. But then, that same game becomes THIS in Melody’s table:

First off, that’s lazy as all hell. Second, it doesn’t even make sense to make it the same game as Kiss the Girls. The mini-game shown above is based on the scene where Melody steals the trident because she wants to permanently remain a mermaid and Ursula’s sister convinces her this is the only way to do it. But that scene has no cinematic connection to the vibes of Kiss the Girl at all. In the Kiss the Girls mini-game, you’re almost flawlessly recreating one of the most famous scenes in animation history about as well as you can do with pinball shots. So I can’t give a pass to this sh*t, because they proved they’re capable of better. Still, Little Mermaid II: Pinball Frenzy is probably as good as video pinball targeted at little kids is going to get in 8-bits. It was just barely okay for me, but I imagine really young kids (age 5 to 8, give or take) will enjoy it. At least when they’re not fighting bosses.
Verdict: YES!
Ranking: #35 of 125
Percentile: 72%

Pro Pinball: Fantastic Journey
Platform: PlayStation
Released October 17, 2000
Designed & Directed by Adrian Barritt
Developed by Cunning Developments
Published by Empire Interactive
NO MODERN RELEASE

I needed a few cracks at writing the Little Mermaid II review (and it still ain’t that great so imagine how bad it was before🤪) so I was late joining my family for Fantastic Journey and we had to postpone a day. I asked them “how was it?” and Angela looked at me and gave a thumbs down like Caesar. Dad didn’t really care for the two flipper layout or gimmicky nature of it either. Like with Big Race USA, only Sasha The Kid thought it was really good. “I thought everyone was into shot selection and making your own strategies? What more do you want?” Well, good flow for one. This thing flows like a stream post-beaver invasion.

One thing is very, very obvious: the team at Cunning Developments really enjoyed the defensive, rebounding-centric vibes of Big Race USA, because they leaned even harder into it with Fantastic Journey. Despite possibly the biggest variety of shots in a two-flipper layout of any 90’s tables, real or digital, Fantastic Journey is a defense-first table. It’s PUNISHING with its long drop rebounds and bouncy physics. Myself and the other girls all ate TILTs at least once with poor Angela tilting twice in a single game. It’s dangerously close to feeling like a bricklayer. It got so bad that we did something we haven’t really messed around with too much in the Pro Pinball series: the operator’s menu.

The default slope is 6. We found 5 worked a little better and probably should have been the default setting. The rejections were a little more lifelike with it. On the default setting, too many conversion shots that should have easily had enough speed and momentum to clear any orbit or ramp rejected. That went away when we set the slope to “5.” But set your expectations accordingly, because it’s not going to transform Fantastic Journey into a Timeshock-like experience. The table just isn’t that good. It has one truly memorable aspect in the ships that come out the playfield:

There’s more than one ship, too. The ships change to match the mode. Despite that, they didn’t attempt to make it a video game-like thing. They basically created a shot that would be awesome in real life but too cost-prohibitive and likely prone to breaking down to actually ever be placed in a real table (if you don’t believe me, look at all the problems Cirqus Voltaire with a similar element has).

Sadly, the rest of Fantastic Journey is just sort of middling. There’s a spinner with a magnet attached to it that catches the ball and launches it through its orbit. That’s precious. Well, except for the fact that it takes a moment to actually do that and murders the pace of the table in cold blood.

And that’s really the problem. The high, long rebounds do everything they can to prevent ball control. BUT, the table doesn’t maintain a fast pace that tough rebounders really need to feel frantic and tense. Now, with that said, the scoring balance is great, the multiballs are crazy easy to unlock but not so easy to play that it throws the balance off, the game is generous with extra balls, and there’s just enough nice modes to make the YES! not really that close. Angela disagrees firmly, believing this is the first truly bad table in a game with good physics in this feature.

Were this to be a normal Pinball Chick review where I didn’t have to give props to the physics and the options and I was stacking this against a library of hundreds of other pins, I might feel different. Angela said she would be close to giving it the lowest rating we do (though ultimately admitting she’d give it a 2 out of 5). Fantastic Journey is a table with no identity that stands out as a solo video pinball game, but would not stand tall in a set like Pinball FX or Zaccaria. Fantastic Journey can be fun, but it’s too vicious while also never maintaining a consistent tempo. It feels kind of directionless. Ironic given all the f*cking arrows.
Verdict: YES!
Ranking: #33 of 125
Percentile: 74%

3-D Ultra Pinball: Thrillride
Platform: Game Boy Color
Released in December 29, 2000
Designed by Robert Hemphill
Developed by Left Field Productions, Inc.
Published by Sierra On-Line, Inc.
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

“Hello? Is this Sierra Online? This is Robert Hemphill of Left Field Productions, and I was told I should get in touch with you because we have this really good pinball engine! Yes, I’m aware you already make pinball games for Windows, but see, that’s why I’m calling! Our engine is for the Game Boy Color. Please don’t laugh and hear me out. You see, we partnered with Nintendo on a Little Mermaid pinball game and it got good reviews but the problem is nobody gives a sh*t about Little Mermaid II: Return the Sea. Yes, there’s a sequel to Little Mermaid. It went straight to video. Please stop laughing. Please. Okay, well, long story short, nobody bought it but we think our engine is really great. We tried to convince Nintendo to let us do a game based on one of their IPs but Nintendo said they would never do Mario Pinball or Metroid Pinball, and the Jupiter guys already have dibs on Pokémon, those jerks. So we were thinking since you guys do those 3D Ultra Pinball games for Windows and Mac, maybe we could port one of them to the Game Boy Color with our Little Mermaid engine. Yes, it does multiball! Just as long as you have no follow-up questions about it, yep, we can totally do multiball!”

So yeah, this is unfortunately the only representative of the 3D Ultra Pinball series in this feature. I wanted to at least do Creep Night since that was, to the best of my recollection, the only video pinball game I ever played any significant amount of time growing up. I never played Thrill Ride, which is a Windows game by itself. I did look up clips of it and I’ll tell you right now that the Game Boy Color game shares no DNA with it at all. It might share the same theme and outside and they’re both based on Hersheypark, which is America’s 9th biggest theme park, but the layout and gameplay is totally different. As an unofficial sequel to Little Mermaid II, I was excited, but that quickly faded when I realized this thing shoots terribly.

Thrill Ride features only one table, which you’re seeing above. The shooting angles for it are horrible, making this a true bricklayer experience. While the engine is good and the physics and rebounding work great given the limitations, this layout feels completely unoptimized for it. Also, there’s something I neglected to mention about Little Mermaid II: the ball CONSTANTLY balances perfectly on rails, slingshots, and other elements.

It’s annoying and immersion-breaking, but Little Mermaid II has unlimited nudging so it’s not that big a deal. Well, guess what Thrill Ride doesn’t have? Unlimited nudging! You can totally trigger a TILT in it, regardless of which difficulty you pick. Yet, the ball nestles even more in Thrill Ride than it did in Little Mermaid II. Like, almost once a ball, and you have to burn tilt warnings to get it loose. Sometimes more than one, too. It’s like playing pinball afflicted with narcolepsy!

And I can’t stress enough how constant and immersion-shattering it is. In the trio of pictures above that showed off the table? The ball is actually nestled on the rail in the first picture.

Since it actually takes effort and eats tilt warnings to wake it up, it’s not a nothingburger. Especially when you consider how much time it can eat up if you’re in a timed mode. Why the f*ck would any left or right nudge not immediately tip the ball back into play? That’s not even close to the main reason I didn’t like Thrillride, but it made my decision easier for me to not second guess. Really, it’s just a series of bad shots. Like this:

Yeah, I was worried the ball was stuck there. It will eventually roll back down on its own, but it will take FOREVER for this to happen. Like nestling, this will also happen constantly. Why did I circle the flipper? Because the only way to reliably get the ball to the upper playfield’s flippers is to hold the right flipper up and shoot the ball from the lower left flipper up and through to the cramped upper playfield. Thrillride isn’t the first video pin to do this, but it’s the worst version of it because of how tight and cramped they made the shot. Thrillride made me realize the Little Mermaid II worked because its tables were open and there was room for bouncing. There’s no room here, so if you miss that shot, your punishment could be nestling on top of a structure that’s there because there’s no room for anything else.

The ten mini-games would have been the best part of Thrillride, though here’s where I have to recommend that players of all-skill levels play the game on the skill level of II, where you get ten extra seconds over difficulty III. I can’t imagine some of these games can actually be beaten on level III. Not that it matters, as none of the games offer unlimited drains in any skill level, despite the often tight targets that offer limited means of defense. You can trigger a tilt even in the mini-games, which feels like a massive oversight more than deliberate design. Yeah, Thrillride sucks.

I can’t say enough good things about the engine, even if the ball is really just looking for a place to sleep, but the engine needed open playfields. This leaned so hard into crowding that there’s no joy in making shots or even rebounding. Look at the above screenshot. The entire upper playfield is jammed up with these bumpers. So you have two shots, really, and both of them are toe shots. When the bumpers become a mode, you can’t actually aim and shoot because the shot angles are so tight that you have no flexibility.

I’ll still take this engine over Pokémon’s, but a great engine means nothing without layouts and shots that work with it. Thrillride’s shots work against the engine, and that makes it feel almost bad by design. Also, as Dave wouldn’t shut up about, it’s not actually 3-D. Maybe you should have called it “Hersheypark Pinball” on Game Boy Color? I don’t know how good this is on Windows, but Thrillride on GBCs clunky series of bad shots and poorly executed mini-games that had potential but no effort.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #57of 125
Percentile: 54%

Super Robot Pinball
Platform: Game Boy Color
Released February 23, 2001
Developed by Jupiter Corp.
Published by Media Factory
Never Released Outside of Japan
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

“Hello, is this Nintendo? This is Jupiter! No, not the planet, the game studio. How do you not know us? We work together all the time! Hello?! Mario’s Picross! (covers receiver) Hey guys, they say they’ve never heard of us. (puts phone back to ear) You’ll have to take my word for it! We’re seriously like one of your biggest partners. We even did Pokémon Pinball, which sold over five million copies. Yes, I’m aware Pokémon Pinball is a steaming pile sh*t-smelling sadness. And an unimaginable dumpster fire of tedium and/or boredom. A festering silicon tumor oozing pus out of a cartridge of OKAY, I GET IT! We made a terrible pinball game! But we promise our next game will be better! In fact, we have Pokémon Pinball: Gold & Silver ready for your approval. Hello? Hello? Guys, I think they hung up on me.”

So yeah, by a total fluke of timing, two straight Game Boy Color games in this feature are recycling engines originally used for Nintendo-published video pinball games. I also wasn’t entirely joking about Super Robot Pinball starting life as a sequel to Pokémon Pinball that was meant to be based on Gold & Silver. I can’t prove it. I have no evidence to support this. But playing Super Robot Pinball, it becomes obvious that it’s so much closer to the gameplay of Pokemon than the real Pokémon. The random encounters, the leveling up system, the variety of enemies AND the fact that you can select from a roster of different robots for the battle. I have an alternative theory: this started life as the original Pokémon Pinball, but it wasn’t close to finished yet so they whipped out the cynical, lazy cash grab that was the real Pokémon Pinball and kept working on this since they knew it was coming out better. Well, marginally better.

As for the new theme, you need a flow chart to explain this stuff but in short, Super Robot Wars is a spin-off from the Compati Hero series that Battle Pinball for the Super Famicom was a part of. Super Robot Wars became an even bigger franchise in its own right with well over fifty different games. If my theory about this being meant to be Pokémon Pinball: Gold & Silver is correct, the partnership with Super Robot Wars makes perfect sense as a backup, since the RPG mechanics nearly match that franchise’s more tactical leanings. The random encounters are triggered by hitting bumpers, then you shoot an orbit to choose an opponent from a list of six random robots, then you either power it up or fight in a separate arena:

The left orbit charges up your fighting spirit which makes you hit harder. The right orbit charges up your attack power, and then actually hitting the character unleashes the attacks. You also get unlimited tilt, the variety of real anime robots is fun, and the first level has a much better layout than either table in Pokémon Pinball. It all sounds so great, but I don’t get the love for this one at all. First off, that above combat layout f*cking sucks. It’s the most basic, boring combat layout imaginable. Hell, the average mini-playfield in Pinball FX offers a bigger variety of shots than they put on an entire screen here. But a much worse problem is that I hate the ball and flippers. They’re NOT good. There were so many times where I was like “wait, how did the ball save activate? The flippers absolutely should have made contact with the ball.” So you’ll see stuff like this all the time:

What the actual f*ck?! You can’t tip? Was this designed by Scottie Pippen? Using the tip of the flipper to poke the ball to the other flipper is like seriously one of the most basic methods of rebounding and it fails, fails, FAILS again and again in Super Robot Pinball. Since they designed the game around sharp rebounding angles, both tipping and taking dead flips are things you’ll want to use, but they constantly don’t work. Here’s a clip where the ball absolutely had the speed and momentum to deflect off the tip of the flipper and comfortably give me room to shoot with the right flipper, and instead the ball passes through it. It’s close, but it happens.

The problem is really the same as Pokémon Pinball: huge balls relative to the flippers. The ball is so big it literally would not fit between the flippers in order to drain, so they had to fudge the physics to make the comically large balls of Pokémon Pinball and Super Robot Pinball work. I mean, they could have just shrank the ball, but why do that? It’s a video game! Just have the ball clip through the flippers! I mean, why not? How come nobody else thought of this? GENIUS! Except, it does it when flipping too. Again, both games do this, but it happens constantly throughout Super Robot Pinball. Far, far more than in Pokémon Pinball. If you want to know the funniest thing you can do with a video pinball game, just let a ball drain deliberately in Super Robot Pinball. It’s weird to watch. It legitimately looks like the ball is embarrassed as it slouches through the flippers. Oh and there’s also a drain pin that the ball also clips through. Because of course it would.

 

And it gets even worse, because the ball save is taller than the flippers! THIS IS THE BALL SAVE:

I really do believe that Super Robot Pinball is one of the most overrated video pinball games of all time. It’s also probably one of the most overrated imports of all time. It’s INSANELY popular among the Game Boy fandom. Glowing reviews for it and appearances on some “best Game Boy import” lists. all across the world wide web. Obviously I don’t agree at all with them. The layouts are boring. Saying the first level has a better layout than Pokémon Pinball is faint praise. It’s still a bland, boring layout lacking any excitement.

But the second level is far worse than any previous Jupiter layout, as they completely separated the bumpers from a sawed-off lower playfield by placing them between a long, zig-zaggy tube that acts as a transfer. It’s like someone broadsided a normal pinball layout and they just left it that way, laid a bungee cord across them and said “see, it’s still one table.” It has no flow at all, BY DESIGN! They deliberately made an anti-flow pinball layout. What the f*ck are we even doing here?

The shot selection and shooting angles are just not exciting for the purposes of pinball. More importantly, the core robot fighting mechanic is too repetitive. One battlefield. One. For over sixty f*cking enemies, and it’s not even a particularly ambitious playfield at that. It gets old really quickly because it’s just the same two shots over and over. The bosses (there’s bosses) are cheap as hell, too and since the flippers and ball save have terrible collision detection, the ball save will get burned up by shots that should have by all rights hit the flippers. That’s not “hard” boss design. That’s just straight-up cheap. So no, Super Robot Pinball isn’t some kind of amazing hidden gem. It’s bad, people. It’s really, really bad. If you have no fondness for anime characters, you’ll get nothing out of this at all.

Oh, I totally get why people dump confetti on it, seemingly just for existing. It never came out in America and it uses the same engine and graphics style as Pokémon Pinball. Whether I like it or not, Pokémon Pinball is the 7th best selling original Game Boy/Game Boy Color game of all-time. An “upgraded” rehash of it that never came out in the United States has the same forbidden fruit quality that all import exclusives have. I talked about this with ParanoiaScape and I get excited for them too. It’s literally my job at Indie Gamer Chick to find hidden gems, so any Japanese exclusive is going to make me sit up in my chair right from the start, even if it doesn’t make sense in this era where gaming is global and regional barriers are a thing of the past. But Super Robot Pinball isn’t a hidden gem. It’s a hidden lump of coal. I have two more Jupiter games to go, and my expectations are low. When people shower Pokémon Pinball and especially Super Robot Pinball with praise, what incentive do they have to improve? This is so frustrating.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #77 of 125
Percentile: 38%

KISS Pinball
Platform: PlayStation
Released March 23, 2001
Tables Designed by Stephen Atkinson and Joel Finch
Developed by Tarantula Studios
Published by Take-Two Interactive
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

KISS Pinball is widely regarded as one of the worst video games ever made. Not just video pinball games, but worst overall games. I used to read EGM religiously around this time, and KISS Pinball was one of the games that only had one person rate it instead of three or four, but it was the first game I remember getting a 1 out of 10 in EGM. Now that I’m all grown-up, part of me always wondered if it was really as bad as its reputation suggested or if the low scores were critics virtue signaling to their readers that they too know KISS the band is safe, sanitized and deeply lame. Going into this feature, I went back and read some of those reviews and they felt just a little too “f*ck KISS, amirite?” I was still cautiously optimistic until it became apparent that Spidersoft/Tarantula Studios have absolutely no talent for pinball, or really anything at all, and are one of the worst studios in gaming history. A perennial developer of “worst game of the year” nominees, and not just for pinball. I came to dread each game by them.

Then I found out Tarantula didn’t actually design KISS. It was originally a Windows game developed by Australian studio Wildfire Studios Pty. Ltd. They were the company behind the famous Windows pinball game Balls of Steel, with layouts by designers Stephen Atkinson and Joel Finch (fun fact: I was actually going to include the recent re-release of Balls of Steel in this but I’ll check it out as a full Pinball Chick review some other time). At this point, Wildfire wasn’t doing their own console ports, so they sold the PlayStation rights to KISS Pinball to Tarantula Studios. Partnering with Tarantula for the PS1 port of KISS Pinball was a very, very stupid decision by the Wildfire. They probably just assumed Spidersh*t must be good at video pinball since they made so many of them. Having Tarantula port your carefully crafted pinball game is like hiring Michael Myers to be your babysitter. “Look, I did a Google search and his name kept popping up with babysitters so I figured this guy must be the right one to watch our kids! So anyway, the funeral is Friday.” So is KISS Pinball really as bad as everyone says or was it just dog-piling for the sake of sh*tting on an uncool band?

The answer is, yes, it’s really as bad as everyone says. Warning: this could make you motion sick. I got a little dizzy at one point playing this piece of sh*t.

That’s two full games……5 ball games, mind you…… of KISS Pinball for the PlayStation, completed in seven minutes. Now, I really wanted to review the Windows version because I found a gameplay clip of it and it seems like a typical Pinball Dreams-like. Not amazing by any means. Pretty f*cking generic, actually, but playable at least. Tarantula’s PlayStation build of KISS Pinball, however, is un-f*cking-playable. That’s not an exaggeration. They completely half-assed this port and butchered the physics and ball speed. I want you to see what happens every single time you trap the ball on Last Stop Oblivion, aka the first table, with the right flipper:

I have never seen that before. I am not doing anything there but releasing the flipper. Somehow, the act of releasing the flipper transfers enough energy to the ball to make it jump over the drain. That’s how lifelike the ball physics are. That only happens with the right flipper on that table. The other table it’s a normal (badly programmed) trap. What you’re seeing in the above clip is a glitch, and a glitch I found about ten seconds into my first game. It doesn’t go away. It happens every single time. Unbelievable. Oh, and if that’s intentional, it’s a f*cking dumb idea worthy of ridicule anyway. But it gets so much worse. As you might have noticed, KISS moves far too fast for even a pinball veteran to be expected to follow the action. Again, the only word that works is “unplayable.” I didn’t shoot particularly well in the two games above, or in these two full games on the first table:

But in my defense, I just can’t react that fast because I wasn’t born on Krypton or a member of Flash family. I’ve set Pinball FX and Zaccaria world records, but I couldn’t keep a ball alive at all in KISS. Multiple times I went from the top screen to dead and the game counting-up the post ball bonus before I even realized the ball was in danger, let alone already drained and over with. On top of all that, the ball is too bouncy, which makes rebounding and completing orbits too difficult, assuming you even see the ball at all. ALL the shooting angles are rough and since the ball is so heavy and fast, it makes the upper flippers feel kind of dead. The ball doesn’t roll smoothly like the Windows game appears to do, giving the whole thing an 8-bit vibe. Also, this is really ugly for a PS1 game. This really is one of the most half-assed, lazy port jobs I’ve ever seen.

My family and I gave KISS a little over an hour-and-a-half before I literally went to the bathroom, grabbed a towel, and threw it across the living room to thunderous applause. Even after 90 minutes of both playing this and watching it, I really can’t describe what the workload for these tables are like because the action moved so fast that I couldn’t tell what was going on besides the act of keeping the ball alive. But at least it has KISS music though, right? Hah, wrong. There’s no songs from the band in this at all. In fact, you’re supposed to bring your own music. Apparently they included the option to, once the table loads, swap the KISS Pinball disc for your favorite KISS™ Officially Licensed Music-Themed Compact Disc Product (Sold Separately). My sister Angela proved she might be an actual saint by saying “in fairness, a fan of the band would likely have their own favorite songs and not want to have someone else select the tracks for them, so I don’t mind this choice.” Fair enough. Like I said, a saint. BTW, I have no dog in this hunt. I don’t listen to the band. I didn’t even know the song “God Gave Rock and Roll to You” from the ending of Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey was KISS’ song until recently.

My instincts on those scathing reviews were about as bad as the game itself. KISS Pinball really is one of the very worst video games ever made, for any genre. KISS Pinball was a $9.99 budget release so maybe Tarantula’s attitude was “who gives a sh*t? It’s not like we’re making real money on this.” Wouldn’t surprise me. Even if that were the case, how the hell did they butcher the physics and ball speed this badly? It’s almost beyond belief. Either they did it on purpose because they were pissy about working on a $10 budget release or with the KISS license, or they didn’t care and phoned it in without a care of how it came out. Or they just plain have no talent at all. Thank God this is the final game from Spidersoft/Tarantula. If they’re reading this, I want to take this moment to say to everyone who worked on KISS Pinball for PS1 and other Spidersoft/Tarantula games in this feature that you really were the absolute f*cking worst. (nods) Seriously, you were the worst thing to happen to pinball since Fiorello La Guardia.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #110 of 125
Percentile: 12%

Microsoft Pinball Arcade
Platform: Game Boy Color
Released May, 2001
Designed by Ken Grant and Jeremy Throckmorton
Developed by Saffire, Inc
Published by Cryo Interactive Entertainment
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

I am so happy! THIS IS THE LAST 8 BIT GAME IN THIS FEATURE! Celebrate good times! And, it’s one final reminder of how bad the 8-bit era of video pinball could be. This port of the Windows game that has no relation to the modern Pinball Arcade has four Game Boy Color remakes of famous Gottlieb pins along with a recreation of Baffle Ball, the 1931 game that has pins and a ball. Baffle Ball has no flippers of course. The object is to use the plunger to launch balls into scoring pockets. If you’re into Pachinko, well, Baffle Ball is basically Pachinko, and I don’t care for Pachinko at all. But I’ll raise a glass to Baffle Ball, as pinheads owe a lot to its popularity.

What we’re really here for are the four “modern” pinball tables, though three of them are Electro-Mechanical. The only solid state is 1982’s Haunted House, which is one of my least favorite tables and probably one of the most polarizing pins in pinball history. People either love it for being so weird or hate it for having no flow at all. Still, it’s clearly the main event here. It’s too bad the physics are among the worst physics in the history of video pinball. The living ball slowly wiggles back and forth. Never up and down. Just back and forth. For the two older pins, 1950’s Knock-Out and the 1963 Wedge-Head Slick Chick, the physics are NOT compatible with smaller flippers, making the games outright unplayable.

Regardless of which of the two older tables you’re playing, the ball is too active to actually aim all that much. This is especially true for Knock-Out and Slick Chick. Since the flippers are so small and the ball wiggles back and forth so much, it’s likely to wiggle either right past the flipper or even behind it. It’s also bouncy and has a tendency to bounce right over the flipper. Just right over it. The amount of times I flipped and missed the ball entirely was kind of embarrassing, but to my credit, the ball acts like it’s busting for a piss. But even if it had worked, Knock-Out isn’t exactly a table modern fans would enjoy. The real 1950 Knock-Out had mechanical fighters in the middle of the playfield that would punch each-other out, complete with a referee counting them down. Charming, but that’s lost in a video game, especially an 8-bit one.

Both Knock-Out and Slick Chick have MASSIVE flipper gaps because that was the style at the time. Slick Chick also has incredibly violent slingshots bordering the flippers, which makes it even harder to hit the ball than Knock-Out. Knock-Out has a generous drain plug that lasts quite a while. Slick Chick doesn’t, so most of my games with it ended in just seconds. This game has basically no defense at all. The nudge might as well not be there. I found it to be completely ineffective, so there’s really no way to protect against the slings or the drain. Neither of the old school tables should have been in this at all. If they were all that Microsoft Pinball Arcade on GBC offered, it would have certainly finished in the bottom three of the rankings. For the second straight game in this feature, I have to use the term “unplayable.”

Thankfully, the other two play just good enough to bring the release out of the sewer. In terms of playability, Spirit of ’76 is easily the best table in that you can actually sort of aim with both flippers. It’s also a shot-for-shot recreation of one of the all-time Ed Krynski/Wayne Neyens classics. But, unlike modern recreations or even some classics like David’s Midnight Magic, it NEVER feels like the real Spirit of ’76 pinball machine. It feels like the layout was run over by a steamroller. Plus it shoots far too clunky, as too many shooting angles also directly feed the drain with no means of preventing it. This might have single-handedly dragged Microsoft Pinball Arcade out of the worst game ever conversation, but not by much. Then there’s the houseball factory that is Haunted House.

What you’re seeing above happens so often that I once had a game where all five balls did it. If you plunge the middle lane, hold your breath because there’s a pretty good chance you just lost that ball. You can’t defend against it. They programmed it this way. How is that supposed to be fun? I have no idea. If not for that, Haunted House would have probably pushed the game up a few spots in the rankings. Despite my dislike of the real 1982 Haunted House, I found it to be the most compelling of the five pins. The real life Haunted House is clunky and nonsensical, so it oddly pairs well with these physics.

Again, don’t mistake this for me endorsing the game. Microsoft Pinball Arcade game the Game Boy Color is truly terrible and one of the worst video pinball games of all-time, but Haunted House’s weird disjointed layout and awkward shooting angles aren’t that affected by the God awful engine. Oh, it’s still bad. I might knock Haunted House, but I don’t deny that it earned its reputation as a famously tough defensive table. If you’ve ever wondered what Haunted House would be like without a smidge of defense, just look at the above clip. You can’t use the Game Boy excuse or the 8-bit excuse for video pinball this shoddy. The platform and the format have plenty of good games. This is just a very bad effort. These physics are terrible. I really got the impression that they did want to make a better game than this. Haunted House especially has some wacky angles that they did faithfully recreate. If you squint your eyes, the trapdoor and ramps almost look like the real deal. But the physics make all four flipper-based pins in Microsoft Pinball Arcade GBC some of the worst playing tables in this feature.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #86 of 125
Percentile: 31%

Akira Psycho Ball
Platform: PlayStation 2
Released February 21, 2002
Directed by Norio Nakagata
Developed by KAZe
Published by Bandai
Never Released in North America
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

I’m not a huge fan of the anime movie Akira. I don’t hate it or anything. It’s fine. My father really likes it a lot, but it’s not something I would throw on when I’m bored. So it really speaks volumes how much I f*cking loved Akira Psycho Ball. It’s the final console pinball game from KAZe and a final evolution of their Digital Pinball engine over Last Gladiators and Necronomicon. The physics are similar to those, but with even better passing and ball handling that’s probably the best video pinball had ever seen up to this point. Now, the single player quest starts with a round of what you see above. In this head-to-head pinball, you rebound and shoot for the targets, holding the balls to charge up their potency. I was really worried about Psycho Ball during this sequence. It’s not fun. Not at all. It’s chaos and a bore.

Thank god you only have to win one match of it before the real pinball begins. As you can see in the above picture, the design mentality is more akin to KAZe’s Sega Saturn games. Not that I’m complaining. In fact, this first table would likely have taken the top spot in either game. A nice variety of shooting angles, a fun three-slot toy in the center, and……. Wait, what’s happening?

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! Yep, each of the three levels “transforms” by having the lower half the playfield swap-out for a new half. “Doesn’t that mean the shooting angles are the same?” Angela asked. Pssh, party pooper. Also, she’s not entirely wrong, though the new configurations usually add second flippers and a few extra shots via a balcony. More importantly, the defense and rebounding angles do completely change. Sure, it feels slightly gimmicky, but it does successfully keep the game fresh.

Okay, so they doubled-down on putting hard-to-reach straight-up-the-middle targets. But the layouts they chose for the three tables AND nearly every configuration of those layouts makes for some fun, very fast-paced, very frisky pinball. I was SO CLOSE to making this the new #1 in the rankings, but there’s bigger problems besides those center shooting angles. For one thing, Psycho Ball’s slingshots are just insanely sensitive. If a f*cking gnat landed on them, it’d be curtains for the gnat. The ball just barely, BARELY grazes them and triggers yet another hot-potato sequence between the two slings. Akira might actually have the most hot potato-heavy slingshots in this entire feature. The second table especially:

The first and third tables are well suited for the wide variety of multiballs, while the second table seems obsessed with forcing clear-outs. The second table has such aggressive slingshots and shooting angles that feed them that it begins to feel trollish more than challenging. You’ll also note that the middle ramp in the center of the table might be the longest and steepest ramp I’ve ever seen in any real or digital pinball table. Remind me again, what shooting angle is the toughest to get a full force shot up? That’s right, it’s the center angle. Did KAZe just have a thing against centrists and this is where they draw the line? Also, the third configuration of the second table was a massive letdown.

Oh it still shoots pretty good, but I was expecting something a little more meaty. Akira has one other big problem in that, if you play the single player linear game (you can play the tables solo as well), the scaling is just not very good at all. The third level is by far the easiest, even when you factor in the boss. The second level is by far the hardest in every possible way. The first level is right between them, though I will say the first table is by far the best in the game and KAZe’s best pinball table ever, regardless of which configuration it has. Not that it’s a hard game by any means, as I beat the linear quest in my first every attempt thanks to tons of mundane shots and tasks lighting the extra ball target, which is always a single drop target that’s placed at an easy-to-hit angle. And seemingly every time I lost a ball, the game lit the extra ball target. Here are two:

Finally, and then I swear I’m done complaining: the third level has two lame special modes: a janky third-person mini-table where you shoot a wall and then smash the cryogenic tubes. I don’t mind the camera angle but the layout is just bad, with a bumper placed at the rear that makes the whole thing feel half-assed. Meanwhile, the “boss fight” against SOL is boring too. The physics change for it and become so slow that it was one of those “look up videos and make sure the emulator isn’t sh*tting the bed* situations. It wasn’t. I think they were aiming for “it’s space so it should be slower and more epic” but it just feels like the game is suffering from hardware failure.

Despite a laundry list of problems, Akira Psycho Ball is easily the best video pinball game that never came out in the United States. With the exception of versus mode and the two glorified side-quests seen above, even the worst aspects of the tables are still among the elite video pinball tables ever made. KAZe got off to a pretty rocky start in this genre, as I really don’t think Super Pinball, its sequel, or Power Rangers were even good at all. But unlike Spidersoft/Tarantula Studios, KAZe got better and better as they went along.

Eventually, KAZe became one of the all-time great video pinball studios. Akira Psycho Ball and the two Saturn pins came with BIG reputations, but they’re well deserved. I almost didn’t do Akira Psycho Ball or ANY Sixth Generation games. I’m happy I caved-in. And sad, because this is unlikely to get a wide release. I know that the licensing issues with Akira will make that difficult. Psycho Ball is loaded with clips from the movie and even has bits of the movie’s ending after you beat the final stage. But someone, somewhere has to figure this sh*t out, because Akira is genuinely one of THE great licensed games of the sixth generation, for any genre. Thanks for pestering me to add this to the feature, everyone. You were right. You usually are with these things.

I also think this is probably pinball that doesn’t require you to be a hardcore pinhead. Yeah, that second table is a little on the punishing side, but it also still practically rains extra balls. With the news that Last Gladiators is making a comeback, I hope the studio doing that reads this feature. If you are reading this, please make some calls and work out a deal to get the license and do a digital distribution release of it for all modern platforms so that everyone can get a chance to play this. The best video pinball game ever? I didn’t go that far, but I really had to think about it. It’s in the discussion for the GOAT of video pinball for sure.
Verdict: YES!
Ranking: #2 of 125
Percentile: 98%

Elemental Pinball
aka Nice Price Series Vol. 8: Elemental Pinball
Platform: PlayStation
Released February 21, 2002
Developed by DigiCube
Never Released in the United States
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Yep, all three of those tables are identical. It’s a budget release. Following the success of the Simple series of budget titles, there were tons of copycats. One short lived series was called the “Nice Price” series, and Elemental Pinball is a member of it. It’s a boring, bland, utterly generic 8-bit-like pinball game with bouncy physics that left me staring at my keyboard wondering what the f*ck I do with it. I had to remind myself that we’re now well into the 2000s while playing this, because Elemental Pinball feels like a video pinball concept from over ten years earlier that got frozen in a block of ice. In terms of layout, it was obvious to everyone that they were going for a Space Cadet-like target shooting layout. There’s no ball handling at all, and really no objective either besides scoring points and keeping the ball in play. But, there is a twist: the whole elemental thing.

Halfway through the above clip, you can see me activate the water ball mode, which makes the balls ricochet around. For the duration of the mode, they don’t really behave like pinballs and instead just continuously deflect off any and all surfaces while you rack-up extra balls. It would be a neat idea if it didn’t last so long and if the balls didn’t act like a slow motion replay. What the hell were they thinking with this? You don’t have to worry about flipping. The balls will clear every orbit. Again, they’re temporarily brick breaker-type balls. It turns an already uninteresting game into an outright slog. The fireball you can also unlock doesn’t do that. It behaves like a normal pinball and the only thing it does is score triple points and rack up even more extra balls. Seriously, at one pint I had eleven EBs and said “where the f*ck did all these come from?” The other mode is a centipede. I wish the game had more of this:

That centipede is literally the only exciting aspect of an otherwise dead-on-arrival video pinball game, and it rarely shows up. Would it have REALLY killed them to create a few extra layouts or more enemies like that? Mind you, the layout isn’t so bad, especially given the physics. You can aim and the upper left orbit is a genuinely satisfying shot. But the table is so low key and short on pomp that just looking at it is exhausting. I get it’s a budget release, but Elemental Pinball seriously feels like they just rushed the most efficient layout they could muster out the door without any polishing. With slightly better physics and presentation, this could have at least been a bottom-feeding YES! game. Instead, it might be the most nothing game in this entire feature. It offers so little to even talk about that I almost cut this from the feature. Yet another “budget game means no effort” and I’m getting so sick of those.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #74 of 125
Percentile: 41%

Muppet Pinball Mayhem
Platform: Game Boy Advance
Released May 18, 2002
Table Designs by Steven Kovensky
Directed by Mike Mika
Developed by Digital Eclipse Software, Inc.
Published by NewKidCo, Inc.
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Sigh. I had high hopes for the first Game Boy Advance title in this feature. I have much love for Digital Eclipse and I know a lot of their staff are legitimate pinball fans. I also set my expectations at “kiddie’s first pinball game” because of the license, though in retrospect, that might not have been fair. I hadn’t seen the original Muppet Movie since I was a little girl. Angela, a fan of movie magic, threw it on during my play session (I had no clue the film was a little over ten years older than me). It’s a wonderful movie! Truly something for everyone of all ages. I looked at the lineup of 1979 films and I honestly think it should have gotten an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture and Best Direction. And indeed, there’s stuff for both pinheads and children playing their first pinball game in Muppet Pinball Mayhem. Too bad it’s boring.

Oh, it’s not ALL boring. There’s actually a handful of good shots that are genuinely thrilling. There’s just not enough of them. Hell, there isn’t even a single one in Miss Piggy’s table, seen above. Mind you, Muppet Pinball Mayhem features pretty good physics, given the limitations. Plenty of shooting angles and nice ball speed and rebounding logic. So really, the reason Miss Piggy is a miserable slog to play is entirely on the layout. It’s one of the clunkiest shooters in this feature. Like this shot here:

There’s really no good shooting angle for it, which is a huge downer since it’s the table’s driver. Now granted, being difficult to work with is on brand for Miss Piggy, but the bumpers, ramp placement, and rules of the whole table seem to work against each-other. Speaking of rules, by far the biggest problem with Muppets is the lack of proper shot building. I just played this so much and was so unhappy the entire time that it felt like a f*cking hostage situation, and I still have no idea what shots were actually activating what modes. There’s constantly shots lit that seemingly do nothing. Maybe the instruction book explains it, but I couldn’t find the book this time. The goals are very much not intuitive. Take this shot done with a Terminator 2 style gun on Gonzo’s table:

“Shoot T–A–R–G–E–T with Cannon!” What target? Nothing is lit! Does it mean the G-O-N-Z-O drop targets? No, that can’t be it! Those targets are always there anyway and easily shootable with the normal flippers. They’re arguably the primary shot of the table already. But the gun doesn’t really have the radius to shoot anything else. But also, NOTHING HAPPENS when you shoot the G-O-N-Z-O targets and the normal play resumes. So what am I supposed to do? Well, you’re supposed to shoot the G-O-N-Z-O targets one at a time, then slowly work up relighting the cannon, then load the cannon, then shoot again until you’ve knocked out all the GONZO letters. Because they don’t normally say GONZO. They say GREAT.

Given that the DMD does have plenty of quality animations and the occasional (not common enough) instruction on it, would it REALLY have killed them to have it say “SHOOT THE G-O-N-Z-O TARGETS” and then add something that says “4 TO GO?” For a game that should have a primary audience of little kids, the rules were confusing and there was a complete lack of pizazz to making shots and completing modes. Muppet Pinball Mayhem? More like Muppet Pinball Sedation. Even the good shots have issues. Multiball is worthless because not all the shots are near the flippers. Then take shots like the theater on Kermit’s table, which acts as a very satisfying turnstile spinner.

It’s SO fun to shoot. Best shot in the game, easily. So what’s the problem? You might notice there’s a teeny tiny ferris wheel hidden to the right of it. It’s so hidden that it’s practically a f*cking Where’s Waldo game. So after you complete all the modes, it tells you to shoot the theater to unlock the next table. Well, I shot the f*cking theater. It didn’t do anything! That’s because you need a full force shot, which is impossible to do with a trapped shot. You have to shoot that ticket in the bottom left hand corner on a conversion shot in order to have the speed to really rev-up the turnstile spinner and have the ball pass through it to the ferris wheel. Nope, That’s not fun

Oh, and in adventure mode, how do you advance to the next table? You have to lose all your balls on the current table. Which brings me to what was the worst problem for me: Muppet Pinball Mayhem really is like a kiddie game, because it was too easy. I played one game of Kermit’s table that I had to lay down in order to move on to the next table. At this point, I just opted to play Adventure Mode so I could unlock the fourth table. Over an hour later, Angela said “uh, maybe you should die on purpose and see if it takes you to the next level.” And it worked. I had to lay down the game, and by the way, I had so many extra balls and it gives you so much ball save that laying the Kermit table down took me almost five minutes. I also had to lay down the Miss Piggy and Gonzo tables because I never would have died otherwise. I put about three hours into Muppet Pinball Mayhem and I literally didn’t lose. I forfeited. So what was my reward?

Holy mother of God. Wow. This is….. yeah, this is really bad. Like, historically bad. Hey Digital Eclipse I have something to ask you and hopefully enough time has passed. It’s been almost a quarter of a century since this was released. You can tell me: did you lock the Animal table behind the adventure mode in hopes no critic would ever play it? Yeah, holy crap, this is bad. I literally can’t believe this is being treated as a reward. It has to be one of the worst unlockables in gaming history. So these bumpers pop up and down the entire time, which by itself murders the tempo of the table to a degree I’ve never seen in any form of pinball. It’s such an obviously bad idea to have that sh*t going the entire time. I guess they had to do that because the angles are like baby’s first Japanese fan.

So obviously this isn’t for me and I have to give it a NO! But, would little kids enjoy it? Well I can’t actually test it, but honestly, I don’t think so, and for the same reasons I was bored: there’s just no stimuli in Muppet Pinball Mayhem. It’s far too subdued for its own good. There’s no sense of excitement. It’s low on energy, which is in contrast to the Muppet show and movies. They’re full of energy! Muppet Pinball Mayhem is efficient and even pulls off some damn satisfying shots, but there’s no connecting them. I don’t mean in the shooting combos sense, but in the logical shot A leads to shot B sense. There’s a mode in Kermit that says “shoot the lit shots.” But there’s lit shots that aren’t tied to the mode. So which is which? The game doesn’t tell you. You can’t do that and not expect both children and the young at heart to become listless.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #50 of 125
Percentile: 60%

The Pinball of the Dead
Platform: Game Boy Advance
Released June 18, 2002
Directed by Yuichi Toyama
Developed by Wow Entertainment
Published by Sega
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

The Pinball of the Dead so desperately wants to be like Devil’s Crush that it just straight-up copies attack patterns and almost whole layouts. But hey, I liked Devil’s Crush. Everyone did! What could go wrong? Deep breath, okay Cathy. This is the one. The one where I get taken out on a boat and shot like Fredo. Mmmhmm. My body is ready. So, why do I *hate* Pinball of the Dead? Hopefully the clip here’s complete lack of action makes it obvious:

Mind you, THAT’S ON “FAST” SPEED! You mean to tell me the game is capable of playing even slower? GOOD LORD!! How did they do that? Did they set the ball to move at the speed of black hole evaporation? I didn’t even bother to check. I was too scared that I would slip into a coma from which I might never wake. Now, this is one of the rare video pinball games I had as a kid. Played it for a few minutes, stuck it into a drawer and never played again. I didn’t pick it out. I think my Dad got it for me from a two pack at Costco. If I wasn’t doing this feature, I would never have played it again. But I’ve been wrong about games I previously sampled so I really did go into this review cautiously optimistic that my memories of Pinball of the Dead were completely wrong. They were completely right.

And I thought Muppet Pinball Mayhem could use some caffeine. Muppet was low-energy. This has no energy at all. None. It doesn’t bode well for the Game Boy Advance that the first two video pins are among the least energetic games in the genre, but this really is a new low because the ball speed is really the only thing that drove me to not like the game. This might have been a fun, timeless Devil’s Crush wannabe. Oh, it brings nothing new to the table besides splashes of blood (that you have to turn on in the menu). But there was exactly one exciting shot in the entire first table. It was this:

And that is it. The one fun shot in the entire game. The rest of it is a repetitive chore with some of the most lightweight combat in video pinball. Like the Crush series, Pinball of the Dead leans heavily into live targets. But, the ball has to have momentum to score a kill. What the game considers momentum varies. Like for example:

That’s me hitting a zombie from point blank range with the ball. It survived and the ball was harmlessly shooed off to the left flipper. Okay, question: how does it kill them at all then? Because there was a gap between the flipper and the zombie. It’s not like the flippers and the ball both hit the zombie. The ball flipped and launched the ball directly into it. If that doesn’t kill it, shouldn’t the zombies just be immune to the ball? Now, in fairness, had I done it off the tip of the flipper, it would have died.

I think they were aiming for realism in this parody of their House of the Dead series set on a giant pinball table. In practice, it just makes the combat feel inconsistent and lacking in weight. When there’s a cluster of enemies and the ball falls onto them, it should be exciting to see the ball cut through them. Instead it usually bounces lifelessly between them like Zombie Plinko. The hits with the ball NEVER feel violent or impactful, even against the bosses.

Despite the fact that critics have championed Pinball of the Dead as one of the best video pins of all-time and even one of the best Game Boy Advance games, I really thought it was f*cking boring. Pinball Chick team member Matt said that I have a high tolerance for bad games. Maybe. But what I can’t deal with is slow games. After just a few minutes of The Pinball of the Dead, a sense of dread overcame me. I really didn’t want to play it anymore. I literally heard myself think “oh God, I’m committed to this. I’m actually stuck with this for a while.” I think it has to mostly be non-pinball fans singing its praises because it’s yet another wacky House of the Dead satire from Sega. But, like this:

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You get those letters from a sinkhole that stops the game, then takes a few more seconds to spit the ball back out. Look how many letters you need to get. LOOK AT IT! What the hell were they thinking? That is so many times you need to shoot the same sinkhole, in a game where sinkholes take forever. By the time you actually get all the letters, the excitement is gone because you’ve invested so much time into the waiting process that the payoff isn’t worth it. And there’s so many of those letter-collecting shots in each table. TONS of them. The sheer amount of downtime and waiting is mind numbing. Hell, just watching the ball slowly roll up to the flippers is agony. It takes forever!

It really looks like it’s going to be fun and there are potentially some damn good shooting angles that could have been sick with a better engine. Despite being the first of these Crush-likes to offer multiple tables, the second table is a legitimate contender for the worst video pinball table ever made just on its glacial pace alone and the third table feels like a stripped down rehash of the first one. Look at this boss battle where it takes 20 seconds for the ball to reach the flippers. After thirty seconds, I’ve only flipped twice. When a f*cking turn based, menu-driven game would have a faster pace and more excitement than your pinball, it’s time to rethink things.

The one and only thing I’ll give Pinball of the Dead over Devil’s Crush is that I would take Dead’s bosses over Devil’s mini-games because at least they can end in seconds if you have multiball. But they’re not fun either, so what does that really matter? Pinball of the Dead is like playing Devil’s Crush at half the speed and none of the tension. Replaying it all these years later reaffirmed to me it’s one of the most overrated video games ever made and possibly THE most overrated video pinball game. I will NEVER understand how anyone could consider this one of the best GBA games. Compared to what?
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #89 of 125
Percentile: 29%

Pinball Advance
Platform: Game Boy Advance
Released October 18, 2002
Developed by Rebellion Developments
Published by Digital Worldwide
Never Released Outside of Europe
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Pinball Advance is a remake of Pinball Mania, the first game where I realized that Spidersoft/Tarantula Studios simply did not give a sh*t. I mean, they released a game with dead flippers that could barely launch a trapped ball past the flipper zone. But this isn’t a Spidersh*t game. Pinball Advance was developed by Rebellion Developments, the studio behind the Sniper Elite franchise, so I was pretty optimistic. It also uses a completely different camera angle from the Pinball Mania I played. So I quickly discovered that Tarantula played like a late 70s Gottlieb table with a hint of 80s eye candy in the form of a ramp and a balcony. It was pretty playable. The physics weren’t amazing and the drain gap was too big, so it wasn’t going to be a top rated game, but it seemed like a YES! game. And then this happened in my second game, and the third game overall:

You can barely see the ball in the upper left corner, but yeah, the ball is stuck and unable to move. It’s stuck so badly that even nudging won’t free it. TILTING doesn’t free it either. You only have one option: pause the game and quit. So sorry. By the way, that above clip was the SECOND TIME IN A ROW it happened. My father was actually the player the first time it happened and we screwed up getting a clip of it, but, it turns out, Pinball Advance would be generous with game ruining stuck balls and I would have PLENTY of chances to get more clips. You see, it’s actually insanely easy to stick a ball in that upper corner, which was problematic to begin with. The ball usually comes in too fast to hit any target but the F. We even tried cheating to be able to hit the A-N-G targets in FANG, but the only shooting angle that worked at most ramp speeds was the F. It’s VERY rare for the ball to come in slow enough to hit the other targets. The first time we did it without any cheating, my father jammed the ball without any hope of recovery. Then I took my turn and did it too. Not deliberately. It just happens through common on-target shots.

This is the 103rd game that was eligible to be ranked in this feature, and this was the first time that we literally soft-locked the game. A few close calls, but the nudge always was able to free the ball. This time, we couldn’t get the ball unjammed. Even after TILTING, the ball isn’t freed. It remains there, mocking your now dead game. There’s no option to reset the ball in the menu, which is what happens on modern tables. So, in that clip, the game is over. And again, that was the SECOND TIME we’d done it. Here’s the third time I jammed a ball on Pinball Advance, in literally my first ever game on the Jail Break table. YES, IT HAPPENS ON MULTIPLE TABLES!

The ball is behind the base of the center pillar on the McDonald’s ramp. Later on, Angela locked the ball on the same spot in consecutive games. Most of our games on Jail Break and pretty much any game we were shooting well enough ended with a stuck ball. It’s actually crazy easy to jam a ball in this via a common ricochet. We’ve done it from the left and right side too. By the way, the first clip was with the game on NORMAL difficulty. The above clip is also on NORMAL. I adjusted the game to be on HARD, which made the ball faster and the game a lot more fun and exciting. Completed a full game of Tarantula, and it was fun. Then Angela took her turn and and, just to really prove it wasn’t f*cking around, while shooting the lights out and having an AMAZING game of Tarantula, Pinball Advance locked ANOTHER ball on the table, this time in a different spot.

Once again, there’s no way out of it. No amount of nudging will unstick it. Game. Over. So not only can you jam the ball, but you can jam it in a variety of ways. Who knows? Maybe I didn’t even find them all. Like Tarantula, Jail Break’s can be stuck in multiple ways. Even though we were constantly sticking the ball on Jail Break, we couldn’t see the ball behind the pillar. But then, while typing this up, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing some method of unsticking the ball (I don’t think I am). So I fired up Jail Break and, while having my best game ever on it (meaning I cleared 50M before sticking the ball) I stuck in a way where you could see it peeking out behind the pillar, which tells me there’s a LOT of room to stick the ball behind that pillar. Also, this was on HARD instead of NORMAL like the first Jail Break clip.

The message is clear: the longer you play Tarantula and Jail Break, the more likely the game will end with a stuck ball. Only my second game of Tarantula and my very first game of Jail Break ended this way, so ANY amount of play testing should have found this sh*t. The Jail Break stuck ball happened only a minute or two into the game. Maybe the play testers thought they had somehow screwed up and did something they weren’t supposed to do so they never reported it. Or maybe they did report it and it was released without being fixed. A North American release had been planned and was canceled, perhaps out of fear of press coverage highlighting these easily stuck balls.

The casino-themed table is missing from Pinball Mania, so the final table is Dare Devil (two words, apparently) and it had to knock my socks off for me to not place Pinball Advance dead last in the ranking. The good news is we never experienced a stuck ball on this table. It doesn’t mean it can’t happen. There were a couple moments where the ball came to a complete stop in the middle of a ramp, like in this shot:

And then suddenly the ball started moving again on its own. It happened on basically every ramp in Pinball Advance and, since I had already seen a ball get stuck on Tarantula’s ramp when it came to an unmotivated stop, I think it’s a safe bet it could happen in Dare Devil, even if we never experienced it. Technically, it never happened, so I can evaluate the table on its merits. Yeah, this is a horrible pinball table with serial killer outlanes and shots like this one:

And about 95% of the time that shot and, in fact, most shots on the right of the table will end with the ball draining down a huge vacuum outlane on the right. The left outlane is nearly as lethal AND there’s also plenty of straight down the middle angles. The modes are bland and the whole thing feels like a prototype. Oh lord, and I thought Pinball Mania was a sh*tshow. Pinball Advance was so much worse. Good f*cking God! When two-thirds of your tables have a pretty good chance of resulting in a game-ending stuck ball, how can you not be considered one of the absolute very worst video pinball games ever.

I’ve seen some truly wretched sh*t in this feature, but at least those games didn’t just have the ball get stuck. Not only does it happen here, but it’s COMMONPLACE! Again, even fifteen minutes of play testing should have found this. Pinball Advance has got to be the worst Game Boy Advance release. Yes, even worse than Mortal Kombat Advance. Seriously, how bad are the seven games sitting below this in the rankings that I would pick a game that I broke two of the three tables multiple times? Pinball Advance, you broke my spirit. Take a bow, Pinball Advance, so I can lop your head off.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #118 of 125
Percentile: 6%

Austin Powers Pinball
Platform: PlayStation
Released October 25, 2002
Designed by Joel Finch and Adrian Cook
Developed by Wildfire Studios
Published by Gotham Games
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

What you’re seeing in the above two pictures is a rolling ball that, before reaching the flippers, suddenly lifts off with enough speed and momentum to clear the drain and hit the right flippers. And yes, this is a repeat from other games in this feature. What can I say? There’s so many Pinball Dreams-like games in this feature that made the exact same mistake that I assume they all just come from the same toolkit. “MAKE YOUR PINBALL VIDEO GAME! SELL IT AT DRUG STORES! ACT NOW!” But that hop completely ruins Austin Powers because it just blocks your ability to aim at key shots. (shrug)

Austin Powers, like those Pool and Bowling PS1 budget games I mentioned above, was a regular at gas stations and drug stores. Rite Aids and Walgreens always seemed to have a copy. It’s yet another $9.99 budget release from the same team that designed KISS, using basically the same engine as KISS, with the same ball-hops-over-flippers issue as KISS. The only advantage is Austin Powers has better layouts and moves slightly less fast so as not to be impossible to play. It’s still horrible. Nearly a quarter-century after video pinball was properly invented with Atari’s Video Pinball and we still have a game that has no handling, a bouncy ball that resists being aimed, limited shooting angles, and absolutely no flow at all.

While there’s audio clips from characters in the movie and some DMD movie clips (when you lose the ball it’s the scene when Austin Powers gets a stick shift pushed into his crotch. Nice touch), you never shake the vibe that this could be any theme. To anyone who says “isn’t that true of most pinball?” I swear to you it’s not true. You can tailor shots to have a cinematic link to a movie. I found one such thing in either Austin Powers table:

The fem bots, which shoot bullets from their boobs, are represented by the pop bumpers. That’s it. That feels thematically linked directly to the movie without having to use imagination. And that is it. +1 for the fem bots. -1 for this:

For what it’s worth, the second table based on The Spy Who Shagged Me shoots much better than the first one, although both tables feel like they were built to incorporate that hop on the flippers to make the game more challenging. So many key shots are outright prevented by them. I was originally going to say “it only happens on the left flipper” but it actually does happen frequently enough on the right flipper to be a thing. Why not, I don’t know, FIX THE DAMN HOP?! So really, the most interesting thing about the game is that it outright stole Twilight Zone’s Battle the Power magnetic pulse mini-game, only it’s not exciting and about 1% as rewarding. I say that as someone who is in total agreement that Battle the Power throws the balance of Twilight Zone wildly off, but I love that mode. Don’t do this. No.

The second table did a lot of annoying things. It has a wavy orbit (is it literally supposed to be groovy?) that bends a couple times, which might be fun if the ball didn’t have bouncy physics that does things like go from rolling to airborne unprompted. So that groovy ramp constantly got halfway through and rejected off full-force shots just based on the luck of where the ball’s bouncy cycle was. It also made me repeat a couple modes that I already finished. I beat the Mini-Me mode where you have to shoot the orbit Mini-Me is at, and then I hit the mode start and it was immediately a repeat of it. What the f*ck? I completed the mode the first time! Why wasn’t it checked off?

Whatever. Ten years after Pinball Fantasies released and Austin Powers feels like yet another slightly reworked knock-off of it with outdated physics. While I don’t think it’s entirely fair to be lumped-in with KISS because that truly is putrid all around, I really can’t blame any critic who did just do a two-for-one review of both since they both represent the same problem: an early 90s physics engine, with NOTHING done to improve it, for a 2003 movie license game. It really wouldn’t have killed Wildfire to improve the physics engine of Austin Powers. There is an effective nudge that can stop that leap before it happens, but it throws your timing up AND burns through tilt warnings. Yet another “it’s a budget release, so who cares?” I care. Pinball fans care. I imagine Austin Powers fans cared. I’m not scoring against how fuddy-duddy a game like this was in 2003 because it’s not 2003 anymore so who cares? But it IS shameful. And no, it’s not okay because Austin Powers the character is a literal relic of the past. Yeah, like that was intentional. Come on, they ain’t THAT clever.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #79 of 125
Percentile: 37%

Pinball Tycoon
Platform: Game Boy Advance
Released January 2, 2003
Developed by Ignition Entertainment Ltd.
Published by AIA USA, Ltd.
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

What you’re seeing in the above clip is me soft locking Pinball Tycoon in the first game where I activated the “Black Gold” table’s high-concept multiball. It’s sort of like Mist Multiball in Bram Stoker’s Dracula in that the object is to dislodge a ball. But instead of eerily floating across the playfield, the ball jumps up and down the shooter’s lane and you have to intercept it. You can earn multiple balls doing this. So what happened? At the start of the clip, you can see a ball drain after I missed the jumping ball. Since I had more balls left to potentially add to the multiball, it just loaded the next ball in the shooter’s lane. Problem: the other ball was still waiting to be dislodged. So now both balls were jumping up and down the shooter’s lane, and I could do nothing about it. No way to dislodge it. No way to use the plunger. I waited over five minutes, flipping, hitting the nudge button and eventually TILTing. Even after I TILTed, the balls kept jumping, and the game was over. It had taken me multiple games and quite a while in that particular round to unlock that multiball too. After going 102 games without a softlock, I have softlocked two out of the last three games, both GBA games. Un-f*cking-believable.

So now THIS is also near the bottom of the worst video pinball games ever made thanks to an insanely easy to activate game-ending glitch AND some of the laziest, half-assed table designs in pinball history. It shouldn’t surprise you to learn this was both produced and programmed by a pair of guys who did all those previously terrible Spidersoft pinball games who last collaborated on KISS Pinball for the PS1. It even has the same engine as the handheld versions of Pinball Dreams, Pinball Fantasies, and Hollywood Pinball. It feels basically like a direct sequel to Hollywood Pinball with these terrible layouts. Look at the above table. Look at this table, Hollywood Mogul:

As boring and lifeless as California Gold Rush was (seriously one of the laziest designs I’ve ever seen), at least there’s shooting angles for the orbits. There’s NO shooting angles for Mogul’s orbits. I spent well over an hour looking for them and came to the conclusion there’s no way to deliberately set up the conversion shots that will allow the ball to access them without rejecting. Mogul is one of the worst tables I’ve ever seen. It seriously feels like a pinball table designed in a few minutes, with upper and mid-playfields that make no sense at all. The mid-playfield’s flippers needed to be lowered to allow cleaner shots. You want pinball to have tough shots, but you also want those shots to be visually satisfying. I never once completed any orbit in one graceful trip. The ball just barely made it over the top, bouncing around the entire time. When a ball is physically incapable of smoothly clearing the circumference of a wide orbit like Hollywood Mogul has, all that you have left is a clunky shot. Mogul isn’t a total sh*tshow, but it’s so clunky that it’s impossible to enjoy.

Black Gold was the table I played the most as I knew there was a multiball that I was failing to unlock. When I finally did, as you saw in the above clip, draining even once will end the game in a way you can’t fix. So apparently I wasn’t the only one struggling to start multiball too. It seems like the play testers were as well, because even one unlock of multiball would have revealed what happens. Hah, I’m just kidding. This didn’t have play testers. Even without that, Black Oil is a terrible table that takes too long to unlock the key shots. Having to lock SIX multiball balls is ridiculous. This whole table is a mind-numbing grind. The sad thing is the multiball idea was original, but they couldn’t have possibly f*cked it up worse and solidified themselves as the least talented pinball designers of all-time.

The casino-themed Golden Chance is easily the best table in the game in that it rises to the level of being simply a dumpster fire of terrible pinball gameplay. It might have an Italian bottom, but the rules are total nonsense. Completing the inlane lights gives you an extra ball every single time. That’s far too great a reward for such a mundane task. The scoring is bad. Key targets are set on blind angles that can’t be shot at all AND are rarely hit by the bumpers, making them among the blindest of blind angles pinball has ever seen.

This really was the final video game of any genre by the producer and programmers that brought us all these cash grab Spidersh*t pinball shovelware. And if these reviews seem too mean, remember these games weren’t donated to players. They cost real money, and lots of it. Presumably enough pinball-loving gamers of all ages chose these games over other games they would have had so much more fun with. That’s why they kept making them even though they clearly didn’t care at all for quality pinball games. That’s what pisses me off so much about Spidersoft and the people who made these games. Even in a new company, with over a decade of practice of making video pinball, Pinball Tycoon proves once and for all they never improved at all. Not the layouts. Not the physics. If anything, they just kept getting lazier and lazier. Spidersoft’s contributions to pinball and gaming at large should be spoken of with the same mocking snickers as LJN or Micronics. I’m done for good with them, this time for real, and good riddance.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #117 of 125
Percentile: 6%

Patriotic Pinball
Platform: PlayStation
Released April 22, 2003
Designed by Stephen Atkinson and Adrian Cook
Developed by Wildfire Studios
Published by Gotham Games
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

I had a “sigh, let’s get this over with” attitude with Patriotic Pinball when I first booted it up. As another Wildfire production and the final $9.99 PlayStation budget release, I expected another Pinball Dreams-like game. It even had the same menu as KISS and Austin Powers. Then the first table loaded, and to my surprise, its engine was an original 3D pinball engine. “Let’s get this over with” was out the window, at least for a little while. It features two tables, though, both tables are so similar that they come across more like remixes of each-other.

Okay, so there are a couple key differences in the two, most notably the placement of the bumpers and the addition of an upper flipper in the second table, Road Trip. But that upper flipper is one of the most useless flippers in terms of the actual targets it’s capable of shooting. Really, the flipper is there completely for defense against the bumpers, which are capable of launching the ball like a rocket towards the drain much faster than a human can reasonably act. Instead of dialing back the punching power of the bumpers, it feels like the designers added a flipper that has no real target to shoot as a band aid. Finally, some shots are tightened or loosened depending on the table. Despite these changes, it really does sincerely feel like two versions of one table, each with their own ROMs. Whether or not that’s the case, America on Duty is the best of the two tables.

But “let’s get this over with” quickly returned when I realized that Patriotic Pinball’s engine was just plain no good. It’s too limited in its shooting angles and some of the angles they did include don’t feel realistic at all. Even though both tables have a Japanese fan layout, none of us could find angles for multiple orbits off the flippers. Only conversion shots or shots that use the insanely overpowered nudge worked. My family, who enjoyed playing the Pro Pinball series but lost interest in lending me a hand as I’ve had twelve out of the last thirteen games have not been good, sat down to play this, then quickly sat back up and said “have fun with that, Cathy!” Thanks fam.

The themes themselves are pretty boring, and some of the modes are too punishing. American on Duty, like Austin Powers, has Twilight Zone’s “Battle the Power” mode in the guise of using pulses to launch aircraft carriers. Clearly Wildfire LOVED Twilight Zone. But the physics feel different in this mode than they do in the normal table. The ball moves too fast and is too heavy, causing games to end too quickly. I never got credit for finishing the mode, which I’m guessing takes five completions. I never did better than four.

And there’s a “gather food” mode in Road Trip that can end in a single shot if you shoot the bumpers. Which, like, 50% of the right flipper’s surface area will shoot the bumpers whether you aim for them or not. The bumper orbit is by far the widest orbit on the table, so it’s too easy to hit them, which ends the mode immediately. This is such a recklessly designed mode that’s so easy to fail that it’s not even exciting. It becomes annoying when it activates, because you know it’s not going to end well, especially since the problem with some orbits not having direct shooting angles means you can’t even access them via a trapped shot. You have to shoot them off rebounds, and where do most of those shooting angles come from? Oh right, the bumpers. The same ones you can’t touch, at least from the front.

Patriotic Pinball was the final ever original PlayStation pinball game, and when I saw they dumped the 2D engine, I had high hopes. Video pinball had come so far during the PlayStation era before regressing like Pro Pinball had never happened. Unfortunately, Patriotic Pinball is a further regression. Simply put, the game just isn’t fun, and not just because of the bad engine. Even if it had just a couple more shooting angles to rise to the level of average, I question whether it could have gotten a YES! The theming and presentation is bland to the point of exhaustion. We’ve already seen both the military and US road trip themes in this feature. Why does “budget release” have to also mean generic? You really couldn’t come up with something more creative than the same tired themes that have been done to death? I enjoyed the PS1’s offerings. I’m also glad to be done with them.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #52 of 125
Percentile: 48%

Pinball Fun
aka Simple 2000 Series Vol. 26: The Pinball x 3
Platform: PlayStation 2
Released April 24, 2003
Directed by Atsushi Satoh
Developed by HuneX
Published by D3Publisher (Japan) 505 Game Street (Europe)
Never Released in North America
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Some of the bad games in this feature feel like they’re dead inside in the metaphorical sense. Pinball Fun has two tables that are legitimately dead inside, as in they are almost entirely empty. That’s especially frustrating because the tables are positively massive, yet they they don’t f*cking do anything! The first and third tables are so empty that it makes the game feel like an unfinished prototype. No wait, hold on. “Unfinished prototype” is actually too far along in the development process for how little content these offer. Instead, two out of the three tables feel like a proof of concept for a pinball engine that were shown to a studio manager as an example of what the physics were capable of, and the boss played around with it for a minute or two and said “this is good enough. Let’s just ship it out like this. It’s a budget title, so nobody gives a sh*t.”

The first table, Attack the Dragon, is the most nothing table in this entire feature. If you don’t count the slingshots of the Italian bottom, there’s two ramps, a sinkhole, and a bumper that I hit only a couple times over the course of five games. See the little black dot under the word “SCORE” at the top. That’s the bumper. As for the dragon, after hitting the lights or the sinkhole enough times to turn on every light of the corresponding shot, a dragon spawns. It’s a bash toy that sits perfectly still and poses no threat even when it breathes fire, then dies and vanishes after three or four hits. And that’s the whole table. It’s barely even a pinball table. I can’t stress enough: this feels like a proof of concept whipped out over an afternoon.

It’s at this point I need to note that Pinball Fun’s physics aren’t bad at all. They’re slow, but the shooting angles feel good and natural, so this engine really does seem like it could have produced a solid video pinball game if it had better layouts. But the third table, Operation Thunder Storm, feels like yet another proof of concept, this time for ramps. You can see there’s even more lights this time, but they don’t do anything except activate multiball and do other bonuses. This table does have a mini-flipper zone at the rear of the table that shoots a genuinely visually satisfying shot. That arch ramp in the back has a roller coaster-like vibe to it. It’s fun to watch the ball travel across a ramp that has no rails. But this table is an empty, soul-crushing slog.

Maybe I’m right about the proof of concept thing, because the only table that comes remotely close to feeling like a finished table that has a complete theme rather than a placeholder is the second table, called “Love Songs: Idols & Pinball.” It’s an anime/J-Pop-themed table that has a variety of targets, clear goals and a sense of progression. It’s not a good table, as the targets aren’t fun to hit and the ball gets caught in slingshot/wall hot potato too often. It also sometimes takes a long time for the ball to finish clearing the ramps at the rear of the table. Worst of all, the most important targets on the table are situated behind the bumpers in a way that can’t be shot. So, while it single-handedly kept Pinball Fun out of the worst-game-ever discussion, it’s a really bad table that isn’t remotely fun. Pinball Fun feels unfinished, or even like the type of development kit asset flip you see on Steam all the time today. Another terrible budget release, but this one hurts because its physics aren’t awful.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #88 of 125
Percentile: 30%

Sonic Pinball Party
Platform: Game Boy Advance
Released May 27, 2003
Directed by Akinori Nishiyama
Developed by Sonic Team & Jupiter Corp.
Published by Sega
Sold Exclusively at Target (United States)
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Sonic Pinball Party is breaking the losing streak for both Game Boy Advance and this feature, though it sure seemed like it wanted to be yet another NO! There’s so many downright baffling choices made in this thing. Sonic Pinball Party features three tables, only one of which is any good. The Nights tables and the unlockable Samba De Amigo tables are complete disasters. Samba De Amigo especially, which was so boring that, like with the Animal table in Muppet Pinball Mayhem, I wondered if it was made an extra feature that can be unlocked out of hope that critics would never actually play it.

Based on the Dreamcast maraca-based rhythm game. Samba has to be the worst table in a YES! game in this feature. Not only is it boring, with poor shot selection and a lifeless theme, but it has the worst mini-game in the history of pinball, in any form it takes. Shooting the upper right orbit when lit activates a simple two button rhythm game that can take a few minutes to complete. Yes, a few minutes. AND IT’S BORING!

The Nights table is also pretty dang bad, though it wouldn’t take many tweaks to make it decent. It features two supplemental flippers that are so limited in their usage that I have to imagine they’re relics of an earlier design. The layout and the pathways the ball will naturally travel pull the ball away from those flippers, which usually can only graze the ball. Even after running through all the “levels” and doing my best to tour the table, I found these flippers had no use that couldn’t be better done with the primaries. It was very rare they ever made meaningful contact with the ball, and when they did, the shot wasn’t exciting anyway. The flippers have a shallow radius too, limiting their shot to well, one: straight across, and you will RARELY get an opportunity at it. Really, I think they were aiming for some kind of flipper-to-flipper sequence shot, but look at the placement of the flippers, the full radius of the flipper, and the typical placement of the ball from the only angle that feeds a shot. It doesn’t hug the flipper. It pops out and away from it just by the geometry of the table.

What are they even doing there? And it’s not like Nights’ other shots are well done. The central target is basically a gazebo that the ball passes through and offers no satisfaction. It takes gathering five crystals to fight a boss, but the act of gathering the crystal requires the use of that flyweight gazebo. At least the Gillwing boss takes multiple hits. Sonic can’t say that. I mean, it’s still not a good fight. Ideally, the boss would move around, but it stays stationary and isn’t even framed like a big deal. Look at it! It’s so unassuming it might as well be a normal target.

So really, it’s all about that one Sonic table, which is pretty decent. It’s not amazing or anything but the layout has multiple fun, frisky shots that feel true to the character, in contrast to the “meh, could be anything” layout of Nights.

But while it has a nice mix of stationary targets and orbits, the progress feels incredibly dumbed down. Shooting the right orbit three times activates Robotnik, who floats into a position that barely calls any attention to him. They really had a framing problem with this game, as Robotnik feels even more subdued than Gillwing. But it gets even worse. The amount of shots it takes to defeat Robotnik? One. Imagine if Bowser only took one hit on a Mario pinball table. “Technically doesn’t Bowser only take one hit in some games? The axe thing?” TJ said. Okay, well, fair, BUT I don’t think Robotnik ever does! Well, he does here.

What’s even worse is the bonus after Robotnik, if a point countdown where every single orbit you hit scores whatever is left, until it runs out. It lasts a minute or so, and then the level theme changes. Not the shots themselves, though. While effort is made to give each of the different themes a personality, if you don’t up the shots or stakes, it doesn’t matter. Regardless of which level you’re on, Robotnik only takes one shot to kill. The rewards for beating him don’t really change. It makes the sense of progress feel inauthentic. I also have to call out the worst format of multiball  yet. When you have multiball going, kickbacks and ball save turn off. That’s too punishing, especially when the table is three screens tall and you can’t track the position of any ball above the highest one.

If this review is overly negative for a YES! game, that’s mostly because I was soured on the Sonic Pinball Party experience thanks to having to suffer through a tedious slog of a single player campaign in order to unlock the Samba De Amigo table. You have to get benchmark scores on Sonic table a couple times, the Nights table once, then beat EVERY stage in Sonic, then beat Robotnik’s high score, and all to unlock one of the worst digital pinball tables in a good pinball game ever made. The only thing stopping it from being THE worst is that Zaccaria Pinball has some real doozies for unlockables, given the time investment.

But the time investment wasn’t worth it and when I realized the scoring balance tilted so heavily in favor of just killing Robotnik and shooting two ramps over and over for the time bonus and the combo bonus, the excitement of the game drained out. But as a reminder, Sonic actually does have top notch target placement and some damn satisfying angles. The twin shots with the supplemental flipper is a thing of beauty (so they DO know how to use them!) and the Chao Eggs are delightful. But it needed badly to change up the Robotnik fight with a bigger variety and it needed balanced scoring. Even before Samba De Amigo was unlocked, Sonic plummeted down my rankings because I realized the risk/reward balance is nonexistent. Fun shots are nice but they’re only exciting if there’s risk and stakes. The highest yielding shots are the easiest in Sonic. So it’s barely okay, really. But hey, at least both Jupiter and the Game Boy Advance are FINALLY on the scoreboard.
Verdict: YES!
Rating: #25 of 125
Percentile: 80%

Pokémon Pinball: Ruby & Sapphire
Platform: Game Boy Advance
Released August 1, 2003
Directed by Masaru Kuribayashi
Developed by Jupiter Corp.
Published by Nintendo
NO MODERN RELEASE

Pokémon Pinball’s sequel still has more problems than a math test, with the biggest problem being they didn’t change the uninspired primary catching format from the original game. It’s literally the same sequence of shooting a single orbit and the starting target, hitting the bumpers, and then shooting the stationary bash toy. Even with better hardware, they didn’t even try to improve the formula. Hey, 5.3 million buyers can’t be wrong, right?! If you want proof that how good or bad a game is can’t be measured by its metric, look at Pokémon Pinball. Nintendo clearly didn’t, and the result is less than a quarter of the original game’s owners bought the sequel even though the franchise was hotter than ever. A sales drop that sends about as clear of a message as consumers are capable of: Pokémon Pinball’s format f*cking sucks, and it’s no different here.

But, keeping it real, Pokémon Pinball: Ruby & Sapphire mechanically is still a pretty big improvement over the original game. It shoots a LOT better and…… honestly that’s really the only improvement. Ball handling is still a massive regression to the early 90s, as passing is not really possible. But the shooting angles are much more accurate and lifelike, especially the straight-up-the-middle angle that you absolutely need in this game. While I’m stunned that ball handling is actually worse than the first game, I’ll take the better shooting and rebounding, and Pokémon Pinball: Ruby & Sapphire is now in the elite category. A case could be made that no 2D pinball game ever shot better.

Sadly, the mini-games are even longer, spongier, and more tedious in the sequel. The only good news on that front is that each table has a unique boss that can be captured. Hell, even the secondary bosses can be captured. The bad news is you have to beat the sets of mini-games twice for the captures to happen. The worse news is the games are frustrating slogs built entirely around making you sit and watch while your ball is trapped. They’re all bad. Every single one of them is terrible. It made me appreciate the decision to remove the mini-games entirely from Sonic Pinball Party and move them to a casino in the options menu where they can’t hurt anyone. Oh, you didn’t realize that’s what happened? I don’t know it for a fact, but I’m CERTAIN that’s what happened.

But I do have some really good news: Jupiter seems to have realized that these mini-games become annoying when they repeat over and over every two to three catches or evolutions, so they included the option to opt-out of playing them and stop the endless interruptions that plagued the first game! Take note, Spidersoft: there’s still one way to assure players don’t get bored: let them skip the stuff you know turned out bad! I’m not even kidding, Jupiter! That’s the best idea you’ve had since Picross! I mean, I still had to get bored a few times while trying to catch the Pokémon featured in the mini-games. Like really bored. So bored that I was pronounced clinically dead at one point. But after that, I could skip it, and I could get back to the main unimaginative gameplay I signed up for! Thank you!

Let me bitch about one more boss and then I SWEAR I’m done with the bad stuff.

Okay, now, if it sounds like this isn’t getting a YES!, I don’t blame you. But actually, Pokémon Pinball allows you to take a pass on the interruptions and traveling makes the act of catching Pokémon so much better. Plus, they added one additional method of catching: eggs that match into Pokémon that provide a live target to take out. The pool is so limited and it literally repeated for me on only my third egg get, but I appreciated that they added at least one more catching method. With the better shooting physics and layouts, I found myself enjoying stringing together shots and quickly filling my Pokémon roster.

This time around, both tables are kinda samey. Sapphire is a teeny tiny bit harder than Ruby, but this game is even easier than the original game. I literally never actually game overed unintentionally. Ruby & Sapphire was so generous with kickbacks and ball saves that I had to lay down literally every single game, or I would have just kept going, and I didn’t even buy a single extra ball from the marts. By the way, the mart and coin system is a complete failure on account of not having enough stuff to buy. I would have preferred things like paying to increase the odds of finding a new Pokémon. Nope, just ball saves and extra balls, or maybe a trip to the Seel bonus stage, which is yet another stinkaroo.

Still, I admit that I didn’t dislike this Pokémon Pinball: Ruby & Sapphire overall. Oh, there was plenty about it I hated and I’m glad to be finished with both it and Jupiter. I hope they stick with Picross because they don’t exactly have a gift for pinball. Or a sense of imagination, as Ruby & Sapphire is still a completely lazy idea. But the faster pace and better shooting angles helps it to avoid feeling like a soulless cash grab knowingly riding the franchise’s coattails with minimal effort. I mean, just barely, but it did manage to avoid feeling completely cynical. Still, if Nintendo goes back to the Pokémon Pinball video game franchise now that the Stern table is the biggest pinball hit of the 21st century, and I strongly suspect they will, I hope they kick Jupiter to the curb and get someone who actually has a sense of imagination and ambition that matches the scale of the franchise. I know Pokémon Pinball: Ruby & Sapphire has BIG fans, and I’m fine with that. But I want to ask them all, seriously, doesn’t Pokémon deserve a better video pinball game than this?
Verdict: YES!
Ranking: #26 of 125
Percentile: 79%
I had a sudden thought as I was editing this: Pokémon Pinball, only done in the same transforming playfield style of Akira, changing the roster of available Pokémon to nab, which are a mix of fixed shots and live targets. Seriously, you can picture it, right?! 

Flipnic: Ultimate Pinball
Platform: PlayStation 2
Released August 7, 2003
Designed by Katsuyuki Kanetaka
Developed by Sony
Published by Capcom (US) Ubisoft (EU)
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

I have a ritual that cracks my family up, though I swear it’s not deliberate. I’ll rage quit a bad game, swear I’m done with it, start writing the review, and then my guilty conscience makes me go back to it. I really don’t think anyone but me cares if I finish a game or not as long as I genuinely put a good faith effort into trying to finish it and let people know when I don’t. But for whatever reason, especially in recent years, I always start thinking “God, what if I’m missing something interesting?” But I did end up quitting Flipnic before finishing it, and it wasn’t a “rage quit” but rather a saving myself from further miserable boredom. This is actually one of the worst games in this feature, though I didn’t end up throwing in the towel permanently in the spot I “quit” the most times on.  That would be this area in only the game’s second actual stage:

You’ll notice that is NOT pinball in this game that calls itself “Ultimate Pinball.” Instead it’s a humongous magnetic maze where the ball rotates automatically around posts and you have to press the flipper button to launch the ball, which can only travel in a straight line in the four primary directions: up, down, left, or right. Using this format, you have to transfer the ball from post-to-post and find your way through an area of the level that’s roughly the size of North Dakota and just about as fun to visit. If you hit a tiny steel post, the ball will ricochet and return to the post. Some of the posts go up and down because this maze actually has multiple levels of depth. It takes several seconds for the post to transfer, which happens with no visual warning or countdown, nor do all the posts go up and down at the same time EVEN IF THEY’RE THE SAME COLOR, nor is there any warning that a post could be coming down in the trajectory of your ball. If it gets squashed, you die.

The actual object isn’t just to make your way through this galaxy-sized maze. It’s to find the giant red posts in the above picture. Clanging off one of them starts the challenge, where you have to clank off each of the four posts three times within the time limits. That doesn’t sound too bad. Except the transfer mechanics of the posts are slow. Oh, and don’t forget the posts move up and down and, despite being in a challenge, they continue to move up and down like you’re still making your way through the maze. When they move up, previous time is lost and lots of it because it takes FOREVER for them to go back down. Still not trollish enough for you? Okay, how about the things you have to hit three times will shut and become invulnerable for several seconds? And there’s a second set of these and an identical mandatory challenge, meaning you have to do this sh*t twice in two different locations in the maze. I did my “I quit!” routine three times on this section alone before I finally forced myself to finish it, and it wasn’t worth it.

Flipnic was designed by Katsuyuki Kanetaka, a name you might not recognize but most early PlayStation 2 owners likely remember his most famous game: PS2 launch day sleeper Fantavision, aka “the firework game.” For my younger readers, Fantavision was like a puzzle game with a hint of Missile Command thrown-in where you tried to explode fireworks. It was completely shallow and should have been a pack-in game, and today it would barely qualify as a $4.99 launch day tech demo. But since the PS2 wasn’t exactly populated with great games when it first launched, this strange little nothingburger of a mini-game was sometimes called the secret killer app of the PS2 launch. Hell *I* did too since I wasn’t hugely into snowboarding games, but in going back and playing it again, it’s actually a repetitive, boring snoozer of a game. Flipnic was Kanetaka’s final game design (he produced Ape Escape: Pumped and Primed in 2005 and then left the industry), and it’s not hard to imagine why.

The idea is actually enticing, as it basically expands traditional pinball modes like getting an extra ball, hitting X bumpers, or shooting X into wider, sprawling environments. Not the worst idea, actually. You can even see the occasional inspiration from real life tables, and not even popular ones. Take a look at this waterfall:

Hidden on the waterfall is a vertical playfield that doesn’t have the normal pinball slope. You have to explore the level and eventually activate the FREEZE OVER event, then shoot the waterfall enough times to shatter the ice and game access to the ramp that allows you shoot the up and onto the vertical playfield that legitimately feels like it was inspired by the once obscure 1988 Pat Lawlor flop Banzai Run (a table that later was included in Pinball Arcade and currently is on Pinball FX). They even got the physics for that specific section kind of right!

It sounds SO cool and so rewarding, but it’s really not. The problem is the game isn’t really that good at providing guidance or direction. Because of those twisty-turny ramps that are structured like out-and-back roller coasters, it’s hard to get a feel for what playfields have access transfers to what other playfields in any given level. There’s far too many small playfields that look samey, and it’s just overall very confusing. Like, look at these screens:

Those are all different rooms in a section of the second level. Yes, the same level with the magnetic maze. These are all different rooms too:

Sure, the colored ramps help a little, but even after hours it was easy to lose track of how to get to each room and where THAT room takes you. Besides, pinball is not a great format for this style of exploration anyway. I went an hour trying to figure out what I was missing to unlock the boss so I could finally play a new stage. The only help you get is a checklist which tells you what you need and how the mode works, but not how to get to it. There’s no map, which would have helped a lot. By the way, if you do try this, play it on EASY, which I think just adds extra balls and credits when you game over. Don’t be a tough guy. Play it on EASY (which is the default setting) because it’s a pretty hard game even then.

I wish I had quit with the magnetic maze. I mean, in a way that stuck. It wasn’t worth it. Flipnic mechanically is a very mediocre pinball game with poor shooting angles and often dead flippers. The game presents players with plenty of straight-up-the-middle targets but there’s no direct shooting angle to hit them off the flippers. You have to get them off a slapshot off a rebound. Balls that you trap and shoot often usually make it halfway up the screen before limply falling back down, just like Pinball Mania by Spidersoft. When I’m comparing you to a Spidersoft game, it’s time to reevaluate your career. While Flipnic has MUCH more ambition than anything they ever did, the level design is still mediocre and sometimes the physics are just plain confusing. Like take a look at this tube:

It seems like a neat idea, one I’ve never seen before. But because the ball sways back and forth through the tube and loses momentum as it does it, which the bumpers don’t provide enough of a boost for either, this took me multiple attempts to clear due to running out of time. The flippers are also pretty dead and feel kind of nubby, so sometimes I’d hit the ball in the dead center of the flipper and would have been better off waving a piece of paper at it. You have to hit the green target in the back three times to clear it. After you win, you still are stuck in the tube. The top opens up, like so:

Using those dead flippers that are too small to actually aim, with the ball still swaying because YOU’RE IN A F*CKING TUBE, you have to actually get up and over the wall like the warped wall in Ninja Warrior. By the way, you have to then repeat this same mission (more or less) a few more times, and it just plain isn’t good. I don’t know what else to say! It doesn’t work and should have been cut from the game. Now when you do something new in gaming, you can’t know if it’ll work until you try it. Fine. But you can still cut it from the game afterward, you know? It’s astonishing to me that people who have jobs based around making fun games can’t recognize when something just plain isn’t fun under any circumstance. Fun is in the eye of the beholder, but when a game fails mechanically to the degree these tubes do, is it really THAT hard to recognize?

Oh and if you think that’s funny, get this: the game has so many breaks in the action with the ramps and comically over-the-top cutscenes that it actually had to announce that you’ve reached an area of the game where you won’t be interrupted. I’m not even kidding, they’re called “non-stop areas.”

And there’s so many more problems with Flipnic. It’s not intuitive at all. Multiple missions drop the flippers entirely and instead have you raise and lower bumpers. They’re usually called “Bumper Villages” and they were always unwelcome. The main exploration stages end with these “Zero Gravity” mini-boss fights where you shoot at a collection of what looks like acorns or some type of debris, and the playfield moves up and down. Instead of being “zero gravity” it’s more like an elevator with a glass floor. It’s a confusing mess, really. I’ve been playing pinball my entire life and I had no clue what was happening. I just aimlessly hit the ball back at the cluster of crap as best as I could, and it worked. I won every time on my first attempt. If I was doing something to control the playfield’s up and down movement, I never figured out what it was. It didn’t seem to matter what floor I was on.

And then to really hammer home how anxious they were to remove the pinball from a game with the words “Ultimate Pinball” in the title, there’s a level that drops the pinball entirely and instead is a brick breaker. I’m not even kidding, and the graphics are so stripped down without actually looking “old school” that they look like placeholders more than retro. Now yes, “pinball” is the Japanese shorthand for brick breaker games, but come on. It has flipper pinball in it. That’s what the game promised on the cover and in the title. COME ON! WHY?!

And it was at this point, many hours into this game, that I said “you know what? Everyone gets a finite time on this Earth, and this isn’t worth my finite time anymore.” If you’ll notice the timer in the corner, it’s because the game lets you preview levels you haven’t technically unlocked. The brick breaker section made my decision to quit easier, but what really got me was, after beating the tube level and another boss that is literally the same style shapeshifting boss as the previous two had been, the game repeated a whole level already beat.

Before this, I admit that I was mildly curious what the next theme would be. But the fourth actual exploration-based level wasn’t a new level. It was the first level again, only set at night, with a couple of the playfields slightly remixed. Played it for about five minutes, knew an all brick-breaker stage was coming, and said “nope, I’m good.” And this time I meant it.

That should give you an idea of how boring Flipnic is. I didn’t even quit Moon Ball Magic, Panic Road, or Grand Cross. I slogged through all those, but I couldn’t take anymore of this. Despite not playing anywhere near as bad as those games, the problem with Flipnic is it’s a total chore to play. It’s too slow and never exciting. I almost said “it has higher peaks than those games” but I realized even that’s only barely true. There’s a couple okay multiball sequences that feel like normal pinball, but getting there is so slow and so repetitive and boring. So even if the game had stuck to layouts like this:

It’s still never actually fun. There’s too many round surfaces that catch the ball and prevent any normal rebounding (thanks to a quirk of timing I’ll be dealing with in the next game as well). So the defense is bad, and the nudging isn’t effective enough to help with the bumper villages. I kept quitting and coming back to it and finally I was like “what am I doing with my life?”

I almost never check long play videos of games I’m reviewing because I don’t actually want to know what’s next. Usually when I do, that’s a sign I’m done with the review and just want to make sure quitting is the right thing. It turns out that brick breaker level IS the end, with no pinball stuff left besides yet another rematch with the same boss in the arena, then roll credits. So the official last level of Flipnic: Ultimate Pinball contains no actual pinball. There might be more levels after that. If they’re fun, oh well. You shouldn’t have to work hard, for hours, to get to the “good stuff” in games. And now I know why Flipnic is the rare Sony-developed game they didn’t bother to publish in the United States, letting Capcom do the honors instead, and also why it hasn’t been re-released in any format since.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #85 of 125
Percentile: 32%

Mario Pinball Land
aka Super Mario Ball (Japan & Europe)
Platform: Game Boy Advance
Released August 26, 2004
Directed by Brett Gow
Developed by Fuse Games
Published by Nintendo
NO MODERN RELEASE

I guess I need to play Mario Party Advance again, because either that or this is the worst Mario game Nintendo ever published. Mario Pinball Land is bad. Really bad. One of the worst pinball games ever and certainly one of Nintendo’s worst published games. Unfortunately for me, how bad it is depends on which version is being played. The game was first released in Japan, then got an international release where the physics were, ahem, tweaked. It’s like the embodiment of the “broke, or made better?” meme.

For whatever reason, the international release removed most of the friction from the ball, so the shooting is faster, looser and MUCH less accurate. In the US/EU builds, 90% of your shots that have any momentum will go to 10 o’clock or 2 o’clock. Those two angles, almost every time. The Japanese build is slightly better and allows for a little more aiming, though not so much that it’s transformative. Oh, and in the US version, despite moving faster, targets seem to register they’re being hit less, too.

For this review, I intended to play all the way through both builds, but I quit the US version about  halfway through and only finished the Japanese game. Had I not found out about the Japanese version of Mario Pinball Land having easier shooting physics, I really think it would have been in the bottom five in the rankings. It’s the most baffling regional difference I’ve ever seen. A change they considered and made deliberately. What the f*ck?!

This clip is from the Japanese version:

Regardless of which version you play, Mario Pinball Land is terrible in every way video pinball is capable of being terrible. The object is to gather stars, defeat four bosses, and then defeat Bowser. Along the way, you gather two types of coins to buy items from Toad that can create multiballs (with Yoshi eggs), make you invisible, make the ball grow or shrink, or just wipe out all enemies on a screen, a basic “automatic win” item. Parts of stages are gated-off unless you have enough stars. It doesn’t sound like a bad idea for an action pinball adventure, but even if you fix any one aspect of Mario Pinball Land that doesn’t work, it would still be a bad game.

Let’s say you gave this game perfect physics. Okay, what are you playing on? Levels that feel dead. Take the above screenshot. What’s the snowman do? Nothing. Just, nothing. It’s not even a bumper. It’s just something sitting there so the room doesn’t seem too empty, I guess. You can shoot it a billion times and it won’t do anything. You have to just kill the shy guys one at a time. After four, you get a star. I’m pretty sure every room has a star in it. You can get the question mark too. It’s got a coin in it. You can use a mini-mushroom to shoot that igloo in the corner, which sends you to this room:

The star won’t help me. In fact, if you use it, the enemies stop spawning because the people who made this game are humongous assholes. In this room, the moles pop up one at a time starting on the left. You have to use the roundness of the room to hit the mole, then hit the next one which will be a little higher up, and then the next one, until you’ve hit all the moles that go around the room like a clock. The catch is all the moles but the starting one only stay surfaced for about a second or two, and if you don’t hit them immediately, they go back underground and reset to the previous position. It’s beyond reasonable even with the round room, which doesn’t help because your ball doesn’t go THROUGH the moles. It clanks off them and then you have to get the rebound and hit the next one within two or three seconds. It’s one of the poorest constructed challenges in any game in this feature.

And the combat is not particularly strong. You need to have momentum to score a hit, but what constitutes momentum varies. In fairness, most of my direct shots that made contact did count. But when the ball was coming back for a rebound, sometimes it just rolled limply off the enemies and sometimes it scored. The mole room I talked about? Here’s the ball, stuck on a mole.

Same with deflected shots. The game rewards combos with valuable blue coins that can nab you three stars by beating mini-games sold by Toad. But sometimes I’d watch a shot hit one enemy and score the kill only to brush off another, even if it was right next to it. I assume they made it this way to justify the difference between when you’re just the ball and when you’re using the star item, which scores an instakill for any contact. Mario Pinball wasn’t going to be fun either way, but if it was ever going to have any chance with these physics, the combat needed to be all contact hits.

I do admire that they tried to create some sense of exploration. You can take the four game worlds in any order and, like all Mario adventures, there’s lots of optional levels and quests that you don’t need to see the credits. But exploration fails because most of the levels are empty feeling. Mario Pinball feels like an unfinished prototype that they forgot to fill with scenery and obstacles. That’s why doing things like putting one snowman awkwardly on the screen makes the game feel so uninspired. Later on, there is a challenge with snowmen. “Hey Frank, this is feeling a little empty. Just take one of the snowman sprites and stick it there. Perfect!” It’s not ALWAYS that way. Like this:

At least there’s something visually interesting in the room. But compare it to these rooms:

You’ll notice there’s no slingshots or outlanes in this game either. Yeah, I wouldn’t want to compromise the storage closet vibe the level design seems to have been going for. And sure, some of those screens above have the Yoshi switches that give you bonus points or are rooms where you rematch bosses you’ve already beat, but what you’re gaining from those modes versus what you’re giving up (interesting locations and settings) isn’t a good trade. Pinball is one of those genres that requires stimulating visuals and a variety of settings. Mario Pinball Land just doesn’t offer that. It feels like they just never finished the game. Maybe they didn’t.

The final nail in Mario Pinball Land’s coffin is the stunning fact that it’s the first pinball game in quite a while in this feature that has no nudge. So with these badly designed rooms that tend to suck up your shots and limit your rebounding, combined with limited shooting angles (especially in the US/EU builds), your only method of navigation and combat is the flippers. There’s no other way to manipulate the ball and, once you shoot, you have nothing to do except wait for the ball to return. I don’t know if an effective nudge would have made any difference, but I was constantly double checking for one anyway.

I legitimately can’t believe Nintendo green lit Mario Pinball Land as a finished game. It feels like exactly the type of game that they normally say “you know what, guys, it’s not working out” and cancels before release. Granted, Nintendo was going through a leadership shakeup, and around this time a lot of mediocre first party games slipped through the cracks. But still, we live in a world where Earthbound 64 was canceled and Mario Pinball Land, a nothing game that controls terribly and has so little to do, was given a full commercial release. Hell they even later sold again as a Virtual Console game. Normally I advocate that all games should be available to Switch Online subscribers, but don’t weep that they skipped this one. It’s genuinely one of the worst video pins ever. Still, I really wish Nintendo would take another crack at this concept. Mario’s exotic locations and enemies really ought to lend themselves to pinball. Just not this way.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #94 of 125
Percentile: 25%

Pac-Man Pinball Advance
Platform: Game Boy Advance
Released May 2, 2005
Designed by Szilárd Péteri
Developed by Human Soft
Published by Namco
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Mario Pinball Land was pretty bad, but I’ll take it over Pac-Man Pinball Advance any day. This is yet another Game Boy Advance video pin that’s so bad that it almost defies belief and yet another game that has to be in the discussion of the worst major video games ever made. This thing sold over 200,000 copies, and I wonder how many of those were to kids who had never played pinball before and lost all interest in pinball afterward. There’s only two tables, neither of which are particularly fun to shoot. Oh, and for whatever reason, there’s two styles of art for each table, one that looks okay and the other which looks nothing like Pac-Man.

It’s like the production team got into an argument over how the game should look and a wishy washy manager said “do both! Hell, then we only have to make two tables instead of four! That’ll save us a lot of time! Great job, everyone! We might just finish this game in a weekend after all! You guys should fight more often!”

The style you choose doesn’t make any difference. 2005’s Pac-Man Pinball Advance feels like a game from a decade-and-a-half earlier, ignoring all advancements in video pinball. The shooting angles especially are incredibly limited and often not accurate to the angles you would expect. But the worst part is that sometimes the punching power of the flippers becomes punch drunk. The tips of the flippers are especially dead if you trap the ball. Both tables have shots mapped to the toes, but the ball will predictably not have the lift. This was one of the most easy-to-replicate flipper failures in this whole feature. I couldn’t believe how dead it was.

So the only way to have the momentum to make key shots is usually off a rebounding slapshot, many angles of which can’t be aimed at all (not all but many). Party like it’s 1990! Let’s all do lines of coke and watch Arnold Schwarzenegger movies! But hold on, because this is *Pac-Man* Pinball, and there’s dots and ghost eating. Surely that makes up for the mostly empty playfields and terrible physics?

The ghosts don’t take an active role on the playfield unless you get an energizer, which is tossed on the playfield when you hit all the drop targets. It’s much easier on the Haunted Boardwalk table than in the Pac Village. Actually, the drop targets are placed front and center on that table, so I was barely going ten seconds between munching sessions. It happened so much in the Haunted Boardwalk that it took me quite a while to accomplish anything else and became an unwelcome interruption. One that I couldn’t stop because most missed shots hit those drop targets. But a bigger problem is the ghosts really are just normal, run of the mill live targets that video pinball has done to death. They score like Pac-Man, but they don’t feel like Pac-Man.

Neither do the dots. Ideally, they should make the game feel like a maze chase/pinball hybrid. Of course, there’s no playfield threats to Pac-Man. You can only lose by draining. There’s no sense of urgency to get the dots, either. Or any pressure at all, really, because for whatever reason, the developers didn’t make collecting dots the main object. Instead, the object is to spin the spinner enough times to charge up the meter in the lower corner, then enter Professor Pac-Man’s house, then rescue a citizen of Pac-Land. Or clones of Pac-Man. This is done by collecting a power pellet and eating Blinky. Rinse and repeat, and that’s Pac-Man Pinball Advance.

What the f*ck, really?! Seriously, it’s a Pac-Man pinball game and you even had the smarts to put dots but you didn’t make them the object of the game? The dots are only currency for buying items from a store. The only reason to want to do a Pac-Man pinball game is to try and recreate the feel of Pac-Man. This has references to Pac-Man, but it never comes close to feeling like the character. It comes across as incredibly cynical, especially since the game constantly fails to work. The reason it took me so long to activate even the first Pac-Land character is because even on-target shots might just stop on a dime when they reach the turn of any orbit. Below is a full speed shot that clearly enters the orbit and then it just stops, completely unmotivated.

And that is what sealed Pac-Man Pinball Advance for me. The flippers are inaccurate enough and often not powerful enough, but the fact that the game clearly can’t handle the orbits in a way that pinball requires? Those orbits are EVERYTHING! All actual progress is tied to them, and every one of them on both tables is capable of just immediately blocking the ball from cleanly rolling through it. Sometimes it even looks like the ball is clipping through it, and when that happens, the momentum ends and the ball rejects. Again, it usually happens at the start of turns.

Pathetic and shameful. At the time this came out, video pinball had existed for over a quarter of a century, and THIS was the best Human Soft could do? And it’s not like there’s fun side modes that offer any relief. One of them literally made me motion sick AND it was another round room that looks like it fell out of the previous review into this one. For whatever reason, the room sways back and forth. I have no idea why. There’s nothing on the map doing this. I guess they just thought it was cool, but I felt the room spinning after a few seconds.

Seriously, if you’re prone to getting sea sick, don’t watch this clip. It’s bad.

So yeah, Pac-Man Pinball Advance has no redeeming qualities and is one of the absolute worst video pinball games of all-time. Weirdly, Zen Studios was going to make a direct sequel to this game for Nintendo DS called Super Pac-Man Pinball. Screenshots were even released, then the game was cancelled with no explanation. I’m going to guess their staff played the original game, realized it was terrible, and lost all their motivation. Why would THIS get a sequel? Because it had such incredible distribution, Pac-Man Pinball Advance sold 200,000 copies. If your heart is hurting, congratulations, you’re a healthy human being. What’s even more maddening is that a couple major outlets gave it positive reviews. Suddenly I’m wondering what the going rate for a 7 out of 10 was in 2005, and if it was enough to pay their medical bills after their pants suddenly burst into flames.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #109 of 125
Percentile: 13%

Pinball
aka Hudson Pinball or Pinball PSP
Platform: PlayStation Portable
Released September 25, 2005
Developed by Hudson*
Never Released Outside of Japan
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Oh hey, yet another video pinball game with the simple title of “Pinball.” Yeah, this is going to be AWESOME for Google search results. You think they could have come up with a more inspired name since this is, I believe, the first video pinball to have been released that wanted to simulate real life dimensions of pinball using tate mode. In fact, for this game, it’s mandatory. There’s no option to play it any other way. Still, that’s a pretty historic achievement since the best way to play modern video pinball is, of course, using these very same dimensions. I really wish the game lived up to that historic achievement, but it’s actually a really simple, bland, and badly programmed video pinball game.

There’s only two tables, neither of which offers a whole lot to do. I really think they were aiming for a KAZe-like pinball experience (Sasha the Kid literally asked if KAZe made this while playing it). Hell, this might actually be a game made by former KAZe members for all we know. It’s really close, as there’s a couple aspects to the look, physics, and multiball that feel like their Saturn games, though nowhere near as good. The shooting angles seemed okay at first, but what sincerely shocked me was that the designers didn’t even program a backhanded shot. The ball will fly off as if it’s being hit normally, which shattered my immersion. Ball handling is poor too, as passing is impossible. It’s an all shooting, all-rebounding game like the mid 90s. But what’s worse is there’s really nothing much to shoot.

Don’t mistake the poor “advanced” shooting angles for this being a game that shoots badly. It’s actually too easy. The ramps are simply massive, making them too hard to hit. This was what caused the most comparisons to KAZe from my family, as we all enjoyed their Saturn stuff but they did have a tendency to make some shots too easy. This is like that, only amplified. Look how big the ramps are!

While the ball does wobble out sometimes, it’s still crazy easy to just shoot the ramps one after another. Too many shots directly feed the flippers, especially in the Forest table, and they score a lot more than other shots. Those pick squares are the drop targets, and hitting them slowly chips away at them instead of dropping them all at once. There’s really no incentive to tour the table. This is a really, really bad design.

I think Morphing Avenger was aiming for an off-brand Animorphs vibe. Which is weird because I was the target age for Animorphs when it was hot in the late 90s/early 2000s and it always came across as generic and off-brand kiddie entertainment to me, but whatever. Avenger is easily the better of the two tables and offers a little more bite with no outright lay-up shots like the first table. Hitting shots charges up a transformation that lights targets that opens a multiball. This table has a supplemental flipper with a few decent side targets to shoot. This complicated the review because it’s almost a decent table. Almost.

Like the first table, Morphing Avenger has the same “small ball, large targets” issue that kills too many risk/reward factors. Frankly, that saps the thrills out of all shooting. Consequently, both tables in Pinball PSP lack any truly exciting shots. In the case of Forest, it never had a chance at working. The layout is just plain bad and still would have been bad even if this was on Zaccaria Pinball. But Morphing Avenger could have worked. It has a central driver that seems to want to make people think about tables like Attack From Mars or Medieval Madness, and it even has three entrances. Two of those are a very small orbit, while the center one, when lit, activates the multiball. I wish it had been exciting because they bet so heavily on this element, meaning it takes up so much real estate, but it’s just not exciting. Review over? Not quite.

There is one mode that is different and interesting. Instead of shooting normal pinball, you can play a time attack mode. The default is 90 seconds and it’s kind of addictive. The rules are different: basically every shot adds a ball and multiplies the scoring. If your aim is true, you can overload the playfield with balls. Neither myself nor anybody in my family could get it over five total balls, and we’re not entirely sure if that is the limit. It’s a neat idea but the problems with the lack of ball handling and backhanding really bite Pinball PSP in the ass here. Managing the onslaught of balls is impossible, leading to easy clear-outs and lots of “everybody out of the pool” situations where you go from five balls to game over almost instantly. Fun idea, but ultimately it brought into focus that Pinball PSP was more deeply flawed than I realized. Still, that mode was probably good enough for 20 rankings on its own, so at least it has that going for it.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #53 of 125
Percentile: 58%

Metroid Prime Pinball
Platform: Nintendo DS
Released October 24, 2005
Developed by Fuse Games
Published by Nintendo
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

You know, I really thought when I started this project months and months ago that Metroid Prime Pinball was going to win the top spot in the rankings. And then I played it, and it didn’t even make the top ten, but #11 when Fuse Games didn’t exactly show the highest aptitude for video pinball in Mario Pinball Land, or any aptitude at all, really, is one of the unsung gaming miracles of all-time. For all of Metroid Prime Pinball’s many, many problems, I really never would have guessed the two games were made by the same studio. You can’t really blame me, either. They don’t have the same problems. ALL of Metroid Prime’s problems come down to pacing.

Take the above screenshot. The best way to describe it is a video mode similar to the saucer landing from Attack From Mars, only longer and if the enemies took more than one bullet to kill. Using the flipper buttons, you shoot left and right as swarms of bugs inch towards you. The Vices and I think the pinball community in general considers Attack From Mars’ video mode to be the GOAT conversation and this mode clearly wants to be that for Metroid Prime Pinball, but it goes too long and the enemies are too spongy, so it’s not very fun at all. Also, despite how quickly it can become overwhelming, it’s not very exciting either, whereas all these years later AFM’s video mode gets my blood pumping. Metroid Prime Pinball devotes such a big time investment towards this. In my first play session, I played it, beat it, and it couldn’t have been more than a minute or two later that I was playing the second round of it. Goddammitsomuch.

I’m guessing even among big fans of Metroid Prime Pinball, it won’t be controversial for me to say that its biggest problem is pacing. This is probably the worst paced YES! game (spoilers) in this feature. Things like the roulette wheels taking too long to activate even when you press B to stop them, or having to manually lay a bomb to have saucers let go of the ball, and for no reason either. It’s not in service to immersion as a pinball game or a Metroid game because NEITHER pinball nor Metroid are expected to have this many interruptions of the action. I love Metroid, and I can safely say that no Metroid game is THIS slow paced, not even Return of Samus. I mean, I shouldn’t even have to say this, but Metroid is an action franchise. What are you doing, Fuse Games? It’s not just idle mechanics that kill the flow, either. It’s active gameplay design choices. Let me skip ahead to the last boss, and I’m going to highlight only the lower screen.

The two saucers I circled are the roulette wheels that give you items. One single shot lights the targets, and another starts the wheel. Even if you are mashing the B button, you’re still at least six or seven seconds away from the action resuming. I can’t stress enough: this is in the middle of the last boss fight. One of these would be weird for this circumstance. Two of them? Did we really need TWO of them? But what really makes this sincerely jaw dropping is where they’re placed. Both along common angles a player is likely to hit on a missed shot. Hell, I’d dare say they’re laid along THE primary angle of these flippers. Now here’s the full screen:

The tightness of the shots you actually want to hit and where the roulette shots are located is the most genuinely batsh*t insane placement I’ve seen. Even if your aim is on-point, just the chaos of pinball is going to assure the ball ends up in those saucers, lightning and activating the game-pausing roulette wheels over and over. What were they thinking? What Metroid Prime Pinball really needed was someone in charge willing to say “no” or, at the very least, “try again.” If they insisted on having the wheel in the room, ONE would have been enough and it should have been placed in a tough-to-shoot spot, not laid along the highest traffic angles. Clearly nobody told these guys “no” because this is just a downer of an ending to what can be, in short bursts, one of the best video pinball games ever made.

For all my bitching, I have to give Metroid Prime Pinball props for what it accomplished. The game’s shooting angles and movement are so lifelike at times that it made me do a double take. I think this shoots far better than the Pinball Hall of Fame games (which I briefly write-up in the bonus section). Accurate off-the-flippers angles with none of the floatiness. Metroid Prime Pinball really feels like a milestone for video pinball. I just really wish it stuck to video pinball, because sometimes it’s very clever.

Look at the above multiball. You have two different color balls, red and blue, and the playfield fills with red and blue live targets that only the correct ball can pick up. The twist is that the other ball doesn’t simply pass through it, but rather is propelled off it like a high-impact jet bumper. Some of the targets are placed on orbits, and if the wrong ball is on the orbit, it will be launched backwards. It requires careful ball management and timing. It’s brilliant! I love it! That’s one of the best “only in video pinball” ideas in this entire feature. It’s strong enough to be the main object.

If Nintendo ever does pinball again, I really hope they read this review and take note. Nintendo games uniquely already do their specific brand of action perfectly. That’s why Nintendo is, well, Nintendo. It stands to reason that pinball needs to be PINBALL in all capital letters. Trying to invoke the action feel of a game like Metroid in a pinball environment was foolhardy. It’s going to be stripped down to nothing, too limited, and it’ll get in the way of the only thing the pinball game can do better than the series it’s themed around: PINBALL! I get that they wanted Samus to have bombs, but there’s nothing clever about how the bombs are used in Metroid Prime Pinball. They just get in the way. They slow the action down, and with no gain. It’s pinball! Besides, why would I want to passively bomb an enemy in a pinball game when smashing them with the ball is the fun part!

I will fully admit to maybe having too high of expectations. I looked at getting to replay Metroid Prime Pinball, the first video pinball game I actually loved during my childhood, as my reward for five months worth of working on this project, but really it wasn’t like that. It was fine, and infuriating. While the good stuff is actually even better than I remember, the bad stuff made my memories of the constant interruptions flood back. I remembered the groundbreaking physics, and they were absolutely better than I remembered. Look at this:

Silk. Folks, that is REAL pinball physics sucked into a video game like no video pin had ever done before. The stuff Farsight was starting to do wished it was THIS smooth. But the actual pinball design feels like it’s worried people who signed up for pinball will get bored with pinball, and there’s just too much downtime. You can’t call Metroid Prime Pinball non-stop action. My father compared the experience of playing Metroid Prime Pinball to the frustration you feel when making a short road trip downtown and hitting every red traffic light along the way. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

I’m sure Metroid Prime Pinball will be remade or re-released, but I’d rather someone actually rework it. Some of these layouts are REALLY good, or rather they would be if you just dropped the roulette saucers entirely. Shorten the shooting gallery stuff and add more levels because what’s here isn’t enough. I think most people picture Metroid as one of the most action-packed gaming franchises in the world. This is not action-packed. It’s Metroid Pause Pinball. I’ve used a phrase like “amazing in small doses” to describe games that are fine if you don’t put much time into them before. Metroid Prime Pinball is amazing in small doses, but unlike most games I say that about, I’m not the one controlling the dose sizes. The action never gets a chance to heat up because of constant interruptions. I don’t think Fuse Games was capable of realizing that. Well Fuse Games ain’t around anymore, so there’s no reason it can’t be fixed.
Verdict: YES!
Ranking: #11 of 125
Percentile: 91%

Ottifanten Pinball
Platform: Game Boy Advance
Released December 15, 2005
Game Design by Sascha Hartmann
Developed by Independent Arts
Published by Trend Verlag
Never Released Outside of Europe
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

The Game Boy Advance was pretty disappointing as a video pinball platform. How disappointing? Out of nine games (ten if you count the one in the bonus section), THIS was the third best. Ottifanten Pinball, the final GBA video pin and one of the rarest cartridges in this feature, isn’t very good. But it wouldn’t take much adjustment to just push it onto the bottom of the YES! pile. Based on animated characters created by Otto Waalkes, this is a pretty standard video pinball game with two very basic layouts, one of which is fine and one of which is very, very not fine. Try to guess which is which.

Yeah, Küste (German for “coast” or “coastline”) is like a total bricklayer that was one of the most unpleasant video pinball experiences I had. Both tables are woefully short on targets, but the second table doesn’t even allow for much action because so many missed shots just clank and return to the flippers. There’s no risk since the nudge is too effective and the game is insanely generous with kickbacks. This table just felt empty and lacking.

Now with that said, the first table could have earned a YES! if the game had shot smoother. But this is yet another table that dialed-up the friction too much, and there’s also not enough bounce on the ball. It makes the game feel very rough. Like the playfield has a grittiness to it, like the table could use a good waxing. It also could use a personality transplant. The game is full of comical noises, but when you beat a mode, nothing happens except the countdown to complete the mode just stops and you’re unceremoniously awarded points. These characters seem like they’re supposed to be really wacky and funny, but it’s like they never finished the animation sprites or something.

As you can see in the above clip, this is yet another game that does multiball that has to be played entirely blind. Since the balls don’t really ricochet much, it leads to plenty of clear-outs since missed shots return from the angle they came. Ball handling is limited and shooting angles leave a lot to be desired. The best thing I can say about the engine is that rebounding is a cinch thanks to nudges that literally are capable of popping the ball up a couple ball-lengths. The same movement applies to left/right nudging. I’m now pretty sure this is meant to be a little kid’s video pin.

You probably noticed the layouts have a striking similarity to those found in the Pokémon Pinball games, which I’m guessing was the direct inspiration for this game. Hey, those sold millions of copies, and even Pac-Man Pinball Advance and Pinball of the Dead sold hundreds of thousands of copies and they sucked. Weirdly, if you wanted to make a quick and dirty cash-in, there was compelling evidence that pinball on GBA was a safe bet. Ottifanten Pinball very much has a “soulless, uninspired cash-grab” vibe to it. But, it’s honestly not a trash fire by any means. It’s just very, very, VERY bland and very boring.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #59 of 125
Percentile: 53%

Odama
Platform: Nintendo GameCube
Released March 31, 2006
Designed by Yoot Saito
Directed by Keiji Okayasu
Developed by Vivarium
Published by Nintendo
Requires Microphone
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

I can’t stress enough that all the problems I experienced in my 2026 play session matched my experience playing Odama when it came out in 2006 (though I might not have gotten it until 2007, I honestly can’t remember). I always considered this one of Nintendo’s most broken games. It’s really not very good.

From Yoot Saito, the creator of Sim Tower and the bizarre Dreamcast virtual pet simulator Seaman (yes, the talking fish game) along with Keiji Okayasu, the co-director of Shenmue, Odama spent years in development before finally releasing in 2006, and it was far and away the most difficult game in this feature to review. As in after over five combined hours of gameplay, I still hadn’t beaten the first level. I don’t necessarily think it’s because it’s hard, as I’d cleared the entire screen of enemies with plenty of time left to go, but I still kept losing because apparently I can’t pronounce the words “press forward” to the game’s satisfaction, nor could anyone else in my house.

In the middle of my play session, I did something I rarely do: I looked up other reviews of Odama. I predicted average scores in the 6 to 7 range, which is the usual “I didn’t like it at all and was happy when I finally had what I needed to never have to play this again but I also don’t want any fans to be angry at me” scores. Metacritic score: 62 out of 100. Bullseye. I noticed a trend among Odama reviews, whether they were positive or negative: they all say some variation of “you’ve never played anything like this” or “there’s nothing like it” or “you have to give credit for the originality.” That last one irks me. “You HAVE to give credit.” No, I really don’t, actually. Especially if it doesn’t work. So, what is Odama? Okay, well, it’s pinball, but the playfield is a battlefield in Feudal Japan. AND Odama is a real-time strategy game where you have to command troops using the GameCube microphone and clear a path for two soldiers carrying a giant bell to walk through a goal. SO quirky and original.

I had Odama for GameCube back in the day. I love pinball and, while I was never specifically a video pinball fan, this was the type of “only works in video games” idea that got my attention. I think I played it for an hour and never played it again when it couldn’t understand what commands I was giving. I’ve never done great with voice controls in games. I don’t have the clearest speaking style and have had plenty of bad experiences with such games. Remember Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day? Remember Hey You, Pikachu? I sure do, because I remember being really angry that they couldn’t understand a word I said. Hell, Brain Age became a dedicated Sudoku player because I got sick of the game saying I was stupid because it couldn’t understand the words I was saying. The only game with mandatory microphone gameplay I have a positive memory of is, ironically, Seaman. Meanwhile, I remember getting stuck on Odama’s new ability practice screens. Not even the game itself. THE PRACTICE SCREENS, with unlimited second chances. I never got past even the first one. That was 2006/2007. In 2026, my experience was identical (until right before I finished this review, when I got past the first command).

Thankfully, it wasn’t just me. Dad couldn’t get past this. Angela couldn’t get past the second command. Sasha was the first one of us to actually get past the very first command practice, “advance.” Seriously, we almost FAINTED when Sasha the Kid said “advance” and it actually worked. We literally gasped. Which the game probably would have interpreted as “move left.”

You can quit the practice screens any time and return to the game, or else this review would be even more pathetic than it already is. In the heat of battle, the mic did work in the sense that it heard me and my family speak, registered that a command was given, and carried out an order. Except it mostly decided to interpret the majority of commands as “move left.” I assure you, I never said the words “move left” while playing. Dad didn’t. Angela didn’t. Sasha didn’t. We never encountered any situation where we would want to say those words. Yet the game activated that command the most, by far. Like 50 for every 1 of anything else. Words like “advance” “press forward” or “flank and destroy”, IE the only three things we spoke the entire play sessions, don’t sound anything like “move left” but that’s what the game did to me in 2006, and that’s what it did to all four of us (and others in my family who we tried it on) in 2026. Yeah, this game is f*cking broken.

I’m pretty sure all those screenshots are from different games. We really did try dozens of times to make this work, and in multiple different ways. We changed the mic settings almost every new game searching for a setting that would work even half the time (we would have settled for half the time, seriously), changing microphones, silencing ANYTHING that could be making noise in the room (including the game itself), talking at a variety of volumes, holding the mic a variety of distances from us, and in the case of Angela, talking in an exaggerated British accent. The first time we knew for certain “press forward” actually worked was when Angela said, and I’m not kidding, “press forward you nincompoops!” in a posh British accent. “I don’t think I can do that,” I said, so I tried the name calling part. “Press forward you rapscallions!” “Press forward you whoreson caterpillars!” I’d never even heard of that last one but Angela assures me it’s devastating. Not that it matters. They moved left or did nothing. You know what’s even worse than moving left? Not even acknowledging you’re holding the mic button down, which it did in the practice screens (and thus presumably the game as well) constantly. I remember that happening back in the day too and wondering if my GameCube mic had been defective.

We really, REALLY wanted this to work. Hell, just to get past the first f*cking stage so I could do this review without feeling guilty about it. But the bell guys would get right next to the goal with the entire enemy army wiped out and then scream at me to say “press forward.” Which I did. I said it loudly and quietly and every volume in between. I said it back in 2006 on an actual GameCube, and I said it while doing this review on three different kinds of microphones, in dozens different settings, and in a dead silent room with no background noise, and it did actually make them press forward, but never when they were right next to the door with a clear path to victory. Or actually, as I discovered right before finishing this review, maybe they did do it once or twice and I didn’t realize it, but you have to baby them step-by-step through the door, so getting the voice to work once isn’t enough. That’s not immersive. That’s a feature that should have been killed on the drawing board.

So I probably shouldn’t even do a verdict for Odama. I never beat the first stage in 2006. In 2026, I failed at this again, along with everyone in my family. I still have never seen the second level. But I’m giving it a NO! because I did buy this game back in the day and hated it, and it deserves a NO! because it didn’t need to make the microphone mandatory. Somehow Nintendo was able to create Pikmin, a game that’s far more complicated than this sh*t, without requiring players to give vocal commands for the game to work. The voice thing was a deliberate choice by the designer because Yoot Saito had an infatuation with voice command-based games. His final three major games before his relevancy washed out were all primarily played through voice commands: Seaman, Odama, and Seaman 2. Yeah, there’s a Seaman 2 exclusive to the PS2 in Japan, but don’t get too excited: it’s not like the first game. It’s basically a generic God game with voice commands. Seriously, it looks terrible.

If you want to have a game that requires voice commands, those voice commands better be able to recognize every word in every possible tone of voice or accent every single time. If it doesn’t do that and you sell it anyway, you’re selling a knowingly broken game without warning people “this might not work for you.” Making the microphone optional would have fixed this. I would have gladly turned off the microphone in exchange for slightly slower gameplay. We checked the instruction book and found out that the troubleshooting section all but says if the voice commands get it wrong, it’s really on you.

If it has trouble recognizing some voices enough that you had to put “results may vary” in the instruction book, which is something that no normal controller needs, did you ever think “okay maybe the tech isn’t ready and we should make this optional?” I assume that Nintendo and others wanted to. Odama had a fairly long development cycle, debuting in playable form in E3 in 2004 but not releasing until March of 2006, with features missing. But reading that troubleshooting section made me a little angry. It was at this point I really no longer thought “god, what a quirky concept.” No, Pikmin, now THERE’S a quirky game. Hell, most Nintendo games are quirky. Mario grows big from a mushroom, fights a giant half-dragon, half-turtle and rescues a princess of a Mushroom Kingdom, and then they all go go-kart racing. All of it comes across as sincere. Odama comes across like it’s trying too hard, and its brand of quirkiness is completely insincere. All it needed to do to gain that sincerity back is to make the mic stuff optional. Had it done that, this sh*t wouldn’t have happened:

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I’m pretty sure those are all from different games. I did f*cking say “press forward.” I said it in 2006. I said it in 2026. I even tried “press” and “forward” separately. I tried that in 2006. Apparently neither myself nor anyone in my life can say it correctly, and I feel like an ass because I have to move on. I have other games to do, and what if I do get the person to listen? I get to repeat this process again with the next level. Yea?! None of the other mechanics of Odama are relevant to my review. Not the “attacking the enemies” with the ball or the friendly fire aspect. Not the power-up that steals enemy troops. None of it matters, because the aspect that mattered most and the thing you need to win didn’t work for me or anyone else in my house.

I swear to God to you I tried. I really, really tried. Do you really think I want a review like this? I don’t. I want to be able to finish every game. After writing most of this review, I went back for one last play session. “Press forward” worked and I really thought I was going to win. Then nothing. Wrote the rest of this review, tried again. This time, with the guys within spitting distance of the gate, I got “press forward” to work TWICE! “I’M GOING TO WIN!” But no, the guys walked basically one step forward then yelled at me to say “press forward” again. F*cking really?! So you can’t even say the microphone is in service to the immersion, because no soldier has to be walked one step at a time through a battlefield. If you have a clear path and accept the instruction “press forward” what soldier assigned to carry the battle-winning bell isn’t going to take it on faith that the order given is an order to go through the gate?

Sometimes when I don’t like a game that has fans, they say “you must have been playing it wrong.” I’m totally open to the idea that’s the case with Odama and there’s some mechanic I’m missing. BUT, if there is, it’s up to the game to say it. The only thing we got was the game telling us, over and over and over, “say PRESS FORWARD.” We did. It didn’t work. Odama is a deliberately unintuitive nightmare. Reviews typically note it has a very high difficulty and that the troops need too much micromanagement with the microphone, with some also noting the mic doesn’t work right every time. You do see how those two complaints are damning when put together, right? Seriously, is the term still “difficult?” I would use the term “broken.” And it’s broken by choice. Odama did not need this mechanic. I don’t owe Odama points for originality. You only get those points if the f*cking thing works for everyone every time.

In this feature I’ve finished some pretty f’n broken, frustrating games. Moon Ball Magic. Grand Cross. The only game I quit for good was Flipnic and that was out of boredom. Odama defeated me because I couldn’t pronounce “press forward” to the game’s satisfaction as a 17 year old or as an about-to-be 37 year old. Any of these commands could have been easily mapped to other buttons. Other games like this have done it for years. The mic is there because Yoot thinks talking to games is neat. It’s his thing, and it basically ended his career as a relevant game designer. That’s sad because he clearly has talent, and Odama seems like it could be something I could get into. I tried it ONE LAST TIME over a day after I wrote the previous paragraph because I wanted to at least finish that f*cking first stage. I got the bell right at the gate, one “press forward” away. It had recognized “press forward” multiple times. But then the bell turned around and walked the other way.

The whole situation reminds me of Robert Zemeckis, who directed one banger after another. Romancing the Stone, Back to the Future (and both sequels), Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Death Becomes Her, Forrest Gump, and Castaway. AND THEN he did The Polar Express, which I will never understand the appeal in. I think Polar Express is grotesque and unwatchable, but suddenly he was infatuated with motion capture and started exclusively making motion capture movies. Beowulf and A Christmas Carol, both of which were tough to watch, and when he stopped doing them, he was a shell of the director he once was. How bad is Odama? I compared it to the Polar Express. The voice recognition tech is from 2003. They didn’t exactly have Siri-levels of voice recognition software back then. Odama is the typical “let’s do tomorrow’s tech today” experiment. It works for a game like Seaman where you get unlimited second chances. For an action game? Nintendo should have cancelled this.
Verdict: NO!
No Ranking Issued

Powershot Pinball
Platform: PlayStation 2
Released July 7, 2006
Developed by Liquid Games
Published by OG International Ltd
Never Released Outside of Europe*
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

*Allegedly a New Zealand release happened for the PlayStation 3 of all things but I can’t find any proof of it.

Powershot Pinball feels like the type of dime-a-dozen 3D asset flip pinball game that’s common on Steam and even Nintendo Switch today. A woefully badly engineered game that brings back such pinball issues as a hyperactive living ball, limited shooting angles, and no ball handling, but this time in a fully 3D environment. Some of these tables are stunningly limited in their scope, but you actually have to work hard to find that out. You see, only one single-player table is available out of the box. Only “Streets of New York” is unlocked at the start. That’s Streets in New York in the above picture. What? It doesn’t feel anything like that theme to you? Yeah, me neither.

Five out of the six tables are nonsense. Well, actually all six are, but one of them got my attention so I’ll give it a pass. The others are just a series of elements tossed onto a playfield with little rhyme or reason. Throw in a few orbits, most of which I never actually directly hit off the flippers. I shot at and shot at and shot at them and couldn’t find a single shooting angle. How did I hit those orbits? Usually unintentionally when the ball ricocheted off the drain pin. Every ball starts with some kind of plug between the flippers that stays until it’s hit a few times, and regardless of how they’re shaped, they’re functionally a high-powered bumper that launches the ball. For the most part, the only targets you can hit are rollover lights that turn on when you rollover them. If they activate other things, I never did. That’s because they also turn off when you roll over them a second time.

Powershot Pinball is one of the most boring games in this feature. The truly bad tables are completely lacking in things to do. Take the “Shipwreck” table which literally features a turned over ship. One of the things on the ship is a smokestack. Well, that’s a delightfully charming shot, right? Wrong. The ball goes into the smokestack, bounces off a wall, and comes back not scoring any points. It’s not an element to the table. It’s just an asset that they either made or it came with the development kit, but it doesn’t do anything.

And the flippers are laid out on that table in a way where the ball will clank inside the smokestack constantly. It’s like they intended it to do something and forget to program it. Other tables are just head scratching in how they’re laid out. Like “Island” where the shots are so clunky and claustrophobic that I honestly wonder if they had more ambitious plans and then gave up.

There was one table that got my attention, called “Bay.” It’s a MASSIVE table with a giant cruise ship on it. It’s not good either, but the sheer scale of it added to the enjoyment of hitting targets. Oh, it’s still clunky and hitting the orbits off the flippers is next to impossible, but at least the novelty of such a huge table that’s played entirely with two flippers amused me, even if I’m laughing at it and not with it.

So I was prepared to pull Powershot Pinball out of the bottom of the rankings. But, then the ball clipped through the Bay table, and that was a big problem because it wasn’t the first time it had happened, and it wasn’t the last time either. In fact, we clipped through walls and targets multiple times across multiple tables playing Powershot Pinball. The spinning targets (seen in the first picture below) were especially problematic, especially for high velocity shots on them. The ball would be launched well out of the table, and whether this is a glitch or (for whatever reason) a deliberate design, this is as bad as pinball gets.

It’s pretty clear that Powershot Pinball’s designers weren’t exactly studied-up in the logic of pinball design. The targets are boring. The layouts are clunky. This alone would make this a very, very bad pinball game. The physics and layout design are total amateur hour stuff. Fix one of those two aspects and we’re still talking about one of the worst games in this feature because of how bad the other side of the equation is. But when you add the fact that the game is so glitchy that the ball can just fly off into space not from the drain but from passing through solid objects, and now we’re talking about one of the worst video games ever made. And on top of all of that, the two player modes are crap.

And now I’m even more frustrated that all the tables start locked but the first one. So what if a player has bad luck and all their balls clip through the table? I mean, that’s in play, right? The scoring is really boring, with mostly low scoring targets, so it’s not a total lay-up to get the scores to unlock the next table (and the goals are never stated). I could absolutely see a situation where a pinball novice never gets the points to unlock the second table. And the best table (which is faint praise in this game) is the fifth table, which means it’s the fourth one that unlocks.

Imagine buying THIS game and then having to work to get five out the six tables. Powershot Pinball is garbage. Absolute garbage. One of the worst games I’ve ever played. I know I’ve said that a lot in this feature, but what can I say? The video pinball genre really has some f*cking doozies in it. Powershot is just another one to throw on the file, then dump gasoline on the pile and light it on fire.
Verdict: NO!
Ranking: #102 of 125
Percentile: 18%

I’VE MADE IT TO THE FINAL GAME!

Alien Crush Returns
Platform: Nintendo Wii via WiiWare
Released August 26, 2008
Designed by Yoshiyuki Urushibara (Lead Designer)
Developed by TamSoft
Published by Hudson Soft
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

I should note that I could not play the competitive mode. If Alien Crush Returns ever gets a re-release with those features turned on, I’ll redo this review, so watch this space.

Alien Crush really isn’t much like the original Crush games. It’s structured like a linear, level-based game with three tables and two bosses, including that unholy offspring of Slimer and Audrey II pictured above. You can play the three tables separately for high scores if you want, so at first, I thought this review would be more complicated than it is. Then I played through the quest mode, and I realized how ill-suited the levels are to just play for high scores. They probably should have included a remake of the original game just to boost the value, because what’s here isn’t enough.

The first level is the only one that feels like a proper pinball table, though there’s not a lot to do. It’s meant to be beaten in just a minute or two, as the object is just to clear out all the aliens marked with arrows. When I tried to play this solo, I quit after ten minutes from being exhausted by boredom. It lacks that “jam packed” feeling the original Crush games and even games inspired by them tend to have. If that sounds like I’m sh*tting on the game, I’m not. The thing is, this level works great as the first tutorial level in a linear action game. It doesn’t work at all as a stand alone pinball experience. NONE of the tables do. That’s the entire problem with Alien Crush Returns.

Levels 2 and 3 are even better about the “great as a level in a video game” and worse about the “stand alone video pinball table” vibe. I genuinely didn’t know going into this how many total tables Alien Crush Returns had, but my heart was set to be broken if it ended too soon. The progression goes Level 1, Level 2, First Boss, Level 3, Final Boss, and my heart sank when it said I’d reached the final challenge because I already knew replaying the levels just for a high score was going to suck. And it did. Levels 1 and 2 are just such nothing tables AS pinball tables. Give players a goal and promise it will stop sooner than the average table and they’re actually a lot of fun. That’s what the game needed.

It just needed a whole lot more of it. Level 3 is the final table and it’s a complete mess with three single-flipper mini-fields that are not fun at all. The highlight of this table is a f*cking dragon that has one of the most uninspired preset pathways. It enters the table through a hole on the right side of the playfield and quickly reenters it in a hole in the upper left side. You have to destroy each segment of the dragon, and that sounds like it could be fun. But unlike many targets in Alien Crush Returns, this one doesn’t have a satisfying crunch to it and, when you score the killing blow, the whole dragon just poofs out of existence. It’s awful.

Finally, there’s two bosses and they’re fine. Neat character models, but both battles are kind of samey in that they take place in the same playfield. They’re surrounded by bumpers and the object is to hit the ball up a center ramp to damage them. This is where the physics of Alien Crush Returns have to be called out. Alien Crush Returns aspired to play like an old school video pinball game and it does. Did they ever stop to ask if that’s a good thing?

The shooting angles off the flippers are really bad. Trapped shots fly off to the left or right regardless of where they’re hit off the flipper. If you want to hit the bosses, you have to tee-up a cherry bomb. There’s also power-ups that can be activated with the A button, one of which sends the ball flying, one of which reverses everything that just happened, and one of which gives you an automatic multiball. You don’t get that last one until after you’ve beaten the game. The bosses are spongy as hell. The first boss can cripple the flippers so they barely work. The second one can just straight-up destroy a live ball. The second boss was challenging enough that I ate a Game Over and had to start the fight over both times I played through the campaign. The first boss is just a slow, boring sponge bucket.

Alien Crush Returns feels like a proof of concept more than a full game. I’m giving it a YES! because I did really enjoy the thirty or so minutes it took me to beat the quest, even if I was bored to death playing the tables solo. But the game needed to be twice as long, at least. I’d be fine dropping the bosses and doing four levels and a boss for ten total stages. It’s not like the levels were meticulously crafted for optimal pinball fun. All three tables are at least a little clunky. Like here’s the bonus room hole in the first table:

It’s so awkwardly placed that it’s easy to lose track of it. Again, fine for a linear game, which is the primary structure of Alien Crush Returns. But five levels? I’d feel ripped off even at $10. Same if I had been an Alien Crush fan who bought this. There’s little in the way of imagination besides the character models themselves. I never completely shook the vibe that this was a thrown-together cash grab capitalizing on the fame of the twenty-year-old (at the time) Crush franchise. Yet, it’s not an amazing fan service game. It isn’t structured like Alien Crush, and it doesn’t have enough callbacks to it. It gives the whole project a cynical vibe. Is this really what someone wanted from a Crush sequel in 2008? But as its own thing? Meh, it’s fine. I guess.
Verdict: YES!
Ranking: #36 of 125
Percentile: 71%

FINAL RANKINGS

1. Pro Pinball: Timeshock (1998 – PlayStation)
2. Akira Psycho Ball (2002 – PlayStation 2)
3. Worms Pinball (1999 – PlayStation)
4. True Pinball (1996 – PlayStation/Sega Saturn)
5. Digital Pinball: Necronomicon (1996 – Sega Saturn)
6. Slam Tilt (1996 – Amiga)
7. Psycho Pinball (1994 – Sega Genesis)
8. Kyuutenkai: Fantastic Pinball (1995 – PlayStation/Sega Saturn)
9. Devil’s Crush (1990 – TurboGrafx-16)
10. Solar War (Unreleased Circa 1980 – Arcade)
11. Metroid Prime Pinball (2005 – Nintendo DS)
12. David’s Midnight Magic (1981 – Apple II)
13. Battle Pinball (1995 – Super Famicom)
14. Pro Pinball: Big Race USA (2000 – PlayStation)
15. Full Tilt! Pinball (1995 – Windows)
16. Video Pinball (1979 – Arcade)
17. Kirby’s Pinball Land (1993 – Game Boy)
18. Digital Pinball: Last Gladiators Ver. 9.7 (1997 – Sega Saturn)
19. Alien Crush (1990 – TurboGrafx-16)
20. Pinball Illusions (1995 – Amiga CD32)
21. Pinball Fantasies (1993 – Amiga CD32)
22. Super Pinball Action (1991 – Arcade)
23. Fireball (1988 – MSX2)
24. Pinball Dreams (1992 – Amiga)
25. Sonic Pinball (2003 – Game Boy Advance)
26. Pokémon Pinball: Ruby & Sapphire (2003 – Game Boy Advance)
27. Pro Pinball: The Web (1996 – PlayStation)
28. Pinball aka Play It! Pinball (2000 – PlayStation 2)
29. Epic Pinball (1993 – MS DOS)
30. Speed Ball (1987 – Arcade)
31. Pinball Action (1985 – Arcade)
32. Revenge of the ‘Gator (1989 – Game Boy)
33. Pro Pinball: Fantastic Journey (2000 – PlayStation)
34. Dragon’s Revenge (1993 – Sega Genesis)
35. Little Mermaid II: Pinball Frenzy (2000 – Game Boy Color)
36. Alien Crush Returns (2008 – WiiWare)
37. Midnight Magic (1986 – Atari 2600)
38. Getaway: High Speed II (1995 – Game Boy)
39. Slamball (1984 – Commodore 64)
40. Mechanicus (1991 – Commodore 64)
41. Pinball Dreams (1995 – Game Gear)
42. Pinbo (1984 – Arcade)
43. Bumper Bash (1983 – Atari 2600)
44. Royal Flush (1994 – MS DOS)
45. Queen of Hearts (1983 – Apple II)
    YES! **TERMINATOR LINE** NO!
46. Time Scanner (1987 – Arcade)
47. Power Rangers Zeo: Full Tilt Battle Pinball (1996 – PlayStation)
48. Golden Logres (1999 – PlayStation)
49. Pokémon Pinball (1999 – Game Boy Color)
50. Muppet Pinball Mayhem (2002 – Game Boy Advance)
51. Pinball (1983 – Intellivision)
52. Patriotic Pinball (2003 – PlayStation)
53. Pinball aka Hudson Pinball (2005 – PlayStation Portable)
54. Pinball Hazard (1996 – Amiga)
55. Super Pinball: Behind the Mask (1994 – SNES)
56. Time Cruise (1991 – TurboGrafx-16)
57. 3-D Ultra Pinball: Thrill Ride (2000 – Game Boy Color)
58. Rollerball (1984 – MSX)
59. Ottifanten Pinball (2005 – Game Boy Advance)
60. Dragon’s Fury (1991 – Sega Genesis)
61. Thomas the Tank Engine Pinball (1995 – Amiga)
62. David’s Midnight Magic (Atari 8-Bit)
63. Pinball Jam (1992 – Atari Lynx)
64. Pinball Prelude (1996 – Amiga CD32)
65. Super Pinball II: The Amazing Odyssey (SNES)
66. Pinball aka Vs. Pinball (1984 – Arcade)
67. Pinball aka Black Box Pinball (1984 – NES)
68. Sonic Spinball (1993 – Sega Genesis)
69. Sonic Spinball (1994 – Sega Master System)
70. Lucy Shot (1990 – Sharp X68000)
71. Rollerball (1988 – NES)
72. Hyper 3-D Pinball aka Tilt! (1997 – PlayStation/Sega Saturn)
73. Neo Golden Logres (2000 – Sega Dreamcast)
74. Elemental Pinball (2002 – PlayStation)
75. Extreme Pinball (1996 – PlayStation)
76. Pin•Bot (1990 – NES)
77. Super Robot Pinball (2001 – Game Boy Color)
78. Battle Pinball (1994 – 3DO)
79. Austin Powers Pinball (2002 – PlayStation)
80. High Speed (1991 – NES)
81. Pinball Quest (1989 – NES)
82. Obsession (1995 – Amiga)
83. Jaki Crush (1992 – SNES)
84. Family Pinball aka Rock ‘n Ball (1989 – NES)
85. Flipnic: Ultimate Pinball (2003 – PlayStation 2)
86. Microsoft Pinball Arcade (2001 – Game Boy Color)
87. Hollywood Pinball (1999 – Game Boy Color)
88. Pinball Fun (2003 – PlayStation 2)
89. The Pinball of the Dead (2002 – Game Boy Advance)
    TRULY PUTRID STUFF STARTS HERE
90. Grand Cross (1994 – Arcade)
91. Crüe Ball (1992 – Sega Genesis)
92. ParanoiaScape (1996 – PlayStation)
93. Pinball Graffiti (1996 – Sega Saturn)
94. Mario Pinball Land aka Super Mario Ball (2004 – Game Boy Advance)
95. Virtual Pinball (1993 – Sega Genesis)
96. Pinball (1991 – CD-i)
97. Video Pinball (1981 – Atari 2600)
98. Pinball Pinball (1990 – Sharp X68000)
99. Raster Blaster (1981 – Apple II/Atari 8-Bit)
100. Thunderball! (1979 – Odyssey 2)
101. Night Mission (1982 – Apple II)
102. Powershot Pinball (2006 – PlayStation 2)
103. Power Pinball (1989 – Amstrad CPC)
104. Super Pinball (1988 – NES)
105. The Pinball (1999 – PlayStation)
106. Dragon Beat: Legend of Pinball (1997 – PlayStation)
107. Ruiner Pinball (1995 – Atari Jaguar)
108. PaTaank (1994 – 3DO)
109. Pac-Man Pinball Advance (2005 – Game Boy Advance))
110. KISS Pinball (2001 – PlayStation)
     ACTUAL WORST GAME I’VE EVER PLAYED IN MY LIFE CONTENDERS START HERE
111. Pinball Mania (1995 – Amiga)
112. Dino Land (1991 – Sega Genesis)
113. Galactic Pinball (1995 – Virtual Boy)
114. Moon Ball Magic (1988 – Famicom Disk System)
115. Casino Games (1989 – Sega Master System)
116. Sega Flipper (1983 – Sega SG-1000)
117. Pinball Tycoon (2003 – Game Boy Advance)
118. Pinball Advance (2002 – Game Boy Advance)
119. Hero Shūgō!! Pinball Party (1990 – Game Boy)
120. Spinball (1983 – Vectrex)
121. Wizard Pinball (1994 – Sega Game Gear)
122. Time Scanner (1989 – Amiga)
123. Advanced Pinball Simulator (1989 – Commodore 64)
124. Real Pinball (1994 – 3DO)
125. Panic Road (1986 – Arcade)

Last year I did “post credits” stuff for Konami Shoot ‘Em Ups: The Definitive Review. Did you really think I wouldn’t do that again?

BONUS: Games Cut from the Feature

These don’t count for the rankings. This is just for funsies!

Pinball Fantasies
Platform: Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Released February, 1995
Developed by Spidersoft
Published by GameTek
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Originally I had planned to do this as part of the main feature, but after getting physically sick from SNES Pinball Dreams and emotionally sick from Spidersoft’s Pinball Mania, I decided to cut it. It uses the same exact busted engine as Pinball Dreams SNES. The scrolling happens left and right in addition to up and down while the ball speed is totally detached from reality. Although this version of Fantasies was likely the one with the largest potential audience, there were so many ports of Pinball Fantasies that I figured I could cut this one. Besides, I didn’t really want to play a game that genuinely gives me motion sickness. It likely would have gotten a NO! but I barely put five minutes into this before my stomach issued me a yellow card and I decided to stop. This wasn’t even the version of Pinball Fantasies I played the least. That would be the PSP versions that have the same issue but more subtle. Subtle is worse, actually.

Pinball Fantasies
Platform: Atari Jaguar
Released June 1, 1995
Developed by Spidersoft
Published by 21st Century Entertainment
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

This isn’t an exciting cut from the main feature. The truth is, I dropped Pinball Fantasies because, in terms of gameplay, it’s on par with the Amiga version. It has the tiniest touch of the speed issues that Spidersoft’s SNES ports of Pinball Dreams and Pinball Fantasies has, but it’s not a deal breaker. The biggest downgrade is to the graphics and sound. I thought the Amiga CD32 version looked a lot more crisp than the Jaguar game, and obviously the sound and music is never going to be as good. Otherwise, Pinball Fantasies on the Jaguar is a pretty straight port of the Amiga game. Jaguar fans can consider Fantasies’ Amiga ranking to also count for it. Hey, congrats on not sh*tting the bed on a port, Spidersoft!

Pinball Fantasies Deluxe
Platform: PlayStation
Released October 25, 1996
Developed by Digital Illusions
Published by Vap
Never Released Outside of Japan
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Yet another carbon copy of the original Amiga game. I didn’t see the “Deluxe” aspect of this besides offering a few basic options. We’re into the 32-bit era and it’s weird that this game, which wasn’t even amazing to begin with, keeps getting copy and pasted over and over. They didn’t touch up any aspect of it. They could have made this set truly valuable by adding the Pinball Dreams tables too. Nope. It’s just the Amiga game on the PlayStation in Japan in 1996. A good Amiga game but really pressing its luck on the PSX, especially when you consider that True Pinball was already on the PlayStation by the time this came out. I played it for about ten minutes and then canceled the review. Go ahead and lump this in with the Amiga game.

Pinball Challenge Deluxe
Platform: Game Boy Advance
Released July 5, 2002
Developed by Binary 9 Studios
Published by Ubisoft
Never Released Outside of Europe
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED 

The only game ever developed by Binary 9 Studios, Pinball Challenge Deluxe is a compilation of Pinball Dreams and Pinball Fantasies. Thankfully, these aren’t the terrible Spidersh*t ports. The bad news is, even though Binary 9 reworked the physics, this collection of eight tables still requires full side-to-side and up-and-down scrolling that made me feel like I was in a rocking boat. In what little I played of this, I wasn’t impressed at all. You can see very, very little of the playfield off the flippers, so you’re shooting completely blind. I likely would have given this a NO! if I had been able to play it without feeling like I was about to toss my cookies.

Pinball Hall of Fame: The Gottlieb Collection
aka Gottlieb Pinball Classics
Platforms: PS2, Xbox, GameCube, Wii, PSP
First Released November 16, 2004
Directed by Jay Obernolte
Developed by Farsight Studios
Published by Crave
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

AND

Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection
aka Williams Pinball Classics
Platforms: PS2, 3DS, Wii, Xbox 360, PS3, PSP
First Released Released February 26, 2008
Directed by Jay Obernolte
Developed by Farsight Studios
Published by Crave
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

I went back and forth on whether to include the Farsight collections of classic real life tables, but the gameplay was just a little too close to Pinball Arcade, which I considered the cut-off point for this feature. Really, both Hall of Fame games feel like prototypes for what would be the game that kicked off the modern era. Unlike all the games that contained real tables up to this point, I think these cross the threshold into legitimate simulations of real tables and not interpretations of them, though not all tables in these sets play as well as others. Still, by this point I’d already doubled my previous highest time investment in any IGC project and my family said “why don’t you drop them, Cathy?”

I will say that I think the Gottlieb set has an extraordinarily mediocre lineup: Ace High (1957), Central Park (1966), Big Shot (1973), Genie (1979), Black Hole (1981), Victory (1987) and Tee’d Off (1993). Wii and PSP owners could also play El Dorado City of Gold (1984) and the unreleased prototype Goin’ Nuts (1983) which finished dead last in my Pinball Arcade rankings among the 96 tables that weren’t broken by engine issues caused by Pinball Arcade (the overall team average ranked it #94 of 96, in front of only Big Buck Hunter Pro and Rescue 911). Much like The Pinball Arcade, the choices to represent Gottlieb leave a LOT to be desired. Black Hole is obviously the star, and I personally get a kick out of Central Park but it’s not for everyone. This is a pretty bland set that plays moderately well, though we did NOT agree on that. Sasha the Kid HATED this game and felt it was “rigged” so that more balls feed the flippers than natural.

The Williams set is much stronger, with all versions having Gorgar (1979) Black Knight (1980), Space Shuttle (1984), Pin•Bot (1986), Taxi (1988), Funhouse (1990) and Whirlwind (1990). That’s a hell of a lineup, but where the Williams Collection crosses the line into maddening frustration is the tables some versions are missing. All versions but the Nintendo 3DS build also have Firepower (1980). It’s only an all-time classic. No big. All versions but the PS2 and 3DS also have Jive Time (1970) and Sorcerer (1985). While I personally find both to be hugely overrated, I would be furious to have them missing, but now it gets really maddening. Literally. Exclusive to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 builds are three huge Dot Matrix Display-era tables: Tales of the Arabian Nights (1996), No Good Gofers (1997) and the universally acclaimed all-time classic Medieval Madness (1997). Ouch. F*cking ouch. I’ve gone back and forth on what my personal favorite pin is, it’s probably that. Anyway, I didn’t put enough time into these to review, but they’re basically wonkier versions of Pinball Arcade. Fun fact: both of these were commonly seen in cheap game racks in places like drug stores. I saw the Gottlieb Collection at Rite Aid all the time.

Pinball Fantasies and Pinball Dreams
Platform: PlayStation Portable Minis
Pinball Fantasies Release: October 1, 2009
Pinball Dreams Release: November 19, 2009
Developed by Cowboy Rodeo
PSN Versions – No Modern Release

I really, REALLY would have done these ports of Pinball Dreams and Pinball Fantasies, as they really do seem like they had the highest chance of being the best ports ever of two of the most important pinball games ever made. In my VERY limited experience, and I mean we’re talking as limited as I’ve ever played in my life, it seemed like the physics were going to be the same as the Amiga versions. All shooting, all rebounding, no ball handling, but the layouts are some of the most famous video pinball layouts ever and you can play them in tate mode. Except, they don’t fill the entire screen. This is like a more subtle version of the problem the SNES games had, but that subtly made the motion sickness effect more immediate and MUCH more intense. This was downright boat-like with its swaying. Literally rocking back and forth just slow enough to not give me a headache but just fast enough to simulate a boat on the ocean, and I almost puked. I played these for under five minutes. Check them out if you get a chance and have a stronger stomach than me.

Kirby’s Pinball Land DX
Platform: Game Boy
Released January 13, 2022
Unauthorized ROM Hack of Kirby’s Pinball Land
Developed by kkzero
Link to Patch at ROMHacking.net
I use THIS tool to apply patches.

This enhanced edition of Kirby’s Pinball Land has two major differences. First, obviously, there’s color now. Unlike Revenge of the ‘Gator, and other Game Boy Color enhanced versions of games (see my reviews for Super Mario Land, Super Mario Land 2, and Wario Land) this wasn’t a universal upgrade. The colorization wasn’t awful but it’s not great, either. Like, the level select screen is absolutely an eyesore.

Nope. That’s not good. And the Wispy stage is pretty bland overall until you actually get to the Wispy fight, which looks pretty solid.

But Kracko and Poppy’s levels look fine! Really!

I should note that the READ ME says “all known issues have been fixed” but when I beat the game, Dedede’s sprite was completely black, as was a few others:

But what really matters is gameplay. All slowdown has been removed, which mostly matters for the bonus games. It makes a difference too. In only my second soccer game in Poppy’s stage, I made so many goals that I went from the starting three lives to eight in a single round. I scored so many goals that I netted five extra lives in one bonus game.

I did notice that I was having a lot more trouble doing straight-up-the-middle shots in DX, but otherwise it’s an okay ROM hack of pretty good video pinball game.

Revenge of the ‘Gator Gold
Platform: Game Boy
Released January 23, 2023
Unauthorized ROM Hack of ‘Revenge of the Gator
Developed by MojoDojo
Link to Patch at ROMHacking.net
I use THIS tool to apply patches.

Revenge of the ‘Gator Gold offers the same improvements as Kirby’s Pinball Land DX: faster gameplay in living color. The improvements work much better for Gator, which needed the pick me up more than Kirby. While you still can’t nudge, the gameplay benefits greatly from the intensity boost that comes with the higher speed. The game also doesn’t have slowdown, which you feel in the bonus stages. Apparently the game also squashes a few bugs, but I didn’t notice any in the main game so (shrug). Usually I say something like “set your expectations accordingly” but in the case of Revenge of the ‘Gator Gold, this is clearly the superior version and the best way to play the game. Nintendo could really benefit from putting in the time to have these sort of quality of life ROM hacks on Switch Online, especially when the difference is so obvious.

And now we’ve reached the end. Thank you everyone for fifteen incredible years, and here’s to fifteen more.

To Dad, Angela, and Sasha the Kid: Thanks for playing pinball with me!
To Dave, Jordi, Dash, and Matt: Thanks for all the help!
To EVERYONE who recommended a review for this: THANK YOU!