Classic Pinball Video Games: The Definitive Review – All 18 PlayStation One Video Pinball Games Reviewed & Ranked

Due to issues with loading, I’m posting the reviews from Classic Pinball Video Games separately or in groups like this.

IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

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!
Classic Pinball Video Games Ranking: #8 of 125
Percentile: 94%

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!
Classic Pinball Video Games 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*
Classic Pinball Video Games 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!
Classic Pinball Video Games Ranking: #27 of 125
Percentile: 78%

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!
Classic Pinball Video Games Ranking: #47 of 125
Percentile: 62%

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!
Classic Pinball Video Games Ranking: #72 of 125
Percentile: 42%

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!
Classic Pinball Video Games 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
Classic Pinball Video Games 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!
Classic Pinball Video Games Ranking: #92 of 125
Percentile: 26%

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!
Classic Pinball Video Games Ranking: #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!
Classic Pinball Video Games 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!
Classic Pinball Video Games 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!
Classic Pinball Video Games Ranking: #14 of 125
Percentile: 89%

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!
Classic Pinball Video Games Ranking: #33 of 125
Percentile: 74%

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!
Classic Pinball Video Games Ranking: #110 of 125
Percentile: 12%

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!
Classic Pinball Video Games Ranking: #74 of 125
Percentile: 41%

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!
Classic Pinball Video Games Ranking: #79 of 125
Percentile: 37%

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!
Classic Pinball Video Games Ranking: #52 of 125
Percentile: 48%

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)