I did it. I deactivated my Twitter. Here’s the explanation in case you missed it. And I think it’s a safe bet that I shouldn’t be doing reviews while I’m both sick to my stomach and emotionally devastated. I played through Contra three times, and I was a complete zombie. Contra! One of the greatest games of all time, but the lights were on and nobody was home. I wrote a review with all the emotional punch of a turnip. So, what am I playing? Nothing. I think it’ll probably be a couple days before I feel.. anything.
A few months ago I started LCD Games XI, and I never finished it. So, here’s a thing from it.
CUPHEAD!! “Homebrew” by Itizso Gameplay Type: Spinning Plate
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Cuphead is an original creation by recreation master Itizso. While it’s a typical six-channel spinning plate game disguised as a gallery shooter, there’s a big twist to this one: you’re not scoring points. Instead, you’re just trying to survive for as long as you can, with scoring measured in minutes and seconds. Unfortunately, there’s no auto-fire here. You actually do have to mash the shooting button. This isn’t a game I could put extended playtime into without annihilating my hands. I suppose the question is “does it feel like Cuphead?” And the answer is “not even a little bit.” The pea shooter’s noise, that now apparently iconic clicking sound, is here for the LCD, but otherwise, nah. I think most fans of the franchise would be disappointed that the LCD is themed more after one of the platforming segments instead of an encounter with one of the humongous, transforming bosses. But, while I don’t think this necessarily works as a Cuphead game, the addition of leaderboards makes this a one-off spinning plate experience that I enjoyed, in small doses. Verdict: YES!
So, I’m not going to be posting updates to the former Twitter. I’ve decided to keep my account open for at least for a couple days so that my followers can see my parting message. I might just keep it open so that the plethora (great word) of indie developers who I’ve already connected with can still reach out to me and so nobody else can claim my handle there. But I’m ceasing updates to it, effective immediately with the link to this post. And it’s not really a politics thing, whether anyone believes it or not. I’ve quit following politics. It’s because social media is worse for you than cigarettes. Hey, I’ve quit smoking already. I quit opiates before that. I’ve been sober for years and years now. I’ve quit every addiction in my life, except that stupid Twitter account, and for what? Because I didn’t want to lose my followers? Actually, I trust the followers who want to read my reviews that they know where to find them, and it’s not on Twitter. The reviews are here, at Indie Gamer Chick, and I ain’t going anywhere. I had good times there, but it’s not like it was all positive. I’ve been wiping tears all day, and I imagine I will for a while to come, but I’ll have no shortage of bad memories to look back on and know that this is what I should have done years ago. I wanted to, but I have over 18,000 followers, and that’s tough to give up. So, why do it?
UPDATE: The Contra Review is up! And I shut down the Twitter. Like pulling off a band-aid. I don’t know why they say that. I don’t remember a band-aid ever hurting. But, I’ve had my legs waxed. That’s a better metaphor. I leg-waxed my Twitter.
A few years back, some person who had, only five minutes earlier, discovered that, yea, epilepsy in gaming is a problem tried to whip-up a mob to cancel me, because this person decided I was an enemy of gaming accessibility. Me. As in the person who has been writing about epilepsy for a long, long time. She was having a tantrum and acting like developers were deliberately hurting people with flashing visuals in their games, which helps not at all. She literally didn’t know what she was even mad about. She didn’t know the science. She didn’t know the history. She didn’t know the particulars. She didn’t have a f*cking clue what she was talking about, and she didn’t care. It was just the latest thing to cross the path of a person who is perpetually raging. If this woman had done more than read half a tweet and a quarter of an article and actually did research, she would have understood that epilepsy is among the most misunderstood medical conditions in the world. When I started Indie Gamer Chick, in my experience, most developers during my early years (2011 – 2013) thought that people with epilepsy just didn’t play games. It made perfect sense to believe that, too. I believed it when I was diagnosed in 2005. My literal first thought was “oh no, I think I just lost video games forever.” Thankfully, it’s not that simple. Medical stuff rarely is. A lot of people think most or all epileptic people are photosensitive. They’re not. Take a random sample of 100 epileptic people and try to guess how many of them will be photosensitive enough to have seizures. Half? Two-thirds? Twenty? Twenty-five? Forty?
Three. Only 3. That’s 30 for every 1,000 people who live with epilepsy.
So, why is it such a common belief? The media, mostly. I’m sure every Nintendo fan has heard of the episode of the Pokemon anime that gave hundreds of kids seizures. Actually, most probably didn’t have tonic–clonic seizures (that’s what they call grand mal seizures now), or seizures at all. That’s because you don’t have to be epileptic to be photosensitive. You, the person reading this, could be photosensitive. Ever get blurred vision from a flashing light that lasts longer than it takes for your eyes to normally focus? How about a headache? Ever get a headache from a strobe light? Even a little one? YOU’RE PHOTOSENSITIVE. Welcome to the club. It’s a big club, too. The things that can give ME a seizure can give a SIGNIFICANTLY greater portion of the population what were the most widely reported effects of that Pokemon episode. Headaches. Dizziness. Nausea. Loss of balance. Confusion. Blurred vision.
There’s also a lot of myths about “triggers.” It’s best to think of it as a range. Even in the days where I wasn’t taking care of myself and seizures were more common, I had moments where I accidentally saw a strobe in full view and didn’t have a seizure or feel any consequence at all. But, there’s the time that it’s suspected I had a seizure from looking at a lamp, looking away from it, then looking back at it. Isn’t that scary? But that’s not an anomaly. That’s how it works. The scariest part by far of having epilepsy is how unpredictable it is. There’s no on-off switch that’s activated by something specific. It’s a scale, and an epileptic person only knows a moderately certain range. If you’re lucky (or maybe it’s unlucky, given the circumstances) you might get a feel for when you’re more sensitive than normal. I’ve had intuitions like that before, but really, it’s just a range where you don’t know where you’re at on any given day. It’s like the Range Game from Price is Right, only I play it with a strobe light and instead of winning a new refrigerator, I have a seizure.
“Ms. Vice is so excited to have won that she’s shaking. Hey, wait a second.. uh, medics?!”
That’s epilepsy. A series of dice rolls where you only get a vague set of rules. I don’t have “photosensitive epilepsy.” I have epilepsy AND I have photosensitivity which can result in a seizure. And I don’t even always have a seizure if the trigger “hits.” All those symptoms I listed above are far more likely to happen than a seizure. In fact, these days I rarely have seizures at all. I had a LOT when I started IGC. As many as one every three to four days. But, that was because I wasn’t taking care of myself. I felt sorry for myself, so I took drugs, but not the drugs I should have been taking. Robin Williams had a joke where he said a doctor told him “Robin, if you keep taking drugs, you’ll die” then later in life it became “Robin, take these drugs or you’ll die!” That’s my life these days. The “fun” drugs are out and the good ones are in, and seizures are very rare. In 2024, I’ve had two verified seizures and two suspected ones. So the betting favorite isn’t “death by seizure” anymore (who am I kidding? Overdosing was the favorite!) I think “crushed by a pinball table following a fit of rage” is the new favorite. Sh*t, I’ll take $10 on that.
So photosensitivity is a lot more complicated than people might think. Hell, you’re probably thinking of strobes only, aren’t you? While that is the most common trigger, it doesn’t even get you two-thirds the way there. What if I told you repetitive patterns can trigger some people? Shifting colors can too. And, by the way, there’s no such thing as “epilepsy safe.” Neither epilepsy nor photosensitivity work that way. Game developers need to discontinue using medical language in their option menus. You’re not a doctor, and calling your well-meaning toggle “epilepsy mode” or “photosensitive mode” implies safe for epilepsy. It’s just not, no matter how many things you change, because there’s no safety from it. Gaming will always be a risk for me and people like me. I’ve decided that it’s an acceptable risk, but make no mistake: it could kill me. That’s not off the table and WILL NEVER be off the table, so the best I can do is build a very big table for myself. What you’re doing might be “safer” but you don’t know who’s playing your game, their medical history, or their triggers. I prefer the term “effects intensity” for those toggles. It’s not medical jargon, so it implies no safety. Also, most photosensitivity goes undiagnosed, but “effects intensity” is neutral to that and invites more people. By the way, I’ve been doing this for over 13 years, and I’ve never met a single developer who was anything short of horrified to learn their game might be potentially dangerous for me to play. They’re not idiots or willfully ignorant. Our culture has led many people to believe that people like me don’t play games at all or can’t play games at all. It’s a stigma that makes logical sense if you only know this stuff from watching TV. People like Karen.
So, Karen, like, chill the f*ck out. People aren’t born smart to everything. Stuff gets stigmatized, and medical stigmas are not overcome by screaming at people. This is a complicated topic that the adults are handling. I love video games, so I’ve participated in this topic. This woman was “outraged” (really faking outrage) because I actually do not care if I ultimately can’t play a game because of my condition. A condition she hadn’t thought twice about in her entire miserable life, but one that I once genuinely believed would likely kill me someday. Not from a “trigger.” I have epilepsy. Seizures JUST HAPPEN, no trigger needed. I’ll be minding my own business when ZAP and then I wake up with no memory of what the f*ck happened, feel like I’ve pulled muscles all through my body, and glance around the room to see worried faces and people asking “are you okay?” That’s what it’s like. The most common question I get is “do they hurt?” I dunno. I don’t remember any of them. Some people say they’re alert during their seizures and remember everything. For me, it’s like it happens to someone else, and even if I’m up and at ’em an hour or two later, that doesn’t mean I’m all there. That could take a while. Maybe 12 hours before my short term memory is working again. The most common side effects are severe body aches, usually a headache, and my body’s internal clock is well off track. “It’s not 3am Saturday! It’s only 1pm Friday!” is what it’s genuinely like. It’s not hard for me to imagine that at least one of those people who think they’re abducted by aliens and cite the lost time as their proof might actually have epilepsy and not know it. It’s a heartbreaking thing to think about, but I figure it has to be true for at least one of them.
With the photosensitivity, I just really have to take caution with games. This is the part where I say “this is not medical advice. If you have photosensitivity, talk to your doctor. What works for me WORKS FOR ME.” The big two precautions are distance from the screen and lighting in the room. Gaming in the dark is not an option. ANY use of televisions in a room with the lights turned off isn’t. I don’t even get in cars at night if I can help it. Any pinball fan knows that the best pinball is played with the lighting turned down and the table lights turned up. I can’t do it. It’s super dangerous. The risks I take with gaming are calculated risks. Trust me, I have the capability to be stupid. We went to Disneyland recently and I opened my eyes on Space Mountain. I snuck away from my family and rode an indoor, flashy rollercoaster with the intent of keeping my eyes shut the whole time like it was the Ark of the Covenant from Raiders of the Lost Ark. But, I just wanted just a f’n glimpse of what had once been my favorite Disney ride. A glimpse I hadn’t seen in almost 20 years, and now that I’m sober, properly medicated, and mostly seizure-free, it was too tempting to resist. They’d updated the effects since I’d last seen them! So, I opened my eyes for a few seconds and ended up with a ripper of a headache that almost ruined the day for everyone, especially since they knew what I’d done and that I was messed up. Stupid and childish, and I’ll never do anything like it again. It doesn’t affect my gaming as much as you’d think. I’ve had ONE instance in the last few years where I was like “HOLY HELL” with a strobe light. Of all the things, it was the Jetsons NES game that had my family asking “what the hell is wrong with you?” until they realized I honestly didn’t know it was coming. The entire last boss and the aftermath have strobe lights going non-stop. EPILEPSY WARNING FOR THIS VIDEO.
That’s an extreme outlier. There was a single boss in the game Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon that went overboard on the strobe lights. The Pinball Arcade version of the pinball machine Sorcerer got me TWICE. And, that’s really all I can remember from games I actually played since 2019, which is around the time my epilepsy became “manageable” thanks to me growing the f*ck up and acting like I actually cared about my health. I let my friends and family make final decisions on what is and isn’t safe and I respect their decision as final and absolute. If they veto a game, that’s it. I don’t play it. The most recent was the NES Zapper game Gumshoe. We bought a relatively expensive light gun so I could do some light gun game reviews, but Gumshoe was vetoed because of how much shooting is involved: constant, non-stop shooting. That’s a problem because of the bright, white, screen-wide pulse the technology of the NES Zapper causes. I think the world can live without my Gumshoe opinion. But, that really is the extent of my recent epilepsy in gaming experience. What does any of this have to do with the Karen mentioned above? I don’t need to play any one specific game. I can play so many other games. In my experience, even the biggest advocates for the epilepsy options will say “if the game can’t work without the flashing lights, then people with epilepsy have other options for games they can play. Make the game you want to make. It’s YOUR game, not ours.” By the way, that’s a hypothetical situation that I have LITERALLY NEVER HEARD OF ACTUALLY HAPPENING, but just saying it lets the developers know that, hey, we respect your vision as a creator.
This was taken by someone at a conference on accessibility given by my friend Ian Hamilton, one of the world’s foremost experts on game accessibility. This was LONG before the scary lady read half a tweet and was suddenly down with fixing epilepsy. There’s a LOT of epileptic gamers out there, and the greatest honor of my entire life is doing my small part to make gaming truly for everyone. Having my parents, who I gave many sleepless nights to in my youth, tell me they’re proud of me, when I had really not given them a lot to be proud of.. let’s just say, I’m biting my lip right now or else I’d burst into tears.
And that’s what she was raging about. That sentiment above was insufficient for Karen, who didn’t even know there was any problem at all just minutes earlier. She was literally looking at my followers list and directly demanding the ones with the most followers publicly denounce me and join the mob against me. Do you know how many of those big names said anything to the effect of “wait, you’re mad at Indie Gamer Chick over an epilepsy thing? Are you f*cking kidding me?” None. They were too scared they would become the next target of this monster, who was known for turning on people on a dime. I got a lot of private well wishes from people she tagged demanding to cancel me, including some pretty big names in gaming, some who acknowledged they were scared to be targeted, but no big names had the courage to defend me against a woman who clearly didn’t who didn’t give two sh*ts about epilepsy. Her timeline was a series of big bullsh*t fake outrage of the day, and she had enough followers to make someone feel her wrath. That just happened to be the day her big bullsh*t fake outrage of the day was epilepsy, because she had just found out about it.
Do you know what *I* found out that day? I found out that I didn’t really have as many friends as I thought I had. To be clear, a lot of people did come to my defense. Friends did. Total strangers did. One of them didn’t even follow me, but they knew me as a person associated with epilepsy awareness in gaming. That meant a lot to me, and I’m not trying to say that those who did stand up for me meant nothing. It meant EVERYTHING that day. I found out who truly cared. But so many others were sending their well wishes instead of saying “you’re wrong” to this woman while I was puking my guts out, sick to my stomach that I was being attacked for not being supportive enough of something I poured my life into supporting.
That’s not why I’m leaving Twitter, obviously. It happened a long time ago. I blocked Karen. I find that it’s better for your blood pressure to block people who attempt to cancel you because they’re furious you got to a good cause before them. Let’s be real: that’s what she was REALLY mad about. What a f*cking child. But, now, I can’t block her. Twitter, or X or whatever it’s called, is doing away with blocking. People can still see what you’re doing now. It’d be like a judge saying “here’s your restraining order, but your ex can still stare creepily through your window and make throat-slashing gestures.” I don’t take blocking lightly. I recently blocked someone after many, many months of him being just plain annoying, and the final straw was he preemptively raged against a developer about how artwork better not be AI generated. No basis for it at all. Just a kid puffing up his chest and putting a developer on the spot, based on nothing. It wasn’t AI art. He could have asked “is this AI art?” instead of figuratively shaking his fist like some kind of big shot. That was not the only instance of preemptive outrage over an imagined slight towards a studio or developer from this individual, either. I don’t want this person seeing my timeline, because they didn’t use it respectfully. I don’t have that option anymore. But, I do have the option to leave.
One of the reasons I’ve stayed is because I didn’t want anyone taking my Twitter handle. I’ve had issues with people either claiming to work with me or collaborate with me to score review codes. I had a whole group of people try to score free copies of a major indie game by saying they worked with me, when they didn’t. I have the emails between the owner and the developer. The developer, by the way, who respected me so much that he put my f’n mascot, Sweetie, in his game. Of all the people to try to pass off a working relationship that doesn’t exist, you did it to a developer who essentially put me in their game? Wow. When I confronted the owner who sent the email to the dev (which I have) he told me I was wasting time he could be using to promote indies. The owner of that group later told one of the few male content creators he had (he mostly recruited women) that he would spit on me if he could. The guy he told that to quit because, yea, that’s major league f*cked and this person actually had integrity. The audacity of saying you would spit on someone whose clout he was trying to use to score games FOR HIM AND HIS PEOPLE. Good f*cking god. By the way, only two people out of close to twenty, if not more, quit over this.
A lot of the people who worked for this group acknowledged it, verified it, and stuck with them to keep the review copy gravy train going. I never called them out in public because I’d already tried that, and I was told I was wrong for it. Even though it was obvious what they were doing, apparently I came across like I was insufficiently grateful for my position of being a semi-popular game critic. To understand what happened, imagine the audacity it would take to make a group called “Indie Game Nation” so your content creators can call themselves “IGN” or say “you’re with IGN.” Well, I’m not IGN big, so I, a small content creator when you get down to it, was fair game. This group even recruited a content creator who had “Chick” in the name and a round yellow mascot. She probably doesn’t even know about this. I tried telling her, but never got a reply. And that almost by itself kept me at Twitter. After 30 days, your handle becomes available for someone else. I could post a million billion things here at this blog saying “that’s not me anymore” but developers would probably still send codes to the person who got my handle. That whole episode messed me up. It feels so awful to have someone who doesn’t respect you get caught trying to use your name to get games for themselves, but then to brag to someone on your team “I will spit on her, any day, any time” (that’s an exact quote, I have the transcript) is such a nasty, hateful thing. To get caught trying to get codes using my name THEN say you would spit on me if you could? Yea, this guy is totally down with female empowerment. I was sick to my stomach over that whole thing, and that kept me around longer than I wanted.
Not that I have the market cornered on yellow round mascots. She’s basically a smiley with a bow at this point, but dammit, she’s MY smiley with a bow. Thanks Scott for all the Sweeties over the years.
By the way, the good times outnumbered the bad, easily. My followers were always up for donating to charities like the Epilepsy Foundation and Direct Relief. They helped me to discover so many games I never would have found without them, and I hope I did the same for them. I went through a time where I was handing out more games than I was playing. All I wanted was for people to spread the word of the games. Even that had a lot of negativity, so much that I had to quit doing it for my own sanity. People tried to use duplicate accounts to grab double the copies. People didn’t do the work. Some people agreed to the terms, then thought I was being unreasonable to say “can you just play for like twenty minutes and show it off to people? That’s sort of the point of this whole thing.” But, last Halloween, I did it one last time, and there was no drama. It went great. I wish I had quit THAT NIGHT, going out on one of the happiest days of my adult life. Not even a special night, but just a night where it was like “yea, this is what gaming should be.” And hey, I made a lot of friends along the way. I met my best friend through Twitter. I met most of my friends through it. One of my closest friends had a little girl going to kindergarten when I started IGC, and now she’s started college. What? “Where did the time go?” I’ve been around long enough that I’ve fallen out of touch with more friends than I can keep up with. I’ve even had friends who’ve since died. People drift apart. That’s life. This feels like it’s just a larger scale drifting apart.
From a personal point of view, the biggest thrills were always when the people who made the games I played growing up were telling people to read my reviews. I wish everyone could know what that feels like. I wish I could go back in time and tell the little girl who didn’t have a lot of friends that, some day not far from now, the people who made this game you’re playing will be your friends. I wouldn’t have believed it. But, sure enough, even that became a downer. On January 7, 2023. Ed Boon, the mastermind behind Mortal Kombat, told people that he thought my review of Nintendo’s coin-op Popeye was good. “Nice work @IndieGamerChick”
That’s the guy who created Mortal god damned Kombat telling people he liked MY work. That’s not supposed to happen. I do game reviews with lame jokes. You have no idea what that meant to me, and that came during a rough time for me. But, almost none of the replies in that endorsement were about my review. It was almost entirely people demanding he announce the next Mortal Kombat right f*cking now. Still a career highlight, but it’s also like how I imagine everyone who won an Oscar after Chris Rock got smacked by Will Smith felt. It’s not the same, but man, I felt like a complete piece of sh*t reading that thread. And, I probably shouldn’t have, because damn, that was a great day at this blog. But, I have feelings, like anyone else. So, no, it’s not a politics thing. It’s a “what am I even doing here?” thing. Years ago, it wasn’t rare for me to get a few hundred clicks off Twitter from links I’d post throughout the week. Even though the Ed Boon thing was soured, I got over 900 clicks through Twitter that day alone. But, these days, I only get maybe a dozen clicks a day off Twitter on a day that a new review goes up, if I’m lucky. Engagement is way down. And yet, my blog has never been more popular. My reviews have been finding an audience without Twitter. I’ll miss interacting with followers, but it’s time.
Why not jump to another social media? Bluesky or whatever? I think I just want to play games with my family. I wasn’t joking earlier about social media being an addiction. It totally is, at least for me. It’s my last addiction, and I’m ready to drop it. I’m on the patch for it and everything! To everyone who followed me there over the years, thank you! I’m sad, but I’m also excited. God knows my family has been wanting me to do this for years. I’ll miss you, but it doesn’t have to be goodbye. On the sidebar you can put down your email to get updates of my posts. I don’t think there’s spam associated with it. It’s just an email alert of when a new review or feature is up. I’ll miss Twitter, but my reviews are here, at Indie Gamer Chick, and I’m not quitting. (cracks knuckles) I’m just getting started.
SO, WHAT AM I PLAYING?
Is that building puckering up to kiss me?
Some fun reviews coming to IGC. Contra is coming later today. I need some comfort food, and there’s no better comfort food than one of the greatest NES games of all-time. I discovered that autofire and a spread gun make that game almost trivial. At least one new Pinball FX review is dropping this weekend. Speaking of pinball, you might want to take a look at this pool of games, because it might matter in the coming weeks.
Super Pinball II: The Amazing Odyssey (Super Famicom)
Galactic Pinball (Virtual Boy)
Getaway: High Speed II (Super Game Boy)
Pokémon Pinball (Game Boy Color)
Little Mermaid II: Pinball Frenzy (Game Boy Color)
3D Ultra Pinball – Thrillride (Game Boy Color)
Microsoft Pinball Arcade (Game Boy Color)
Muppet Pinball Mayhem (Game Boy Advance)
Pinball Advance (Game Boy Advance)
The Pinball of the Dead (Game Boy Advance)
Pinball Tycoon (Game Boy Advance)
Sonic Pinball Party (Game Boy Advance)
Pokémon Pinball: Ruby & Sapphire (Game Boy Advance)
Pac-Man Pinball Advance (Game Boy Advance)
I don’t know what I’ll be doing with that list, but I’ve started knocking those games out already. So, I’ll leave you with this, my brand spanking new review of Video Pinball for the Atari 2600, which will be part of whatever feature this ends up being. I’m going to use “What Am I Playing” to post a lot of content from projects that went unfinished. I love you all! Thank you for 13 awesome years on Twitter. This isn’t goodbye. It’s “let’s stay at home for dinner today.”
Video Pinball
aka Arcade Pinball (Sears Label) Platform: Atari 2600 Released in 1980 Designed by Bob Smith Developed by Atari
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Video Pinball is probably one of the most famous video pinball games ever. That’s particularly weird because it never actually feels like pinball. The ball is practically made of Flubber with how much it bounces around. It’s actually not out of the question that you could end up going several minutes without having to touch the flippers or nudge. Not seconds. Minutes! We used a stopwatch and everything! In a game where we never once activated the flippers, one ball lasted 1 minute, 7 seconds AND it returned to the plunger instead of draining. The total time was 3 minutes, 4 seconds, without ever once hitting a flipper, and that included three total returns to the plunger. Designer Bob Smith apparently took inspiration from Atari’s own Superman table. Atari tables were notorious for breaking down, so kudos to Mr. Smith because my PC didn’t catch fire playing this (like Atari pins really did do). But, come on. Including this game is a little tongue in cheek. The control you have over the ball is minimum. None of us found the nudge effective except in very limited circumstances where the ball was bouncing slow enough but in a sharp-enough angle that a tiny nudge pushed in down one of the scoring lanes. The biggest misnomer of pinball is that it’s random chaos. Video Pinball for Atari is random chaos.
With the difficulty toggled, it opens what I assume are double outlanes.
Can You Trap? No. If you attempt to, at best, the ball just reverses direction and bounces until it hits the staircase that represents the slings. Can You Pass? No. You can’t even really aim the ball all that well. Pinball is a precise ball sport. This is just batting a ball back into play and hoping for the best. The world’s greatest snooker players couldn’t calculate the amount of trajectory that goes into “shots” in video pinball. I’m not even sure it’s charming in the way video pinball can be. My family firmly disagreed. Oscar said “all things considered, there’s dynamic scoring with the drop targets raising the bumper value. There’s ‘lights’ in the Atari lane that grant bonuses.” Even 9 year old Sasha found herself defending it. “The plunger is easy to use and has adjustable strengths. You can aim the first shot!” Mind you, defending or not, none of us gave this a YES! It’s like a novelty toy more than pinball, and it wasn’t until after the review that I told my family I only had us start with this to see if they were going to hand out YES! votes like candy to trick or treaters. Verdicts: Cathy – NO! Angela – NO! Oscar – NO! Sasha – NO!
Ghost Manor Platform: TurboGrafx-16 Released in 1992 Designed by Art Huff Developed by ICOM Simulations Published by Turbo Technologies, Inc. NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED (?)
What the hell kind of hero is that? Why does he have an “A” on his shirt? Did Alvin from the Chipmunks make a wish to be a real boy and that’s what he became? And by the way, you can’t see it but the A is on both sides. He’s an A both coming and going.
What horror themed game starring a character named Arthur did YOU think I was going to review? Well the thing is, next year is Ghosts ‘n Goblins 40th anniversary, and I think it’s a safe bet that the franchise will be getting a retro collection in 2025. Besides, what stuck out to me about this is I’ve already reviewed a game called Ghost Manor. It was for the Atari 2600 and the review is part of Atari 50: The Games They Couldn’t Include – Part Two. THAT Ghost Manor was an ambitious genre hodgepodge. While I didn’t ultimately give it a YES!, I admired that the company behind the Veg-O-Matic didn’t phone-in their attempt at carving-out a niche in the game industry. I wish I could say the same about this version of Ghost Manor. This take on the theme is a labyrinthine platformer that shares more DNA with Wizards & Warriors than Castlevania or Ghosts ‘n Goblins. Not good DNA, either. It’s one of those passed-on traits that’s not desirable, like asthma or, in this game’s case, slanted platforms that you slide down in a semi-controllable fashion. It’s not that Ghost Manor is a god awful game by any means. It’s just a basic, boring game that relies too heavily on GOTCHAs to ping your health away. One of this game’s main strategies for challenge is moments like this:
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Placing enemies on the other side of the door so that taking damage is a certainty is a trick Ghost Manor pulls all the time. Or entering a door only to have a monster on the other side on top of where you sprite will first come into existence. If this game had instakills, it’d be impossible. It’s a health tax, and nothing more. Why even do the enemies thing? Just take away some health to pass to the next screen. Weirdly, I still never died from taking damage. The only deaths were, like so many games, instakills from pits, environmental hazards, or direct contact with the game’s only boss. How it handles environmental hazards is so weird. Like, look at this screenshot.
I’m walking safely past the fire. BUT, had I jumped onto the same spot I’m on, I would have been killed instantly by the fire. The background suddenly, inexplicably counts as the foreground when it’s a danger element. This happens with spikes too (though they don’t kill you instantly). I don’t recall ever seeing anything like this before. It already doesn’t help that your character looks like a Cabbage Patch Kid that grew up, but once the scariest aspect of the game is bright lights in the background instead of actual monsters and skeletons, it’s probably time to rethink your game. Everything else about Ghost Manor is as generic as it gets. Hearts refill your life. Red orbs act as your projectiles and kill things. I was constantly running out of ammo and having to take damage.
See, I walked through this door and poof, damaged. By the way, some of the enemies that you kill split into two smaller versions that circle around you until you kill them or leave the room, but they don’t kill you. What are they doing? Taunting you?
On the other hand, there’s treasure chests or boxes all over that have life refills, ammo, points, and occasionally whammies (though nowhere near as many whammies as Ghosts n’ Goblins have). Even with this, there still wasn’t enough ammo. I reached the point where if an enemy wasn’t directly blocking the path I was on or I could easily avoid it, I didn’t kill it. Where’s the fun in that? A bigger problem is the way momentum works. Ghost Manor reminded me of the 3D version of Dragon’s Lair, because if you walked into any wall at any speed, Dirk the Daring recoiled. Well, this game does that too. It doesn’t damage you, but it absolutely grinds movement to a halt. There’s no consistency to it, either. Sometimes I was running full speed and no recoil happened. Other times I was attempting to get close to a wall with a platform so I could jump and my character was like “BOING.” It was just something I had to deal with. It’s such a weirdly sloppy thing to add to a game based around jumping and exploring because it has no benefit. It’s neither immersive nor does it add to the challenge, because I don’t even think it caused me to take damage even once. It’s just a bad idea in a game that feels like it’s grasping at straws.
I’m actually stuck here. I had to rewind the game to unstick myself. I couldn’t find any benefit to clipping through the wall like this so I assume it’s a glitch. There’s no guides anywhere for this game so if I’m missing something, I couldn’t find it.
The best thing I can say about Ghost Manor is that it’s pretty short. I finished it in under 90 minutes even though I’d never played it before. The level design isn’t half bad and the exploration is moderately okay. Weirdly, there’s no graphics to indicate whether something is locked or not, so it’s never quite clear what the key goes to when you find it. At one point, I was in a room that looked like the right wall opened up into another room. I’d seen over a dozen walls that looked exactly like it already. The door appeared open, but instead, I brained myself on it. Well, that’s because the key went to it. They couldn’t draw a door? Really? It’s a stunningly lazy game, and what’s even weirder is there is a logical way to help with that problem built into the game. When you face the final boss in a free-roaming room while riding a ghost, an arrow points you towards where the boss is in the arena. Why didn’t they just use that arrow to tell you where to take the key? It would have cut down on the busy work. And ultimately, that’s the problem with Ghost Manor: there’s no extra effort at all. The combat is boring, the movement sucks, and it doesn’t even really work as a “scary” game, especially with the perpetually smiling hero. I’d like to think Ghost Manor is a game starring a hero who is tripping balls on acid. If it’s true, it begs the question: what were those skeletons I killed, really? Verdict: NO!
Doctor Strange First Released December 17, 2013 Main Platform: Pinball FX Switch Platform: Pinball FX Designed by Ivan “Mad_Boy” Nicoara Set: Marvel Pinball Collection 1 ($23.99) Links: Strategy Guide – Pinball FX Wiki
One of the more life-like tables in terms of layout.. OR IS IT? Instead of using a diverter, the left ramps magically change direction, splitting apart and merging again. Neato.
Doctor Strange’s table is a strange one, indeed. Lots of conventional angles and smooth-sailing orbits make this enjoyable enough as a finesse shooter’s table. It’s too bad it can’t just give you the ball when it starts a mode. It has to violently spit the ball out so that it ricochets around, and sometimes it’ll just drop straight down the drain. Come on, enough of that. Seriously, at one point, I had a two ball multiball where both balls were shot directly from the VUKs down the drain, then I had to watch as the balls got stuck in the plunger. Absurdly, that’s not even Doctor Strange’s biggest issue. That would be the short amount of time you get to complete modes. They just don’t give you long enough for a table that has ball movement this loose, and one that deliberately eats up time before you even get your first shot. You could have as little as one shot at each ramp, and if the ball finds its way to the bumpers, you’re probably going to fail the mode. This is one of those tables where Zen desperately needs to go back and redo the rules completely from scratch. They can do an entire advertising campaign about having updated the ROMs for the tables. Nobody is saying “erase the old version forever.” We ain’t George Lucas. No, keep it up and call the reworked versions “The 2025 Builds” or something like that.
Signature Mode – Baron Mordo: One of the most fun modes on a middling table, five portals open in the middle of the midfield. When you shoot them, the ball teleports to the corresponding portal and completes the orbit at super speed, complete with sound effects right out of a 1960s Hanna-Barbera cartoon. It’s so cheesy and we all love it. We just wish it gave you another ten seconds to make each shot.
Doctor Strange features better than decent modes, mind you, and I especially enjoy how each has its own two shot driver. ONLY TWO SHOTS? Are we SURE this is a Zen table? Sure, they overvalued the modes to finish them, which feels like an over-correction so that players avoid chopping wood with combos. The layout is fine, which is why the modes need fixing. It wouldn’t require a lot of work for Zen to go in, add time to the modes (double, at least) and then cut their value by maybe 25%. There’s a marvelous table in here, and combos are such a cinch to shoot that you can veg out. I just wish the mechanics were more forgiving and/or less aggressive. On the positive side, this is easily the cheesiest table in Pinball FX. It’s so wildly cartoonish that it’s honestly more charming than most recent Marvel Cinematic Universe films and media combined, including the second Doctor Strange movie. The layout is fine. It might lean a little too heavily into defense, but with the smooth shooting combos, it’s easy to relight the kickbacks. Everything comes back to the timer and the fact that Doctor Strange is too aggressive with its multiball serves. They turn what should be one of the elite Marvel pins into a table located firmly in the middle of the pack. Cathy: GOOD (3 out of 5) Angela: GOOD Oscar: GOOD Jordi: GOOD Sasha: GOOD Scoring Average: 3.0 🧹CLEAN SCORECARD🧹 Some review copies were provided in this review, others were paid for.
Deadpool
First Released June 24, 2014
Main Platform: Pinball FX
Switch Platform: Not Yet Released Designed by Tamas “Ypok” Pokrocz Set: Marvel Pinball Collection 2 ($29.99 MSRP)
Links: Strategy Guide – Pinball FX Wiki
Deadpool looks the part. No doubt about it. There’s a ton of Easter Eggs and winks to the audience. But, it comes with a price: it can take FOREVER for the animations to wrap up, which means waiting around. Even holding the flippers, it can take a while. It can mess with your shooting stroke.
One of the call outs in Deadpool has him saying Zen Studios should make an M-rated pinball game, and his stated reason results in him being bleeped for the next ten seconds. Zen? Make an M-rated table? Nah, it’ll never happen. In Deadpool, if you make a skill shot, there’s a very good chance you’ll score 500,000 points and also watch the ball go straight down the outlane that’s directly next to the plunger and fed by the skill shot, losing your ball save. I’m sure this was done to be a troll, because I guess Deadpool could lazily be interpreted as a glorified troll. Cool. Yea, Deadpool the Pinball FX table is quite the frustrating pinball experience. For the record: that skill shot isn’t a “git gud” element that adds challenge. It’s just crap design. Mind you, there’s a super skillshot if you hit the first, which you might not even get a chance at because of this design. Why would you make a table like that? People pay money for these, and your first instinct is to troll? But the whole table is that way. The bumpers are of the Creature from the Black Lagoon variety, and it’s not rare for a ball to get caught in them for a long time. On a table where time is money. Want to experience Deadpool-based agony without watching X-Men Origins: Wolverine? Try playing this table in the five minute mode. (About an hour after typing that, 9 year old Sasha took that as a bet and shortly thereafter became Pinball FX’s Deadpool 5 Minute Challenge Undisputed World Champion).
Signature Shot – Mode Start Filing Cabinet: The one ingenious aspect of Deadpool is how the mode start works. Once you hit the mode start lanes to light the cabinet, you can start the mode and play on EASY right away, or you can use the spinners to light other difficulties. Usually this means adding to the shot requirement or shrinking time limits. This is a great idea, and the modes are just good enough to carry Deadpool over the finish line. Even if it’s doing it one piece at a time. By the way, you’re not guaranteed to actually get the hardest difficulty even if you light it. You still have the ball into the top locker. In Sasha’s record-setting 5 minute challenge, her intent was to play on HARD, but after lighting it, the mode start shot fizzled off the jump and only went into the MEDIUM hole. And she still set the world record anyway. Go figure.
Deadpool has the same problem as Ant-Man: there’s something loose and inelegant about ball movement in this table. You can see it in the skill shot, when a tiny little bump with the plunger sends the ball flying. The bumpers and slingshots are the same way. This is what we call a “kinetic” table, though it feels more in terms of gravity than actual table mechanics. It feels like you’re shooting a marble instead of a steel ball. Maybe the table wouldn’t work without the lighter physics. I hope that’s not the reason, because if it is, that’s the point when a designer should tear the table down and start over, not slap a price tag on it and release it. So, I must have hated the table, right? Actually, it won me over thanks to the way the mode start is handled, plus the modes themselves are pretty good. From shooting garbage that rains from the sky to the miniature Deadpool. The only one I disliked was a button mashing arm wrestling sequence. Button mashing is one of those accessibility things that needs to be phased out unless it’s a specific button mashing genre (like Track & Field games).
Signature Shot – Lil’ Deadpool: Okay, so as far as digital targets go, this is slightly weak since he just wiggles there after completing other tasks. What makes it more interesting is that we started setting records once we began trying for medium difficulty. Instead of three sequences of hitting the spinners and shooting the lockers to set up Lil’ Deadpool, you have to do four. For much more points. Yea, that’s a fair trade.
Even with the physics problems, I have to give it up to Ypok. He did a fairly decent job of balancing the difficulty and risk/reward between EASY/MEDIUM/HARD difficulties. It also helps that the harp-shaped playfield inherently has good combo shooting that feels different from a typical “pick a lane, any lane” out and back again combo shooting. Do I think Deadpool lives up to its potential? Oh, not even close. This thing feels SO WEIRD in terms of speed and bounce. If this hadn’t been Deadpool, they could have just as easily based it on Sonic The Hedgehog with how fast it runs and how much punch you get off the slingshots or even the grenade that acts as a ball save. The story isn’t “Deadpool wins a Clean Scorecard” but instead “Deadpool’s physics prevented it from winning the Certificate of Excellence that the layout and modes deserved.” On the other hand, this is the rare IP that is so enticing that pretty much everyone wants to play it, and it’s actually good enough that everyone should at least enjoy it more than dislike it. That counts for something in my book. Cathy: GOOD (3 out of 5) Angela: GOOD Oscar: GOOD Jordi: GOOD Dash: GREAT (4 out of 5) Sasha: GREAT Scoring Average: 3.33 – 🧹CLEAN SCORECARD🧹 Some review copies were provided in this review, others were paid for. Read my review of the Deadpool NES game.
This was supposed to be in the 130+ table Pinball FX Table Review Guide, but since it can’t handle posting a review that large, I decided to split up all the table reviews into separate posts. The guide originally included brand new short form reviews for a few tables we already posted full reviews for. So hell, why not just post it anyway? Though I swear on all that is holy this is the last time I’m doing an Addams Family table. Unless they include the gold version eventually.
This is it. This is pinball’s all-time sales champion. The only modern pin that sold over 20,000 units. And, yea, it absolutely deserves that status. While I’ll insist until the day I die that whatever happened to be the best pin of 1992 was probably fated to be the biggest seller ever, it’s also not a cosmic fluke that Addams was the chosen one. It’s probably the greatest example of theme integration in the medium’s history. It just feels exactly like how the lyrics of the Addams Family theme song describe them. Creepy? Check. Kooky? Check. Mysterious? Check. Spooky? Actually, yea. Check-check. Every table with a darker, macabre theme that came after Addams tried to recreate the magic and couldn’t. Tales from the Crypt. Scared Stiff (which is ironically a better version of the Tales from the Crypt theme, only with Elvira instead of the Crypt Keeper). I think the modes play a big part in that. I wish Zen Studios would try to make a pin that replicated the Pat Lawlor 90s style of “doors” as featured in this and Twilight Zone. Checking off the doors isn’t a grind at all, but staying alive might be. Addams is one of the rare pins that can get away with a plethora of house balls and keep people coming back for more. Even that feels true to the spirit of the theme, and it never fails to generate laughs in my house when it happens. Do you realize how SPECTACULAR of a table you have to be to get away with that? Addams is practically in a class of its own. By the way, this is THE greatest table of the 1990s for duels. We’re always down to throw hands at Addams in the Vice House. It’s a guaranteed good time.
Signature Element – T-H-I-N-G Lock: This is one of those things.. literally, in this shot’s case.. where the charm of a real table is lost. When you play a physical version of Addams Family, having a disembodied hand come out of a box and grab the ball is a sight to behold. I can’t imagine what this must have looked like in an arcade in 1992, when interactive toys in pinball were a genuine rarity. It must have been quite the treat. But, thirty-two years later, it’s just an extended break in the action, is it not? Pinball FX has tables where full fledged zombies walk around on the table, and I’m supposed to still get excited to see this slow-ass hand come out of the box? Granted, sometimes the break is a welcome one, since this is one of the more chaotic pins out there. But, if you’re in the middle of a hot streak, it might totally screw up your shooting rhythm, especially if the lock is already occupied and Thing is just going to put the ball right back. So agonizing.
Zen has done a pretty good job with Addams. Hell, the Thing Flips auto-shot is even somewhat improved from the launch version, though it’s still pretty inaccurate. Oddly enough, it’s a pretty good shot exclusively on Nintendo Switch, but that version has major issues regarding the electric chair. In real life, when the ball is dropped from the electric chair and you take a dead flip, it’s very rare for the ball to roll up the right outlane and activate the (temporary) electric chair switch. It does it almost every time on Nintendo Switch. That’s a big problem because it allows you to cheese the doors. That alone almost cost it from winning our Certificate of Excellence, as it barely made it over the scoring average threshold. Also, and this is slightly nit-picky but the extra ball shot feels a little inaccurate regardless of which version (or mode) you’re playing with Addams. The biggest difference between the real life and Zen versions all comes down to physics. Pinball FX’s engine is poor at things like bounces. On a real table, if you brick the Thing Flips shot, you might be able to convert the rebound and make the shot anyway. The ball just doesn’t ricochet enough to do that on Pinball FX. So, in all fairness, I can’t say this is a life-like take on Addams. It’s probably 85% there, but it’s also probably accurate to say the problems with Pinball FX’s engine affect Addams more than any other Williams pin. Maybe someday they’ll find the other fifteen percent, but we all prefer Zen’s build to standard Pinball Arcade port anyway. Addams Family is an imperfect port of what might be the perfect 90s pin. Cathy: MASTERPIECE (5 out of 5) GREAT on Switch (4 out of 5) Angela: MASTERPIECE(GREAT on Switch) Oscar: GREAT(GOOD on Switch) Jordi: MASTERPIECE Dash: GOOD (3 out of 5)
Sasha: MASTERPIECE(GREAT on Switch)
Dave: GREAT (Nintendo Switch)
Elias: GOOD (Nintendo Switch)
Primary Scoring Average: 4.5 📜CERTIFIED EXCELLENT📜
Switch Scoring Average: 3.66 📜CERTIFIED EXCELLENT📜
Darth Vader
First Released October 15, 2013
Main Set: Pinball FX
Switch Set: Star Wars Pinball Designed by Ivan “Mad_Boy” Nicoara Set: Star Wars Pinball Collection 1 ($23.99)
Links: Strategy Guide – Pinball FX Wiki
Be afraid. Be very afraid. In Darth Vader, every shot is high risk, yet this is a table made in the days before Zen started a crusade against ball control. This is a table that says “I DARE YOU TO CATCH AND SHOOT!” That’s tough enough without trollish ball returns. Had this table been made today, they’d aim the orbits at the drain and Darth Vader would be among the worst pins ever made. Hopefully if they take my advice to go back and rework the rule sheets for their old tables, their design staff doesn’t take that as a cue to break the tables. I literally mean “just fix the rules.” In fact, now I’m actually reconsidering this whole “rework the old pins” thing. I’m getting a weird “monkey’s paw where your wish has unexpected consequences” vibe. “Wish granted! Every pin will now be remade.. by Daniel ‘Dolby’ Vigh!” “NOOOOOOOOO!”
Darth Vader is maddeningly difficult, and also one of my favorite tables among the Star Wars tables. I ranked it #1 among the pins included in the Nintendo Switch compilation Star Wars Pinball, which is pretty much all the Star Wars pins in this feature except Classic Collectables and Mandalorian. Enough time has passed and enough replays have happened that I no longer believe that, and actually I’m not even rating Darth Vader a MASTERPIECE. Still top five among the Star Wars pins? I think so, but that’s mostly because there’s nothing quite like it anywhere in the pinball world. The unconventional angles, especially shots off the left flipper, are some of the most nail-biting tight squeezes I’ve seen on any pin. It’s a table where it’s hard to get into a rhythm because the shots themselves are so difficult. Especially the bat flipper, which is essentially an invisible Ritchie Loop. Or maybe it’s the brutal toe shot with minimum clearance that must travel the full length of the table.
Signature Mode – Darth Vader Assembly: Players are given the option to start a game of Darth Vader in what is the only easy aspect of the entire table. You have to shoot zone-style magnetic targets which capture the ball and score a million points a pop. It’s an easy ten million points, which is a LOT of points in this specific pin. There’s no time limit to this mode and the only real catch is that Darth Vader in general has a short ball save, so it’s not completely unlikely you would die during this mode. So what? There’s no logical reason anyone should skip it. You only lose out on one skill shot chance, which is only worth 500,000 points and gives you a crack at an even more difficult super skill shot for a million points. 1.5 million or 10 million. Hmmmmm. If you want your pins to be story-driven, Zen, just f’n do it! Don’t be wishy-washy about it! Stand by your convictions!
The above segment isn’t why I’m dropping my score of Darth Vader. It’s that Darth Vader’s modes require too many shots done with too much precision. It’s not even the checklist itself. There’s set-up shots that put the ball in position to make the check mark that also require complete precision. This on a table that is arguably the toughest-shooting good table in Pinball FX. There’s a reason why Darth Vader’s leaderboard features significantly lower scores than other tables. It’s because even pros would struggle to heat-up on this one. Some of the modes are so out of reach they feel nearly impossible, like an intern accidentally input the wrong number and they just left it in. Like in a mode where the bumpers need to be hit 30 times in 60 seconds. Bumpers being those things that are out of the players hands. A running gag with me and IGC reviews is that I have unfathomably bad RNG luck. Well, in the final check before this review, I played twenty games of Darth Vader, and whenever I wasn’t on a bumper-specific mode, the ball would bang around for several seconds. BUT, whenever I actually needed to hit the bumpers, usually the ball would hit one then fall back to the flippers. In fact, that happens to me all the time with bumper-based modes a lot in Pinball FX and Pinball M. When they’re in the spotlight, they suddenly become shy.
Signature Mode – Trench Run: This mode WOULD be fun, but it goes too long and takes too much effort to unlock. Also, Pinball FX crashed during this after I’d shot down multiple ships. Like, I was kind of stunned by how many I’d shot down and the mode was still going when my Xbox Series X just said “nope” and I lost my game. I was on the 3rd ball with my highest score up to this point, around 80,000,000 points with 99M as the world record. That made two record runs I lost in a single week from a crash or a glitch. If that hasn’t earned me getting an achievement named after me in a future update, I don’t know what will.
It’s also worth noting that Darth Vader is not a table well suited to having a timer at all. Some of the shots, like the Super Jackpot, have a rail that doesn’t have the proper slope or any means to accelerate the ball. One time I valleyed the ball, which inched along the rear habitrail so slowly that it ate up the entire time limit of a mode all by itself. I have argued and will continue to argue that Zen could shut up everyone who complains about re-buying the old tables by completely overhauling the rule sheets. In the case of Darth Vader, this doesn’t feel like a luxury. It feels like something that NEEDS to happen because this table is f’n impossible. Oscar argues that if any table can get away with grindy, brutally difficult modes, it’s Darth Vader. He also concedes that, despite keeping his MASTERPIECE rating, they went overboard. Uh, yeah?! I still think as a pinball experience, Darth Vader is unique enough and the right kind of tough (in terms of shooting, not the modes themselves) that it’s, at minimum, a GREATtable. If you’re a fan of quick-draw sharpshooters, this might actually be Zen’s best table ever. Hell, even the scoring, ridiculously conservative as it is, seems to be well-balanced and spot-on. So, GREAT? Yep. In the discussion for best the Star Wars table? Not at all. Battle of Mimban and Clone Wars are a galaxy far, far away from it. Cathy: GREAT (4 out of 5) Angela: GREAT Oscar: MASTERPIECE (5 out of 5) Jordi: GREAT
Sasha: GREAT
Elias: GOOD (3 out of 5, Star Wars Pinball)
Overall Scoring Average: 4.0 📜CERTIFIED EXCELLENT📜 Star Wars Pinball Scoring Average: 4.0 📜CERTIFIED EXCELLENT📜 Primary Scoring Average: 4.2 📜CERTIFIED EXCELLENT📜 Some review copies were provided in this review, others were paid for.
Curse of the Mummy
Pinball FX Debuting Pin First Released February 16, 2023 Main Platform: Pinball FX Switch Platform: Not Yet Released Designed by Anna Lengyel & Peter Grafl Set: Zen Secrets & Shadows Pack ($14.99)
Links: Pinball FX Wiki
I kind of wish that Zen went all-out on original ideas like this one. I mean, it’s not ENTIRELY original. Hell, when I was a little kid, one of our computers had an Egyptian-themed pinball table that I always thought was part of the 3D Ultra Pinball line, but upon further research, I’m now almost certain it was called The Tomb. Anyway, more of this, Zen.
After years of developing tables based on classic Williams/Bally pins and licensed properties like Star Wars or Marvel, I find it comforting that Zen will still crank out generic themes that feel like something a lower-budget competitor would make. I’m not knocking that. I LOVE IT, because this lets them stretch their legs and come up with some inventive ideas using boilerplate themes. Curse of the Mummy hearkens back to a time when video pinball centered around tropes like Ancient Egypt or UFOs or Haunted Houses. The classics are classics for a reason. We originally had Cursed of the Mummy pegged as an instant-classic, but the VUK spitting the ball directly at the drain, and the waterfall that carries a ball down the drain? Yea, that became annoying, especially when you can’t really nudge to defend against it, and sometimes the VUK spits the ball out with just enough wobble to miss the flippers entirely and go right down the drink. Thankfully, following some patch work, they bandaged the table with an invisible ball save if the ball is bouncing around the bumpers or any other targets that hang directly above the drain. Using ball save to patch problematic design is the refuge of the desperate, but we’ll take it.
Signature Mode – Maze Blaze: A traditional light-chasing mode with a delightful twist. The inlanes have lit torches that ignite the ball, which you then use to light torches. To really sell it, the lighting changes to give the mode a darker, more foreboding tone. It’s WONDERFUL! The theme might be generic, but Anna Lengyel & Peter Grafl went all-out with it.
I really like the rest of the layout for Curse of the Mummy. A very classic design that has no driver, yet multiple thrilling shots. The Pyramid ramp that doubles as a jump-ramp AND a lock? Inspired. Both mini-tables in the upper corners have sharp, nail-biting angles on their shot selection, but they work really well too. Pretty much all the standard modes are fantastic. In addition to the great balls of fire in the above caption, there’s ones where a colony of scarabs flood the playfield and a couple modes that involve shooting clay tablets. Curse of the Mummy is also tailored especially well for multiball, which is a true rarity among tables that debuted in Pinball FX. It even has an old-fashioned video mode with a DMD display, even though Curse of the Mummy features an LCD scoreboard. It goes so far towards helping with the retro vibe. The funny thing is, Curse of the Mummy is packed with Pinball Noir, but that table doesn’t feel like a modern table with old fashioned sensibilities. Mummy does.
Signature Element – The Upper Playfield: Curse of the Mummy’s corners feature not one, not three, but TWO completely different mini-fields, both of which have a variety of shots. It’s insane how much action is squeezed into such a little space. They try this a lot in Pinball FX and Pinball M, often with disastrous results (see Star Trek: Discovery for an example of a mini-field gone horribly wrong). Curse of the Mummy’s mini-fields don’t feel like they fundamentally halt the table’s flow. The claustrophobic space works well with the monster theme, but it’s the transition from the mini-fields to the main playfield that makes these work. It’s pretty much instantaneous, making it feel like part of a greater whole instead of a completely different pinball-like thing growing out of the table like a tumor. Fantastic job!
There’s a second video mode where you have to catch falling balls of light that goes too long and it’s awful, but that’s really the table’s one and only stinker. There’s also typical Zen problems with grinding, but the shot selection is fun enough that it takes the edge off that. Post patch, the biggest complaint is probably just mild scoring imbalance issues, as some of the easier modes pay off too much compared to more difficult modes. There’s also almost no consideration for how much work goes into activating a mode in the scoring balance. But, that’s nit-picky, and Curse of the Mummy certainly isn’t guilty of anything that could be said about 90% of Zen’s work. A bigger question is “did the bandages they put on Curse of the Mummy to fix the house ball problem go too far?” Dad certainly thinks so. “You can deliberately let the ball drain off the waterfall and/or bumpers in order to get a more playable ball from the left VUK.” He’s not wrong, but at the same time, he admits that’s better than burning all your tilt warnings on a common ball path. The whole ball save thing didn’t bother me at all. I’m all for doing whatever it takes to make tables fair. Curse of the Mummy is proof that it’s a good thing, because the table was pretty mediocre before the patch. Now, we’re giving it an award. The irony that bandages helped a mummy-themed table isn’t lost on me. Cathy: GREAT (4 out of 5) Angela: GREAT Oscar: GOOD (3 out of 5) Jordi: GREAT
Sasha: GREAT
Overall Scoring Average: 3.8 📜CERTIFIED EXCELLENT📜
Some review copies were provided in this review, others were paid for.
Crypt of the NecroDancer
Pinball FX Debuting Pin First Released April 13, 2023 Main Platform: Pinball FX Switch Platform: Pinball FX Designed by Gergely ’Gary’ Vadocz Stand Alone Release ($5.49 MSRP)
Links: Pinball FX Wiki
For all the crap I’m about to give Crypt of the NecroDancer Pinball, it received a Clean Scorecard from my team. A very difficult task, especially considering that all six “Primary” Pinball FX players (IE non-Nintendo Switch) submitted a rating and nobody thought it deserved less than a GOOD rating. My team consists of three millennials/Gen-Xers, a 75 year old retiree, and two children. All of us gave it a positive rating. This is a quality pin. Now, whether or not it reached its fullest potential is another matter.
Based on the indie stalwart that I’ve never really played, because my ability to keep a beat is right up there with my ability to do a Vince Carter 360 windmill jam. Thankfully, you don’t HAVE to be able to keep a beat in this pinball take on it, even though the game talks about it. Really, you just have to shoot whichever shot is lit and/or then shoot the shots where a C (for COMBO) is lit, which builds the coin multiplier, which increases the value of shots, defeated enemies, and bosses. Instead of thinking of this as a rhythm pinball game, think of it as musical chairs pinball. You just have to beat the modes before the music runs out. Jordi said this shares more DNA with something like Safe Cracker than it does with the indie it’s based off of, and he’s right. Now, we rank Safe Cracker second-to-last behind only Han Solo as the worst overall Pinball FX table, so that might sound like a bad thing. It’s not. The only difference is when the time runs out in Safe Cracker, you don’t automatically lose the game. Here, the ball dies if you haven’t completed the current task before the music stops. There’s no overtime, and that absolutely sucks. And what’s especially lousy is they have a perfectly logical penalty already in place. When you finish the mode, whatever music is left can be spent shooting jackpots or entering the store to spend diamonds. Missing out on that is punishment enough. You don’t have to kill them too. It’s rude!
Signature Element – Digital Targets: A few Pinball FX and Pinball M tables use what we’ve dubbed “digital targets.” Moving characters that aren’t cardboard targets, usually in the form of full characters. World War Z, Solo, Chucky’s Killer Pinball, and so forth have them. Crypt has probably the best ones. They’re not spongy, which is a major plus. In fact, this is one of the least grindy tables in Pinball FX. Except for collecting diamonds. That’s grindy, needlessly risky, and boring.
Mind you, there’s no actual numeric timer, which would be a nice concession for hearing-impaired players. That’s why it’s especially funny that I played a lot better when I muted the game (I often play all games muted) and just shot like I would any other table. I even broke five out of six available records on the Nintendo Switch version without hearing a single note. Angela, who wears headphones and listens to music when she plays pinball, was also frustrated by the lack of a visual timer. The layout is simple, with the highlight being digital targets based on enemies from the indie game that you smack. The digital targets are an absolute joy to shoot. They never feel like a chore. The orbits are all satisfying to hit. But, there’s so many needlessly merciless moments. Like the diamonds. I’ve had many instances where I broke the brick that was hiding them and made the collection, only it then dropped the ball straight down the f’n drain. Off a made, incentivized shot. Crypt should have been an all-time classic in the annals of Zen Studios, but it’s merely okay because of wanton cruelty. The slingshots aren’t necessarily lethal, but they do burn off a lot of time. It’s not rare at all for the ball to get stuck in an extended volley between them. It looks like the slingshots are playing hot potato with each-other. Crypt doesn’t exactly feel lifelike, as the ball feels both too heavy while also gliding around like a hockey puck, and sometimes that’s good and sometimes that’s bad.
Signature Mode – Mini Table: I love the idea here, but the execution spoils the fun. It’s like a dueling pinball where the gravity reverses at the midway point of the table, and you’re trying to shoot the opponent’s drain. But, the physics are rough as hell. When the ball drains on your side, it’s supposed to be pushed back up into play, presumably by a burst of air. But sometimes the mechanism or physics fail and the ball falls immediately back down into the drain. Maybe it’ll go up and down without curving towards the flippers, but more often it doesn’t even clear the drain before it goes back down, costing you more chances if it’s a bonus room or your health if it’s the third boss. This isn’t something you could have flipped to save. The ball didn’t even make it that high. It’s literally inside the drain when whatever happens causes it to fall again. This happens constantly, and I try not to get angry at this type of thing, but this one got me because it’s just so lazy. Plus, it didn’t need to be this way in the first place. When the ball drains, the ball could have been teleported to the lane and the player loses health or chances, or have a VUK in the corner that spits the ball back out. Those options come with zero risk of mechanical or physics engine failure. No player can ever become frustrated by it and rendered less likely to purchase more Pinball FX tables. But, instead of doing that, nah, just a little puff of air that may or may not work. It’s one of those design choices so obviously bad that you can practically hear the designer saying “eh, maybe it just pops back up. Or not. Who cares? It’s only pinball!”
The center orbit (third from the left) is where the ball exits the shop, and once in a while, it just drops the ball straight down the drain (this effect is multiplied in the Switch version, where it happens so frequently it’s practically expected). Yes, you can nudge to defend it, but this one of those tables where the angles are tailor-made to push the ball towards the lane rails, and also the automatic ball serve might actually just roll so that you can just barely kiss the ball with the very tip of the flipper. I have no clue why they continuously do this type of thing, but on a table with a strict time limit that wants you to shoot to the beat of the music, shouldn’t the challenge have come from making shots? Even on an experimental table, their designers would rather do everything they can possibly do to prevent you from controlling the ball. They want you to make shots to the beat of the music, but they also want to make it as hard as possible to get off a shot. The absolute worst possible thing is someone holding the ball with the flipper. They couldn’t even let that mentality go this one time on a table that’s trying to do something no pinball table has ever done before. At this point, you have to wonder if Zen Studios design staff hobbles around on crutches on account of their constant shooting themselves in the foot. I wanted to give this a BAD rating because of the hostility towards ball control, but I couldn’t. The targets are too fun. The orbits are. The modes are. They’re so much fun that the story isn’t “Crypt of the NecroDancer barely gets a Clean Scorecard.” It’s “Crypt of the NecroDancer should have entered the Pantheon and it didn’t come close.” Cathy: GOOD (3 out of 5) THE PITS* on Nintendo Switch (1 out of 5) Angela: GOOD – (BAD on Nintendo Switch, 2 out of 5) Oscar: GOOD (GOOD on Nintendo Switch) Jordi: GOOD Dash: GREAT (4 out of 5)
Sasha: GREAT (GREAT on Nintendo Switch) Elias: GREAT (Nintendo Switch) Primary Scoring Average: 3.33 🧹CLEAN SCORECARD🧹
Switch Scoring Average: 2.8 – GOOD
*On Switch this thing dumps ball down the drain like crazy. Orbits that you can confidently shoot in the primary versions of Pinball FX kill you in this version. It needs work.
Some review copies were provided in this review, others were paid for.
In retrospect, the Creature sticker is a massive waste of real estate that could have been used on something more interactive, or just more lights and more “modes” for lack of a better term. At the end of the day, it’s just one of those 3D stickers that you see on the back of credit cards. I would have much rather had a movie screen target. It’s weird that this is a table themed around a drive-in theater and there’s no screen to shoot. If Zen ever starts to do sequels to Williams pins, they should start with a Creature table where you shoot a screen to FOCUS it.
The best thing Creature from the Black Lagoon has going for it is the near-certainty that it’ll spark a lively debate among silverball enthusiasts. While nobody HATES it, some people are just bored silly by it. Some people think it’s just alright but don’t get what all the hubbub is about. Its biggest fans REALLY like it, like my father for example. Oscar would normally hate a table with scoring as wildly imbalanced as Creature from the Black Lagoon, yet he’s given Creech the highest rating out of all of us. Dad fully admits this table is a guilty pleasure owed largely to an unforgettable theme. Yea, the drive-in concept is inspired, and so is tying it directly to a B-tier Universal Monster. It’s not a table about the Creature. It’s a table about teenagers watching the movie Creature from the Black Lagoon. That’s fantastic, but the shot selection is very limited, and the lack of scoring balance is especially damning. What’s far worse than the imbalance is the fact that risk/reward isn’t factored in at all. Take the jackpots for example. You shoot the snack bar scoop. That’s basically the lowest-risk shot on the board, but it scores the biggest points. What do you light the super jackpot with? The up-the-middle shot into the bumpers, which safely feed the right flipper the ball every single time. What flipper is used to shoot the jackpot? The right one.
Signature Shots – The Snack Bar Targets: One of the most frustrating shots of the DMD era of pinball are these four stand-up targets. In Classic and Arcade modes, you can shoot the scoop located above the right side targets to score the lights instead of shooting them directly, but only until you’ve scored your first jackpot. After that, you have to figure out an angle to hit them directly. I’ve been playing Creech for years and I still haven’t found a safe way to shoot these. It seems like I’m better off shooting other targets and getting the snackbar lights off ricochets if I miss.
I would LOVE for someone to go into Creech and rework every single shot’s value and incentivize full touring of the table. Create a reason for players to not just stick to the four shots that activate multiball. Even though we’ve called Creech’s gameplay “anti-flow pinball” it actually does have good shot selection. Both ramps are quite satisfying to complete. But when they come at a multiple of the risk and a fraction of the reward, there’s really no reason to shoot them besides the fact that it’s more sporting. Even if you reworked the game’s score sheet and created whole new modes, Creech is going to be a stop-and-go table. It’s what we call a “pick ‘n flick” and nothing is going to change that. So be it. With the shot selection as solid as it is, maybe a new scoresheet could turn Creature of the Black Lagoon into the greatest pick ‘n flick table of all-time. The sad thing is, if this had been a modern Stern table, that’s exactly what would have happened by now. They would have released an update that refined the gameplay at no cost to the shots themselves. There’s no reason Zen can’t keep the existing version AND create a more nuanced and elegant ROM for Creech. If any table among their Williams pins needs it, it’s Creech. The Black Lagoon must be freezing, because Creech is one of THE most polarizing tables in pinball history. But, since I know Zen is reading this: if you want to try an experiment with any of the Williams pins, this is the one to do it on. Cathy: GOOD (3 out of 5) Angela: BAD (2 out of 5) Oscar: GREAT (4 out of 5) Jordi: GOOD Dash: BAD Dave: BAD
Elias: GOOD Sasha: BAD Scoring Average: 2.65 – OKAY
Some review copies were provided in this review, others were paid for.
CUPHEAD!!
Video Pinball (Atari 2600)
Family Pinball (aka Rock ‘n Ball, Famicom/NES)
Psycho Pinball (Sega Mega Drive)
Video Pinball
Ghost Manor
Doctor Strange
Deadpool
Cathy: 
The Addams Family
Cathy: 
Darth Vader
Cathy: 
Curse of the Mummy
Cathy: 
Crypt of the NecroDancer
Cathy: 
Creature From the Black Lagoon
Cathy: 
Indie Gamer Chick 
You must be logged in to post a comment.