Video Pinball (Arcade) and Solar War (Unreleased Atari Arcade) Reviews

July 18, 2026 by 3 Comments

These reviews are a repost from Classic Pinball Video Games from 1979 to 2009: The Definitive Review. Because that feature contains full reviews for 130 games, it was causing loading issues for many readers, so this one time, I’m breaking a Definitive Review into smaller pieces. If you get a chance, be sure to check out the full feature as I worked really hard on it.

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

It took us quite a while to set up the overlay. I needed a friend to walk us through it, which was a process. Like actually, this screenshot is just plain wrong. You can see it in the bottom right flipper, which doesn’t go there. We had quite a lot of tinkering to do to get this as close to accurate as possible. Still, when this game first appeared on my monitor, I sincerely shed tears of joy. The original game would have a “floating image” similar to Asteroids or Space Invaders using the Pepper’s Ghost effect.

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

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

You can see the plunger in this. I love the logo. That is a logo that is dying to be brought back if, say, Atari were to buy Zen Studios and get them off Unreal Engine. FYI, we played this with 5 balls and replays set low. The winner of the Vice Family dual: me. Maybe that’s why I liked it so much: I didn’t lose to Angela or Sasha the Kid for a change. Speaking of STK, she liked Video Pinball so much she asked Dad to figure out how to plug it into her V-Pin in a way where the plunger and accelerometer would work. It still won’t risk TILTING probably. How it works is actually clever. I think how it works is if you press the panel down too hard, you hit a button that tilts. For MAME, you have to map TILT, which removes the risk unless you do something like map it to an analog stick, where nudge is 12 o’clock and TILT is all other directions with a tiny bit of wiggle room. We didn’t try that and I don’t even know if it’s possible. You know what? The shooting angles are deadly enough without TILT risk.

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

Video Pinball was pretty much a bust for Atari at around 1,500 units sold. Part of that could certainly be chalked-up to bad timing. Video Pinball not only ran smack-dab into the start of the golden age of solid state pinball with Bally, Williams, and Gottlieb killing it, but it also launched during the golden age of arcades as well. Like, oh, a little game called Space Invaders had just arrived in North America four months earlier. If that isn’t a good enough reason why Video Pinball flopped, I have a second theory: that theme is just not good. Disco? Seriously? They could literally choose any theme and they chose a gaudy green, star-spangled disco theme? It’s not exactly something I could picture children in arcades lining up for. Dad’s theory is that Video Pinball was aimed more at adults as a novelty. “Hey Boomers, it’s pinball, that thing you love, only simulated by a computer! The future is NOW!” Even then, disco is a TERRIBLE theme and the whole table looks like it’s so radioactive that you might grow a tumor by standing too close to it. “Cheap looking” said Sasha. “Tacky” said Angela. Yep and yep.

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

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

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

The right outlane is the most relentless eater of balls this side of Pat “Deep Dish” Bertoletti. Also notice how there’s no Italian Bottom.

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

God-tier logo for the first ever video pinball game.

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

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

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

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

I actually crossed this one off the list because I didn’t think the overlay was out there, but then the same friend who walked us through setting up Video Pinball found the overlay floating around the MAME community. So I figure now is as good a time as any to say THANK YOU to everyone who has ever developed for MAME. You have given so much joy to my life and the lives of so many people out there, and what you do is often a pretty thankless job. Well, I’ll say “thank you!”

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

The ball is the one in the upper left corner. We called this the “leap tall buildings in a single bound” shot. And it’s not hard to imagine the four rollover targets as the Daily Planet.

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

Lovely that I can just remove the background to highlight the letters.

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

After Atari lost the Superman arcade license (or exchanged it for the real Superman pinball table), they had to rework the game using an eight character name because of the eight targets you’re seeking. “Orion XIV” was initially chosen before settling on the generic space theme and going with SOLAR WAR. Apparently the prototype for Superman was actually SUPER (space) MAN. That’s not his name. That’s an adjective and a noun.

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

What you’re seeing is Time 2000, which looks good, but our friend, professional designer Dave Sanders, considers it to be the single worst pinball table ever made from a logic point of view. Atari should NEVER have been in the pinball business, period. Atari’s pins were poorly designed and famous for design flaws that made shorting out the electrics easy. The bigger problem was they didn’t make money for arcade operators. All Atari pins were wide-bodies, and wide-bodies require more space, obviously. In essence, arcade operators would have to decide between using space for three normal pinball machines or two Atari ones (insanely, they made an even bigger table, Hercules, which was truly recklessly stupid. LOOK AT HOW BIG IT IS, and it’s a terrible game).

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

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

Both Atari coin-op video pins are punishing, so even without the fear of tilt, I think they work. You’re not going to be able to just bend the ball to your will. These are OUTSTANDING, but Solar War especially is the nicest treat I’ve had in years at IGC. I didn’t expect to get to play it, and it’s phenomenal. A true mix of late 70s pinball design mentality and high-concept table touring. Again, huge thanks to the MAME community who rescues games like this from oblivion.

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

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)

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Arcade Archives: Pinball (Review for Nintendo Switch)

September 7, 2019 by 10 Comments

Another day, another Nintendo coin-op that’s damn-near identical to an NES launch counterpart that costs $7.99, which pretty much only nets you the same game that’ll inevitably be ported to Switch Online for free. Joy. (UPDATE May 25, 2022: it took two-and-two-thirds of a year, but the prophecy was fulfilled. Pinball is now part of the Switch Online lineup. Sucks here, sucks there, sucks everywhere). Today, it’s 1983’s Pinball by Satoru Iwata of all people. And it’s not good at all. It’s horrible. It’s one of Nintendo’s worst published games.

But Mario has a very brief cameo in it, so Nintendo fanboys of the past convinced themselves it was awesome. That’s par for the course on those Nintendo black box releases. Imagine if he’d made an appearance in Urban Champion. It wouldn’t have the unjust reputation as the worst game Nintendo ever made. While we’re on the subject, Pinball somehow managed to not be that either despite busted physics and some of the the most cheating gameplay ever. Of all time.

I see London. I see France. Pauline ain’t wearing underpants!

You can tell Pinball wasn’t made by someone with a deep understanding of what makes real pinball work. A lot of people describe the pastime as “controlled chaos.” But I grew up in a house with pinball machines (specifically the Williams classics Firepower and Black Knight, both from 1980 and both by the legendary Steve Ritchie, both of which my Dad bought in the mid 80s before I was even born. I got two things from my father: a love of pinball and a predisposition to high blood pressure. Thanks Daddy). Pinball, when played at its top level, is anything but chaos. With enough time and patience, anyone can clock a table, learning every angle, skill shot, and the risk/reward factors of each target. Pinball is a very precise sport. Yes, sport. Fuck you. If curling, golf, or League of Legends are sports, so is pinball. And pinball, which is one of the great joys of my life, has only recently been successfully recreated digitally. It took gaming less time to figure out proper online play than it did to get digital pinball right.

This isn’t the snobbish “real pinball is the only pinball” hot air that you get from many silver ball enthusiasts. A lot of people don’t have the money you need to truly get into it. A decent pin will typically run you $1,500 – $2,500 minimum, $4,000 for iconic tables, going as high as $10,000 for legendary tables. And that’s not even considering the amount of work you need to put into them to clean and maintain them. Turning pinball from a hobby to a passion is very expensive. The majority of people who do buck up and buy a table end up not liking it as much as they imagined they would. That’s why I like video pinball’s potential. If you don’t fall completely in love with the experience, you’re only out a couple bucks. As opposed to thousands.

And, in 1983, this is probably as close to looking like a real table as video pins got. But it’s also not pinball in the sense that you can play it like a real machine. You can’t, because you simply can’t clock Nintendo Pinball. For starters, the ball is alive and always vibrating. Because it’s always having a seizure, even if you hold the ball with a flipper to set up a shot, you can’t control what trajectory it’ll take or how the ball will react upon hitting walls and surfaces. It’s completely random and never consistent from one shot to the next. Nintendo Pinball’s reality lives up to the greatest misconception of real pinball: it’s governed by random chance. The ball also does weird things like somehow retaining inertia that it should have lost when you grab the ball for a tee shot. And the plunger is not easy to use either since there’s no analog way to fire it off. Probably 49 shots out of 50 had me getting the in one of the 500 point lanes instead of the 1,000 point one. Which also tells me that the game does more than just rely on its limited physics to dictate the ball’s path. It must be doing something more to pull the ball away from targets. Simple random chance odds tell me that the ball should be able to go down the center chute one out of three times, instead of once every fifty shots. So something is not on the up-and-up with Pinball. Other parts of the game make this even more clear.

Those slots where the cards are became the most maddening aspect of the game. Because the ball is so erratic and doesn’t have consistent weight or gravity, even if I slowed it down so that it should drop into one of the slots, it’d inevitably suddenly become a high-density rubber ball and bounce off. Also, this almost always happened to the left, leading me to believe there’s invisible suction that draws the ball away from targets.

It also doesn’t help that the table layout isn’t very good. The game is split into two screens. The upper one contains a slot machine that you activate by going down one chute. The numbers don’t stop on their own, and instead you must hit a moving target when it’s hovering above the reel that’s spinning. In over ten hours spent on this game, I only successfully pulled this off three times. This mostly owes to the upper level having three ways for players to be sent down to the lower level: the drain (the gap between the flippers), a portal that fires you past targets on the lower level, and finally a outlane on the left side. This outlane I genuinely believe is rigged with some kind of suction. It has to be. Too many times the ball bounced into it when it had none of the required momentum to even come close to the opening, let alone go through it. Inevitably, if the ball even came near the entrance to it, it was like crossing the event horizon of a black hole: no escape.

And then you have the lower level, where the majority of available points are (if you’re playing the five minute caravan mode, getting points in the upper level is so slow you practically have to let the ball fall down to it). Here, there’s five slots that reveal playing cards. Get all five cards revealed and you get a drain stopper and score points. You can also enter a bonus room here. This is where Mario shows up, and it’s possibly the most busted aspect of the game. Ironically, the BONUS room ruined my best runs of the five-minute mode because sometimes the ball’s momentum would just stop on a dime and it would proceed to very, very slowly roll towards a drain. It could eat up thirty seconds by itself. In the NES/Famicom version of Pinball, my understanding is you’re not guaranteed to be able to enter the bonus room. In the arcade version, you enter it every time you hit the portal to it. Assuming you’re actually trying to score points in it, you must reflect a ball with a paddle similar to Breakout. Mario holds the paddle, thus earning the game acclaim from slobbering Nintendo fanboys the world over. If you successfully do this, Pauline will fall from her holding chamber. You must then catch her and deliver her to an exit (which again, she walks VERY slowly to). If you successfully pull this off, you only get 5,000 points. It’s such a little amount of points for such a high-degree difficulty challenge. But, far too often, the ball will launch in a way where it’s unplayable from the start. And, since you only get the points earned in it after losing your last ball, it’s not desirable to enter this room at all in the Arcade Archives Caravan Mode. Even killing yourself to get those earned points isn’t worth it, because it takes forever for them to be added to your real score. Why is everything about Pinball so slow? Pinball ain’t slow!

This is NOT exactly the NES version. In it, the flippers apparently don’t disappear as often, the physics are altered, and you have to unlock being able to successfully enter the bonus room. I guess. I have no means to play it. I suspect it’ll be coming to Switch Online soon. But the disappearing flippers becomes insanely annoying. They’re still there. You just can’t see them. You can cheat like I did and mark where the optimal spot on the screen they are.

In fairness, this bonus room wasn’t designed around a special mode of the game being surgically grafted to it 36 years later. But that doesn’t excuse why the bonus room is so miserable to begin with. Or why knocking down all the drop targets makes your flippers invisible. What in all the fuck is that? Why invisible? Why is the scoring balance so off? Why are the high degree difficulty shots in the upper level worth so little points, while the relatively easy to hit bumpers on the lower level worth so much? High scoring is as simple as getting the ball trapped in a cycle in them, having them knock around, and up through the card slots. I posted the fifth highest score in Caravan Mode’s global leaderboard doing this. It’s pretty much the only way you can do it. I also finished 28th in Hi-Score mode, where you must play with the machine’s default options. So nobody can accuse me of disliking Pinball because I sucked at it. I’m high up on all three global leaderboards.

Especially the normal mode, where high scores count no matter what options you use. I kept all the default options but gave myself five lives instead of three. And then I posted the second highest score ever recorded on the Arcade Archives Pinball original mode global leaderboard: 843,020. A pretty amazing achievement.

Too bad it’s fake.

To my credit, the game kept cheating me. What’s good for the goose..

Yep, I cheated. It’s a bullshit score that I achieved by exploiting an absolutely galling oversight on developer Hamster’s part. Anyone can beat if they have enough time and patience, skill level be damned.

Here’s how I did it. Pay attention Hamster: I’m about to close a loophole in your games for you. You’re welcome.

Unlike Hi-Score and Caravan Modes, where pausing the game to the menu forfeits your score and session, original mode allows you to access a menu, where changing anything but the game’s dip switch options keeps your current session alive. Included in this is a Save State Interrupt feature. For most emulators, Save State Interrupt should only work to save a game if you need to power down the platform you’re on. When you resume the session, it erases the save state. Hamster forgot the erase part. Erasing the state only happens when you game over. Using the save state, I could quit to the game’s main menu if I died or the ball wasn’t where I wanted it to be. I would just replay sections bit by bit, creating a new state every 10,000 or so points and dropping balls occasionally to make it look like it was a believable score, finally laying my ball down once I cleared the 2nd place score to make it look realistic. In reality, I considered taking the top spot (which is over two-million points, significantly higher than the next highest scores) but it took me hours just to get to second using this trickery.

It’s absolutely fucking insane that Hamster didn’t think of this, and it puts a taint on every previous Arcade Archives release. I went back and checked them. All the ones I own have this exploit in their original modes. And yea, I feel bad about it (my apologies to everyone with real scores I beat out making this point). That’s why I put effort towards posting impressive real scores in the other two modes. But, ultimately, even my fifth play finish in Caravan Mode was via dumb luck. My ball at one point got stuck in a cycle in the middle of the bumpers and went through the queen’s slot a dozen times in a row. I also managed to avoid the bonus room and the ball, for literally the only time the entire time I was playing, seemed to bounce in my favor. But when my best accomplishment is based on dumb luck, it sort of mutes the point of being one of the top five scorers ever, does it not?

I’m going to guess the top score isn’t legit either. Looking back, all the Arcade Archives titles have massive gaps in the top scores. You can tell which ones are real and which ones aren’t just by noting those gaps and at which point on the list scores start to cluster closer together. This is also why the scores in Hi-Score Mode and Caravan Modes tend to be closer together. Still, I can’t believe the Vs. Super Mario score is legit. Meanwhile, I cheesed Kid Niki’s global board too in another way (that review is coming up).

So yea, I hated Pinball too. And I’m not even willing to give it kudos for ambition for its era. It’s a horrible layout. The scoring is all out of wack and not balanced to factor in risk/reward, it has a busted bonus room, and it’s almost entirely based on luck. It’s more pachinko than pinball, and since this was made for a primarily Japanese audience, that’s probably by design. I hate to bring back this old chestnut, but I’m sort of forced to: gaming has come a long ways. But the Atari 2600’s Video Pinball from 1980 did predictable, reliable physics better than this warped version of pinball on a more advanced platform three years after-the-fact did. I have to believe Nintendo’s version could have done it too and simply didn’t. Pinball isn’t the worst early Nintendo game. But it is maybe the most broken. We exist in a world that has Ice Climber, so that’s saying something.

Arcade Archives: Pinball (despite this being a Vs. System game, it’s not called “Vs. Pinball”) was developed by Hamster
Point of Sale: Nintendo Switch

$7.99 studied under Rosie Ruiz in the making of this review.

A fan purchased this game for me. All indie games reviewed at this blog are purchased by me. Retro AAA games I accept fan donations on. I matched the purchase price of this with a contribution to the Epilepsy Foundation. And then I blistered my thumb playing it. Also, I think Iwata haunted my Switch.

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