PC Pinball (DOS / Win9x era)

[Brian Clark]

Here's couple great PC pinball sites I've discovered ever since I became interested in the genre:

http://www.lastbandit.com/pinrevue.html

It's an oldie, but goodie. This was one of the first video pinball sites I've visited since I became interested in the genre.

Interesting sites, but some reviews are better than others. Epic Pinball's review on one site says it's only for casual players and the other site's reviews of Silverball and Epic Pinball give me the impression that the reviewer didn't play some of the tables much at all. A bit disappointing to see Eight Ball Deluxe get low reviews on both sites, as well. From what I played of the Amtex version, it seems like a nice conversion. I like the Royal Flush conversion so far too. Seems impressive for the time it came out. I noticed Royal Flush has ads for conversions of Fireball and Queen of Hearts, both never released, which makes me want to see them in Pinball Arcade even more. My uncle in FL has both games and he is letting me keep the disc too. I also like Tristan quite a bit as well. Ironic that some of the reasons in the reviews for disliking it (the simple layout) is exactly one of the reasons why I like it.

 

[PinMike8666]

The reviewer is actually a pretty decent video pinball player. On the link you quoted me, the reviewer's high scores are on the far-right corner under "Additional Documents".

Eight Ball Deluxe and Tristan were designed by Little Wing Pinball, a small indie Japanese-developer. The reviewer on the quoted site really loves their work. Even today, they still develop PC pinball games and are on sale, with the exception of the aforementioned games. However, Tristan can be bought on the Apple's app store.

http://www.littlewingpinball.com/doc/en/index.html

Their games are a little on the pricey side, but are solid-to-excellent. My favorite would be Fairy Tower due to the difficult layout and awesome multiball play.

 

[Freelance]

And I thought Worms Pinball on Steam was expensive.

Despite the fact they're on sale right now, the highest standard price is 35 dollars! Really?

At least the sale prices are actually decent.

PS. Nice. My monitor res isn't supported and I tried to force game to run at lower res under properties but it doesn't work at all. Erasing the extra line messes up the game too and doesn't work again until I reinstall it. Lame.

P.P.S. Okay, it works if I actually lower my monitor res. Played Monster Fair and this is actually pretty cool. I really don't want to have to force a lower monitor res just to play though. 1024x768 on a widescreen TV is horrible.

P.P.S. Wow. Now it doesn't work again. I am confused. It started after I configured my gamepad with my Logitech profiler. Now starting the game directly or through the profiler comes up with a blank screen like it's the wrong res, but I can still hear the sounds.

P.P.P.S. What the? I went back to my original res and game works again! This is very strange. Have you ever had such issues, PinMike8666? Too bad even though I changed buttons to my gamepad, it didn't work. Still have to use the keyboard.

 

[PinMike8666]

Yeah, I think they should make those sale prices permanent. Their games have been on sale since September of last year, so maybe they will keep it. I bought all of their tables, recently. Their games are actually really good, but not $35 good; definitely not as good as Pro Pinball, which each table can be had for $5.99 on GOG. However, their games are still as good (in my opinion, better) than other non-Pinball Arcade sims.

I would easily recommend Golden Lorges, Angel Egg, and Crystal Caliburn as starter games.

 

[Freelance]

Okay I think it's just Monster Fair giving me trouble. I tried some other tables and they all start up fine enough. Yes, these tables are pretty decent and aren't video-gamey pinball either. Just wish they were cheaper. I like how Golden Lorges has 3 tables. One of them looks similar to Crystal Caliburn. I'm pretty poor right now so I can't get those higher priced ones (besides which, I am saving for TPA). I think I'm going to get Crystal Caliburn. I like the medieval theme.

P.S. I wasn't aware Japan even liked pinball games.

P.P.S. Thanks for making me aware of this company! I may buy some more in the future.

P.P.P.S. Wooo gamepad works in Crystal Caliburn!

 

[Brian Clark]

Yeah, I think they should make those sale prices permanent. Their games have been on sale since September of last year, so maybe they will keep it. I bought all of their tables, recently. Their games are actually really good, but not $35 good; definitely not as good as Pro Pinball, which each table can be had for $5.99 on GOG. However, their games are still as good (in my opinion, better) than other non-Pinball Arcade sims.

I would easily recommend Golden Lorges, Angel Egg, and Crystal Caliburn as starter games.

I wish GoG offered The Web. I'll probably buy Crystal Caliburn first, but the others seemed solid, as well. I noticed the one site rated two of the Little Wing games high, but gave Tristan a low rating. It's less advanced than their other games, but I really like the design and physics of the game. I like the iPad remake, as well. I actually want to try Little Wing's Mac port of Eight Ball Deluxe, though the PC port, done by different developers, is actually well done. It's interesting that Little Wing is a JP developer that mostly made games for Mac and PC. Golden Logres did get JP only ports to PSX and DC, though.

P.S. I wasn't aware Japan even liked pinball games.

A lot of pinball games came from Japan. Super Pinball Behind the Mask and other Kaze Pinball like Last Gladiators and Necronomion for the Saturn, Kirby's Pinball Land, Pinball NES, Rock 'n Ball NES, the TG-16/MD Genesis/SNES Crash/Crush series (including the JP only Jaki Crush), Revenge of the Gator GB, Pokemon Pinball, and a few others were made in Japan.

 

[Jeff Strong]

I wish GoG offered The Web. I'll probably buy Crystal Caliburn first, but the others seemed solid, as well. I noticed the one site rated two of the Little Wing games high, but gave Tristan a low rating. It's less advanced than their other games, but I really like the design and physics of the game. I like the iPad remake, as well. I actually want to try Little Wing's Mac port of Eight Ball Deluxe, though the PC port, done by different developers, is actually well done. It's interesting that Little Wing is a JP developer that mostly made games for Mac and PC. Golden Logres did get JP only ports to PSX and DC, though.




A lot of pinball games came from Japan. Super Pinball Behind the Mask and other Kaze Pinball like Last Gladiators and Necronomion for the Saturn, Kirby's Pinball Land, Pinball NES, Rock 'n Ball NES, the TG-16/MD Genesis/SNES Crash/Crush series (including the JP only Jaki Crush), Revenge of the Gator GB, Pokemon Pinball, and a few others were made in Japan.

Little Wing is currently working on bring Crystal Caliburn to the iPad as well.

 

[Brian Clark]

I meant to link both sites, but I actidentially cut the other one off. It was the one that was archived that gave me the impression that some of the tables in Epic Pinball and Silverball weren't played much by the reviewer. Maybe I'm mistaken, but I was surprised to see Cyborgirl to get written off with barely a sentence.

 

[Freelance]

Oops I didn't word it properly. I mean I didn't think Japan care much about pinball today. I am not aware of any Japanese-based pinball games in this day and age. They all came from western developers, ie Zen Pinball, Pinball Hall of Fame, Dream Pinball 3D, Slamit Pinball, etc. If there are any, can you name some, aside from Metroid Pinball and that Mario Pinball whatever game. I dunno any PC pinball games that came from Japan.

 

[Brian Clark]

Oops I didn't word it properly. I mean I didn't think Japan care much about pinball today. I am not aware of any Japanese-based pinball games in this day and age. They all came from western developers, ie Zen Pinball, Pinball Hall of Fame, Dream Pinball 3D, Slamit Pinball, etc. If there are any, can you name some, aside from Metroid Pinball and that Mario Pinball whatever game. I dunno any PC pinball games that came from Japan.

The only ones I can think of are that pinball game included with Kirby Mass Attack and the Little Wing games (last one, Mad Dadelus, was 2010 and I heard Crystal Caliburn II is in development).

 

[PinMike8666]

Having spent some more time with Little Wing Pinball's tables (which are an absolute blast), I've grown quite accustomed to their default controls.

Little Wing Pinball defaults:

Z Key = Left Flipper
Slash Key = Right Flipper
Enter = Plunger
X Key = Left Nudge
Period Key = Right Nudge
Space = Center Nudge

I actually play better with those defaults compared to most PC pinball games I've recently played; I even tried the Little Wing defaults on Pro Pinball: Fantastic Journey and have been getting better. Of course, that's just me.

Like I said, I'm loving Little Wing's tables; they all play great in their own ways and are second only to the Pro Pinball series as the best series of PC pinball. I only have a Windows XP desktop and a Vista laptop, so I can't play The Pinball Arcade or Pinball FX 2 on a PC. I'm not worried about it though as I have an Xbox 360 (which has both games).

 

[Freelance]

My preferred PC layout is L and R triggers for flippers and an analog stick for nudging. I never like using keyboards for pinball.

You can still play TPA on PC by the way. XP is old but it will be supported.

Aside from the Pro Pinball series, I also love the pins from Digital Illusions CE (Pinball Fantasies, Pinball Dreams and especially Pinball Illusions). I just recently got a hold on Slam Tilt as well (Liquid Dezign HB) and it's also very good. I think it's better than Pinball Illusions.

Crystal Caliburn's framerate is a little choppy on my system.

 

[PinMike8666]

I bought some PC Pinball games recently (about 3 weeks ago) Here are my brief thoughts on the games:

Pinball Gold Pack (via GOG): Dreams and Fantasies are technically very outdated, but are quite fun despite. Illusions would have been better than the aforementioned games if it had options (a good portion of the music is missing too). Mania is pretty decent, but not as inspired as DICE's tables. I haven't played Dreams II yet.

Slam Tilt Pinball: Pretty great; tables sport ambitious design, huge scoring (perhaps a little too much), nice music, and cool looking Dot-Matrix-Display. The physics were great for their time, but feel too floaty by today's video pinball. Better than any of 21st Century's pinball games.

Absolute Pinball: It's just okay; technically nice layouts and physics, but the audio sounds too barren, thus the tables feel dull.

Balls of Steel: Haven't played it much. Not too impressed with it; nice physics (fast and weighty), but table design seems kinda boring and doesn't feel too fun. Update: playing more of this, I actually quite like it; it's like a precursor to Zen Studios tables. Quite good fun on auto camera settings.

Epic Pinball Complete: It's quite good fun if you can buy it for cheap; somewhat hit-and-miss, but more hits than misses. Feels like the earlier 21st Century Pinball games, but more involved.

Extreme Pinball: Seems as good as Epic's first outing; haven't looked into it too much, though.

Platinum Pinball (aka Pinball 10): Nice pinball collection; it's a compilation of Pinball Revolution (which is a nice game featuring British licenses), a remake of Pinball Mania (which I have via Pinball Gold Pack), and a couple new tables. The physics feel weird, however; the ball stops when you don't think it will, but still manageable.

Addiction Pinball: A poor-man's Pro Pinball with two tables (rather than one); nice table designs, graphics almost as detailed as said game, and nice physics. However, the game feels too easy, even on hard difficulty.

Pro Pinball: Fantastic Journey (via GOG): I had a disc of this in 2007, but I recently can't find it, so I downloaded it. While it's considered to being the weakest of the series, I simply love it; feels like something Williams would have made if they didn't sell out to slot machines. The physics need no explanation other than it's Pro Pinball. Also has the most options of the four games.

I also bought all eight of Little Wing's tables on their website. Here's how I would rank them:

Monster Fair
Fairy Tower
Angel Egg
Jinni Zeala
Golden Lorges
Mad Daedalus
Crystal Caliburn
Looney Labyrinth

Thanks for the heads-up on the PC version of The Pinball Arcade; however, I don't think my desktop and notebook could handle it since it has trouble running Visual Pinball 8 and Future Pinball. So I'm still only sticking to my iPad 2 and Xbox 360 for this game.

 

[Jeff Strong]

Fantastic Journey is.......well, quite fantastic. Man, I wish these guys would start making tables like this again....

 

[Brian Clark]

I just got the Pinball Gold Pack from gog. It was worth it, but, while it plays ok, the physics in the PC Pinball Dreams are definitely off. I heard from a post from the developer at the Coyboy Rodeo (company that did the iOS remake) forums the Amiga one uses the same physics as Fantasies, but the PC version has physics that are very slippery at times. Spidersoft definitely changed the physics for the worse. The PC versions of Illusions and Fantasies are definitely worth the ten bucks, though.

I got some more of the Little Wing games recently too. I like Angel Egg the best so far, but I'm also liking Golden Logres, Crystal Caliburn, Tristan (came on the Pinball Deluxe disc with ports of Eight Ball Deluxe and Royal Flush), and Looney Labyrinth quite a bit.

 

[PinMike8666]

While not a PC release, I just got True Pinball (enhanced port of Pinball Illusions) for the PlayStation 1 (via PlayStation 2). I'm preferring this port over the PC version; it actually has an options menu. I also like the 3D view and customizable controls. Even though the music is slightly altered, I think it fits each theme. This is probably the third-best pinball game on the PlayStation 1 (tied with Pro Pinball: The Web but not as good as the latter three). Would have been a fantastic game if they also included the Pinball Dreams and Fantasies tables as well.

Update: Welp, nevermind what I said before; it doesn't save high scores. WTH? I like the playability of it, but I feel like I just wasted a few bucks.

 

[Brian Clark]

I played more of Pinball Dreams DOS. I like it now, but it still has some odd quirks with the physics that aren't in other versions. Fantasies is my favorite game in the pack so far, but Illusions is pretty good and the Spidersoft tables, despite some wonky physics, aren't as bad as I thought they would be. One thing I find interesting with the Steel Wheel table in the DOS pinball dreams is that the middle ramp was altered to make it look less like Bad Cats compared to the Amiga version, but the rest of the table is unchanged and still heavily resembles Bad Cats.

 

[Tabe]

Ahhh...PC pinball games. I've been playing video pinball games since...well...Video Pinball on the Atari 2600 I acquire pretty much every pinball game I can find on any system I own at any given time. As for PC:

- Pro Pinball: The Web - Great, great game. Probably my favorite of the Pro Pinball series (I like the Saturn version even more than the PC). I would love to see it redone to be on the level, technically, that the last 3 games were. DESTROY THE SPACE STATION!

- Pro Pinball: Timeshock - Obviously an excellent game but I find the table design to be just a bit off. Just a tad frustrating at times.

- Pro Pinball: Fantastic Journey - Definitely the weakest entry in the series with it being too easy to lose your ball at times. Still a great game.

- Pro Pinball: Big Race USA - Love, love, love this game. Close second to The Web. Only knock would be that it's too easy to lose your ball making shots you're supposed to make (like shooting the taxi) - same gripe I have with The Web too.

- Pinball Fantasies - Party Land is one of the best tables ever. Great game. Would love to see a modern remake. Have also considered buying the PSN version for my PS3.

- Pinball Dreams - Never cared for this one. Everyone says the Amiga version was great but I only ever played the PC version and it wasn't.

- Pinball Dreams 2 - See Pinball Dreams

- Pinball Illusions - See Pinball Dreams

- Tristan - May have been accurate but I thought this wasn't very good even for the era.

- Royal Flush - The original release was mediocre but seemed to be accurate. The 2.0 release was very good. I'll knock points off for it promising a PC version of Funhouse that never came

- Silverball - Spent lots and lots of time on this one.

- Extreme Pinball - Oh yeah, big fan of this. It's too bad the PSN version of this is the bad PS1 version with its ridiculous load times or I'd have bought it.

- Hyper 3D Pinball - Pretty good but nothing special.

- Absolute Pinball - So-so, nothing special.

- Addiction Pinball - Excellent game, top-shelf. Still a lot of fun to play today.

- The Williams Collection - Decent enough conversions of some Williams favorites, like Tales of the Arabian Nights.

- Microsoft Pinball Arcade - Terrible. Hated this one.

- Full Tilt Pinball - Decent, nothing special.

- Full Tilt 2 - A lot better than #1, still nothing special.

- Adventure Pinball - I liked this one a lot and still play it on occasion.

- Crystal Caliburn - Can't even count the hours spent on this one. Great game.

- All the other Little Wing games - They're all good but time has kind of passed them by.

- Balls of Steel - I enjoyed these tables a lot but they're nowhere near the class of even games that came out at the same time.

- 3D Ultra Pinball & its sequels - Hated 'em.

- Sci-Fi Pinball - Terrible.

- Star Trek Pinball - Terrible.

- Kiss Pinball - Low end of mediocre.

I'm sure I've forgotten a few This list, of course, does not include more recent games like Pure Pinball, Nvidia's pinball game, and so on.

Tabe

 

[Brian Clark]

I have Pinball Dreams iOS now, so I compared it to the PC. iOS version is based on the Amiga version. Steel Wheel bears even more of a resemblence to Bad Cats with the same type of curved ramp instead of the altered DOS version ramp. Nitemare's playfield is also a bit different. Physics in the iOS version are much better and closer to Pinball Fantasies (the developer of the iOS version mentioned the Amiga Dreams and Fantasies have the same physics code on the forums for the game). I also found out that Diner has a very similar playfied to Nitemare.

DOS Nitemare
Amiga Nitemare
Diner

 

[francis247uk]

Worth mentioning the free table of Full Tilt which came with Windows from 95 to xp: 3D Pinball for Windows - Space Cadet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKjm5onH1XM&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Sure most people have played this when bored in windows at one time or another!