PS3 williams collection original game compared to the pinball arcade

[budtki@verizon.net]

a couple years ago i had purchased the williams collection game(disc) at a local store, this game is great, the graphics and RESOLUTION are superior to farsights online pinball arcade, as is some of the better camera angles and a multiplayer tournement(NOT the online version) that my wife and i enjoy immensly. farsight had produced the willaims collection, so it is my question that will further updates bring better resolution to all existing and new pinballs available on the pinball arcade? some of the camera angles such as funhouse is not as effective as the one available on "the williams collection, and the resolution on the black night, gorgar, and circus volitare are border line. it is my hope that farsight will further define the resolution on these games to match that the quality that the willaims collection displays. one BIG item that should be paramount to farsight in their efforts to improve their product should be the sound quality, as in EXTRA BASS. there is nothing more impressive then the sound(bass quality) of a real pinball, and one thing that has bothered me and has been notoriously missing(even in the williams collection) since playing farsight's pinballs, is the booming crack of winning a special, is there anyway to improve farsights current wimpy version of this pinball defining sound? my favorite machines are, COMET, THE SIMPSON(first version), HIGHSPEED(first version),PARAGON,PLAYBOY(first version),FIREBALL,TIMEWARP,and KISS

 

[brakel]

I disagree. I think TPA is already superior to the ps3 Williams collection and it keeps getting better. I still play my ps3 Williams disc from time to time. Black Knight aside TPA is far above Williams in every way from sound, to physics, to graphics and resolution. Gorgar looks gorgeous to me. Looks like the table just pops off my screen and the beating heart kicks in my subwoofer a bit.

 

[Mark W**a]

It's not a higher resolution, what you are voicing is your preference to the brighter lighting scheme of the Williams collection. That's a preference a lot of us share and it's being addressed soon, the team at Farsight has stated that they are going to implement a lighting slider into one of the future updates for the game. So you'll be able to match the brightness of Williams. The ball physics have been vastly improved for the digitial release. As for the sound, what kind of sound system/home theater are you using?

Not sure if they are working on adding a tournament mode.

 

[brakel]

It's not a higher resolution, what you are voicing is your preference to the brighter lighting scheme of the Williams collection. That's a preference a lot of us share and it's being addressed soon, the team at Farsight has stated that they are going to implement a lighting slider into one of the future updates for the game. So you'll be able to match the brightness of Williams. The ball physics have been vastly improved for the digitial release. As for the sound, what kind of sound system/home theater are you using?

Not sure if they are working on adding a tournament mode.

The games might be out putting to the same resolution but there is way more detail in the TPA versions (excluding Black Knight). There are things on Gorgar and Funhouse that I could not read or see in the Williams HoF collection.

My home theater consists of an HDMI switching 7.1 Denon receiver, Magnaplanar mains, Orb speakers for my center and rear surrounds, Polk bookshelf speakers for my side surrounds and an Infinity sub. Its basically a mix of speakers that I've collected over the years that I think sound good together. TPA sounds much better to me than the Williams HoF for the ps3.

 

[Matt McIrvin]

It did seem to me that PHoF: Williams had fewer weird game-breaking bugs, though the relatively benign "ball fell off table" glitch did happen pretty often. PHoF: Gottlieb seemed buggier than the Williams one.

I can't speak to the visual-quality differences since I played PHoF on the Wii, which was inherently analog NTSC (and lacked the most complex tables), and the screen resolution was obviously much lower than on an XBox 360. It's very strange to go back now and look at those chunky graphics.

 

[Jim O'Brien]

I'm hoping Farsight will add the glass back onto the playfield. Arcade plays so much better than PHoF and if you need proof just play Medieval Madness on PHoF than play it on Arcade. Speaking of glass on the playfield I think they should try and take it a step forward and have your scores updating in real time on it as well...too much to ask for ? Hope not.

 

[ToneTranquilo]

I know it doesn't matter to y'all but I recently bought PHOF for ps3 and yesterday I beat the Williams Challenge! I was in the zone! No one was home, had some strong coffee and the frustration of knowing there was a table that I couldn't play right within my grasp. Now I can feel at peace! Jive Time is mine ; )

 

[spoonman]

I think WPHOF was a more polished game in terms of bugs (Harem goal aside), but being a disc based release it needed to be. I think the resolution of the scanned table graphics appears to be the same on both. The lighting on TPa is more advanced and looks great on most tables.

That being said I think some of the tables on TPA need a graphics overhaul. It seems the last few tables on the PS3 have some low resolution texture scns mixed in with the better quality. Weather this was done on purpose because of memory restraints, to speed up multi-ball, etc is unknown.

If you look closely on Monster Bash you will see quite a lot of low resolution scanned table assets that look like highly compressed JPEGs that you can find on Google Images. Perhaps Farsight's owned tables were missing certain graphics and they had to "outsource" a few scans? I see a few of these low quality scans on CFTBL as well.

The other issue, and its already been well documented, is Black Knight.
I seems like the gamma is way off and they are under lighting these tables, again, maybe to hide he low resolution nature of some of the table graphics.

I'm sure they will continue to improve the bugs and gameplay, but I also hope they pay more attention to the graphics as well. I also assume we will see a disc based TPA at some point when they accumulate enough tables.

 

[Kolchak357]

I'd like to see a challenge mode like the Williams Challenge. Things like that keep you playing all of the tables.

 

[George Klepacz]

I completely agree about the different modes that were in the Williams Collection being really missed in TPA. I find myself playing TPA much less than I was playing WC because the extra modes kept me coming back for more. I have zero chance of getting good enough to make a mark on the leaderboards so all I have is to compete against my own scores or that of my friends with the same skill level. But that isnt all that exciting to me. Throw in something like the Williams Challenge though and I'm forced to play all of the tables and learn them enough to get a high enough score to move on. So far I haven't found my motivation to play Harley much, seems boring. I'm not really into Elvira or Creature either.

 

[George Klepacz]

I had a lot more to that last post but my tablet decided against letting me save it before I had to re sign in to the forum. Im not retyping it, but to summarize I want a Williams Challenge type mode and the offline Tournament mode that was in the WC.

TPA is a good game, but without those extras, I find myself lurking the forum here and the Facebook page more than I play the actual game.

 

[ER777]

Well, I still think the flippers are a little crisper and snappier on the PHoF version but basically everything else is superior in the Pinball Arcade version. I fully expect FS to keep improving on TPA over time as well (the ambient lighting slider sounds great), and with the potential to keep adding more tables for a long time, its only going to get better. The additional challenge and tournament modes already have a placeholder in the menus in TPA, so I'm they'll be added soon.

How about the irony with the environments for the two games though? The Hall of Fame version was set in an Arcade and the Arcade version is set up more like exhibits in a museum. Am I the only one that finds that funny?

 

[ScotchYeti]

How about the irony with the environments for the two games though? The Hall of Fame version was set in an Arcade and the Arcade version is set up more like exhibits in a museum. Am I the only one that finds that funny?

Yes, you are the only one.

People have argued about the old Arcade interface in and out. Neither interface will be optimal for 20+ games, although an Arcade with 3 levels where you can customize where each table is located wouldn't be too bad.

 

[Biff]

I recently played Williams Pinball Classics(EU) again to collect all the trophies for my new PSN account.

I didnt't really enjoy it to play all the old versions of MM, FH, TOTAN & Gorgar again. (Still more fun than playing Zen)
In comparison to the new TPA Versions they all look and play like s*it. Ok, the old Black Knight probably has less bugs.

Now budki is the second guy, who tells me that PHOF is better.
I dont get it. It's like saying, hey my Madden 05 looks better than Madden 13.

I mean, he just said "the graphics and RESOLUTION are superior to farsights online pinball arcade" ... come on..

 

[DrainoBraino]

I dont get it. It's like saying, hey my Madden 05 looks better than Madden 13.

Looks is just one aspect of games. Gameplay is what is important to me. Thats the problem with most game developers now is they focus on looks and forget about having good gameplay. Same thing with tv shows and movies for that matter. Too much focus on hottie actors and actresses and dazzling cgi sequences. The best movies are the ones that tell a compelling story with good characters.

I still like PHOF better than TPA for a few reasons. 1. The flipper physics on TPA are sluggish, bouncy, and just altogether poor. 2. The lighting on TPA is waaay too dark. 3.TPA has too many game breaking bugs. Fix those 3 major problems and I'm all in.

 

[ROTTEN]

The flipper physics on TPA are sluggish, bouncy, and just altogether poor. 2. The lighting on TPA is waaay too dark. 3.TPA has too many game breaking bugs. Fix those 3 major problems and I'm all in.

I agree with all of this. Especially the flipper lag ...... it's just ridiculous .

 

[budtki@verizon.net]

my REPLY to replies of original post "PS3 williams PHOF compared to thepinballarcade"

as far as extra bass, i have a BOSS 5.1 surround sound that rattles the windows, what i was saying is that there is a difference from game to game in the audio output, for instance, the creature has good bass, others do not, and on all machines, the crack of winning a special is a poor recreation, not even close. as for resolution, the PHOF(which was also created by farsight) is without a doubt more defined and clearer then that of TPA, the camera also appears more player friendly and closer then that of TPA. for instance, FUNHOUSE is fun on PHOF as the camera angle allows you to shoot the upper loop because you can CLEARLY see it, the angle TPA uses is NOT player friendly. and why do the graphics vary game to game on TPA? for instance, the bride of pinbot is as clear as any PHOF table, while the black knight and gorgar seem to be of playstation two graphics. i am a pinball nut, i love TPA, i only want the graphics quality to be as good as they could be, ala PHOF. the play however is much more realistic on TPA, to the point that i can't even play the slower PHOF tables anymore. (being the pinball nut i am) i will probably purchase every table farsight releases, however, if new released tables trend toward the graphics of blackknight i will begin to loose interest as fast as a draining ball int the outlane of whirlwind.

 

[alexk3954]

gorgar seem to be of playstation two graphics.

Damn, you must have a really good PS2

 

[brakel]

The crack sound of a special is not easily created in a video game. Its an experience in real life, not just a sound. On a real pinball machine there is a real physical hit being made. Two things are going on here that are not happening in a video game. First is that you feel the physical vibration of the crack. The crack is not a low bass sound so you're not feeling a sound vibration. You're feeling the vibration of one object hitting another object. Secondly is that the crack sound does not come from the speakers on the pinball table but from the actual source of the collision inside the pinball table cabinet. Farsight has not done anything with surround sound in TPA that I can tell. Even if they do it will be hard to duplicate the sounds of a pinball table in a typical 5.1 speaker setup. Surround systems are designed specifically to fill a room with sound, however a pinball table's sound is almost all in front of the player. Our ears can still pickup on if a sound is coming from the speakers, the table (as when a ball hits the glass) or with a special crack coming from the cabinet. While surround sounds can be mixed for effects that happen anywhere, its near impossible to get an effect tuned so closely to another while still differentiating it from another sound just a few inches away...all while everyone at home has their speakers setup differently.

You don't need bass to duplicate the sound of the crack because it is not a deep sound. But its more of an experience than a sound.

 

[George Klepacz]

The gunshots in the movie Open Range in the final shootout give the effect I'm looking for in the crack of earning a special. Still doesn't replicate the real thing, but still gets you going. Haven't seen that scene? Rent the movie and turn up your surround sound, man I love that scene! "It's locked." BOOOOOM! (with plenty of accompanying treble)