![]() ![]() But that visual quality comes with a trade-off, because the lighting on the iOS version looks awfully flat. For owners of "The New iPad," the game takes advantage of the higher-resolution display, making table art easy to see and read. Overall, I found that I was in better control of the action with a gamepad, but the iOS version doesn't lag very far behind on either iPad or iPhone. On touch devices, like the iPad, you tap the lower quadrants of the screen for flippers, and your left/right nudge control can either be done by tapping the upper quadrants or by shaking the device itself, which is a neat idea that doesn't work particularly well. The analog stick makes nudging the table around pretty easy. Ripley's, as the newest table in the lot, has a little bit of everything, from shrunken heads to an abundance of penguin noises.Ĭontrol-wise, the Xbox 360 version lets you choose between the shoulder buttons or triggers for flipper control, both of which feel pretty natural. Tales of the Arabian Nights has a huge, spinning lamp to aim for. Theater of Magic has a rotating magic trunk that uses magnets to steal the ball away. Black Hole has a really neat lower playfield that lights up when you send a ball down there. Pinball Arcade also benefits from including some very sharp table designs. Black Hole should be nice and dark, like this.īut physics only really tells one side of the story. Personally, I think it plays a better game of pinball than Pinball FX2 does, mostly because FX2's balls feel a little light, causing them to rocket off the flippers in ways that just feel a little strange. The ball itself carries an appropriate amount of weight, and in multiball situations, colliding balls careen around the table with angles that feel wholly appropriate. The tables feel about as fast as they should, and the action on the flippers also just feels right. ![]() Here, The Pinball Arcade does quite well. Perhaps the most important thing in a pinball simulation is its ability to handle the physics of an actual pinball machine. On some platforms, like iOS, the first set of additional tables- The Machine: Bride of Pin-bot and Medieval Madness-have already appeared as a $5 bundle. With that in mind, the developers should have a healthy number of tables to choose from for some time to come, and around a dozen additional tables have already been announced. These four tables are notable for presenting a good deal of variety in eras and manufacturers, representing the titans of pinball manufacturing like Bally/ Midway/Williams, Gottlieb, and Stern, the only manufacturer still creating real-world tables today. On consoles, the base package goes for $10 and includes four tables: Tales of the Arabian Nights, Ripley's Believe It or Not!, Black Hole, and Theatre of Magic. If you have ever connected with pinball, real or virtual, in the past, Pinball Arcade is quite awesome. The Pinball Arcade from FarSight Studios combines both of those things, taking the licensed, real-world tables from the developer's previous work on the Pinball Hall of Fame discs and bringing them to a zillion different downloadable formats, from Vita to Android, in an updatable package that starts with four tables and will expand to more via regular downloadable (and paid) updates. ![]() These days, the best that most of us can do is to visit virtual pinball machines via packages like Pinball Hall of Fame or downloadable front-ends like Pinball FX2. It wasn't even 20 years ago that you could expect to see a healthy flock of pinball machines gathering at local bowling alleys, laundromats, and, before their native habitat was destroyed by careless hydrofracking, actual video arcades. Forget about pelicans or fish or whatever stupid animal out there is "going extinct" or "can only be viewed in a zoo these days." The endangered species that I care about is the pinball machine.
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