Pinball Video Games in the Twentieth Century
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- Опубліковано 29 сер 2024
- For a long time, pinball video games had a terrible reputation. It's a genre that's very difficult to do well, and yet many people thought it was a very easy way to knock out a quick game. There were those, however, who gradually built up the genre making gradual improvements over the years. This is that story.
Great video. For those wondering, the last game shown is _Kyūtenkai: Fantasic Pinball_ for the Saturn & PlayStation.
That’s exactly what I was going to ask.
I was indeed wondering! Thanks! 😃
God, I love this channel so much
This is the EXACT video that appeals SPECIFICALLY TO ME
The only thing that would appeal to me more is a 3 hour long video essay about Vending Machines
Thank you, Strange Stranger
The first video pinball games were Flipper Pinball {I} and "Flipper Pinball {II}, on the 1977 "Video Pinball" by Atari a multigame system with 7 games. There is basically a bent line, and then you push the button, and a straight line appears, that the ball bounces off. While there were other "Pong" style games on the system, these two only had the flipper style elements. Rather than the sliding bar. The system came with button on either side for the "Flapper" games. AcadeUSA has a pretty good video about the system and its games "Atari C380 Home Video Pinball Console". The "Flapper I" game features bumpers, spinners, and side targets, while "Flapper II" there is a score gate, and more targets, spinner bars, and pass-through bars. Both games also have a "Paddle Pinball} version with the slider bar instead of the flippers. It also featured two hacky sack style game "Rebound I" {one hoop}, and "Rebound II" {three hoops} games, if you had to knock the sack through a series of hoops. Then the "Breakout/Breakthru" as it is listed on the box, and in the manual. There was a white, and a brown version of the system. The white system seems to have 2 versions of Rebound, while Breakthru, replaces "Rebound I" on the brown verion.
This was a fun video to watch. As someone who grew up in Europe with an Amiga the only pinball games I really played was the Pinball Dreams/Fantasies/Illusions-series which I dearly loved back then, especially Fantasies. It feels like they were a really big thing around here while Epic Pinball seems to have been the big thing around the same time in the US.
Very late in the Amigas life (well, it was probably already dead at this time) we got the game Slam Tilt that I also played til death. I remember it as being really great but then I was starving for Amiga games back then and hadn't really played any of the alternatives.
I never played the GBC pokemon pinball - in fact, i never actually KNEW there was a gbc pokemon pinball till now! I played the shit out of the gba sequel a lot, though. Ive never been a stickler for physics in pinball games as long as they work fine, but the sequel really is a massive improvement.
The GBA game's one of my all-time favorites. Having the Pokemon-catching objectives meant there was always something to do, and the physics were reliable and consistent. I still go back to it in emulation from time to time.
Great video. I'm glad the options nowadays are pretty good with Visual Pinball and The Pinball Arcade, I've noticed that I have a lot of difficulty playing a variety of pinball games since it takes me a while to get accustomed to the slightly different physics that every game has.
Heh, I like your inclusion of an LCD pinball handheld! I had just seen a review of Game & Watch Pinball, and yeah, I can't see how anyone ever thought fitting such a physics-based game into a format with such a small set of ball positions with no overlap would work out well.
I was about to argue with you about Rare's Pinbot, but then I thought on it more:
Well, yes, the physics are quite good.
And yes, it's a great table layout.
Which, yes, means that it is the best we've seen on an 8-bit Nintendo system.
Where I think it falls down is that the graphics aren't yet good enough for it. The limited colour palette & lack of resolution make parts of it somewhat visually muddy. When I played it I was not familiar with the original table, and I couldn't tell you what was going on at all in that pink section on the right. It was only by going back to images of the actual table that I could figure out that "Oh, it's a handful of bumpers with an overlay on top as a second level."
I used to play Crystal Caliburn for the Mac all the time back in the day.
If you've read my comments on these (and I know you have,) you know I love video pinball games, so this is a great topic. I even love the 8-bit pinball games, and I think some of them run BETTER than more "advanced" pinball games.
Video Pinball for Atari VCS: this is a start. It's not great, but it's a remarkable game to start the genre with. The ad copy in the manual is hilarious though. They really tried to sell the game as a way to avoid "unsavory" arcades! Video Pinball just could not possibly replace REAL pinball.
Midnight Magic: this is a neat game. I need to point out the VCS port though, which finally gets Pinball right on the system, just far too late. It's also really impressive for the system. If you know anything about how the VCS draws graphics, the pinball table is shockingly GOOD looking. (I'm glad to see you covered it in this video!)
Intellivision Pinball: I like this one, it's got a great variety of boards, and it shows how Intellivision just blew Atari away at everything. It was just a vastly superior system.
Famicom Pinball: I LOVE THIS ONE. I made sure it would be one of the first games I got when I started my Famicom collection. It's just so cute and the board is really neat, plus it even has a throwback to early "video pinball" which is actually more like breakout, so we don't count that. Sill, that bonus room made it worth it. HAL goes on to make my favorite 8-bit pinball game.
Tiger Pinball: Any LCD pinball game I am steering clear of. You can't really do much about the physics when your ball is flicking so drastically far between frames.
Revenge Of The Gator: and this is it, my all-time favorite 8-bit pinball game and one of my favorite Game Boy games too. It's a game I played ENDLESSLY. Everything that was great about Famicom Pinball was improved 10x. It's so cute, so weird, and addictive.
Very interesting history and footage. Thank you for making this!
Pinball was one of my favorite things at the arcades in the 80s-90s so I *really* enjoyed this exploration! I always felt console versions were lacking because of the physics, but the later PC games (Extreme Pinball, Pinball Dreams, etc.) really hit the spot. I actually had the Tiger LCD Electronic Pinball game too -- it was terrible but in those days it was at least more tolerable on car rides than staring out the window XD.
Microsoft's version of Space Cadet was first. Full Tilt released a few months later with 2 more tables. Kinda did Full Tilt an injustice here.
Full Tilt allows you to change resolution, has music, and has a Multiball mode.
One of my favrotie pinball games made by Epic is Adventure Pinball: Forgotten Island. Very fun to master and complete.
I was never a huge fan of pinball outside of a few video games, but I can appreciate the work that went into this video! definitely curious to look up that dreamcast game (and it'd give me an excuse to test drive the region-unlock disc I picked up when I got our dreamcast) though it does seem a bit pricey at the moment. perhaps I'm due to check out some of the virtual tables on PC as well.
Nice video, and although you may not want any honorable mentions, you made it look like Atari 2600 owners didn't have a good pinball game to play during the early 80s when it was the most popular console in the world. But there was Bumper Bash, a 2600 pinball game released in 1983, and for its time it was top-notch.
I think the best SNES pinball game is Battle Pinball, what with its superior presentation and amount of content.
PinBot NES had additions in later stages, as well. Different ball shapes, sprites to hit, a monster that works it's way around the solar system then will eat your ball and spit it down the hole just like the tornado thing...
Such a cool video, thank you for making this! Been on a huge pinball obsession recently so this is perfect. Will definitely be checking the rest of your channel out now too!!!
The better version of Atari Video Pinball was on the (aptly named) Video Pinball System built-in console. It was still a Pong variation but the boards were better, the flipper proportions/position were more reasonable and most importantly the system had flipper buttons on the sides instead of the cumbersome joystick controls on VCS.
Video Pinball for the 2600 absolutely DOES have nudging that's effective - b by using the fire button. You can practically move the ball wherever you want by quickly pressing the button and using the joystick to pick a direction.
Now that I've finished the video, I can give more of my thoughts:
Pinball Quest is covered, a game that I really love, but I can't admit is good. A pinball RPG is something that really needs to be done now that we have the capabilities to do it better.
Pinbot is my second-favorite NES pinball game. For an 8-bit game, it does such an amazing job at presenting the board. High Speed, as muddy as it is, is quite impressive looking. It's just too bad the visuals are so hard to see. Maybe dark grey was a bad base color.
KAZe's Super Pinball is one I'm oddly familiar with. My little brother, who has no interest in Pinball, was drawn in by the board themes. It was one time where he actually liked a video pinball game more than me! I'm glad KAZe got better because I was pretty bored with the first SNES game.
You talk about the stereopitcal 3D game Galactic Pinball, one of the few Virtual Boy games I got to experience. I happened to really like the gimmick of the VB even if I had to stop playing before 30 minutes because red on black hurts my eyes. I thought the 3D gimmick in Galactic Pinball was the best thing about it, and when that's all your system does, that is not a good sign. Still, it's a shame no VB games ever got ported to 3DS where they belonged.
What you didn't mention was PaTaank, and you have every right to skip over it. It's the ACTUAL "first 3D Pinball Game," and one I had in my 3DO collection before the fire. Making pinball into a first-person view is, obviously, nauseating. It shouldn't have been made, but its uniqueness is worth mentioning. I liked it, as bad as it was!
the pro pinball games on this unlocked a memory that i'm not sure is real? but i could have sworn i played some of them as a kid. time shock and the web in specific, again. it's such a vague memory that's what, 25 years old at minimum now? but i SWEAR i've played them before somewhere.
Fingers crossed for PinDaily!
I really need to one day play the Crush pinball games by Compile, always keep forgetting they are on my backlog. I think the first pinball video game game I ever played was Mario Pinball Land. Really should play more pinball games in general. Might try those ones by KAZe now thanks to this video.
Agreed, those Kaze games look like a lot of fun! I really like the Crush games, especially Devil Crash. If you do check those out, I also recommend checking out the Mega Drive port of Devil Crash by Technosoft: While I have a slight preference for the PC Engine original overall, the MD version adds a really cool new bonus stage (and one that's not so cool). 😊
Great video, but it is worth noting that Pinbot is a "Solid State" table, not an "Electro Mechanical" table. Meaning that it runs off a computer rather than a series of switches and relays. (35:25)
Gods, Space Cadet... I played that so damn much. That table being included in Windows XP is the primary reason I ended up getting Pinball FX2 (most of the tables for it, at that)
I had five pinball games growing up. Pinball and Pinbot (NES), Crystal Caliber (Macintosh), Pokémon pinball, and Galactic pinball. And you covered them all ❤. I just happened to have 3-D glasses sitting next to my desk to watch this video. Honestly, I don’t like pinball and the games and the ones I do like, are very un pinball-ish. I mostly focused on the bonus levels. Galactic pinball was one of the very rare uses of the Metroid license. Back in the day. Pokémon was just about collecting all the Pokémon NES pinball I focus more on rescuing Pauline. Pin bot I played with a friend, so it was more about competition. Crystal caliber on the McIntosh was amazing though. The progression of trying to collect all of the round table and get insane bonuses, unbelievable epic multi or multi battle was to achieve.
You're a machine
Fantastic vid as usual! Pinball video games I've always loved, even if I haven't played close to most of them. It's nice seeing how things progressed.
Pro Pinball is very much still amongst the best of the older ones for sure; they're still a blast to play, even if The Web is kinda rough in comparison to the rest. About the developers, they were all by Cunning Developments; they were an internal studio of Empire Interactive. They had an interesting legacy; after Empire shut them down in the early 2000s a lot of the key staff went on to found Fuse Games, who worked pretty much exclusively with Nintendo; they kinda started with the wrong foot, with the utterly dire Mario Pinball Land on GBA, but right after that they turned things around with the still awesome Metroid Prime Pinball (which is probably still amongst my favorites of the more gamey pinball games), and followed it up with the lesser known but also awesome Pinball Pulse: The Ancients Beckon on DSiWare, which is pretty much the unofficial fifth Pro Pinball game; it plays just as well as them, and it still bums me out they never did more. Some years after that they came back as Silverball and had big plans to bring back Pro Pinball (via a Kickstarter), but sadly said Kickstarter didn't do very well so it took a while til they did something; they eventually only put out a Timeshock remake/remaster, as Pro Pinball Ultra, which was quite good, but I don't think it did all that well. It's a bummer.
As for the NES versions of Pin-Bot and High Speed, funnily the former does eventually add similar more gamey elements (amongst them enemies that can *destroy flippers*), it's just that it doesn't use them immediately like High Speed does.
I can't wait to see what else you got coming out.
I played the heck out of Loony Labyrinth as a kid. Really enjoyed that one.
I do appreciate video pinball games even with their flaws but I get more joy out of playing actual pinball since part of the appeal at least for me is the mechanical aspect of it that can't be fully replicated digitally
great video would pinball again
Love the Kaze games though I think Last Gladiator is their best one. Necronomicon for whatever reason I can't seem to keep the ball in play on any of the tables for long.
I know a couple of UA-camrs that reviewed some shareware CDs and one way that these CDs got inflated was by a lot of Pinball Construction Set tables distributed as shareware back in the day. Quite a few of them were constructed not very well and had a few spots of incredibly bizarre ball behavior.
Hey, great video. I loved it. I have no idea if you are considering continuing the journey with stand out games from the 2000's, 2010, etc., but if you are, I would happily watch them.
You can actually control the ball in Atari 2600 Video Pinball by holding down the fire button and moving the joystick. Makes it far too easy to hold the ball in place to hit the rollovers.
I played Golden Logres this year on pc amd made a full game with all 3 Tables. You will become lot of extra Balls,but for Fischer king you will need it
Even as a Sonic game and someone that isn't as expert of a pinball player I always never got why Sonic spinball is so beloved, it's so painful to play.
I admit I love Pokemon pinball out of nostalgia mostly and the license, but the Gameboy Advance game is better in almost every way.
This was a really informative video, added a lot of these games to play now.
I always thought that Sonic Spinball was divisive: Folk I've known have either really enjoyed it or really hated it. I was always in the latter camp, though I've never really liked the Sonic games anyway.
Those stupid Tiger handhelds. God, early pinball on those abominations must have been an absolute nightmare. There *is* only a few positions for the ball to strike the paddles on those primitive parent confusers.
Why don't you care for High Speed? It has great flow.
Shout out to Flipnic on PS2
Awesome video
Loved the video! Though just wanted to let you know some of the gameplay music was too loud compared to your voice over.
I actually kind of like pinball on the atari 2600, you cant play it like a pinball, you have to abuse its rather generous tilting mechanic to pretty much directly control the ball into giving you a shit load of points.
i wonder will there be a Pinball Video Games in the Twentieth First Century, 😀 too bad Psycho pinball (94) didnt get mention as it was the first video pinball i had play which the ball physic feel good sure way way better than epic pinball ,and Addiction Pinball (98) which had physic close too Pro Pinball. Anyway great video
I must be the only person in the retrogaming scene who doesn't hate Pinball Quest. But I also liked playing Video Pinball on Atari VCS until i got my NES. I must have a thing for video game pinball with jank physics.
I’m not necessarily a pinball guy, but I do love the Kirby Pinball for the Gameboy😎
The last video of the year
Drinking game: drink every time the word “Pinball” is said?
What was the game in the conclusion?
Fantastic Pinball Kyuutenkai
Huh, no pinball illusions/true pinball
also what pinball controller do you have?
I used to have the Thrustmaster Pinball Controllers, PC controllers that were just flipper buttons you mounted to the side of your keyboard but they also had an accelerometer in them for tilting.
The Web was the begging of awful 3D realistic looking pinball games, instead of the pixel graphics of earlier games. Could not understand how people praised that game when it was released given how the board looks cluttered, ugly and busy as hell. Highly recommend Pinball Deluxe: Reloaded for anyone who wants a current game that feels like the old 90s pinball games.