Now, I like pinball. There are fewer and fewer pinball tables around in arcades and pubs as each year passes, so every time I see a table I haven't seen before, and the cost to play is about 50p, I'll give it a go.
However... I don't know whether it was due to how the table was set up, maybe the angle it was being played at was wrong... but this table wasn't much fun at all. It was slow - both the ball and the flippers. There was a voice to tell you what to do, which ramps to aim for etc, but it wasn't immediately obvious which features it was referring to each time. I was lucky enough to get a "Match" and a free credit, but it still wasn't enough to make me really like the machine enough to put in more money.
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This week I played a copy of "Dragon's Fury" for Megadrive. I play a few pinball videogames as it's quite hard to find tables around anymore - mostly on handheld consoles - Pokemon Pinball games, Super Robot pinball and Metroid Prime Pinball. Super Mario Pinball was fun too and is the only videogame pinball I'd really class as 3D pinball - all the others are really 2D pinball with emulated ramps and things. Most video pinball games are terrible, though. The only good PC or console pinball game I've played is Epic Pinball and that was a very long time ago now - I played it on a 486/66.
Well, I guess the one that comes free with Windows isn't that bad, but it feels like the angles are preordained by the timing at which the ball strikes each thing on the table, or something like that, rather than being calculated using maths and physics - it's very old-style Microsoft; you can only play this game the way we say it should be played, travelling the paths which we think the ball should take! There is no way to hit the ball at an angle which we have not accounted for!
So, "Dragon's Fury", which came with the Megadrive when I bought it second hand ages ago but I never started it up. It said on the box "The Best 3D Pinball Game In The World", to which I felt extremely skeptical, but no, it's actually really good - much better than this "real" pinball table, renewing my enthusiasm for pinball. ^_^ I like the style of the graphics, I like the table and the bonus stages, I like the way it has most of the winning elements of modern video pinball games yet it predates most of them. My only wish is that there would be some kind of multiball function in there.
Video pinball is certainly different from "real" pinball, and so gameplay elements tend to be very different. Video pinball games tend to be much easier to give the player a longer game, as we've already taken their money before they start up the game. There's no benefit to the developer in making the player use more "credits". Replay value is not just in getting a higher score (although they always have a high score table) - modern tables and video pinball games both tend to give you short "missions" to complete then you can defeat the final mission and win the game, but for video pinball the final mission is likely to take the form of a "boss" character for you to hit repeatedly with your ball in the right spots or at the right time. With some video pinball games - like Dragon's Fury, Kirby's Pinball, Super Mario Pinball and Metroid Prime Pinball, enemies wander around each stage as targets. I also really like the video pinball games that let you collect things as you play - the Pokemon Pinball games and Super Robot Pinball being my favourites that allow you to do that. That really adds something substantial to do as replay value.
I like some elements of video pinball an awful lot, but as I said, only a handful of video pinball games are really good. I'm always happy to try out a table I've never played before, even though the same is true and lots of real pinball tables aren't very good either... ^_^;;
