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Plus, the console games scroll you right down to the lanes and flippers as "gravity" eventually overcomes "electromechanical" bumpers, pulling the ball your way. After all, if the action is at the top of the table, that's where you're likely watching, should it be a real or virtual table. This matters, though I don't know exactly why. You can't lean down over the glass and watch that chrome demon pop around, and then quickly glance downward or rock back on your heels to check those terminal lanes and flipper positions. ![]() This makes Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection a damn fine game, although not much of a simulation, as the virtual tables ultimately possess little of the feel of their mechanical predecessors.įor starters, you can't easily see an entire pinball slate at once. That's a hallmark of a good game: simplicity, and the ability to lose yourself in it without having to throw in the towel because you keep losing. Besides knowing that you tranquilly enjoyed yourself, you really have no idea where that time went. Computer solitaire and console pinball are games that you sit down and intend to play for 20 minutes as a break from just about anything else, but when you glance at your watch again, you discover that more than two hours have passed. What I call the "time-suck factor" should be obvious in both games. Sure, the game's price is an expensive hour in an arcade, but for a lifetime of pinball on 10 tables, it's dirt cheap. With console pinball, the convenience lies in having a variety of tables all in one place, no stacks of quarters piled on the most favored machines' glass tops - the arcade equivalent of a long line ahead of you. In convenience, computer solitaire bests its real-world counterpart because you never have to shuffle the deck or lay out the opening card arrangements. The thing about console pinball is the same thing about some people's addiction to computer solitaire: ruled by the convenience and "time-suck" factors. ![]() However, should you spend some hours or days playing console pinball games and then go out and try the rare tangible artifact at a local bar or your neighbor's rec room, you may discover that the video game versions are definitely entertaining, but aren't particularly good simulations of the real deal, despite the developers' often-hairsplitting attention to details and game physics. The audio is all about startling, jarring, mechanically inspired sound effects, without anything so complicated as the perfect positioning of running footsteps or weapons fire in a multichannel sound field. The largely static graphics also mean that an attractive game is easy to create without having to overtax less-powerful consoles. The interaction of the ball with the plunger electrically triggered, spring-loaded bumpers and traps electromechanical flippers and even the basic physics of balls rolling and caroming off various surfaces all seem nicely suited to simulation in software. This fresh, fun and fine game sure plays a mean pinball.Īt first blush, mechanical pinball seems to translate well to computer or console simulations. Video pinball addicts and even casual fans,īut Crave just handed his developers' hat to him.įor these table games I have a tough test.įor real nostalgic sim, Williams is the best.
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