Released in 1994
Developed by Digital Illusions / Spidersoft.
Published by Gametek.
In the late eighties and early nineties, my brother and I
would spend our summer days in arcades. So prevalent were these entertainment
halls that it’s hard to believe that now they have almost completely
disappeared. Any that remain are almost incomparable to the arcades of
yesteryear, filled with toy grabbing machines and penny pushers. The familiar sound of clanging metal pinballs and table bumpers has gone. There are not even queues of eager gamers
itching to get on to the latest machine. The former arcade mainstays have
become the exceptions, and this is solely down to profitability. When home
consoles equalled and then eclipsed what an arcade machine could do, why would
anyone pay money for a gaming experience they could have at home for free? To
be popular videogame arcade machines had to offer something that couldn’t be
easily replicated at home. This ultimately meant that traditional arcade
videogames vanished and only dancing, shooting and “immersive experience”
machines remained.
The popularity of pinball machines didn't necessarily
decline, they just weren’t very profitable in the first place. This hardly made
them attractive to an arcade owner. Ever since their inception in the 1960’s
pinball machines offer essentially the same core game experience; use flippers
to hit targets and keep the ball from reaching the bottom of the machine.
Although the placement of table hazards and their themes may vary, all pinball
tables are mechanical, which obviously means they require more maintenance than
an electronic machine. Balls get stuck, lights burn out, switches need
replacing and to make matters worse they take up about twice as much arcade
floor space as other machines. Unlike a modern dancing or shooting machine
where the playtime you get from a single 50p is often less than three minutes,
an expert with a pinball could play for a very long time, earning replay after
replay from a single coin. The arcades
could make much more money running a single toy grabbing machine than they make
from a whole bank of pinball machines.
If you fancy playing some pinball nowadays, you have very
little option but to boot up a digital version and play it on a home system.
However, digital pinball doesn’t only exist because real life pinball has
vanished. During the eighties and early nineties, companies were keen to
capitalise on the popularity of real life pinball. Outside of the arcades a
number of pinball inspired games emerged, but almost all were terrible.
Nintendo’s first attempt the rather underwhelming Game & Watch Multi-Screen
‘Pinball’ didn’t even allow the ball to be aimed; it would bounce off a flipper
in a random direction. Things weren’t much better on the NES, ‘Pinball’ by
Nintendo, Hal Laboratory‘s ‘Rollerball’ and Rare’s ‘Pinbot’ were all
individually ambitious, but the limitations of the 8bit system hampered the
sense of realism while limiting the complexity of the tables.
'Pinball Dreams ' however was a world apart from these
comparatively primitive titles. Originally the game was made for the Amiga by Digital Illusions; a
small group of self-taught programmers, artists and musicians from Sweden. ‘Pinball
Dreams’ was their first game and it quickly became regarded as not just a
landmark Amiga title but also the defining moment for digital pinball across all systems. Key to its success was the realistic ball physics
which is both subtle and sophisticated. "‘Pinball Dreams’ is a beautiful
pinball game, closer to the real thing than any other attempt I've seen on any
machine", wrote Stuart Campbell when reviewing the original Amiga release.
"This game comes as close to matching the real thing as you're ever likely
to get" agreed Neil West when he reviewed the game for Amiga Format
magazine."The ball bounces and rolls as realistically as anyone could have
hoped". When this lifelike ball was placed on four, at the time,
imaginative and diverse tables, it was clear that Digital Illusions had found a
winning combination. As a result ‘Pinball Dreams’ was a success with both
players and critics, a game rewarded with both high review scores and massive
sales.

Like the Amiga original, the game features four tables – Ignition (a science fiction table), Steel Wheel (inspired by old western railroads), Beat Box (with a music theme) and Nightmare (which steals from classic b-movie horror clichés). This is pinball at its most traditional; you hit the flippers to propel the ball into the table with the aim of hitting the right targets in the right order. Doing so unlocks more of the table and allows access to more point giving targets. Point accumulation really is the aim of the game here, and the drive to keep on playing is simple to beat your own previous best score.
As it’s a straight conversion of an Amiga game, the graphics
are presented in 2D but the table scrolls in four directions allowing you can
keep track of the ball’s position as you play. If the game were produced from
the ground up for the Snes it's hard to imagine the developers wouldn't have
used the console's Mode 7 scaling and rotating trickery to great effect. It was
an observation that also annoyed Tony Mott when he reviewed the game for Super
Play magazine. "I don't understand why programmers aren't given more
freedom when converting from computer to console like this" he raged.
"It really is a missed opportunity. A perfunctory conversion which was
crying out for major improvements during its journey to the Snes. But no one
listened".
Looking at this as a Super Nintendo title in its own right, it’s reasonably
playable, good fun and certainly worth the money it often demands on eBay.
However expectation must be scaled back as this game certainly doesn't
compare to modern pinball simulations with their license tables and inertia
physics. For a similar amount of money you could get 'Zen Pinball 2' with a
handful of the digital representations of the greatest real world pinball
tables. This would certainly be a more authentic pinball experience. When you
compare 'Pinball Dreams' to its superior sequel 'Pinball Fantasies' you quickly
realise that so much more could be done to make the game more varied and
exciting. For example all four tables only feature two flippers and none have
ball traps or cages that are typical of the more sophisticated real life
tables. Games Critic Stuart Campbell
once believed that "like Cliff Richard, 'Pinball Dreams' is a game that
will never really age. You'll be playing this for years to come". A modern
player accustom to ‘Zen Pinball’ and 'Pinball Arcade' will no doubt disagree and wonder why
there are no side-missions or tables specific challenges to do. While it's easy
to appreciate how pioneering the game was more than 20 years old, nowadays it
feels sparse and somewhat feature less. When the only goal in every table is
simply to get the largest score possible within a limitless time frame, you
have to wonder how much long term appeal there really is.
As with so many Retro Games, enjoyment of 'Pinball Dreams'
is tied to nostalgia. If you owned it and loved it before then you’ll no doubt
be able to forgive the game’s flaws. To long time fans, just hearing Olof Gustafsson's fantastic music will feel
like a warm familiar hug, but it's a product of its time. Without having
enjoyed real world pinball tables, would the youth of today be drawn to a game
like ‘Pinball Dreams’? Nintendo have tried several times to attract younger
audiences, by publishing pinball based on some of their most games prolific
franchises. If having ‘Pokémon’ and ‘Metroid’ on the box wasn’t enough to
entice new players, it highly unlikely ‘Dreams’ would. Which limits
‘Pinball Dreams’ to only being an attractive purchase for those who have played
it before and who aren’t interested in the more accurate simulations that the modern pinball games offer. It is somewhat impossible for me to judge if they are missing out. I’ll happily spend an hour bouncing a virtual ball around four
somewhat empty tables. There may be better Pinball games out there, but none of
these will either be able to offer the bumps and flips of familiarity that comes
from launching a pixelated ball into a ‘Pinball Dreams’ table.
While I may have loved the arcades for the Upright video
games, my brother would always be drawn to the pinball tables. I didn’t own
‘Pinball Dreams’ on the Amiga, it was his and in many ways it was a goto
Amiga game when we grew up. This is probably why he chose this game to give to
me for my 33rd Birthday. What a relief therefore, that it is so
close a match to the Amiga original. Sometimes all we really want, is what we
already know.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.