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In the world of fake pinball
So all sorts of fascinating, often infuriating drama has been going on with The Pinball Arcade, Farsight Software's classic-pinball simulator. As of last night, both of the famous tables with media licenses funded from successful Kickstarters, Twilight Zone and Star Trek: The Next Generation, are out on iOS and Android and, I think, Macintosh, and they've got a bunch of others as well.
But the PS3 releases are taking some more time. As for the XBox 360 releases through XBox Live Arcade, they got more and more delayed as Microsoft rejected them for various reasons, and eventually stopped entirely, for a dismaying reason: the software publisher Farsight used as a middleman, Crave Software (who you may remember as the publisher of Pinball Hall of Fame on disc), went bankrupt and ceased operations. But they claim they've found a new publisher, as yet unidentified, and will get TZ and Star Trek: TNG out before the other delayed packs so that the Kickstarter folk can claim their free copies. Since the XBox is by far the best platform I've got available for playing TPA, this is relevant to my interests. We shall see.
The latest Android release is odd. They completely redid the top-level menus, which were somewhat lacking, but are now about a thousand times worse; it looks like an amateur coding project. I hope they just revert the code ASAP until they can make the new menus look a little better.
The Twilight Zone sim, which came out a few weeks ago, is a lot of fun, but it's controversial, since it's far easier than the real table even by TPA standards. This upsets hardcore pinball fans, since in the real world, the Twilight Zone pinball is known for being not just full of droll bizarrerie, but also deliciously cruel. In particular, the simulated model has a barrier to prevent outlane drains between two of the Town Square jet bumpers, an optional feature that is rarely seen in the real world (after the earliest production models, they started shipping with the barrier inside the coin box in case the operator wanted to install it).
On the bright side, Star Trek: TNG is great, and seems to have captured the flavor of the real table excellently. Gameplay-wise, it's a great fast-flowing Steve Ritchie design, with lots of things to do. But this is also one that demands to be played with the sound on, just for the sake of the clever original-cast voice clips, sound cues and background music, all of which expertly evoked the feel of a particularly exciting, sometimes goofy episode of the TV show. It's nice to just reacquaint myself with all those sound samples that are burned into my head from wasting time in the 1990s. Had you propelled the ball along the proper traTHANK YOU MR. DATA
There have been a bunch of other tables released on non-XBox platforms since the last time I talked about this. My favorites of those include Elvira and the Party Monsters (they also did the other Elvira table, the double-entendreriffic Scared Stiff, but for some reason I don't enjoy it as much), and Big Shot, a simple electromechanical game with a pool theme from 1973. There have also been major upgrades to physics and gameplay on Medieval Madness and Black Hole, which I hope come to the XBox soon.
But the PS3 releases are taking some more time. As for the XBox 360 releases through XBox Live Arcade, they got more and more delayed as Microsoft rejected them for various reasons, and eventually stopped entirely, for a dismaying reason: the software publisher Farsight used as a middleman, Crave Software (who you may remember as the publisher of Pinball Hall of Fame on disc), went bankrupt and ceased operations. But they claim they've found a new publisher, as yet unidentified, and will get TZ and Star Trek: TNG out before the other delayed packs so that the Kickstarter folk can claim their free copies. Since the XBox is by far the best platform I've got available for playing TPA, this is relevant to my interests. We shall see.
The latest Android release is odd. They completely redid the top-level menus, which were somewhat lacking, but are now about a thousand times worse; it looks like an amateur coding project. I hope they just revert the code ASAP until they can make the new menus look a little better.
The Twilight Zone sim, which came out a few weeks ago, is a lot of fun, but it's controversial, since it's far easier than the real table even by TPA standards. This upsets hardcore pinball fans, since in the real world, the Twilight Zone pinball is known for being not just full of droll bizarrerie, but also deliciously cruel. In particular, the simulated model has a barrier to prevent outlane drains between two of the Town Square jet bumpers, an optional feature that is rarely seen in the real world (after the earliest production models, they started shipping with the barrier inside the coin box in case the operator wanted to install it).
On the bright side, Star Trek: TNG is great, and seems to have captured the flavor of the real table excellently. Gameplay-wise, it's a great fast-flowing Steve Ritchie design, with lots of things to do. But this is also one that demands to be played with the sound on, just for the sake of the clever original-cast voice clips, sound cues and background music, all of which expertly evoked the feel of a particularly exciting, sometimes goofy episode of the TV show. It's nice to just reacquaint myself with all those sound samples that are burned into my head from wasting time in the 1990s. Had you propelled the ball along the proper traTHANK YOU MR. DATA
There have been a bunch of other tables released on non-XBox platforms since the last time I talked about this. My favorites of those include Elvira and the Party Monsters (they also did the other Elvira table, the double-entendreriffic Scared Stiff, but for some reason I don't enjoy it as much), and Big Shot, a simple electromechanical game with a pool theme from 1973. There have also been major upgrades to physics and gameplay on Medieval Madness and Black Hole, which I hope come to the XBox soon.