I didn't mention the control schemes here--they are a little peculiar. Pinball simulations actually lend themselves pretty well to keyboard control, but these Atari ports seemed to insist on using joystick controllers anyway, by Atari custom. For both Raster Blaster and David's Midnight Magic, it takes a little fiddling with settings in an emulator to get a setup that is comfortable to play; these are rare games where I would not recommend using a modern game controller as an Atari joystick, because they play better with keys. (For Pinball Construction Set, on the other hand, you probably want some kind of game controller to work the editor UI.)
Raster Blaster seems to have been intended to be played with a joystick controller in each hand, with the buttons acting as flipper buttons.
David's Midnight Magic uses something like the 2600 Video Pinball scheme, where you push left and right on a single joystick to operate the flippers... but the mapping seems to be backwards: pushing left operates the right flipper and vice versa. I don't know if this is some emulation quirk or if it's actually how it worked.
The box art lifted from the Apple version shows the player holding two paddle controllers (kind of like with 2600 Bumper Bash), and with Atari's paddle controllers, because of the way they were mapped, the buttons would indeed operate the flippers that way... but it left no way to operate the plunger to shoot the ball, so that wouldn't actually work. The game also had a one-dimensional nudge via the space bar; the tilt seems pretty sensitive. I think there are keyboard controls for the Magna-Saves but I haven't figured them out.
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Date: 2019-05-31 03:40 am (UTC)Raster Blaster seems to have been intended to be played with a joystick controller in each hand, with the buttons acting as flipper buttons.
David's Midnight Magic uses something like the 2600 Video Pinball scheme, where you push left and right on a single joystick to operate the flippers... but the mapping seems to be backwards: pushing left operates the right flipper and vice versa. I don't know if this is some emulation quirk or if it's actually how it worked.
The box art lifted from the Apple version shows the player holding two paddle controllers (kind of like with 2600 Bumper Bash), and with Atari's paddle controllers, because of the way they were mapped, the buttons would indeed operate the flippers that way... but it left no way to operate the plunger to shoot the ball, so that wouldn't actually work. The game also had a one-dimensional nudge via the space bar; the tilt seems pretty sensitive. I think there are keyboard controls for the Magna-Saves but I haven't figured them out.