Quick Look: The Pinball Arcade (Update!)

That's why I chose the PSN option for the Kickstarters, as I got the tables for both PS3 and Vita to get more value out of it for myself.

That's a lot of balls.

I. Fucking. HATE the goddamn fucking fuck FUCK FUCKING FUCKING delays that the 360 is having with all this content. But I started buying tables on there when it first launched and I'm not big on rebuying stuff for other platforms. So I guess I'll continue to wait until Farsight gets all this FUCKING GODDAMN FUCK FUCK BULLSHIT FUCK YOU Crave bankruptcy crap straightened out.

...anyway, I love the fact that Shao Kahn designed the Star Trek TNG table.

I'm not a big fan of AC/DC, but that AC/DC pinball table was incredible. Have high hopes for the Metallica table.

I watched that Special When Lit documentary that's mentioned here. It was pretty dull in some parts but the interesting bits made up for it.

The gambling history of Pinball is actually really interesting. There used to be 'pinball' machines called Bingo Machines. Those machines would payout credits/free games.

As you can see, bingo machines had no flippers. It was purely a game of chance where your ball landed. Since it was a game of chance, and since most owners would allow players who won large amounts of free credits to essentially sell them back to the owner for money it was considered gambling. That might not make sense to you, but take that surf club cabinet over there, the maximum payout in credits for that particular cabinet is 300 credits. Original pinball machines were much closer to Pachinko than the game we now call pinball.

Jeff said those ultra-lo-fi sound samples were 22 khz. I'd bet they are much, much lower quality than that, probably around 5, at the very most 11khz. 22 khz actually sounds kinda decent, unless you have a 44/48/96khz mix to compare to, most music sounds totally fine in it, it mostly tends to lose some treble.

System Shock 2, and most 90's Blizzard and Westwood games used 22khz music, and I doubt many would say the sound quality there was terrible.

YES

Man. Growing up, I feel like there was a White Water machine in every arcade I ever went to. Surprising to hear someone say they've never seen one. Must be a regional thing.

@jeff You have probably already heard of it or been there, but if you haven't next time you guys are in Vegas check out the Pinball Hall of Fame. They have pretty much every pinball table you can imagine. Really cool place

I absolutely love this game. It chokes a bit on a Kindle Fire, but the touch controls are worth the occasional frame dip. I'm not good enough at pinball to care too much when a sudden drop drains my ball, haha.

One feature I hope that at least the PC version will have is a "dark" mode so that the lights really pop as they would in a darkly lit arcade. I was stunned when I bought the Twilight Zone and I could barely recognize it, simply because all my memories of it were from that sort of environment.

This table was modded like crazy, but this is what I want to see. (with less glare, obviously... it has to be playable)

Whiskey Media audio is always so all over the bloody self. Argh.

Anyone know if a TOS pinball machine exists? Probably a dumb question for pinball enthusiasts, but I know next to nothing about em.

Whooooa, there's a White Water machine at the po-dunk K-Mart a town over. Pretty sure they still have their original xbox display up too...

So amazing listening to that app. LOVE the sound of a pinball arcade. I can almost smell the sweaty palms.

@vinchenzo: I'm not great, but this is how I got better. (I live in Portland, and there's pinball at just about every bar I go by).

• Never flip both flippers at the same time. You'll often need the other flipper in a down position if the first flipper doesn't connect right.
• The newer Stern tables (Lord of the Rings, Sopranos) are easier to learn on than the older tables, they seem a lot more forgiving.
• Don't worry about the lights and the goals this early in the game. Focus on keeping the ball out of the gutters.
• Do not pay any attention to where the balls are gong during multiball. Only pay attention to the flippers, hitting every ball, and making sure the ball doesn't go down the gutter.
• Notice the angle the ball takes, and what part of the flipper it's on. This is more of a 'feeling' than science, but eventually you should be able to make precision shots into the lanes you're looking for. In general, the lower you are on your flipper the more consistent path your ball with take.
• Once you're making precision shots, learn how to stall the ball by holding down one of your flippers and letting the ball come to a rest on it. Then let the ball roll to the part of the flipper that will angle it where you want it to go. Hard to explain, but you'll see this all the time if you watch good player.
• Using the flipper stall, learn how to get the ball from your right flipper, back to your left flipper, and back to your right flipper again, on purpose. You'll eventually need to juggle the ball like this to hit all the lights and ramps.
• Nudging is fari game. If you think the ball is going down the middle give the table a little shove. It's not cheating unless the Tilt sensor goes off.

Holy shit you're right, I haven't bought any tables in a while and it looks like around table pack 10 (about when they started doing Pro Modes I believe) they stopped offering tables on an individual basis, now your only option is the $5 pack or $8 for both with one being Pro. That... is a real bummer, particularly since the packs generally combine a "more recent" (relatively of course) table with the older much more basic stuff that I often don't really have an interest in playing (though I have come to really appreciate Black Hole). However, it should be fairly noted that in addition to the limited free play per table Jeff mentioned, on Android the app itself is free, they offer one ad-supported table for unlimited free play a month, and Tales of the Arabian Nights is apparently now permanently free for all since the one-year anniversary.

The "other properties" bit is only true for Twilight Zone & TNG at the moment. As Jeff alluded to, it's not like actually making the tables work is really more difficult than any other sufficiently fancy table; they were Kickstarted because clearing all the rights and licenses are so much more expensive than most other tables. Consider that with something like TNG, they need to get the likeness rights for each actor who appears anywhere on the table, the rights to their voices, the rights to the iconic TNG music, the basic Star Trek property right itself, etc... it's no surprise those fuckers ended up costing a lot.

@00: Although I haven't seen all the issues you speak of (I bought Monster Bash very close to release and nothing about it has ever been really broken on the Android version, and I've never lost any scores; do you refer to in-game or on the various online leaderboard stuffs?) nor anything like Jeff's weird login business for Twilight Zone despite also getting it via Kickstarter, I've definitely had my own both major and minor. Farsight needs to improve their support both in systems and released tables, no question, but with the way they have to keep this business going that's far easier said than done.

As an example, on a pragmatic level, understand that getting 2 new tables to work on so many different devices/platforms basically once a month must be an absolute nightmare, and doing so is probably a necessity economically even moreso than it is a desire to keep pushing fresh stuff. But it's also absolutely, extremely necessary in that respect as well; people will keep wanting Black Knight 2000, F-14 Tomcat, Addams Family, and all their other favorites until they're available, but if new releases of some kind aren't coming out regularly (AND on every device, or those left out aren't pleased either) people are much more likely to forget about the whole thing and won't be around when those big hits do make it out. And unless it's something like TNG where the extra licensing costs are obvious and thus far easier for people to accept, those "big" tables pretty much need to be the same price as the lesser-known ones or people will just call greed. That all likely means a vast majority of resources needs to be going towards just getting those new tables ready each month.

(Though speaking of which, I don't think the logic "they're pushing these Pro tables now, so I doubt they even needed the Kickstarters for those tables" follows at all; implementing such controversial options for potential extra profits might suggest either simple greed or a more desperate need to improve the bottom line, but drawing a line to "they obviously already have a lot of money" doesn't really make any sense)

None of this excuses poor support, of course. I wish they could take at least a month or two and focus purely on cleaning up a lot of bugs and table issues, but unless they get some kind of historical grant for their efforts in preserving these tables or something equally impossible and insane, I fear that support will continue to be less than ideal. Economic realities or not, I certainly can't begrudge anyone who deems this unacceptable and fairly places the blame on Farsight, if not the fault, and I have nothing but sympathy for both parties. Well, except maybe less so in the case of the mess on 360 because that is no surprise to me in any way; I would hope we're at the point where someone who buys something on there should fully expect there's a very good chance they'll be totally fucked on future updates thanks to MS's continuing ridiculous and archaic requirements for certification et al. Have any of you who Kickstarted for a 360 copy of one of the tables tried to get a refund?

For my part, I just can't be very upset at Farsight despite my very real frustrations with some of their product. Some of that is probably very personal; the first four tables released on this kept me occupied and sane during many endless hours in ICU waiting rooms when my father was in hospital last year.

But I think it might also come down to how much you can appreciate what the company is doing/trying to do, understand the challenges they have to face in being a small company putting out a niche product across multiple unique hardwares (for which every release includes at least some kind of upfront licensing cost, no less) whose real-world original is a known quantity so any mistakes in reproduction will be immediately recognized by their prime customers, and respect that they're probably largely doing so out of a true passion for making sure these things don't just disappear. I think that's worth supporting, even if support in the other direction might falter some.

Does Metallica still makes "music"? WOW

That's some extravagant hair Riker has.

This quicklook reminded me that I have PB FX2 and Pinball Arcade. Money spent.....now they gotta get my Next Generation table!

There's a distinct lack of Cardassians on that table :|

Only pinball I ever played was the Digital Illusions games (That's DICE for you Battlefielders) Pinball Dreams, Pinball Fantasies and Pinball Illusions. Oh yeah I also played Psycho Pinball on the SEGA Mega Drive (Genesis)

If anyone is still looking, for the Bay Area there is the Pacific Pinball Museum in Alameda and Playland Not At The Beach in El Cerrito. Both places have 30 to 40 machines on rotation. Enjoy!

I wish you guys would play Zen Pinball 2.

I remember the Star Trek TNG game even though I was like 5 when I first played it

Isn't Zen Pinball just Pinball FX under a different name?

They had the Star Trek one down at the Emerald City Comicon, I was going to play it, but didn't.

SAY NO TO DRUGS

Jeff http://silverballmuseum.com/. This is a great spot filled with old pinball machines from the past.

This game absolutely rocks. Always loved pinball, but always lived in the sticks where there was no pinball arcade or even single machines anywhere nearby. And when you can only play 5 games on any random table, you have no idea what the hell is going on.

Now I know the rules of the table for Arabian Knight and Medieval Madness and have been surfing around IPDB, Pinball.org, Pinside.com, etc. Come to find out that 90 min north of where I am in Eastern Mass, there is a Pinball place in Pelham NH with 93 tables. Cannot wait to make a trip up there and play these tables for real.

Awesome game. Seriously.

Just so everyone knows...Pinball Arcade on the iPad now has iCade support...and its damn good !!!!

I wanted to share with both Brad and Jeff that you guys are in luck for a local place to play some great pinball. Check out The Pacific Pinball Museum (http://pacificpinball.org/) it's in Alameda and worth the short drive for anyone in the bay area to play some historic tables.

They even have some of the original gambling pinball machines, which are much different than those of your modern day tables. As well they have rooms dedicated to the specific type of machines and corresponding jukeboxes. Cause who doesn't want to listen to Foreigners Jukebox Hero whilst playing Williams Hyperball.

CAX and the Expo are great to see rare tables and prototypes. But this place is always there and it's supported purely by the admission price. It may seem a high entry cost, but all of the machines are well taken care of and are on free play. So if you have an afternoon to commit to playing some tables, you can't go wrong.

Now as per PInball Arcade, its a fantastic platform with near perfect emulation of some of the best tables pinball has to offer. I wouldn't say it's perfect cause unfortunately lag can be an issue, but they have done amazing work.

I'd encourage players to try out Circus Voltaire if you haven't already. Its a rather complex table, that I think gets over looked too much.

As per the Kickstarter rewards issues. As a backer of both TZ and TNG I'm pissed cause the platform I wanted my tables on are the 360. The issues they are having due to Microsoft's policies require them to not only clear up their issues with Crave, but also require them to find another publisher to even put new content up. It's been a long rough road, the only positive is that I can purchase the tables on other platforms I own currently.

Jeff: You should contact Support@PinballArcade.com about your TZ table if they don't get it fixed then follow up with their other team that seems to be heavily involved with the backer stuff PinballArcadeStarTrekCodes@gmail.com

I personally much prefer the zen pinball physics. The ball even has real spin and behaves naturally. I really don't understand Jeff's point of view. Maybe people without real pinball experience would prefer this, but for my taste it is much to floaty. The ball in zen pinball is quicker and feels weightier. Very strange. Real tables are nice of course...

I haven't played an actual pinball machine in 10 years. I've been thinking about buying one tho.

That's a lot of balls.

I really enjoyed the pinball arcade PS2 and Wii Williams Arcade Collection, but don't really like this newer stuff in the demo i'd played. Maybe it's the latency in the controllers or something, but I found it just a smidge slow and it really gave me a weird sense of timing, coming off of a snappier Zen Pinball series. The .002 reaction difference to me makes the choice to not want to play these more powerful than experiencing the nostalgia value of the tables.

Anyone else notice a timing difference between the two?

I got some tables on my Nexus 7. Pretty great pinball game.

Most of the conversations in this one are EXACTLY the same as the conversations in the original Pinball Arcade quick look.