The pinball industry began dying a slow death in 1996, when the first of the major manufacturer closed its doors. Pinball machines are large, require a lot of maintenance, and simply don't bring in as many quarters as an arcade machine or pool table occupying the same space.
Thankfully for pinball-enjoying gamers everywhere that don't want to plunk quarter after quarter in the movie theater game room or drop $4,000 for a table of their own, the quality of digital pinball has been steadily improving year after year.
But which ones to buy? IGN has sifted through the dozens of pinball titles on the App Store to give you the full scoop on which pinball games are the real deal, and which apps are imposters with funky ball physics.
There are currently two pinball apps that any self-respecting iPhone or iPad owner must have on their device: Pinball Arcade &
Zen Pinball. Both feature solid ball physics, several top-notch tables, and online leaderboards to see who among your friends is the true pinball wizard. Both apps also have fundamentally different approaches to the digital pinball market.
Pinball Arcade - FarSight Studios
FarSight Studios has been making digital pinball for nearly a decade, and Pinball Arcade is the culmination of that effort and experience. The app offers up painstakingly accurate digital recreations of real-world pinball tables originally manufactured by Williams, Bally, Stern and Gottlieb.
Pinball Arcade costs $0.99, and for that price gamers get full access to one free table, rotating monthly. Other tables can be individually purchased for $1.99 - $3.99. Right now six tables are available in total, although FarSight has announced its intention to support the app for years, eventually offering up the majority of the top 40 tables of all-time.
What makes Pinball Arcade a must-own is simple: the app offers up faithful recreations of
. Theater of Magic, Medieval Madness and Tales of the Arabian Nights are all universally loved for good reason. They are incredibly complex, with intricate requirements for "progressing" through each table's various rules and stages. They also flow incredibly well, allowing casual fans to have fun hitting ramps and activating accidental multiballs.
If you sit down for a lengthy session with any of these tables to slowly ferret out its secrets and intricacies and then go back to a pinball machine of a lesser design, the difference will be obvious.
Paying $2.99 or more for a single digital pinball table may seem like a lot in an App Store economy where incredible values can be had for $0.99, but these pinball experiences are worth the price.
Zen Pinball - Zen Studios
Zen Pinball is the other pillar at the top tier of portable pinball bliss. Unlike FarSight, Zen Studios is producing a collection of brand-new, digital-only tables. This allows Zen's tables to include features that simply aren't possible when slavishly recreating real world pinball experiences.
Zen Pinball is available as a free download, and includes Sorcerer's Lair directly out of the box. Five more machines are available for purchase – three licensed Marvel tables for $1.99, and two original tables for $0.99, making Zen Pinball marginally more affordable than Pinball Arcade.
Zen's original designs are both a blessing and a curse. In terms of pure quality and fun factor they simply can't go toe-to-toe with Pinball Arcade's best-of-all-time collection. But Zen Studio's original tables Epic Quest and Sorcerer's Lair show that digital-only tables have a lot of potential.
Sorcerer's Lair features several creative pinball mini games. At specific times the player's ball will be transported to a special mini-table to squish spiders or complete another simple objective. The newer Epic Quest is even more elaborate. As players progress they fight monsters and outfit an adventurer, RPG style. There's even pieces of purple epic loot to collect. Hopefully Zen has more tricks up its sleeve to further increase the complexity of their pinball offerings, while still keeping a solid foundation of ramps, bumpers and flippers.
Rescued the princess in Tales of the Arabian Nights? Defeated the entire cadre of enemies in Epic Quest? There's even more quality pinball to be had on iOS. The titles below might not be quite as polished as Pinball Arcade or Zen Pinball, but they're also no slouches either, and offer up more hours silver ball-slinging fun.
Pinball HD Collection
Pinball HD from Russian studio Gameprom ruled the iOS pinball roost when it was originally released over two years ago. The tables aren't quite as complex and don't flow quite as smoothly as the best of the best, but Pinball HD still has a lot to like. The only reason this collection isn't in the must-own pile is because it got muscled out by the near-perfect efforts from Zen and Farsight. The free download includes one table, with nine more available for $0.99 - $2.99. The highlights from the purchasable tables include The Deep and Da Vinci Pinball.
Note: Gameprom's tables that have been collected in its Pinball HD Collection are also available for individual purchase. Instead of cluttering up your iDevice by nabbing the indivual apps, buy them via In-App Purchase from Gameprom's Pinball Collection app linked above.
Frogger Pinball is not to be ignored. Konami's "pinball adventure" is sure to make pinball purists roll their eyes, but the title offers up a huge amount of content including a story mode, several unique stages, boss battles, power-ups and more. The game was developed by Fuse Games, makers of the excellent 2005 DS pinball release Metroid Prime Pinball.
Sonic Spinball isn't a very good pinball experience in any objective sense, but for $0.99 the title is an excellent nostalgia-trip for 20 and 30-something gamers. The title was originally released for the Genesis in 1993, only to resurface on the App Store in 2010.
Can't get enough? Fill your pinball app folder with some of these off-the-wall choices:
Pinball Destruction
Destroy elements from the pinball table itself to progress. It's oddly compelling!
Undead Attack! Pinball
Assault roving zombies and buy power-ups in this gate defense/pinball hybrid.
At one point these titles may have been worth considering, or may get hyped up for other reasons, but they can safely be skipped in favor of the higher quality options outlined above.
Pinball Dreaming / Pinball Dreams HD
Pinball Dreams hit the Amiga way back in 1992, making it one of the very first digital pinball sims. Deveoper
Cowboy Rodeo initially released Pinball Dreaming, a faithful iOS port of four classic tables. Later, Pinball Dreams HD offered up remade versions of the original Amiga tables. Pinball Dreams isn't offensively bad or low quality – the pinball gameplay just feels dated and clunky compared to more modern efforts. The title doesn't have the Sonic the Hedgehog nostalgia to fall back on, to boot.
Ice Road Pinball
Ice Road Pinball pops up across the net as a pinball release gamers should consider, but this is largely because developer Matmi was one of the first out the door with an original iPhone pinball game, first releasing Ice Road Pinball in 2009. The title has long since been outclassed by better releases. Matmi's pinball follow-up Multiball Pinball is better, and is worth a look for gamers that just can't get enough pinball on-the-go. But it is still far from being one of the greats.
ESPN Pinball
ESPN Pinball is a bit of an oddity. It contains three sports-themed tables and is surprisingly feature-rich, but it simply doesn't play very well.
Pinball Tristan
Lots of gamers have fond memories of Pinball Tristan from the 90s, but the hard truth is that the game simply isn't that good. Especially in the face of better nostalgic options. If you enjoyed Tristan 20 years ago this is a solid port to relive those memories, but gamers looking for excellent mobile pinball can safely skip it.
Retro Pinball
Epic Pinball (retitled Retro Pinball for its iOS port) was originally published in 1993 by Epic. Yes, Epic. Small world! Like many of the other retro titles now on the App Store, Retro Pinball is best enjoyed as an old school diversion rather than a genuine representation of what digital pinball can now do.
Lesser Indie Efforts
There are literally dozens of other individual digital pinball tables on sale from indie sources – Hyperspace Pinball, Dino Madness Pinball, Pinball Massacre… the list goes on and on. All can safely be ignored in favor of the better-designed and more full-featured tables from larger studios.
Source : http://wireless.ign.com/articles/122/1224463p1.html
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