Be Excellent To Each Other

Re-beat Zaphod on Funhouse and Cirqus Voltaire....it's just like Craster sarcastically said when he invaded the pinball thread the other week - I don't just have balls...I have FLIPPERS....well, it was something like that anyway

They do need to look at incorporating some of the scoreboard notifications from Zen Pinball into this

Am I still the king bitch on Monster Bash? Something tells me "lol, fuck no."

Assistant deputy regional king bitch

I've been playing quite a lot of the free table on the iOS release of late, and was wondering: what are the absolute best tables in Pinball Arcade to buy first?

It really depends if any of them have any meaning to you or if you've ever seen them in real life.

On iOS you should be able to download a demo of all the tables which gives you a 'score' limit (so you can have whole games if you dont hit that score)

I think for whats currently out Theater of Magic is still my favorite table

Tables for iOS (Taxi and Harley Davidson are not out yet but should be in the next few days)

Black Hole Gottlieb
Ripley's Believe It or Not! Stern
Tales of the Arabian Nights Williams
Theatre of Magic Bally
The Machine: Bride of Pin*Bot Williams
Medieval Madness Williams
Cirqus Voltaire Bally
FunHouse Williams
Gorgar Williams
Monster Bash Williams
Black Knight Williams
Creature from the Black Lagoon Bally
Harley-Davidson, 3rd Edition Stern (Originally Sega)
Taxi Williams

I'd say Theatre of Magic, Monster Bash and Medieval Magic would be good for starters, though if you get really hooked you'll end up buying them all in the end.

EDIT: That should have been Medieval Madness, of course, jeez I'm really losing it of late. Next thing I'll be recommending Magic Hole, Bride of Magicbot and Magic of Magic

I've only got the 4 basic ones on XBLA, but of those my favourites are Arabian Nights and Theatre of Magic.

Much better on XBLA than iOS in my experience, though that's only with an iPhone. iPad might be improved.

iPad is fine, although it's a pity the tables aren't high-res/Retina. I've enjoyed mucking about with the Arabian Nights 'free' table and don't have any real-life link to the others. Just keen to know which of them are good tables, so thanks for the recommendations. I'll try Theatre of Magic first, I think.

They're up to $60K with 21 says to go, I'm not really sure how Kickstarters tend to work, do they gather momentum or run out of steam?

It looks feasible they might make it......

They usually get a load of money day one and a load of money in the final hours.

At this stage, they look set to get about half their money. Bit of a shame they've made so little so far, but few sites have bothered reporting on it.

It's at times like this I wish I was an eccentric millionaire.

I'd just write them out a cheque for the full amount.

I'm sure i found a page before which gave expected totals for kickstarters and was suppose to be pretty accurate - give me a minute and i'll see if i can find it

** edit ** here it is - looks like at the moment they are trending to get about 50% of it

http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/179032 ... remastered







And the projection

Thanks zaphod

Doesn't look good for them making it though going off those projections

Can't help think that $400K was just too much of a big ask for a franchise that basically had its heyday about ten years ago, and that was a PC exclusive.

Mm. Mind you, I think they've not handled things terribly well. First, they're asking for too much money. Secondly, they were cagey about platform support and now seem to be desperately going WE WILL SUPPORT EVERYTHING, EVEN THE VIC-20. Thirdly—and this is the one that actually pissed me off—there's a $50 pledge to get the games on any platform. Fine, I think, and slap down $50. Now, there's a $35 pledge to get the games on any touch platform. They've since confirmed I can get the iPad versions for the $50 pledge, but, you know, hrng.

Despite all that, I really want these games on the iPad, so fingers crossed.

Yeah you're quite right, where they plucked $400K from I really don't know, perhaps Pat Lawlor is very expensive?

TBH I think it would have made far more sense to start off with a much more modest target to just do updates on the Pro Pinball series, and then if that worked out, have a go at the Pat Lawlor business.

The problem now is that they risk missing a chance at both of those things because they've combined them into one very ambitious kickstarter, and lest we forget that they'll be selling these products should they ever complete them.

The Pinball Arcade Kickstarters make more sense as the guys are being totally upfront about needing help with the licensing costs, but with the Pro Pinball series, they're saying they've already got all the licensing rights, so why not just do the updates anyway and sell them on their own merits?

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... d=95907686

Steam greenlight page to get Pinball Arcade on the PC

Have to say I'd like to have the PC version as well as the 360 version.

360 would still be version of choice for the online leaderboards, but at least if I had the PC version as well I could get a nice safe offline archived version of it within Steam on a PC that could never be killed off.

Trailer for Elvira and the Party Monsters



I much prefer Scared Stiff but this was still a fun table.

Never much liked the Elvira table in all honesty, tried to get into it with Visual Pinball but it just didn't click with me.

Scared Stiff, however, is a momentously superb table. This was one of the last real pinballs we had around here, as it happened both the local snooker club and an arcade in Douglas had one - and I played them both an awful lot. (One 50p credit was generally enough for me to play for as long as I wanted to )

Probably one of the easier real pinballs to clock, but still a decent depth of strategy to it. Very much looking forward to the Pinball Arcade release.

Just played through them all on the iPhone, and, erm, I think you might be right. Argh. Trying to figure out the three-pack savings stuff though. Would a straight price-list have been too much to ask for?

I'm coming at this as something of a novice. There's something I really like about pinball, but I'm not that great at it, nor do I have any nostalgic love for any particular tables. Anyway, Pinball Arcade is brilliant in the way it does demos, enabling you to play up to the high score before you buy anything, and that gives you a good go at each table. On iOS, you get Arabian Knights for free, and I also really enjoyed Ripley's Believe It or Not (nice layout, lots to do), Theatre of Magic (fast, fun), Bride of Pinbot (old-school but, again, I really like the layout), Medieval Madness (amusing audio, quite nice layout), Funhouse (although I found this really fucking difficult), and Monster Bash (really fluid and also amusing in how the story works).

I didn't really care for Black Hole (love the audio and general feel, but I don't like how it plays), Cirques Voltaire (just doesn't click), Gorgar (didn't really grab, although I now own it anyway, since it was an extra 50p when buying Monster Bash), Black Knight (I don't remember this at all!), and Creature from the Black Lagoon (found this a bit stomp your head into the ground).

Lots of great stuff here though, and I think the manner in which the testing has been designed is very smart. I'd have bought Theatre of Magic anyway, after what's been said in this thread, but in getting to fully play tables, really get into a game, and then get "OK, now buy it" when you're on a roll, that really encourages IAP. Compare that to Zen Pinball, which doesn't even show screen grabs of the other tables you can buy—madness. I wish FarSight Studios would sort out Retina issues on the new iPad though (either it's not Retina or there's an odd mix of assets) and rework the tedious, buggy front end. The app crashes far too often at that point but I've never had it crash in-game (as in, when playing a table).

The next step in the addiction, of course, is to get yourself a 360 and buy the tables all over again.....JOIN US etc etc

I think there's about as much chance of me buying a 360 as someone knocking on my door in the next five minutes and handing over a big bag of £50 notes that they've decided they "just don't want any more".

That unlikely, eh? But funnily enough, that's exactly how most of us on here financed our Xboxes - you really should answer the door more often.

So I've now bought all the tables. Hurrah!

The Pro Pinball Kickstarter is starting to look a bit desperate, I'm getting near daily updates from them about some trivial bit of news or other, and they haven't even topped $80K yet.

They should have been far more modest in their ambitions. $100K for a modern remake of the Pro Pinball series, and take it from there.

It's not going to happen, which is a real shame, given that I'd love to see a new Pat Lawlor table. In other news, Pinball Arcade addiction has now made all other iOS pinball tables feel and play like total shit.

Aye, that'll happen.

As much as I liked, for example, Pinball FX2 in its own way (on the 360 this is), I've long argued that it's a video game in 'pinball format' than an actual pinball game.

The big losers now are Real Pinball (all of their stuff), which feels stuff and computery, and Gameprom, whose samey design has really been exposed after playing Pinball Arcade. I'd quite like to try more Zen Pinball tables. They're resolutely digital, but they have some depth and imagination. But whereas PA on iOS lets you play until you hit a high score (which meant I got considerable time on Ripley's—I'm not good at that table), Zen doesn't even show you a pic of a table. They're mostly cheap tables, but I'm not buying before playing.

I like Wolverine and Fantastic Four on Zen, all the others leave me cold.

It's made Eurogamer but I think this one is past saving.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012- ... ickstarter

http://www.facebook.com/pinballarcade/p ... 2656475133



Never really liked No Good Gofers before but will at least give it a try

Anyone else having issues with the app on the iPhone? The app crashes when I try to swipe to the Black Lagoon table.

I've not had that problem but there is an update this morning so worth sticking that on to see if it fixes it

The update also brings table packs 5 + 6 to iOS so thats

Elvira and the Party Monsters
No Good Gophers
Harley Davidson
Taxi

However the servers are not working right so you can play them in freeplay mode right now but cant buy any of them (i assume it will be back up later)

They have also said pack 7 will be Elvira's Scared Stiff (a much better table than the Party Monsters and one of my favorite tables) and Big Shot which will be their first Electromechanical (I also think this would then be the first pack not to include something they have released before ?)

What year is big shot?

Looks ancient.

Too old.

IPDB says 1973.

The playfield makes it look very...... BORING. Like all fucking EMs.

I like it though.. I like the fact that they're pulling in tables from all over the place and it's important to preserve them.

I'm not entirely convinced when it comes to EMs though, for starters they're all fucking rubbish, on top of that there are fucking hundreds of them, and they're all preserved for real somewhere over in the USA anyway.

If Pinball Arcade start pairing up an EM with a decent modern table in their DLC packs, I could fall out with them very quickly.

That table actually looks really familiar so it may well be in one of their previous packs (so that would be the 'old' table for that release).

BTW the iOS stuff is working now so my tables have updated - think it was £2.49 and £2.99 for the two new packs - there are a number of the other tables which get updates as well so make sure you click on them to download the new ones while your near a wifi network.

Cheeky cunts, so to get Scared Stiff you have to buy Big Shot as well?

Not happy.

For Xbox yes , for iOS you can pick up individual tables.

The last time they put an old table with a new one like that was Gorgar and Monster Bash , Monster Bash by itself was £1.99 , both together was £2.49 so i dont really begrudge paying them 50p so that i can have the old table

That was pretty much my thinking in the end. I wasn't entirely keen on some tables, but for 50p, I thought sod it. In the end, I found some of them quite fun. Hoping the update fixes the crash problem on the iPhone. Currently downloading a MILLION FUCKING UPDATES, however. Bloody iOS 6 and sodding iPhone 5 release.

@Zaphod Big Shot was on the original Xbox/GameCube/PS2 release of Pinball Hall of Fame.
Not a terrible table by any means, but obviously lacks the complexity (and therefore the lifespan) of the newer tables.

Crash bug now appears to be fixed, but, man, they REALLY need to sort out the front end. I love this app, but swiping a billion times to get to a table is getting old now there are so many of them. A straightforward list would be lovely, at least as an option.

I recently revisited this on PS2. The whole game seems pretty terrible now - the balls are ten times more floaty and slow, which makes some of the tables feel like they're the size of a football pitch if you're not using a fixed, wide camera angle, and the flippers seem to send the ball anywhere they fancy, half the time. It's better looking in some ways, though. You can see the glass and the reflections in it from the surrounding room (which is a much more fleshed-out and plausible game room than the one you see in Pinball Arcade), and the effect is quite well carried off and gives the tables a greater feel of 'authenticity', etc. Maybe they dropped this stuff because they thought it was distracting or unnecessary or otherwise hindered playability, but it would have been good to have a few options for this sort of thing in PA, I think...

Updated my Nexus 7 last night and on Android this months updates are Elvira and No Good Gophers which was designed by Pat Lawler and is rather good.

No idea why they are releasing different tables on different formats.