Be Excellent To Each Other

Had a quick dabble with the Android version on my tablet, and while my cheapo Tablo isn't really up to running it full speed, it's whetted my appetite enough to get the XBLA version when it's released.

I'm pretty sure if you buy the first one you can download and play the other tables in 'demo' mode which restricts you to a 'medium' score point - it does mean you can get a quick feel of the overall tables - of the 4 thats on there Theater of Magic is wonderful and worth the cost of the game as a whole (i bought 'all' tables which i think was about £6 which although a lot for an IOS game was more done to encourage them to do more)

Would we expect a 4th April release to mean 'on there from midnight tonight' or am I just better off waiting until I get home from work tomorrow?

XBLAH games usually go up at around 10-11 in the morning, mate.

In that case I won't wait up

Cheers for the info YOG

I'm quite looking forward to having something to play on ye olde 360 again.

I bought this. Four tables by default. It's pretty good! Does anyone know if they have any plans to do The Addams Family as DLC?

There are loooooads of good tables being released as DLC, so it could well be one of them! I'll be buying this tomorrow. In the demo, the ball physics seemed less weighty and realistic than Pinball FX 2's, but it still played really well. It seems we still haven't reached the point at which we're playing video pinball, rather than a videogame with some pinball principles chucked in.

Ed: oh, hey, I can buy it today!

Naturally, MrC and Trousers are already way beyond my leaderboard capabilities. On day fucking one. Good luck!

I'll tell you one thing it does a lot better than Pinball FX - the instructions for the tables. You go through a series of written instructions and the camera pans (with helpful arrows) to the bits of the table that it's talking about. And they've got the authenticity down to a tee. The sound effects on the Black Hole table are bloody great. Tough table that, though.

FX2 has one of those for every table, too, but they're buried in the menus unintuitively, and really badly written!

I knew it had them, but I didn't realise they took you around the table! Ah well, 0-0. They're both good!

Its often mentioned and its one they are interested in but its a very difficult table to get all the various rights for (artists images for the top glass / movie rights / etc etc) although its one of the tables i'd love to see i would expect a very big announcement if they managed to pull it off.

Look at one of my posts earlier in the thread for confirmed tables so far.



The engine looks pretty much the same as the Williams Pinball collection although some of the tables do have a few enhancements - i really would rather it gave you the slow scroll up a high res image of the table for the attract mode instead of its single image of the whole cab.

And as previously mentioned I much prefer tables which are at least based on real life ones rather than the imagined ones from Pinball FX



I played a few games last night - MrC is waay out in front but on every other table i'm pretty much neck and neck with Trousers so looking forward to having a few chances for leaderboard challenges



Emulated sound so I'd expect them to be 'perfect'

Overall TOM is still an amazing table , Arabian nights is better than the version in Williams Pinball but I think most people are not going to see that much of a difference , Ripleys is an odd table which i still need to work out what to aim for but it plays better on here than on the Ipad (the perspective for the different levels seems easier to track on here) , and Black Hole is a basic table but well implemented - worth 800 points and we'll just need to wait and see how well they can pull off their plans for DLC

Oh, 1-0 to this game for sure!

Theatre of Magic seems ace. Never played this one!

Ah, that's quite a list of possible tables! Excited! Interested to see how much they charge for them.

Well I would be playing this but Microsoft appear to have decided that they don't like any of my credit cards, or even allow the card that is already linked to my Paypal account.

So, erm, bit stuck really.

(I'd allowed my XBL account to lapse to the state where it didn't have any valid payment options on it, hence had to try to add one, whatever I feed it I'm simply met with 'Please enter a valid credit card number'.)

So it works if I enter the EXACT SAME DETAILS through the 360 itself as I was trying on the MyXBox website. (I do so love filling in forms using a fucking gamepad.)

Fucking thing.

Anyway, downloading now.

Have had a reasonable play of three of the four tables now (the Ripley's one doesn't overly appeal to me as I've never played a real one but I'll have a bash at it anyway in due course).

1) The physics and table model wipes the floor with Pinball FX2. The table slope is reasonable and the ball behaves much more realistically as a result, certainly I felt massively more in control of what was going on than I ever did with PFX2. Also note the gap between the flippers is like it is on a real table too. PFX2 compensated for the insane table slope and ridiculous running speed by reducing the gap between the flippers to a tiny degree.

2) REAL TABLES! Huzzah! They look fab, all the music and sound and DMD animations are spot on. Wicked.

3) It's ace!

Roll on the DLC, I can see myself spending a fair wedge of cash getting a decent collection of tables for this game.

First DLC video. Bride of Pinbot and Medieval Madness!

Here's all the announced (real) tables in action:

Monster Bash
Cirqus Voltaire
Creature From the Black Lagoon
Attack from Mars
The Machine: Bride of Pinbot

I'd much rather they stuck to tables which are not already out (Medieval Madness is in Williams collection) - but if it speeds things up then great and i'll buy every one of the tables they have announced.

This is one where I wonder if a season pass would work out better for them - I'd happily stick my money down now for what they have coming out rather than pay 200 points every month or so for the new tables

OOHHHHH brilliant selection!

Monster Bash - awesome.
Cirqus Voltaire - really good.
Creature From The Black Lagoon - classic.
Attack From Mars - really good.
Bride Of Pinbot - awesome.

BRING ON THE DLC!

When is it out? WHEN WHEN WHEN.

Sorry for caps innit.

Holy shit!

This could turn out to be a brilliant pinball collection if they keep the quality up and keep the DLC coming.

As much as I've loved Visual Pinball over the years, the recreations were always limited by the software, plus the fact it was never really designed as an emulation tool so had the VPINMAME integration which was a bit of a faff.

Arabian Nights is a case in point, the genie's lamp thing in Visual Pinball was a real botch job (as best as could be implemented, it was simply constrained by the tools available), but on Pinball Arcade it works perfectly.

I just hope they get the licensing sorted out for some of the big names, off the top of my head:

Twilight Zone
ST:TNG
Addam's Family
Demolition Man
Indiana Jones
Tommy
Star Wars

And there are loads more.

Only played the Believe it or Not table and it's good stuff so far. It'd be nice to have the nearest friend high score visible while you're playing or notification when you pass someone, but not a big deal.

You like that? I think 90% of my games end because I get nervous when that window pops up!

The whole interface here is very 'last gen', though...

Well, found this all a bit dull to be honest, compared with the funness that is Pinball FX2.

It looks rather poor in comparison, too. I care not if a table's 'realistic' or not - the other game has that ace Roman table, and the Merlin one, and Spiderman, and Wolverine... and so on.

Then again it has been out for longer, so this new one needs more tables I suppose.

PFX2 isn't a pinball game though, it's a video game using a sort of 'pinball format' if you will. And I don't mean that PFX2 has stuff that would be impossible to recreate in a real pinball table, but the fundamental fact that it's just flat out WRONG as a pinball game.

Well okay, but, the realism thing doesn't interest me, you know? It's just about hammering the flippers anyway (I accept you will disagree here!), so for me, in that respect, the other game is better for being more fun.

My nerd circuits have overloaded!

Pinball is a game of strategy, skill, planning and of course luck.

The fact that PFX2 reduces it to 'hammering the flippers' says it all really

But why should it bother you that I prefer the other game?

I've explained my reasons as to why, so I don't see the problem.

What bothers me is that your avatar is making me crave Creme eggs.

Appropriate, for a tasty Easter treat!

Black Hole is a bastard. I can't even tell what I'm hitting to open the gate for re-entry, and half of the time I fail anyway.

How do you start Harem Multiball on the Arabian Knights table?

Its the only one i'm missing from the basic goals however there are two ways to do it

1) When you do not have tiger loops enabled the other light is harem , so send the ball round that loop 5 times to start the multiball
2) Hit the ball into the 'secret' entrance to the harem 3 times (the secret entrance is at the back of the genie figure)

Ace, thanks!

I've just played the demo of this and boy, is it different to Pinball FX.

It's proper pinball and I like it!

I absolutely love Black Hole. I feel like I'm in an arcade when I'm playing it. Neon carpet and everything.

I still love Pinball FX but the tables in Pinball Arcade are far superior and once the additional tables come out (ST:TNG - dribble) comes out then I can see Pinball FX being confined to the shelf for only the very occasional outing.

The biggest bonus for me is the games themselves don't last 20-25 minutes a go. Sometimes on Pinball FX you can actually get bored of playing when you're 8 balls in and grinding away trying to get within a few hundred million of MrC or Malc74. A good game on Pinball Arcade lasts nothing like that and you can still rack up a decent score. An exceptional game can last that long but it's such a rare thing that you embrace it when it happens rather than sigh.

This is yet another reason why PFX2 isn't a proper pinball game.

During the time I spent with it I had some pretty long games, and seemed to be doing pretty well, then when I finally lost all my balls I'd see Trousers and co were fifty gazillion points ahead of me, and I did think to myself 'How long were they fucking playing for?'

One has to remember that pinball was always a commercial enterprise, they weren't designed so that you could play for six years off a single 50p piece, but they were designed to reward the skilful player with extra balls and extra credits, (not that extra credits matter so much in free play), but these weren't dropped into your lap. It was also possible to get flat out unlucky sometimes, and watch a crucial last ball disappear down the sidelanes without you getting a single flipper on it, this was all part of what gave pinball its unique character.

Take that away (as PFX2 basically did) and TBH there's not much left of an actual PINBALL game. I'm not saying PFX2 is flat-out poor or that it can't be enjoyed as a video game, but it is a bad pinball game.

I bought this. I know bugger all about pinball, and sometimes get frustrated at a piece of bad luck (ejecting balls from features straight down the gap - aarrgghh!), but this is ace. Excellent fun, and even has tables of extreme simplicity (Black Hole). I've only had a couple of turns, and expect to see all my scores ground into dust, but I'm going to enjoy learning the secrets of various tables.

I'm learning to embrace sheer bad luck myself at the moment - no free 'shoot again' time here! If you launch your ball and it heads straight for the gutter, tough shit.

What's yer Gamertag, Yog?

Klatrymadon, mate. I think my friends list is at 100, but I'll have a comb through it and give someone the Spanish archer.

Funnily enough I sent out a friend request to Curiosity just this afternoon when his friend count was at 99.....talk about bad timing

There are plenty of people on my list who can be culled.

But still, stupid that the limit is STILL 100.

Very annoying because you see a name you dont quite recognize and think you might bump them and then later find out its someone you didnt want to lose :-(

Especially, considering it was one of the main reasons for turning off the original Xbox Live service.

The main reason given, that is. Man, I feel so disillusioned with corporations right now.

This is such a great 'I have 15 minutes spare' game.

Had a corking go on the Theatre of Magic last night while the wife was settling the child. Unfortunately for her I did better than expected and she had to sit and watch me play for a bit. Got three multiballs without losing a life, and maxed out all the regular goals on my first play on the table.

Was unconnected to Live though, so as to avoid notifications when watching telly from a memory stick.

Seems they had some issues with the Apple cert process for the new tables but they are out now on Android :



I assume IOS and XBLA to follow at some point.

And PS3 / Vita version should be out now.

You can turn off notifications during video playback in the settings.