ttop logo reviews logo

Index
Reviews
News
Store
Files
Rulesheets
Hiscores
History
Msgboard
Club
Links
Contact

Roll 'M Up Developer: Lost Boys
Publisher: Dommelsch Bier
grade

Reviewed: 1997 

- The pinball

This a commercial thing that Dommelsch Bier is having (1997). You buy 24 bottles of their beer and you will get to buy their pinball for 2.50 dutch guilders (1.25 US$) . Anyway, this is is pretty cool pinball!! I definitively think it is worth $1.25 (if you drink beer I don't think you will mind that part either ;) ).


- The Tables

Roll 'M Up

The table view is a lot like the one in Full Tilt!. You see the table in a 3d view. The table takes up a little more than half the screen and is placed to the left of it. To the right you find a big score counter and the dmd. The dmd is not really a dot matrix display, what it displays is more of pretty pictures with simple text. There is no choices between resolutions or so, you simply have to live with what you get, which is good enough in this pinball.

The sound isn't anything special. The music that is played is pretty cool in the beginning, it works rather good with the table, but I got a little tiered of it later on. But I don't have that high demands on the pinball as I have about pinballs distributed in the more common way, this is after all a commercial product (err, not a commercial pinball), and a damn good one!

The table layout of Roll 'M Up is pretty good. At the bottom you find the flippers (how unusual), above the left flipper you will find a ramp. This ramp is supposed to simulate a piano, it consist of piano keys. At the top of the ramp which isn't very long is some beercans.
Close to the right of the piano ramp is yet another ramp, this one will take you to the upper half of the pinball or just send you into a loop back to the left flipper.
Above the right flipper is a half circular field in the right wall. The halfcircle is open to the middle of the table and you can pretty easily flip the ball inside it with the left flipper. The walls of the half circle is lined with beercans. Hitting a beercan will result in the same that happens when you hit a drop target. Having hit all beercans results in a lamp is lighten and all beercans raised. Drop down them all a couple of times and you will get a Fireball!!
Above the field is another ramp that when entered will end up forcing the ball to take a very strange path. It will leave the ramp at the top, hit a beer capsule (I think it is one) bounce on it and into something that might be a beer brewer, the beer brewer will drop the ball out on the top of the table.
The top of the table consist of some bumpers, a blow dryer and some more beercans.

The table theme is pretty simple ones you get into it, but it is kind a fun. When starting you are given a special object on the dmd. When this object is accomplished you will be told the next. The first is to hit the piano, not just hit it but go the ramp all the way up and hit the beercans at the top. Oh, if you do this within a special time (when launching the ball a blue line appears beneath the dmd and gets shorter all the time) you get a little bonus. Then you go on to hit some beercans, hit the trampoline, use the blow dryer to keep the ball up and some other thing. Anyway, having accomplished all the objects you reach Dommelsch!, which is the wiz mode of the table. Here every target scores 1 Dommelsch (the counter resets to only count in Dommelsch, when the wiz mode is over the regular counter will be returned). When you look at the hiscore list you will see regular score listed and Dommelsch score listed.

All in all this table theme is influence a lot by beer (naturally) and has a layout that works well with the theme, so I really think you will sit with it a while (at least I wanted to return to it until I had reached the Dommelsch!, and well it is still kind a fun after that, it has some replay value ). The pinball might remind you a lot of for example Full Tilt! (the layout / 3d view of the table is rather similar), but the feeling is not the same and the theme if yet good a bit simple and short. But the pinball still has a special something in it that at least makes me like it. So I really don't want to complain that much on the table layout or theme.


- The Feeling

The feeling is, well... it is not in the class of Full Tilt! which is a pinball that at least to the look reminds me of this one. The feeling is a bit simple, aiming and hitting a ramp isn't the easiest. Catching the ball and the launching it away correctly is hard, you can hit simpler targets but if you try to do more neat things it will get hard. The table is also tiled somewhat strange, or is it just the flippers, when you raise the flippers I feel the raise to much (feels like they will almost touch the slingshots). This also leads to the facts that the ball often bounces on the slingshots when you try to catch it. Well, it probably sounds confusing, but to put it simple working with the flippers isn't the most realistic part of the pinball. The ball moves quite good and the fireball you can get is just plain cool, think it is supposed to resemble some kind of powerball (those rubber balls that move very fast in real pinballs).

So the ball moves ok and rather smooth, the flippers are possible to use and the ball therefore rather controllable (but not near very controllable). So the feeling reaches the ok grade for feeling. But it is in no way technically advanced, it is just ok. Playing the pinball is still fun!!


- The Whole

If you are allowed to drink beer and have the few dollars needed to buy this pinball I really think you should! It is sort of fun, it is not that hard and, well... it has some replay value that really helps the grade. I wouldn't pay the normal price new pinballs that hit the market usually cost (40-50$), but I definitively think it is worth the beer (not that I drink beer) and the few dollars it costs. But I guess it will be hard to get hold of a copy of this pinball if you don't live anywhere near where they sell the beer. Think the commercial ends in a few years (counted from 1997) and that it then will be legal to have it up for download!


system requirements

Platform: PC
Operating System: Windows 95 (possibly also Windows 3.1)

Also available for: -


Screenshots:
  • Roll 'M Up
    ttop