PINBALL FANTASIES by 21st Century Entertainment - £32.99
CD32 Game Review
by Simon Plumbe
If you were asked what the most popular arcade game of all time is, many of those of you who are under 20 would immediately shout "Street Fighter" or "Mortal Combat". Anyone approaching their 30's would probably think right back to the beginning of the games industry as we commonly know it and yell, "Space Invaders". Sad isn't it! Well, in reality, it's none of these and as you can probably guess, it has to be the time old favourite, pinball, in it's many guises and variants we've seen over the years, I can guarantee that you can't walk into any arcade without finding a pinball machine or two and that you'll be able to do so for many decades to come.
However, when it comes to home versions, pinball on the Amiga has been sadly lacking and what few games there have been have been lacking in the playability and realism of their arcade counterparts. Until Pinball Dreams came along, that is.
One of the problems encountered with pinball games in the past is that the ball movement has been, to put it bluntly, artificial. I have never seen, and probably never will see balls that bounce off objects at the same angle they hit it - it's just not physics! Whenever you play a real pinball machine, you know that the ball isn't going to travel in a straight line and that's what any home version must be like. Fortunately, Digital Illusions managed to come up with the goods and offered us two superbly realistic games with a selection of tables to boot!
Each of the four tables is larger than the screen in size and the screen scrolls quite rapidly, following the ball. It's quite disorientating at first, but you soon get used to it, the same way you quickly adjust to your eyes following the ball when playing a real pinball machine.
If you haven't seen the original, there are four themed tables to choose from - Partyland (a typically jolly theme park!), Billion Dollar Game Show, Speed Devils and Stones And Bones (the obligatory horror table). Each is accompanied by some wonderfully atmospheric music and the graphics are superb. Not all of the tables manage to capture the atmosphere of a real table (and Billion Dollar Game Show seems to be a little on the bland side) but the stunningly chilling Stones And Bones more than makes up for this.
As you are probably aware, as with most of the first batch of CD32 releases, this is a port from the original Amiga version with a few enhancements. First, the original Amiga version had 32 colour graphics throughout and these have been completely re-worked in glorious 256 colours. All it really means is that the graphics are far smoother and crisper than in the original and the game looks far prettier! As well as this, the scrolling is much faster and smoother (thanks to the 68020) and the ball movement has been tweaked to be even more realistic than ever before.
The final icing on the cake is the sound. For the majority of the tunes, the original Amiga versions have been left intact, but the two alternative title tunes on the main menu screen have been replaced with two stunning new CD audio tracks. This is probably the big let-down of the game as I expected more in the sound department than just 9 minutes of new music, especially when Robocod had ALL of it's music re-written.
Enhancements aside, what makes Pinball Fantasies stand out from the crowd is that it is so damn addictive! To all intense purposes, this IS a real pinball machine in your home - the tables respond the way you expect them to, the adrenaline flows when trying to get your ball into that elusive passageway to get the jackpot -- what else can I say?!
This is a devilishly addictive game and it is certainly one of the most disruptive games I have ever encountered. No game in the Amiga's history has caused more delays in the world of magazine publishing. My own zine, The Final Frontier, has been delayed more than a couple of times for just "one more go"!
Unlike the majority of games I have played over the years, this is one of the few I genuinely find myself returning to time after time and it is certainly worth the investment. My only gripe (hence the rating) is that more use could have been made of the CD medium and surely we could have seen more than 2 CD audio tracks? Especially when we are being asked to pay £3 more than the original floppy version.
Also, another niggling point is the method of control. Instead of using the left and right buttons on the CD32 controller for left and right flippers, Digital Illusions have a ludicrously strange layout that takes a while to get used to. For the first several goes, I lost count of the number of lost balls I had to suffer due to pressing the wrong button. Would it have been too much to ask for the option to re-assign the control pad to suit the user?
Still, despite these minor gripes, the game is still a classic and worth a place in anyone's collection.
