darkside

I wish I had the space and money to own some classic machines. Loved the pics.

Decker

Yeah, a collection like that would land me a divorce inside of five minutes, but it sure looks awesome to me. I've never seen a SMB pinball table. How does it play? Can you show any pictures of the playing area on that table?

dan30oly

http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/inde...lbumID=1660190
The above link is the easiest way for me to show off pics of my game room.
Let me know if it's not working for anyone.

I almost bought a Baby Pac at a seattle pinball expo a couple years back for $450, but it didn't play as awesome as I remembered, plus it does have the repair issues.

Tholly, that's a great room. I played SMB once at the seattle expo and it played okay.

dan30oly

klov.com is a tremendous resource for arcade games and some pinball.

tholly

I'm pretty sure I have a pic of the playing field of SMB. I really like how it plays. My wife, parents, and me have all spent a ton of time playing through the whole game.

Spiderbite

I just posted an ass load of pinball games for the Touch/iphone. I have played all the free and demo ones so far but haven't been too impressed. I will try to put some impressions down soon. If you know of the perfect pinball game for the Touch, post it. So far, I haven't played any that seem worth buying the full versions of and it kinda scares me away from the ones that don't have demos.

Edison

I got to play them just last night, someone had downloaded all 4 tables on the PSP Go. The Uncharted, and PAIN tables are pretty standard pinball type layouts. The Hot Shots Golf, and High Velocity Bowling have 'mini-games' built on the tables. HSG has sand traps, and hazards along the sides so you need to keep the ball in the center of the play area where there is a little island that represents the green. HVB has a ten pin bowling set up on the playfield, once you get the pin guard up you can knock over the pins for score.

The first two were fun to play, and HSG/HVB probably would be too if you learned the ins and outs of the mini-games. I've read a couple blog post and reviews that state there will be more tables added in the future, and there is a menu option built in to check for new tables.

darkside

I bought the Uncharted table and found it disappointing. Guess it is ok for $4, but it is pretty sad when compared to something like the Pinball Pulse game that came out on DSi for $5 or the Zen tables on XBLA and PSN.

Decker

I'm waiting for a PSN sale on those tables. It would seem like a no-brainer to bundle the four together and make it a more attractive price, like $10-$12. At $10 for the four, I'd probably bite. Thanks for the input.

BTW : When the hell will we get that Ninja Gaiden table for Zen Pinball? I read about that months ago.

Spiderbite

The complete versions of The Deep Pinball & Wild West Pinball for the Touch/iPhone are both free at the moment.

porieux

Pinball Hall Of Fame: The Williams Collection for Xbox 360 is great. Hope we get more like this!

Spiderbite

Pinball Fantasies and Pinball Dreams are both on sale this week for the Touch/iPhone for $5 and $4 respectively. That's a buck off the normal price of each.

Anyone played these? They each come with 4 different tables. Worth it or not?

darkside

I love both of these. The tables are from the Amiga so its not super accurate pinball, but I find them a lot of fun to play. The PSP version is a bit better since you don't have to touch the screen to use the flippers, but the iphone version works pretty well.

Spiderbite

I only see Pinball Fantasies listed on the PSN under the mini section (for 7 bucks). Am I overlooking Pinball Dreaming or does the PSP only have Pinball Fantasies available?

darkside

Dreaming is out for PSP in Europe, but not in the US yet. It should hit here soon. They said it takes longer to release them in the US because they have to pay for the ESRB rating and the approval takes time.

Decker

Just as I predicted, the bundle is $9.99 now. I picked it up this morning and played a little. It looks pretty nice and I'm looking forward to getting a better idea of how the games play with more practice. The Uncharted table, while pretty traditional, is pretty fun and I love those sound effects and music cues being used. It's pretty fun. The collection was too expensive, but now it's pretty nice.

I also noticed that they have the Gottleib Collection for download from the PSN store for $9.99. Is that game pretty good?

darkside

Dang. As soon as I buy one of the tables the bundle gets released.

As far as the Gottlieb one it is very good on PSP and well worth $10.

Spiderbite

Agreed. And this is one of the few times that you don't get hurt by downloading the PSN version instead of getting a cheaper UMD. This one is harder to find for cheap on the used market and they actually have it fairly priced for download which is rare for Sony.

Good to hear about the new bundle. I will definitely pick it up now. Is the bundle just for a limited time?

Decker

Ok, am I missing something? There HAS to be a way to nudge in Pinball Heroes, but I'm pressing every button and still haven't found it. There's no mention of control instructions in their very detailed instruction pages. Can anyone help?

Spiderbite

I never nudge but I did a couple of times after buying the bundle this afternoon after messing with the controls. It's odd but you have to hold one of the flipper buttons and X at the same time.

I really wish they had given the option of customizing the controls because I really prefer to play pinball on the psp with the left arrow being the left flipper and the O button being the right flipper. Why no custom control layouts???

The graphics are pretty good and the tables play more like old school tables. I prefer the bowling one and the golf one because the goals make them more fun to play. The Uncharted one that everyone was talking so highly about is a fucking bore and the PAIN table is just that...a pain.

I didn't try the "long view" but played it with the close-up view. It played fine and the ball didn't seem to get in front of the camera very often as that happens with a lot of other pinball games.

But why make the plunger so weak? And the flippers seem quite weak as well. The Hot Shots table seems like it over compensates for the weak flippers (especially on the left side) by pushing itself up the rail.

So 10 dollars for two decent tables and two slightly poor tables is not too bad. But they really aren't much better than some of the overrated Deep and Western tables on the Touch. They all suck if you compare them to the DS downloadable Ancients table. Use your 5 bucks for that one if you have to pick between the bunch.

Decker

Thank you for that. Why the hell did they come up with that scheme when most of the face buttons and all the directional buttons are unused? And how the hell was I supposed to know to press flipper + X to nudge anyhow? Was it somewhere in the instructions that I missed?

I quite like the Uncharted table. The goals are pretty easy to follow and I think it's just a cool table that thematically works well with the game. Pain does sort of suck. The HSG table is interesting. I think the funky ball movement is their intergration of the "wind", but I'm not sure yet.

alxreys

Coming to PSN this Week: ZEN Pinball Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 Table

It’s been a long time coming but here at ZEN Studios we’ve finally locked down this Thursday, January 14, as the official release date for the Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 table, the second expansion table for ZEN Pinball. Fans will be able to pick up the table on the PlayStation Store for only $2.49 USD and $1.99 EURO. And for those who can’t wait to check out the action, you’ll be happy to know that we’ve also included an exclusive sneak peek of the table with the trailer below.

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Decker

Ooohh. Nice. I will most certainly be buying that one. Probaly will buy the Gottleib Collection at the same time.

Decker

Well picked up the Ninja Gaiden table and tried it out just a bit. I don't know -- it's VERY busy. Kind of hard to figure out what's going on. They have these upper levels that you're supposed to jump to using the flippers but I haven't figured out exactly how to do that yet. Sometimes I'll find myself on that upper shelf by accident, but getting there on purpose isn't so easy for me. And jumping from ramp to ramp seems impossible. The Ninja animations shown in the clip above are really cool. Certainly worth the $2.49 price (how could it NOT be), but it's not one of my favorites yet. Then again, I've not played these games in a long time and not much, I'm probably missing out on a lot of the references on the table.

I also noticed that they've added an option to nudge the table with the sixaxis motion control (this may have been added a while ago, but I hadn't checked in a while. It certainly wasn't there when the game launched last year). I think it's actually less responsive than using the left thumbstick, but it's a nice option to have. Still can't use an analog stick to launch the ball though -- I'm so used to that from the PSP Pinball Heroes games that it's sort of a bummer to go back to a button press, it feels much less natural.

mhg83

Here are two tables from my virtual pinball machine:

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I really like it a lot. It was weird at first getting used to the screen, but eventually you forget that its a virtual pin table and feels like a real pinball machine. I'll upload a few more this week.