Calling all pinball fans!!!

[Masco73]

There was recently a discussion of the top 10 pinball machines. This both excited me and made me > mad. The reason why is because there are just not very many machines around any more. I have never played about 3 on that list of 10. I litterally need to drive 30 minutes to get to any machine(which I do on my days off).
Getting to the point now. Is there any console pinball games out there that can satisfy my pinball needs? I am mainly looking from 8 bit machines up to the dreamcast. Also PC titles if any.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!!

[kainemaxwell]

Offhand I can think of:

Pinball (NES)
Pinbot (NES)
Super Pinball: Behind the Mask (SNES)
Sonic Spinball (Genesis)
Crue Ball (Genesis)
Devil's Crush (TG-16)

Hope that's a good start!

[ghsqb]

Some fun ones I have and would recommend are:

NES- High Speed
SNES- Pinball Fantasies
PC-Adventure Pinball: Forgotten Island

Hope you can track these down, theyre alot of fun

[den68]

Austin Powers Pinball - PS1 actually that one kind of sucks.

or Kiss Pinball - PS1 eeek!

there are some good ones on PS1. Pro Pinball was really good. There was also Pro Pinball Big Race USA, Timeshock and Fantastic Journey.

[Arcade Antics]

Dragon's Fury (Genesis)
Dragon's Revenge (Genesis)
PINBALL OF THE DEAD (Gameboy Advance)

Pinball of the Dead is still in stores now and has recently dropped to $19.99. Go get it while you can, it's awesome, totally worthy of the series name.

[bargora]

I've got all four of the PSX Pro Pinball games, and they're all neat. The first one (titled, simply enough, "Pro Pinball") is the least sophisticated of the four. I would recommend Big Race USA the most. There is a lot of customizability built in to these games, including the option to alter the table physics to reflect a new, maintained, or worn down table.

[Britboy]

Last Gladiators pinball for the Saturn. Best one out there.

[thekeepr]

The Absolute best Pinball game for the PC has got to be Microsoft's Pinball Arcade...very realistic in approach and play, with 7 different tables spanning the history of Pinball. Wish they'd come out with a Vol. 2!!! The Keeper

[norkusa]

Big Race USA and Fantastic Journey from the Pro Pinball Series on PSX are 2 of my favorites. You can see the whole playfield at once and both have lots of fun mini-games. Also, both can be had for under $10 new. I thought Austin Powers Pinball was a sure thing with 2 different machines and it's $10 price tag, but it's REALLY awful. You can only see about 1/3 of the playfield at a time and the physics of the ball are totally unrealistic, which makes it almost impossible to rack up any real points in the game.

Pinbot and High Speed (NES) are great too. They playfields are almost exactlly the same as the real machines and the controll feels very natural. The only thing I don't like about these two is that blob that hangs out around your flippers sometimes during the game. If your ball gets anywhere near it, it will devoure it and loose your ball. This part of the game is real frustrating and I never understood why the hell they put it in the game in the fist place.

Other good pinball games to check out are Devils Crush (TG16/Mega Drive), Crue Ball (GEN), and if you think a Pinball RPG would be your thing, check out Pinball Quest for the NES.

[Gunstarhero]

I own and love the following video pinball games:

High Speed(nes)
Pinbot (nes)
Devil's Crush (tg16)
Alien Crush (tg16)
Pinball Fantasies(Jaguar)
Ruiner Pinball(Jaguar)

[Zaxxon]

MS Pinball Arcade is neat but it only has one good table in it which is Haunted House. It's worth it just for that table IMO. Haunted House is notorious for breaking down constantly so it's rare to find a real working version to play anyway. Big Race USA is neat because it's one of the very few PSX link cable games. I've never played it linked yet.

[IGotTheDot]

Video pinball can be fun, but comparing it to the real thing is like trying to compare Hogan's Alley and going Paintballing. Two different things all together.

Long Love Real Pinball!

[davidbrit2]

Go get Visual Pinball! It's made by Randy Davis. I think you can get it here: http://www.randydavis.net

I might be wrong about the address, since it's been about a year since I did anything major with it. It's basically a CAD program mixed with a pinball sim, meaning you can make any table that suits your fancy, and download hundreds of tables. It uses a VB script backend to allow easy programming of table objects, and even interfaces with PinMAME (you'll need a crazy fast computer to do that, though.) And yes, with this combination, you can even play Baby Pac Man, the table for which I created about a year ago. I'm not sure if anybody has tried updating the table since then. At last check, the lamp outputs for the PinMAME driver were a bit off, so I could never really get the lights to flash properly.

Anyway, get Visual Pinball. You won't be disappointed.

[josekortez]

Pinball of the Dead is worth buying a GBA for, even if you never played House of the/Typing of the Dead. I bought it for 9 bucks over the holiday. It's a really good diversion, trust me...

Also, the only pinball I'm aware of on the Dreamcast is found in the pinball stages in Sonic Adventure...

[Lady Jaye]

It's great to see that there are fans of Pinball of the Dead! I don't have it yet, but will certainly buy it, probably in April (no money to spend through February, and there's PhillyClassic in March).

[Masco73]

Thanks to all for the input. I can't believe the amount of pinball fans out there. I have already managed to track down from ebay adventure pinball-pc, Microsoft pinball-pc, and 2 of the psx pro pinball ones. Those seemed to be mentioned more than once here. All are under $10 each. These will keep me busy until I can afford a real machine someday.

Thanks Again everyone!!