3D Pinball Space Cadet!
I've heard from many people of a certain age that this was the first pinball game they ever played,
or even their first computer game, period.
And it's really no wonder;
Space Cadet appeared on over a billion computers
due to its inclusion in just about every version of Windows XP,
as well as Windows ME, 2000, NT 4.0 and the Plus! companion for Windows 95.
But what if I told you this was only a demo?
That the Space Cadet you know and love is likely the inferior version,
and THIS is the full Space Cadet experience?
Not only that, but there were other tables in the same vein available alongside Space Cadet!
It's true!
And the first clue to this is hidden in plain sight at the bottom of the table!
You see those two company names?
They're in dark red against a black backdrop making them harder to see,
but if you look in the About section in the Help menu,
it mentions Space Cadet was made for Microsoft by Maxis.
Which is technically true, but it is not the entire story.
Space Cadet's origins lay in 1994 at Texas-based developer Cinematronics LLC,
a newly formed studio of independently contracted programmers and artists.
One of their projects was a prototype known as "Malestrom",
a pinball game that featured pre-rendered graphics that scaled at a tilting angle,
giving it a believable 3D look without taxing the hardware much.
This caught the attention of Maxis,
who, at the time, was known for games like SimCity and SimLife,
and wanted to expand their horizions beyond their more cerebral simulations.
Enter Full Tilt! Pinball, (Also known as "Pinball 95" in Europe!)
developed by Cinematronics and published by Maxis in October of 1995
for Windows and Macintosh computers!
This arrived less than two months after Windows 95 launched,
and looking at this box, you'll note that they mention Space Cadet from the Windows 95 Plus! companion.
So yes, technically, 3D Pinball Space Cadet was developed for Microsoft,
but it was due to Maxis picking it up and licensing parts of it to them.
Maxis then released the full version of Space Cadet alongside two more tables,
with the idea of capitalizing on it's inclusion in Microsoft products.
The problem was that while plenty of people saw Space Cadet,
relatively few realized it was a demo for a complete package of pinball tables!
And part of this was because Microsoft's version obscured this information somewhat;
making the company names harder to see on the table, and...
...only including a phone number,
with some vagueness that kinda implied there was something more, but... not really?
And the later versions didn't even include this phone number to call at all,
which made it seem more like a stand-alone table.
...But anyway,
the full version came on this purple-clad CD-ROM,
alongside a jewel-case manual with gameplay tips, troubleshooing info,
and even a brief history of pinball!
Full Tilt! Pinball begins with an animated intro video,
revealing practically nothing,
except that somebody probably had a copy of 3D Studio 4 they were excited to use.
After this, you're greeted with a screen letting you select one of it's trio of pinball tables.
Let's start with the legendary Space Cadet!
[futuristic pitch-raising hum/thruster/ machine bootup/warmup sound]
[low ringing, small clunk of the ball]
(ecstatically) Ahhh... Man, that sound alone is some prime nostalgia!
As for what's different in the full version of Space Cadet here,
the first thing you'll notice is the new spaceship image on the right,
and an altered table design on the left.
The logos at the bottom are bright yellow now,
the overall look and color scheme is a bit more vibrant,
and there are minor changes to the gameplay itself;
like the inclusion of multiball play, instead of a simple ball save.
It also includes some additonal background music,
along with the ability to play in fullscreen in higher resolutions,
up to 1024 x 768, which looks quite impressive on a nice, big CRT display!
Alright! So, let's move on and talk about the gameplay in general,
and show the other two tables while we're at it!
Skullduggery is a pirate-themed table with all the pop culture tropes you can imagine,
filled with buried treasure, cannons, talking parrots and an insatiable quest for booty –
– and then you've got Dragon's Keep, which is your classic medieval fantasy-style table,
where the goal is to complete various quests, gain weapons and armor,
and slay the dragon while probably getting drunk on mead!
Holding down Space pulls back the plunger,
Z and Forward Slash (/) activate the flippers, [NOTE: This (default) key setup is on an American keyboard]
and you've got a few more keys for nudging the table up, left and right.
And while you can remap these,
it's always bothered me that this is one of those pinball games that treated both Shift keys as the same key.
Probably due to my obsession with Epic Pinball,
I prefer having Left and Right Shift activate the flippers,
and anything else just seems wrong!
Of course, if you purchased the Thrustmaster Wizard Pinball Controller,
which featured Full Tilt! Pinball as a pack-in game,
and I've previously covered on LGR,
you don't have to bother with pressing keyboard keys at all!
You can even play DOOM with it if you're crazy enough!
I don't recommend it, but you can!
Still, the keyboard control limitations are a minor complaint,
because the pinball simulation in Full Tilt! Pinball itself is...
...Well, to be honest, it's not great nowadays,
but in 1995, this was pretty awesome stuff!
It's definitely better than some of the Windows pinball competition it had,
like Sierra's "3D Ultra Pinball",
which had unpredictable physics and weird graphical issues...
But for the most part, Full Tilt! Pinball is the superior experience,
including skillshots using the plunger, and magnetic hazards here and there.
And unlike several other PC pinball games,
it doesn't really delve into the realm of impossible physics.
These tables, more or less, hold to what could be done in reality.
Still, it's only got three tables,
and so, the experience grows old pretty quickly...
Because, for me at least, the physics aren't as polished or predictable as they should be
to... really wanna make me spend the time to master each of them.
For that matter, this particular style of PC pinball hasn't aged very well, in my opinion,
largely due to the sometimes wonky physics, and... how freakin' small the table is.
Yes, Full Tilt! Pinball is an improvement on the free version of Space Cadet, but...
...it's not really groundbreaking in any way, at least not anymore.
And yet, that doesn't really matter;
*I* still like it, and there's plenty of people that still do –
– I mean, to this day,
it remains one of the most requested programs that people want included in Windows again,
since it was excluded from Windows Vista and forward.
Now, chances of that happening officially are pretty slim, though,
due to apparently crappily documented source code,
and a collision detection bug that Microsoft said wasn't worth the time to fix...
But hey; if you've got the old files, it can still be played on a modern system quite well!
Whether it's just 3D Pinball Space Cadet,
or the complete Full Tilt! Pinball experience,
this is one of those games that's worth occasionally going back to,
if only to revisit a time when ANY kind of pinball on Windows was something magical!
Oh, hey! You're still here!
Did you know that there's a Full Tilt! Pinball 2 as well?
It's a pretty different style of game, but it's still worth taking a look at,
and I plan to do so sometime in the future,
so subscribe if you'd like, or check back every Monday and Friday for more videos here!
You can also click on some of these,
which are related videos of pinball stuff that I covered.
And as always, thank you very much for watching LGR!