Hello! This is RetroAhoy, and this - is Game Over.
A retrospective on some of the less-well known but still significant titles of the decades
past in gaming. In this episode we're taking a look at the
genesis of what might be the finest series of pinball simulators of the 1990s ... with
Pinball Dreams.
Released in 1992 on the Commodore Amiga by publishers 21st Century Entertainment, and
developed by the then-unknown studio Digital Illusions - Pinball Dreams was a foray into
the realistic digital Pinball Simulator scene. 21st Century Entertainment were founded in
1991, and had a few titles to their name prior to the release of Pinball Dreams - such as
Rubicon, Zarathrusta, and Nebulus 2. Digital Illusions can trace their routes to
Swedish DemoScene group 'The Silents', as the four founders - Ulf Mandorff, Olof Gustafsson,
Fredrik Liliegren and Andreas Axelsson - were all former members.
Pinball Dreams was their first commercial effort, and the slick graphics, titling and
music synchronisation reflects the demoscene influence.
Aside from the great presentation, the game was also notable for its commitment to the
real pinball experience - rather than some of the more fanciful features seen in other
pinball games, the intent with Pinball Dreams was to emulate a real table as closely as
possible. To this extent, the game was a success - the
tables were authentic enough, and the physics behind the game - while occasionally floaty
or mildly quirky - was solid. The game featured 4 tables total - each with
a significantly different theme and layout, and offered a substantial alteration to gameplay
in each instance. The first, Ignition, is a spaceship-themed
affair in which the ultimate goal is to travel the solar system by collecting 'FUEL', then
hitting the launch chute. It's a wide open table with few major features
- fast paced but predictable. Steel Wheel is the second, a wild-west American
Railroad themed table, in a suitably dusty brown hue.
Here you collect new carriages and raise your ticket prices to attain the higher scores
- running the repeatable ramps yields great score bonuses as a reward for accuracy here.
The third, Beat Box, simulates your rise to fame in the 90s music industry, as by hitting
targets and running ramps you can rise up the charts and embark on global tours.
Most of the action is towards the bottom of the table, requiring you to repeatedly run
routes in quick succession to unlock the higher rewards.
Nightmare, the final table - labelled as 'graveyard' on the backdrop, oddly enough - is a crypt-themed
table in which you advance the clock slowly to midnight, and strive for the jackpot and
'super jackpot', with a multi-million point yield sure to secure a spot on the high score
table. These four tables boast diverse gameplay elements,
with each offering a unique graphical style and reactive music soundtrack.
Although there had been many pinball games before, few had captured the essence of a
real table in the way that Digital Illusions were able to.
Through fusion of slick controls, smooth scrolling and good - realistic - table design, the pinball
experience was more authentic than most other digital simulators at the time.
More importantly than that, though - the game was actually fun!
Beyond the slick mechanics and presentation, the table design was such that achieving the
higher levels and top scores was no mean feat - but very satisfying when you were on a hot
streak. The addictive gameplay was bolstered by the
persistent high-scores, with your previous best efforts saved to disk as a future yardstick
to strive for. It's this combination of factors that made
Pinball Dreams a fitting tribute to what was a fading cultural phenomenom - with the advent
of more advanced graphics and the increased focus on home systems over the arcade, the
mechanical pinball machines of yesteryear were starting to fade from popular culture.
Pinball Dreams was generally praised by critics, with most scores in the high 80s, pushing
the 90 percent mark. The engine behind the game went on to some
good use - and the same year a sequel was released, in Pinball Fantasies.
This sequel offered a few technical improvements - taller tables, a third flipper on some,
and a more advanced matrix display for backboard animations.
1995 saw another sequel in Pinball Illusions - which introduced support for the more advanced
graphics architecture on the Amiga 1200 and on MS-DOS, and the inclusion of a 'multiball'
mode. 'True Pinball' would be the last pinball simulator
by the developers - developed for the PlayStation and Sega Saturn, it was essentially a 3D version
of Pinball Illusions, as it included the same 4 tables.
Some of the Digital Illusions developers would join Liquid Dezign, who went on to produce
the last great Amiga pinball game - Slam Tilt, also published by 21st Century.
Following the publication of Slam Tilt, 21st Century would see few subsequent successes
- little more than a few rehashed pinball games before the company finally closed its
doors in the year 2000. Their name, along with their griffon logotype,
will be remembered for Digital Illusion's pinball series - but with the slow death of
the Amiga, Digital Illusions were set to move onto greater pursuits.
In 2002 Digital Illusions Creative Entertainment - now branded as DICE - embarked upon a new
franchise, some distance away from their pinball games - with a military themed first person
shooter. Battlefield 1942 was the first in what was
to be a long-running series, published by Electronic Arts, or EA.
Boasting a great multiplayer experience, the game was a hit - and EA invested heavily in
DICE, buying 19% of their stock for majority ownership.
The series was followed by Battlefield 2 in 2005, Battlefield 2142 in 2006, And a series
of Bad Company Games developed from 2008 specifically for the consoles.
By this point, the studio was purchased wholesale by EA and became a permanent addition to their
stable, and have since been working on new IPs such as Mirrors Edge, and the continuation
of the familiar Battlefield series with the forthcoming Battlefield 3.
Pinball's heyday has long since passed, with the noisy, bulky, mechanical boxes edged out
in arcades by newer, more reliable, forms of digital entertainment.
With the shift away from the arcade in the 90s, home computers would prove a more fertile
ground for game developers, sounding the death knell for the coin-ops.
For those who missed the height of the pinball era, the chance to relive some of the simplistic
excitement of a steel ball, tilted plane and mechanical flippers was a welcome one - which
goes some way to explain the popularity of pinball games in the early 90s.
Pinball Dreams, then, is a homage to the old guard - a cultural echo of a fading treasure,
a memory of bustling arcades and pinball wizards of time gone by.
Join me next time, as we cover another entry in the history of gaming - as we explore the
roots of the shoot-em-up, with arcade title Galaxian.
Until then, farewell.