Greetings, and welcome to LGR Oddware, where we take a look a hardware and software
that is odd, forgotten, obsolete, or all three.
And, well, today we've got something interesting.
In fact, it's the biggest piece of oddware that I've had so far.
[sigh] This is the Philips Virtual Pinball Set.
What have I gotten myself into?
Now, if you've watched Oddware before, you may recall that I covered this in the past:
the Thrustmaster Wizzard Pinball Controller.
And this was just, this is a far smaller device that does a very similar thing to the Philips Virtual Pinball Controller.
And this was just a little dealio that clipped onto the side of your keyboard or just, really, anything
that could stick it to, or even just thrust it around in the air, like a master.
Check out my full Oddware video for coverage of that thing.
But yes, this is not what we're talking about today.
Today we are talking about this monster:
the Philips Virtual Pinball Controller.
And yes, this is the same Philips brand that you might be familiar with for,
like, you know, electric shavers, and whatever else.
But they also made gaming stuff,
of course, mostly notably, the Philips CD-i.
And they did a whole lot of things for computers during the early to late '90s
and then just sorta dropped off the map as far as that kinda stuff goes.
Obviously, they're still around today, but they're no longer making niche devices like this.
And, this is about as niche of a device as you can imagine.
I mean, it really is made just for pinball games.
Much like the Thrustmaster Wizzard, but this one was more expensive and more involved.
In fact, as far as I can tell, it retailed for about $100 back when it launched
which was in late 1996, early 1997, depending on your location.
And this was mostly meant for the European marketplace.
And, of course, Philips, being a Dutch company, that only makes sense.
It did see some limited release here in the U.S.
In fact, this one I found from a guy in California,
but these are actually very hard to find, especially in the box.
In fact, this is the only one that I had ever seen show up on eBay,
so I was willing to pay about 50 bucks for it.
But I've seen them actually go for much more,
but there are also far, far better things on the market nowadays.
The actual device itself is pretty straightforward. Where, you know, you got this
*really* neat-looking Virtual Pinball logo on there.
I actually quite like that logo.
You have a plunger right here, which
is really just a little microswitch inside.
In fact, everything in here is all microswitches.
*Insanely* cheap and flimsy feeling
You have one flipper on the right here,
and a flipper on the left.
However, what this has going for it that the Wizzard did not is
everything else.
You do have this little plunger here, even though it's super basic and barely qualifies.
You also have...
all of these connectors here,
which this actually acts as a keyboard controller.
So it's got a microchip inside that has six different keyboard keys
and so, you have right here a basic AT connection
and it came with a converter to allow you to plug it into PS/2 compatible keyboard ports
and then you can plug your normal keyboard right into here -- or your abnormal keyboard.
Frig, I--
I should like plug in one of my
really odd, like Big Keys keyboards into that for no good reason, or something. [Laughs]
Oh, yeah! And on the back here, you also have
a set of switches.
And these little dip switch things here allow you to change the button configuration.
And if you can't change the key bindings in your pinball game,
then you can do it right here through the hardware.
There is no actual software that comes with this,
at least that is proprietary for this device.
It just runs.
Beyond that, the sheer girth of this thing
is really [grunts] just impressive.
because, yeah, this right here is set to mount onto a desktop.
I mean, you're gonna want a wooden desk. Like, this flimsy table that I have it on right here? This is awful for it
because, you know, this actually supports tilting and nudging and all that stuff. It's got little sensors inside
that allow it to do that. So, you can tilt left, right and forward.
And those again are all key combos that it puts out.
Well, you know, key presses
out through the PS/2 connector in the back there.
As you might have seen on the box itself, it was supposed to come with a copy of Absolute Pinball.
Unfortunately, this one here did not come with that game, so I don't have the original disk to show, but
what I do have to show is also non-original. [Laughs]
That's the manual.
It just--
I didn't have everything, so I made a really crappily copied manual from a random PDF I found online.
And really, this just shows how to, you know, hook it up and everything.
This right here, this is the dip switch table, and this probably the most useful thing out of the entire manual,
because the rest of this is just like,
[goofy voice] "Well, ya know how to play pinball?
You press these buttons."
See, other than the dip switch table, the manual is pretty useless and boring.
However, this is not.
This is probably the next coolest thing in there other than the piece of hardware itself.
This is the original invoice
from the guy in California that bought it back in the day, and
I can see he bought it on November 8, 1996,
for a nice round price of $100.
And apparently this one was made in Italy
and it was bought directly from Philips
in the Netherlands, and they shipped it over there.
So, again,
I have no idea if this was actually sold in U.S. stores or not.
But, uh--
yeah, this invoice. I mean, this guy wanted his Virtual Pinball so badly, he
had it imported, I suppose.
Really cool. If anybody actually did buy one of these in a U.S. store at retail, or anything like that, then
let me know.
But, yeah, this is the only price that I've--
or the only place that I've ever actually seen the price listed, too.
There's surprisingly little information on this piece of oddware,
which is one thing that makes it so odd to me.
We've taken a look at some of this crap, so let's take a look at how it actually plays and runs on an actual PC.
Thanks to the magic of the Internet, I was able to source a backup copy of Absolute Pinball.
So, let's go ahead and-- [loud music]
turn that down.
[music lowers]
Right.
This is the game that it was meant to be played with, or at least that it came packed with.
So, in theory, this should be the best possible experience with the Philips Virtual Pinball setup.
I guess we'll see.
Alright, I figured that would do it, since this is by default mapped to Enter.
So we should--
[clicking]
Don't tell me this one of those you have to do-- [laughs sarcastically]
Yeah, so you have to actually start the game with F1, which isn't mapped to anything on there.
So you actually do still need a keyboard.
[grunts]
That kind of makes sense.
Okay, *now* the music is really quiet. [music gets louder]
Alright, let's try this thing out.
[click]
[clicking]
[laughs]
Okay, well...
What do ya know? These flippers actually feel really good.
This whole thing is, um--
It's not mounted to my desk or anything, but it feels
very solid.
I'm not familiar with this pinball game. Let's launch the ball again here, cuz I wanna have
that kind of feeling.
This thing feels so cheap normally, that it's kind of interesting that it actually doesn't feel too bad in use.
Like, seriously, it just wobbles around in there, but--
[click]
That feels good!
Kind of cheap still, but, you know, better than-- [laughs]
obviously better than the Thrustmaster Wizzard, as far as not having *anything*...
[clicking]
This would probably feel really good if I were standing up, actually.
[click]
[clicking]
Okay, so here's something kind of interesting.
It doesn't actually seem to want to tilt.
Like I'm-- banging on it--
every which way, and if you remember the Wizzard controller, it was like--
I could do this and it would be tilting like crazy.
Well, it doesn't seem to be motion sensitive at all.
[chuckles]
And, well, I said everything was microswitches earlier, and--
well, it really is.
So here's how you tilt things.
Basically, what you do
is, uh--
[click]
Right there, you can see it tilting-- forward.
And then--
Tilting left--
and tilting right.
You *have* to be standing up on this thing, like an actual pinball table.
And like, there's microswitches in there
that actually flip around and, uh-- switch!
Yeah. Let me get outta here.
Alright, one more pinball game I wanna try out because it's just my favorite of the old-school PC-style pinball games.
And that would be
Epic's Epic Pinball.
And, uh, let's--
I've actually switched the switches back there in the back to make sure that it runs--
with the correct key inputs coming out of here.
And, yeah, let's just do Android because
that's friggin' classic.
[click]
Oh, man.
That feels good. [laughs]
Oh, I never actually experienced that with this table before.
You know, it's different. I've played this for, you know, endless hundreds, if not thousands of hours, and
to be able to experience this in a slightly different way with an actual-- well, an "actual" plunger,
it's actually pretty neat.
And, again, I'm very satisfied with these
flippers over here.
The buttons feel really good. The microswitches are nice.
I'm obviously not paying attention to what I'm doing because this is a--
a really sucky game going on here.
The tilt still doesn't seem to want to really work.
Let me try to really manhandle it.
[grunting]
Okay, see, there we go. I was able to tilt it, but I had to, like, just go-- [grunting noises]
And now for the ultimate test of Virtual Pinball here with--
Let's just really try this out with something that it is not meant to be played with,
like Grand Theft Auto V on the PC.
Yes. I'm sure this will go over just fine.
We have left right here to move left.
This goes right.
This right here shoots.
[quiet shooting and screaming]
And we have this right here to move forward.
That's insanely awkward.
Oh, yeah and this--
[struggling] this sort of aims.
It's like the hardest thing to do, though.
Especially aiming and moving.
You can forget it, but, um...
[panting]
Let's see what we can, uh-- see what we can do.
Hey, there!
Citizen!
Oh, no! [laughs]
You--
are going to get killed by a pinball controller.
I don't even know who I'm talking to yet. I just know somebody is.
C'mon.
I don't have anything mapped to run, unfortunately, but--
I do have
what I have going on here.
Oh, this great. This is--
obviously how Rockstar meant the game to be played.
Come on, cops.
Oh.
If I could just turn around.
There we go.
Oh! No no no.
[Laughs] That worked surprisingly well.
Gotta aim!
Ooh!
Ohh!
That went about like how I thought it would.
Terribly.
Well, that is all for this episode of Oddware, and I hope you enjoyed!
And if you saw anything here that you liked,
then perhaps you would like to check out some of my other episodes on
the Thrustmaster Wizzard pinball controller, as well as whatever other thing I happen to put here.
I don't normally choose until the last second.
But, yeah, these are interesting. I promise.
According to my own, totally unbiased opinion.
And if you would like to do even more relating to this kind of stuff,
then why not follow me on Twitter or Facebook
to talk about interesting stuff throughout the week.
And you can also support the show on Patreon to do even more, if you really like what you see.
And, as always, thank you very much for watching.