Pinball Hall of Fame in the Palm of Your Hand
by Chris Alaimo
02/09/2012

Platform: Apple iOS Released: February 8, 2012 Developer: Farsight Studios Price: $0.99 + $3.99/table

The first 2 Pinball: Hall of Fame titles, released in 2004 and 2007 and named after the eponymous museum in Las Vegas, were each a collection of tables from a specific manufacturer; first Gottlieb, then Williams. At the time of their release, each set the gold standard for what a pinball-based video game should be, and accurately reproduced the game play of real life tables, if not the experience of standing in front of an actual machine. Both games were absolute must-buys on their respective systems for even the most casual of pinball fans, and as such I've been eagerly anticipating the release of this latest installment.

Pinball Arcade is available for both the iPad, and the iPhone/iPod touch. The app costs 99 cents and includes one free table - Tales of the Arabian Nights. At this time, 3 additional tables are available; Ripley's Believe It or Not, Black Hole, and Theater of Magic. These additional tables can be purchased for $3.99 each, or all three for $8.99, a savings of $3. Had I not been reviewing the game, I still would have opted for the package deal, which brings the total purchase price up to about $10. The two console-based games sold for $20-30 each and included 8-13 tables (depending on the title and system), so 10 bucks for 4 tables is in line with the pricing of the previous installments. Aside from the fact that the iPad's big bright touch screen was practically made for pinball, the real draw of this game is its expandibility, thanks to the intended release of additional tables down the road.

The game can be played in both portrait and landscape mode, and although the game looks better in a portrait orientation due to the dimensions of a pinball table, I find the iPad more comfortable to hold the other way. Just like every other pinball game I've played for iOS, Pinball Arcade has no virtual "buttons" - rather you simply tap the left side of the screen for the left flipper, and the right side for the right flipper. This is obviously much easier, as without actual buttons providing tactile feedback, it would be easy for your thumbs to drift out of place if they had to remain hovering over a single spot on each side of the screen.

Each table has a detailed set of instructions, separated into categories, which clearly lay out the rules of the game. Although you don't *need* to know that kind of stuff (much as you wouldn't know it if you walked up to an unfamiliar table at an arcade), it greatly enhances your enjoyment of the game if you have a clear understanding of the table's objectives. Otherwise you're just staring at a bunch of bright flashing lights and trying to keep your ball alive without knowing what to aim for. The developers also included a handful of goals for each table, which much like achievement points, serve no purpose other than to motivate you to keep playing. After you complete all of the basic goals, you unlock a new set of "wizard" goals. I always find the goals to be easy to accomplish, because for some reason video pinball is easier than the real thing. An "extras" option includes some historical tidbits about each game, along with a copy of the table's original advertising flyer.

Rather than integrating with Apple's "Game Center", at start-up Pinball Arcade prompts you to sign into Facebook in order to participate in online leaderboards and compete with friends. Otherwise you have to play as a "guest", which I thought was an odd choice of words. Just because I don't want to integrate my pinball game time with Facebook, I'm a guest in my own iPad? It really makes no difference, though. The game saves my high scores, and those are the only scores I care about.

I'm not going to review each table individually, as reviews of the actual tables are available on pinball fan sites, but I will provide an overview. The included (free) table, Williams' Tales of the Arabian Nights is one of two tables to appear in previous installments of the Pinball Hall of Fame series, having been included in the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of The Williams Collection. The table was originally released in 1985 and is loosely based on the literary collection "One Thousand and One Nights".

Also appearing in a previous installment of the series was 1981's Black Hole, released by Gottleib. Predictably featuring an outer-space theme, Black Hole is notable for it's unique game play element featuring a second playfield underneath the first, slanted away from the player so that the ball rolls in the opposite direction. Black Hole had the highest production run of any of the 4 launch tables, with 8,774 machines produced. As I learned from the "extras" option for this table, Black Hole was also the first pinball machine to charge 50 cents. In my time playing the game thus far, this is the only table that I've found to be a bit buggy. During one game, my ball got completely stuck, and I couldn't free it by nudging the table, or calling the "attendant". I'm not quite sure what the attendant does, as the game just displays some message about resetting the ball, but for me it did nothing (I had to restart my game). Another time, I trapped the ball between the back of the flipper and the wall behind it, and when I hit the flipper button again, instead of simply dropping down as the ball would have done on an actual table, it shot out full speed as it would if it had been on the other side of the flipper.

Ripley's Believe It or Not was released in 2004 by Stern Pinball, the last manufacturer of pinball machines in the world. Although probably lesser-known by today's younger generation, Ripley's Believe it or Not has since 1919 been a daily newspaper feature in the form of a comic, displaying stories from around the world that are so outlandish as to seem unbelievable. The original comic strip spawned a radio show, television show, and numerous museums around the world. Ripley's is the only table based on licensed content appearing in the collection. The table features a dot-matrix display that cycles through a number of Ripley's "headlines" (ALGERIAN QUEEN WITH 400 HUSBANDS!) during play, and the play field features numerous characters and drawings recognizable to anyone familiar with the Ripley's series.

Last but certainly not least is Theater of Magic. Released by Data East in 1995, and my all-time favorite pinball machine. Based around the theme of a magic show, the player must complete a number of "illusions", like escaping from a trunk or making a woman levitate, culminating in a grand finale. The playfield features beautiful, colorful artwork and the spooky-voiced narrator and pipe organ music really set the proper tone. The arcade on the college campus in my town has this machine, so having it available on my iPad gives me a great opportunity to practice at home.

Pinball Arcade falls squarely into the "must-buy" category for iOS, and immediately supplanted all competitors as the best pinball game on the iPad. If you're on the fence about it or about pinball on the iPad in general, just pony up the 99 cents to check out the included table, which is a definite winner. There's also a free version of the game, which I didn't even bother with, but I would imagine that it's rife with advertisements and may have a time limit. Pinball arcade is no substitute for the real thing, but no video game is. What it is however is the best pinball game that I've ever played on a handheld device.