Pinball Palooza: Pinball (NES)

To help ease the general public into the concept of video games in general, many early game consoles would use real world activities as the basis for a few games. Tennis, golf, and baseball are certainly common in these early days, but these weren’t the only real life games being translated into a digital form. Almost as prevalent as the sports were pinball games, the idea not a far leap since pinball machines were already sharing arcade space with video games. However, the first consoles were still grappling with the idea of physics in general, and producing consistent and accurate results for pinball play was certainly difficult. The NES came along after this difficult growing period though and with stronger hardware, meaning that its launch title Pinball would be able to provide a decent facsimile of the real arcade amusements.

Pinball’s a reliable little game, the single two-tier table never really surprising the player with an unexpected bounce or odd ball movement. When the ball is near either of your two sets of flippers, you can perform the usual tricks like cradling it to rob it of momentum and the region of the flipper used to launch the ball reliably determines its destination. It’s not a one-to-one adaptation of real life physics or anything, but the player should develop an understanding of how the ball speed works and how it reacts to things like bumper bounces or flipper pressure.

There are two Game Modes in Pinball, both also available for alternating 2 player play, but while one claims to be harder, the only difference is supposedly a change in game speed, and even that isn’t felt to the degree either mode feels truly distinct. There are no unusual goals in Pinball either, the player provided three balls with which they’ll try to get the highest score they can. Play ends if all three balls are lost through the bottom area’s drain, although you can earn an extra ball at 50,000 to prolong play a bit more. Other point milestones can influence the game as well, but it’s in a very unusual way. For some reason, Pinball makes the flippers entirely disappear if you achieve 100,000 points, and while they are still present and able to hit the ball like usual, it feels like an arbitrary change to play, especially since things switch back to normal at 150,000 points. I was convinced the game had glitched out the first time I saw this happen because apparently I glanced over the single line in the manual informing me this would happen. Earning that additional 50,000 points is not an easy feat, but it feels like some players could view this as an interesting challenge while others might feel like not being able to see the flippers restricts your ability to control the ball’s flight path and lead to flipper mashing to compensate.

The board design in Pinball isn’t ambitious but it does have a few different things to interact with. The top half has a mild arctic theme to it with the blue tones, inconsequential seals, and the penguin roulette. Scoring up here consists of some fairly straightforward pinball staples, targets to the left side, loops on both, a bumper in the middle, and a trio of drop lanes at the top with different point values. The only real strange part here is the penguin roulette, the player needing to hit the pink bar that’s moving back and forth above it to start it spinning. Different results give different amounts of points, and other than the hole that spits the ball back into play in the right corner, that’s essentially the long and short of this half of the board. The left hand loop is fairly hard to reliably get your ball into, but this region is pretty plain compared to the bottom half, your ball dropping down there any time it slips past your upper pair of flippers.

The bottom area of Pinball’s table is where the game’s flaws begin to show. This cramped half is a bit too busy for its own good, especially when it comes to the set of three bumpers in the center. These pretty much control your ability to interact with the ways to score down here, blocking the path to the card lanes where you want to try and have the ball pass through each lane to not only get a big point boost, but it also is the only way besides a three penguin roulette result to make a block post appear between the flippers as a ball saver. When you start playing Pinball, there is no ball save, and the three bumpers enjoy wildly flinging your ball around in the lower regions of the table. The side lanes adjacent to the flipper lanes and its bumpers are pretty much a death sentence at first as well. You can manage to get lane protection here too if you hatch three eggs between the bumpers, but if your ball scares off the chicks before they all hatch you will have to keep trying again whenever those eggs reappear. The lack of ball savers feels pretty egregious down here because of the bumpers controlling the action so heavily, and oddly enough, there is no table nudging feature, meaning once the ball is away from your flippers, its fate is almost sealed. You may be able to predict a future bounce or two, but the wildness of getting caught between the bumpers can sometimes send your ball off to certain doom.

A bit more aggravating than the draining is the fact the bumpers block your ability to leave the lower area too. Hitting the ball directly up through the top layer’s central flippers is impossible, the player having to hope a lucky bumper ricochet launches it back up to the top portion. There is a left lane you might luck yourself into traveling up, but this is also near the seven targets that provide what must be the game’s preferred way of getting you back to the more inviting top half. Hit all seven targets and a side exit open ups, the player able to hit the ball off to the right and back to the plunger that is used to initiate play. It really can feel like you’re trapped in this chaotic bottom layer at times, and while the five card drop lane, seven target line, and even the bumpers could have all been interesting ways to build up score, they’re placed poorly when the unforgiving nature of this lower region is taken into account. However, the anxiety of losing your ball to a force out of your control isn’t present in the game’s third area, one completely removed from the pinball table. Hit your ball into a hole in the top right of the lower portion of the board and you will be teleported to a minigame that plays more like Breakout than pinball.

This sub area stars Nintendo’s mascot Mario whose was just starting to gain traction at the time, the hero of Donkey Kong decked out in his actual colors despite the deceptive box art. When your ball enters play in this side game, you now find yourself controlling him instead of a set of flippers, the player meant to run around so he can position the girder he’s carrying in a way that will deflect the ball’s flight path. The ball bounces around an area with two unobtrusive bumpers and a set of colored numbers in the middle. Four columns of three numbers each are lined up, the player able to change their coloration by having the ball pass over the numbers. To get the most points out of this diversion, you need to recolor these bingo lamps so an entire column is the same, all while ensuring the ball doesn’t slip below Mario. Each time you line up the colors correctly, the ground above the lights begins to shrink, a damsel in distress waiting above for you to free her. While this is meant to be Mario’s then-girlfriend Pauline, she was still going by the generic Lady moniker as Nintendo seemingly hadn’t committed to her name yet. When enough of the ground has disappeared, Lady will fall through the gap and down towards Mario, the player needing to catch her with the girder and safely carry her off to the side to get the big bonus. This diversion isn’t very involved, the color changing a bit chaotic and the Breakout style paddle deflection not the best fit for influencing it, but its recognizable characters and gameplay shifts are amusing enough even though they aren’t going to overshadow the problems with the table’s lower half. When you do lose your ball in this minigame it at least tosses you back to the top half of the pinball table, so you can use this to escape that ugly lower portion of the table if the exit seems to risky to angle for.

THE VERDICT: Pinball’s decent yet unexciting upper layer and the Mario-themed minigame can’t make up for the problems lurking at the bottom of the table. With no nudge option and the stinginess in handing out ball savers, the lower half of Pinball’s play area feels like you’re constantly tossing your ball to the whims of fate, the crowded bumpers blocking the point opportunities and making the route back up the safer and simpler play overcomplicated. Pinball provides a few different ways to engage with its score challenge, but that trio of bumpers near the bottom undermines your influence over play a bit too often to let you enjoy them.

And so, I give Pinball for the Nintendo Entertainment System…

A BAD rating. While simple in scope, Pinball feels like it is able to avoid being called shallow. The two screens both have a few different ways of earning points you can aim for, the Mario minigame is a nice break from the pinball play without being too huge a departure, and the physics do their job adequately. Problem is, your capacity to engage with much of the game feels limited. The lower reaches of the table seem to resist your efforts to try and aim at its point objects or even escape to the better play areas, and by leaving the drains open to start and only handing out blockers under circumstances that can sometimes feel out of your control, it feels punishing to hit this lower area and keep losing your balls to bounces you couldn’t prevent. The lack of a nudge option is constantly felt. The ball can be teetering on the edge of the doomed out lanes and all you can do is watch. The ball might get stuck in a loop of bouncing off a bumper and passing through the card or point lane above and all you can do is wait. I’m not even one to really embrace nudging save when I have to, but its absence here leads to moments that could have been rectified by adding that small way of exerting extra influence on the action. If a nudge option was added, the bumpers at the bottom are still probably a bit too close together for their own good, but at least with a nudge you could potentially pull away from them instead of hoping they won’t screw you over.

If you did look only at the top of the table and the Lady saving diversion, you’re not left with too much to chew on. The bingo lamps are a bit too touchy so you mostly just hope things swing your way while keeping the ball in play, but the higher area of Pinball could have gotten away with its simplicity if it was placed atop something similarly decent. However, a table design’s impact on game feel can’t be brushed aside just because some portions of it are acceptable. Pinball on the NES ends up feeling like a game that probably did its job around release but that chaotic weak half of the board weighs heavy on the experience now. Because of that, Pinball won’t really be drawing people in with its score challenge, modern players probably only picking it up out of nostalgic curiosity or a desire to briefly experience one of Mario’s early cameos.