The Pinball Arcade Catch-All

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Just announced.

"A lot of pinball sims put together perfectly competent tables, but stop short of including officially-licensed simulations of real-life flipper machines. Pinball Hall of Fame developer FarSight Studios hopes to change all that with its upcoming new title The Pinball Arcade, coming early next year for PC, Mac, Xbox 360, PS3, Vita, 3DS, iPhone, iPad and Android."

"...The company has obtained licenses to recreate tables from Gottlieb, Williams, Bally, Stern Pinball and numerous others, so that should provide them with plenty of source material."

"The game will launch with four available tables, these being Williams' Tales of the Arabian Nights; Stern Pinball's Ripley's Believe It Or Not!; Data East's Theatre of Magic; and Gottlieb's Black Hole. Further tables will be released at a rate of two per month as paid DLC, and the company plans to include the facility for online tournaments and head to head play."

I will buy the ever-loving crap out of this. Pinball FX 2 is good but Pinball Hall of Fame: Williams Collection is possibly the best pinball recreation I've ever seen. If you played that, you know that the FarSight guys love pinball and know how to do it right. To be able to get a bunch of great original tables recreated sounds pretty amazing and it looks like it will run on almost anything with a screen. Can't wait!

Here's hoping this doesn't become the next Game Room -- coz I had a really similar excited feeling for that.

necroyeti wrote:

Here's hoping this doesn't become the next Game Room -- coz I had a really similar excited feeling for that.

That's true. But Game Room was kind of botched from the start due to Microsoft not being willing to support it. They wanted to see if people would respond to it first before putting money into licensing but because they didn't put money into licensing, people didn't respond because 95% of the games sucked. I have a good feeling about this because firstly, the developer is handling it themselves. They're not going to be beholden to the twits at Crave Games this time. Secondly, their proven track record with doing excellent emulation of pinball before with their Williams and Gottlieb collections have proven they know how to do it right and having just those two manufacturers on board gives them a huge stock of legacy tables to choose from. I really hope it works for them. Like Pinball FX 2, I'll probably buy every table they can throw at me if they're reasonably priced.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:
necroyeti wrote:

Here's hoping this doesn't become the next Game Room -- coz I had a really similar excited feeling for that.

That's true. But Game Room was kind of botched from the start due to Microsoft not being willing to support it. They wanted to see if people would respond to it first before putting money into licensing but because they didn't put money into licensing, people didn't respond because 95% of the games sucked. I have a good feeling about this because firstly, the developer is handling it themselves. They're not going to be beholden to the twits at Crave Games this time. Secondly, their proven track record with doing excellent emulation of pinball before with their Williams and Gottlieb collections have proven they know how to do it right and having just those two manufacturers on board gives them a huge stock of legacy tables to choose from. I really hope it works for them. Like Pinball FX 2, I'll probably buy every table they can throw at me if they're reasonably priced.

Don't get me wrong, I'm right there with you. I own two copies of Williams PHoF -- one for the Wii because I got it cheap, and one for 360, which took me forever to track down, because of Medieval Madness. If they are able to turn around and quickly offer all the tables they licensed for the disc games, then they might be able to get some momentum.

....or not. Now that I think about it, I'd be hard pressed to throw down a whole bunch of cash on tables I already have on disc -- though I do appreciate the 'not have to get up to change the disc' factor. That, and I'd probably still buy the aforementioned Medieval Madness. Hmm. Maybe they will do OK after all. =)

So, the simulations look excellent. But by FAR the most interesting news here is that they're releasing a PC version.

The $64,000 question is whether they will provide hooks for externals (LEDs and Solenoids) and whether they will let you run it in a cabinet mode (with the table flat, and thebackglass/DMD on different monitors). As much of a HUGE fan of Visual Pinball as I am, someone with actual D3D programming chops and a budget could likely do an amazing job of upping the ante. Their choice of tables (Arabian Knights, Theater of Magic) for launch implies they're going after the hardcore community, not folks who will just buy this for a spiderman license, and that's very encouraging.

Very exciting.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

I will buy the ever-loving crap out of this. Pinball FX 2 is good but Pinball Hall of Fame: Williams Collection is possibly the best pinball recreation I've ever seen.

If it's good pinball, I'll buy it. I'm still a huge fan of Pinball FX 2 and it's one of the few games I return to on a regular basis.

This is fantastic news. Williams PHOF is the only game I have ever purchased twice--the table selection and pinball physics are amazing.

rabbit wrote:

But by FAR the most interesting news here is that they're releasing a PC version.

+1

Consider me interested.

IjonTichy wrote:

This is fantastic news. Williams PHOF is the only game I have ever purchased twice--the table selection and pinball physics are amazing.

Yes indeed. Like others, I first bought it on Wii and then I grabbed it as soon as I heard it came out on 360. It's ridiculously hard to get because it came out with 0 fanfare and to this day, Crave Games doesn't even acknowledge it on their web site. I managed to find a single copy at an EB Games after 3 other stores said they never got it. After that, I bought a copy for the PSP from some random online vendor as well. I'm happy to know that it looks like FarSight is doing this on their own rather than with a crappy shovelware publisher. I can see myself buying this on PC, 360 and depending on which smartphone platform I end up going with, there too.

I have Williams PHoF on PS3, but would love to have a modern pinball game on PC by these same people. Count me in.

Finally! I was afraid Farsight had fallen off the face of the earth, but not only are they giving us more pinball, they're doing it on XBLA! And other platforms, obviously, but the no-disc convenience of the excellent Pinball FX2 regularly wins over the superior Williams Collection on my 360. I've been waiting and waiting for them to release the WC on Xbox Games on Demand, but this is even better.

Now if they can only improve the area that FX2 trounces them -- the leaderboards and social aspects -- this will be one for the ages.

I'll be interested to see how they do this for the PC. It sounds like they're going for an FX2 style platform based on DLC releases. Will they just wait and release PC collections every now and then (similar to retail Rock Band track packs)? Will they host their own servers for PC leaderboards? Should be interesting.

YAY! Theatre of Magic!!

Yesssss

Thank God, no more worrying about when the PinMAME version I have will expire or decide to remove itself from my computer? Although this still probably means the lack of licensed licenses, like Addams Family, Star Trek:TNG, Terminator.

Who knows? Ripley's is a licensed property. Not a good licensed property, but still.

Yeah, I'm wondering about (read: praying for) the classic licensed stuff, including Twilight Zone.

Star Trek TNG.

ALL HANDS: PREPARE FOR MULTIBALL

Patrick Stewart's greatest line reading ever.

Very excited about this. I've been spending a ton of time playing the Williams collection on the 3ds (and psp). The older Gottlieb collection wasn't near as good, IMO. I agree that if I didn't have to have the disc in the machine to play it, I'd spend most of my 360 time playing the Williams collection. If they can nail the community part, even better. Can't wait for this!

1Dgaf wrote:

Star Trek TNG.

1Dgaf wrote:

Star Trek TNG.

I will buy that like 20 times just to show FarSight how much I love them if they release this.

Fanatka wrote:

Very excited about this. I've been spending a ton of time playing the Williams collection on the 3ds (and psp). The older Gottlieb collection wasn't near as good, IMO. I agree that if I didn't have to have the disc in the machine to play it, I'd spend most of my 360 time playing the Williams collection. If they can nail the community part, even better. Can't wait for this!

I think the Williams Collection is available on-demand in the Marketplace.

Mister Magnus wrote:

I think the Williams Collection is available on-demand in the Marketplace.

Thanks, but I *just* checked, and no dice. It would be an instant buy for me, however.

Another pinball fan watching closely.

PA, we should do a Pints & Pins night. How many of the local crew would come out to one of the O town route stops? If I recall there are a couple of MAACA members.

There's an updated list of local pins their location and condition on the MAACA site. The guy who routes them keeps it well updated. They post tournaments often too.

No kidding! I had no idea! I would totally by up for such a night.

Starting December 24th they're updating daily for 12 days new information, videos, etc on their Facebook page.
The first tables coming out on Pinball Arcade:

Tales of the Arabian Nights™
Ripley's Believe It or Not™
Theatre of Magic™
Black Hole™

MaxShrek wrote:

Starting December 24th they're updating daily for 12 days new information, videos, etc on their Facebook page.
The first tables coming out on Pinball Arcade:

Tales of the Arabian Nights™
Ripley's Believe It or Not™
Theatre of Magic™
Black Hole™

They've made noises about supporting cabinet/2 screen setups. Giddy.

Latest news is they will be covering "90% of the top 40 all-time tables."

Some tables with cameos in the developer's pinball arcade but not specifically mentioned by name:
Dr. Dude
Taxi
Harley Davidson
The Machine: Bride of Pin*Bot

Day #2:

Each month, The Pinball Arcade will feature one game as The Table of the Month. At launch, this table will be Tales of the Arabian Nights. The Table of the Month on most platforms will cost 99 cents. [We’d prefer to offer it for 99 cents on all platforms, but there are some console restrictions we may have to abide by that would restrict this pricing model]. After each month is over, the Table of the Month will go back to it's regular price which will typically range between $1.99 and $2.99 (with $3.99 currently planned for tables with expensive ancillary licenses).

-
That last one, the $3.99 table, could possibly be a positive thing, with tables like Star Trek TNG, Twilight Zone, Addams Family, and Terminator 2 being more expensive due to more license fees.

Ludicrously cheapie they do them well and let me do it cabinet style. I'd pay 25 a table for good cabinet implementations. Per table.

Today's news: Cirque Voltaire will be table of the month when Cirque Voltaire comes out.

FarSight has put up a pretty informative 15 minutes making of video on the official site. Like I said back when I created this thread, these dudes love pinball. I had no idea the level of detail they went into. I so can't wait for this.

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