Be Excellent To Each Other

SORRY PEOPLE.

I just saw the big banner just as I was about to turn my Funsquare off, and given the recent raft of genuine free/bargain stuff (cheap Super Controller Throwing Anger Boy, free Lara Croft DLC) I thought this might be a one-day thing or something.

Still, more Pinball FX is good, except that cunting 'Extreme' table. Especially the 'youp!' every time you lose a ball.

I believe it's a free client from which to buy tables. Pinball FX one users get to import their tables straight in and then buy new ones...

http://majornelson.com/archive/2010/10/ ... l-fx2.aspx

It's a cool idea. I actually got a cheevo for "free" by downloading PB FX, importing my tables and playing on the SF II table. And I'll be buying the new ones, which cost 800 points as a pack, because I love it so. I'm just skint at the moment.

Also, it has 550 gamer points up for grabs, which is strange...

I just intended to play the imported tables but I've stumped up the 800 for the initial four FX2 tables too. I can see me getting the Camelot table as I was always a fan of the medieval table in Tilt! on the saturn.

I'm not sure about the reworked graphics for Speed Machine though - it's all a bit dark.

I thought that as well, but they have gone to the trouble of updating all the old tables for free....quite impresed by the new tables so far and I think they could have got away with charging for the new version itself as it does have quite a few new features (such as Geometry Wars 2-style letting you know when you're about to overtake one of your friends).

Sadly, they did leave one bug from the first version in, that some bloke called Trousers seems to usually be a the top of the leaderboards.

It would be great if they licenced some of the all-time great tables like Pinbot, High Speed or The Addams Family.

But I'm sure those are so stitched up in legal wrangles (see: no more Pizza Hut in remastered Crazy Taxi) that they are only available if

I'd love to play a properly converted Addams Family - it's the only real pinball table I've enjoyed. PinMAME and that Visual Pinball emulator does a decent job of it, but it'd be nice to play something officially licenced.

They have the Addams Family at Centurion Bar at Newcastle train station. It's ace.

http://www.centurion-newcastle.com/

It must be hella old*... I remember it being previewed in GamePro, the pic was of MC Hammer (back when he was famous!) playing it at the launch party with the kid who played Pugsley looking on.

*and I really doubt Newcastle station ended up with one of the rare Addams Family Gold tables.

It's actually in seriously good nick. Probably been restored recently. They still go for around the price of a small second hand car full restored from my research (I must have one before I die). And you'd be surprised - Newcastle genuinely has some classy joints. This is one of them. Check the website for pics! It's not all council houses, Biffa Bacon and boxer dogs.

Although, I'm not sure why I'm defending it. We hate Geordies in Teesside. Horrible Geordie scum.

I've never really liked pinball that much but tonight I realised why.

Too much shit going on on the screen, objectives that mean nothing ("meet the contact" - what?! aim at the flashing thing? THE WHOLE FUCKING TABLE IS FLASHING), different things happening whenever you do anything twice (go up a ramp to make Blanka do something, or go into a plane or something, or nothing happens). It's all just so horrible.

Add to that the whole losing a ball down the side of the table thing. In my whole life I've never shot the ball directly there off of a flipper. Those losses always come from the ball traveling downwards, yet that's how I invariably seem to die. If you're going to put a hole there how about you PUT A FUCKING FLIPPER THERE TO GIVE ME A FIGHTING CHANCE.

Seriously, it's like Peggle with less skill. I hate pinball the most ever now.

You need to play one table to death and learn its traits, read up on them, then you enjoy pinball, then you can like the rest of the tables.

I'm most impressed by this so far. I settled down to play tonight while my wife was at her yoga class. Ten minutes later she came back. I was slightly miffed that she was home so early until she started telling my how late her class had finished. It was only when I looked at the clock and saw that an hour an a half had gone by that I realised how long I'd been playing.
I love all the high-score and pinball wizard nonsense as well - the more high-score tables to be third behind Mr C and Trousers on the better.

Pah! What do you know? You liked Two Worlds! Aha! ahahahahah... oh, hang on a minute...

The wife went up to bed last night and I stayed down for "ten minutes" to get the cats in. I had a quick game of Pinball FX2 and ended up coming up an hour and a half later declaring that "I couldn't get Sam in."

So brilliantly with a pile of to play games that Peter Crouch can't see over waiting for me I've bought a game with a gazillion tables that I can't stop playing. Bugger.

So, Pinball FX 2 is free, I can add my existing Pinball FX tables to it, and they become new versions?

Yup.

"You have beaten malc74's all-time highest score"
"You have beaten Trousers all-time highest score"

Not things I often read in games on XBLA.

Have you tried Visual Pinball?

It really is surprisingly good.

It's a combination of a simulation of the table and artwork running via Visual Pinball, but an actual EMULATION of the CPU/software/clever bits via VPINMAME (including the dot matrix display and sounds + music), which are therefore perfect.

It's all tied together with some very clever VB Scripting, in a remarkably clever way I don't fully understand.

The ropey tables do look and play a bit crap, but the very best ones are amazingly close to playing the real thing, and this is coming from someone who has owned three real pinball machines in his time. (I do miss you Twilight Zone and ST:TNG! The Speakeasy I'm not so arsed about )

Here's Addams Family for example, apologies for the crap screenshot but I haven't set VP up since I rebuilt to Windows 7, so I've had to just pinch one from a Google search. (It has always been a little bit of a fussy bugger to get going but there was a consolidated installer package for it last time I looked into it.)

I wrote about it many years ago, (mht file attached, actually, mht in zip attached, mhts aren't allowed here).

Oh yeah we've all had a bash on the old VP courtesy of WoS. Might give it another download now though, cheers!

Just played a bit of the good old Buccaneer table.

"You've beaten Dimrill, you've been myoptikakaka, you've beaten WullieOoster, you've beaten ConsoleMAD" etc. Finally lose with what I assumed was a respectable score of 3,488,488 only to notice Malc and Trousers on 18 and 14 fucking MILLION. What the fuck, chaps?

I think having a SDTV really hampers this game. Which is a shame.



:this: Thank you Party Land via Pinball Fantasies.

Heh! I used to have an awesome pinball game for the PC, but I can't remember what it was called.

I'm gonna do some Googling.

Of course, it never topped my Amiga pinballing days, but it had some really great tables.

edit: There have been lots of pinball games. Damn. It was 3D and it came out in the mid to late 90s I guess. My favourite table was a superhero one. Memory is hazy. I think it only had three tables.

21st Century did all the big pinball games in the 90s.

Apart from Psycho Pinball from Codebastards.

Don't forget the Pro Pinball series.

Pro Pinball 'Timeshock' remains pretty much the finest computerised incarnation of pinball ever.

(Followed in second place by The Web. I didn't care so much for Big Race USA and Fantastic Journey.)

I still have the original discs for all of them.

FUCK ME SIDEWAYS, though, if a lot of the 21st Century stuff wasn't developed by Digital Illusions CE AB, aka DICE, aka Battlefield Swede Nickachu People.

Timeshock available here, for $6 (about £4 in real money?) I'd say it's a total steal for pinball fans.

I vaguely recall that even back in the day it supported FANTASY RESOLUTIONS such as 1600x1200

http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/pro_pinball_timeshock

I remember Virtual Pool in 1995 having a maximum resolution of 1980 by 1080 or somesuch.

Crazy! Who could ever need graphics that sharp!

Bought. Love all the tables bar Rome. Which appears shit.

I've dug out my Timeshock disc to see if it's as good as I remember it being.

Dare I choose the 'VERY LARGE' installation option of a terrifying 185MB? Surely no computer can hold that much data?

Oh the joys of being an anal pedant when it comes to backups, I have recovered a copy of the 1.07 Timeshock patch from a MyDocs backup from 2002.

I find the 'new' versions of the tables from the original are all really dark, and now obsessed with huge barriers right in the middle (though Extreme is still the worst for this) to ensure the ball comes bouncing straight back at your flippers.

Timeshock still looks quite nice.

Originally released in 1997 (!), running nicely at 1600x1200 with everything on super ultra settings, as you'd expect really

(jpeg has knobbed it up a bit, it looks a lot sharper than that.)

Now the initial splurge has worn off I am going back through each table trying to climb the leaderboards and get to know them better. I managed to make significant progress on Secrets of the Deep but still have very little idea why exactly I was getting multiballs.

The game doesn't hold the ball in a hole and explain what's going on most of the time (Biolab excepted) so you try and read the LCD display and lose the ball which is somewhat annoying.

Otherwise though what a complete fucking bargain.

Loving the free update to my old tables, the new score chasing system has made it much more entertaining too. Next time I buy points they'll be going on the new tables.

I decided to give this another go and managed to get into it. The leaderboard stuff is great (although I don't want to see weekly scores, thanks) and I was able to set respectable scores, occasionally topping the part of the leaderboard that Trousers and Malc don't live in.

THE INITIAL SPLURGE, Trousers? THE INITIAL SPLURGE?

Can you video yourself playing or something?

I was flicking between tables like a kid in a sweet shop at first. Just finding the sweet spots for the ramps and orbits and remembering how shit the Extreme table was.

Pinball is one of those type of games where if you play it for long enough you will eventually hit a complete zone where everything flies off your flippers in the right direction and the ball never so much as tickles an outlane. It can be frustrating getting to that point but when you hit it then you can see why the developers are called Zen Pinball.

Made bugger all progress on Biolab last night so never got near the zone.

Had a couple of multiplayer games last night against Zardoz. First on Speed Machine was a good laugh, but the second on that fucking pirate table lasted about an hour before I gave up. Z could still be playing it just now for all I know!

This.

It's ultra-bleak.

I may shell out for some of these new tables. Talk about a 180.

Something isn't quite right with the updated Rocky and Bullwinkle table. I could spend hours playing it in the first game, now I'm having all sorts of issues shooting the ramps.

Conversely, I think the Extreme table has actually improved.

It's still a big stinking pile of shit, admittedly, but a little less stinky than before.

'played until ma fingers bleeeeeed'

I played the same that last ball after you left and got to 8.5 million then I switched off in complete disgust after I lost it down the side.

Yeah, dropping down the multiplayer score to 5m makes the game a lot more feasible.

It didn't take long at all on Speed Machine, but we couldn't work out/remember how to score big on the "Pirate Bastard" table. 10x multiplayer & still scoring minimal points

Quite a few times we were up around 8k & then next thing we knew we were back at 4k

Agree on both points there. I'm right loving this even though I see no point to pinball as a rule, but this... it's lovely, and I'm having tons of fun with it all.

Also. Also! Also - for a brief time yesterday, I was above the likes of you, Dimrill, and Myp on a couple of tables. I suspect you have now set this right, but I have photographic evidence of my brief moments of gaming glories.

I fucking love pinball, but I've never developed anything close to an ability to aim for ramps or targets consistently, so it takes me half an hour to get a score that somebody else might get in five minutes.

Just bought the SFII table, though. Seems pretty dos.

Heh heh heh! That'll teach Myp to send me a challenge!