21st Century Pinball

Created by Spidersoft and designed specifically for the Amiga, Pinball Mania was designed first and foremost as a pack-in title for new Amiga computers, but was later whored out numerous times in all kinds of remakes, and even going so far as to appear in other companies' pinball games. This is probably the least popular of 21st's pinball games, though it's unfairly panned, much like Pinball Dreams II was. As usual, we have four more unique tables. A few features have been added over the previous efforts, including a ball saver.

Pinball Mania

Tarantula

A giant spider is terrorizing the locals in this loving tribute to the 1950's B horror movie. Tarantula features plenty of nice one-shot bonuses and bonus holds, and is very generous with the multipliers. The brown and green colors evoke a jungle mood, and the music is pretty cool too.

Jailbreak

A dark blue table themed after prison and the legal system. By hitting targets, you'll be getting arrested (which, ironically, still gives you bonus points - and watchdog groups didn't complain about it?!), digging escape tunnels, and declaring your suspects Guilty or Not Guilty depending on which one you hit. I don't like the music that much - too heavy on the distorted guitars - but this table is actually pretty fun.

Kick-Off!

I had a hard time doing well with this table, because there's a lot of stuff in the way of the ball actually getting anywhere, and it's a lot easier to lose the ball down the side drains. There is a one-million skill shot at the start of each ball, but given this table's difficulty in terms of actually putting the ball anywhere useful, most of my scores tend to include only the skill shots.

Jackpot

I love a good casino-themed pinball table, ever since Sonic the Hedgehog 2. The red and gold color scheme of this one gives off a nice royal feeling. True to its theme, there are plenty of cool gambling-themed bonuses, like a game of Higher Or Lower that can be triggered at the upper part of the table that yields millions if you win, and a real working slot machine at the bottom, among other things like roulette and craps. It also scores very well. Oddly, its music was completely changed in Pinball 3D-VCR, and as far as I can tell, it was the only table to have that treatment.

While the game overall isn't quite as great as DICE's productions, that doesn't mean that it's a bad game at all. It still ranks fairly well in my book, and it's a little better polished than Pinball Dreams II was. Some of the tables really do need some work, though, like the Kick-Off table. The game's physics have been tweaked severely since the previous few games, with the flippers and slingshots suddenly becoming far more powerful. This presents some problems for those used to the earlier games' physics, especially in regards to flipper tricks like trapping and juggling - the flippers are just too powerful to do things like this, and letting the ball hit the slingshots tends to send it wildly out of control.

There are two PC ports of Pinball Mania: one runs in pure MS-DOS, while the other requires Windows. The latter port only appears to run through Windows, but in reality, the Windows EXE is only a shell for the DOS version of the game. It's a little frustrating because the only platform the game will work under is Windows 95 - other OS's complain of missing files, and newer systems won't even start the games. Might as well ignore this port unless you're very patient. Unfortunately, the Windows port is the version included with the Pinball Madness bundles; to get the pure DOS version, you'd need to track it down stand-alone, or get the Pinball Fantasies Deluxe CD (not the Japan-only PlayStation Fantasies port - augh, confusing).

Pinball Mania was the last pinball game to get a Game Boy port from GameTek. Amazingly, this one is even worse than the Game Boy port of Pinball Fantasies: slowdown is even worse, music is so full of those arpeggio chords that it hardly sounds like music anymore, and it even takes forever to switch between tables in the main menu. Argh. Can't a pinball enthusiast get some decent handheld action? And to make matters even worse, the game does not even work properly in most Game Boy emulators, as it will completely freeze the moment a ball is in play. What a testament to GameTek's programming expertise.

That wasn't the end of Pinball Mania, though - later on, Spidersoft put out Pinball 3D-VCR (renamed Total Pinball 3D in the States) which takes all four tables from Pinball Mania and renders them in 3D. It does help playability a bit to see more depth to the tables, but the effort seems a little wasted when they could have put their resources into some of the earlier DICE tables, not to mention that the rendering job here isn't especially good. Multiball gets even more insane here, though, as 3D-VCR supports up to ten balls at once. The "VCR" part of the name comes from the fact that you can record your games and then play them back. Also, if you happen to not like the 3D rendered versions of the tables, you can easily switch to 2D mode instead, even going so far as to be able to record a video in 2D mode and watch it in 3D. However, Pinball 3D-VCR's 2D mode is merely the 3D mode rendered from above, rather than being the original Pinball Mania 2D artwork. It looks quite similar, but some details end up rather washed-out for reasons unknown, so if you only want to play the tables in 2D, you might as well just go play the original Pinball Mania, because it looks nicer.

Even 3D-VCR wasn't the last of it. The tables here have been whored out so many times, it's very hard to tell anymore that they used to be Spidersoft's. The tables have reappeared in third-party pinball games including Platinum Pinball by Redoubt, and Pinball Advance from Digital (not Digital Illusions) and Rebellion. Even Spidersoft themselves weren't above reusing their tables, as they took the Jackpot table and just rearranged the bits to use in Expert Pinball 4000 (below).

Pretty much does what it says on the tin: it's a pinball game, and it has Thomas and friends featured prominently on every table. Developed by Spidersoft and published by Alternative Software (presumably while 21st Century was looking the other way), this one contains another handful of tables, each themed after a character from the famous TV show. This one's actually based on the older Pinball Dreams engine, despite requiring the AGA chipset. Since this is a pinball game aimed directly at children, things have been made a little easier. For starters, the ball moves a little more slowly by default (though you can adjust the table angle through the options), and none of the game's four tables has a side drain. The space between flippers is also a little bit smaller than usual, making it much harder to lose the ball unless you're really trying (or have an unlucky moment). Basically, if you're wanting to get your kid brother or sister into pinball games, this is probably the best place to start. As an aside, all of the tables (except Thomas?) have extra ball features, except they're called "Really Useful Engine". I dunno, I just found that kind of funny.

The game has four tables, each based on one of the locomotives from the series: Thomas, James, Percy, and Toby. Each table has a nice, colorful picture of its character in the table artwork, bears their number on the slingshot bumpers, and is colored similarly to the character the table is supposed to represent. The table music also seems to suit each character's personality (though I don't feel I'm qualified to say much further than that, not having much experience with the series.)

Thomas' table is suspiciously similar to Ignition in all but a few key places, but is generally pretty straightforward, with a skill shot, multipliers, and a jackpot that's relatively easy to trigger. It has a blue theme to it, similar to Thomas himself. Interestingly, Thomas is the only table that actually has a skill shot, though his table also curiously seems to lack an extra ball feature. James' table is very red, and features a lot of ramps and tracks. Percy's table has a lot of drop and spot targets, and Toby's table is full of tunnels and holes for the ball to sink into. It's somewhat difficult to really go into detail about the different tables, because in reality, they're not all that different. Perhaps it's a side effect of the game being based on a children's TV series that, for better or worse, has a very consistent art style.

I find it interesting to note that Thomas Pinball also goes to some length to simplify the scoring system for the young folks. While such complex features as bonus holds, multipliers, and such are still in the game, the actual numbers associated with them are much smaller, resulting in scores typically topping out in the 50,000's, as opposed to the millions like other pinball games.

While Thomas Pinball is a very good introductory game for budding young pinball wizards, more experienced players might have a hard time liking it themselves, at least partially based on the source material. While the ball physics are just as good as the other games, and the tables easy-going and forgiving, it essentially feels like what Pinball Dreams would have been if all four of the tables were Steel Wheel. Looking at it from the other end, though, I'd have to say that Thomas is pinball's equivalent of Chex Quest: while it may seem childish and silly from an external viewpoint, the fact that it's actually Pinball Dreams in disguise might attract some experienced pinballers simply by principle alone.

After Pinball Mania was ported to the PC, 21st Century released a huge compilation called Pinball Gold Pack (called Pinball Power Pack in Germany), containing all 20 tables from Pinball Dreams, Dreams II, Fantasies, Illusions, and Mania. It's exceedingly difficult to find, though, and tends to fetch premium prices on the secondary market (or at least, higher prices than is typical for a fifteen year old compilation of pinball games). It was apparently co-published by the 3DO Company, according to the back of the box. Given its rarity, I couldn't get more information than this.

Of particular interest is that the name Pinball Gold Pack is also reused by GOG.com, for their $10 bundle containing Pinball Dreams, Dreams II, Fantasies, Mania, and Illusions. The collection is put together in a weird way, since some of the games are bundled together (the versions of Fantasies and Mania included are actually the Fantasies Deluxe disc) while others are not (Pinball Dreams Deluxe wasn't included; Dreams and Dreams II are separate programs instead, for reasons unknown). Also, while Pinball Illusions is included, and it is the PC CD-ROM version by Frontline Design, it lacks the CD audio tracks, so the attract and bonus modes in each table are now completely silent. However, since GOG.com bundles DOSBox with the pack, and DOSBox is (as of this writing) unable to alter the CD playback volume, I suppose their tradeoff was to either leave out the audio tracks, or keep them and let them bleed over the MOD music when it plays. Unfortunate, really, because Illusions' music is quite good, and half of it is missing. Still, though, Pinball Dreams and Fantasies are well worth the price of admission, and the inclusion of the under-appreciated Dreams II and Mania as well as a flawed but still playable Illusions rounds out the pack nicely. You could do far worse for $10.