Sneak Peek: Pinball Fantasies

[Mindfield]

I've been working with Cowboy Rodeo on a number of things, but most relevantly to this forum, testing the next game in the Pinball Dreaming lineup, Pinball Fantasies. I know a lot of you have been waiting for this one, and it's just a day or two away from going gold and being submitted to the App Store. (They're just polishing up the App Store icon; everything else is ready for prime time.) They've now given me the greenlight to let the cat out of the bag, so those of you who've been waiting (and those who should really get to know the Pinball Dreaming series up close and personal) only have a week or so left to wait.

As to the game, the main menu is still familiar with its coverflow-style interface, but the high scores have been moved below so they can be seen as soon as you flip to a game. Flipping the game icon now rather amusingly shows you the back of a floppy disk. Most of the rest is still pretty familiar, though. In-game, all of the same features are present; all of the screen action areas are still there, and the pause menu still brings up the options to change graphics, lock orientation, and so on, but there’s a new option to add a “finger area” which blocks off a portion of the bottom of the screen dedicated to flipper use. This is purely a visual thing, in case you don’t want your thumbs obscuring part of the action. Landscape mode is still supported as well, which has its own natural areas for the thumbs due to the portrait nature of the tables, though it is at the expense of some visibility.

Now, Pinball Fantasies was my favourite of the series, so of the two this is the one I’d be most critical of. Fortunately I couldn’t find anything to criticize — bit of a downer for a curmudgeon like me, but at least it meant I got to play one of my all-time favourite pinball games in all its glory. Having played all of the tables, everything is as I remembered it — the music, the sound effects, the action, the skill shots — everything, just like playing it on Amiga and Jaguar as I fondly do. The frame rate sits at a perfect 60FPS pretty well all of the time, though playing it on an iPhone necessarily introduces the occasional stutter as background processes eat away little bits of time. On the iPod Touch however it’s smooth as silk drawers. Not, uh, that I’d know what that feels like or anything. I’m strictly a boxer dude.

You’ll be glad to know that it’s everything you hoped it would be, which is a perfect port of one of the best multi-table pinball games out there. But there’s no point in me blathering on about it any longer, you can see for yourself in the (unfortunately over-exposed) video below, plus some screenshots. Note that in the video there are some audio dropouts. I’m not sure which part of the audio feed setup I was using was causing it, but it wasn’t the game, as the sound is perfectly fine there.


Youtube link | Pop Up

[your personal robot]

Wow wow wow wow wow wow.
I'm soooooo excited!!! This is huge.
Biiiiig thanks for bringing this one.

[Stainy]

Whoa!!! this is brilliant!!! can`t wait.

[cf125]

wow this looks awesome will be keeping my eye out for this keep up the good work

[Mindfield]

Thanks -- though it's all their work, I'm just the messenger. It's definitely worth the wait though, and it still remains one of my all-time favourite pinballers.

[rich_952000]

I'm in fo sho!

I did ask Cowboy Rodeo once in the Dreaming thread if there was a chanc they'd ever institute online leaderboards, unfortunately they responded probably not A shame as that's the one thing I think the series could really benefit from.

[Skellionz]

looking forward to this, i did already it was coming after sending off a few emails to the guys at cowboy rodeo a few weeks ago they sent me a message saying it was almost ready to be submitted to the store ofc i kept this to myself, seeing the screenies and vid is great though and i knew they would do it justice as Juuso Salmijärvi (the guy who mailed me back) had just as much passion for recreating it perfectly as i did.

[LordGek]

Sweet!

[Mindfield]

Originally Posted by rich_952000

I'm in fo sho!

I did ask Cowboy Rodeo once in the Dreaming thread if there was a chanc they'd ever institute online leaderboards, unfortunately they responded probably not A shame as that's the one thing I think the series could really benefit from.

Online leaderboards are coming. The game code already supports it, but they need to do all of the server end stuff, and that's going to take a while to get it right. Juuso tells me probably mid-late summer -- August/September-ish if all goes well. Vesa (their coder) is off on a 4-week vacation so nothing's going to get done in that time anyway.

Originally Posted by Skellionz

looking forward to this, i did already it was coming after sending off a few emails to the guys at cowboy rodeo a few weeks ago they sent me a message saying it was almost ready to be submitted to the store ofc i kept this to myself, seeing the screenies and vid is great though and i knew they would do it justice as Juuso Salmijärvi (the guy who mailed me back) had just as much passion for recreating it perfectly as i did.

That's been their number one mandate for the series, to make as perfect a port as they can, and they've succeeded like gangbusters with both of them, but especially with Fantasies. I played he hell out of Fantasies back in the day, and this brings back all the memories in detail.

[drelbs]

When I saw Pinball Dreams come out, I was hoping for Pinball Fantasies, as it was my favorite of the series.

I shudder at the thought of how many hours I've spent playing PartyLand on the PC. (I've even got the good, but seriously flawed SNES version...)