Windows

Balls of Steel

Description

After Epic Megagames' two releases Epic Pinball and Extreme Pinball, Apogee finally got their own pinball game in late 1997, Balls of Steel. It features five testosterone-packed tables, each with its own theme, missions, and special bonuses. Like the Epic games and the classic "21st Century" pinball games on Amiga, BoS has a top-down scrolling screen, with an animated dot matrix display at the bottom. It also features a full-table view. Very high scores are awarded with a "powerball" end bonus mode, and could be posted on the "WorldScores" net site (no longer available). Being a Windows game, all tables boast high-resolution graphics.

This game was included in Encore's "Pinball Madness 2" collection in 1999.

Alternate Titles

• "BOS" -- Common abbreviation

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User Reviews

Pinball as addictive as any 1st-person shooter.

Andy Voss (1622)

The Press Says

Mega Score	Apr, 1998	90 out of 100	90
Adrenaline Vault, The (AVault)	Feb 08, 1997		90
Gamezilla	Dec 06, 2000	89 out of 100	89
Imperium Gier	Oct 10, 2001	8.3 out of 10	83
PC Games (Germany)	Jan 07, 1998	80 out of 100	80
Computer Games Magazine	May 07, 1998		80
GameStar (Germany)	Jan, 1998	78 out of 100	78
PC Action	Jan, 1998	76 out of 100	76
PC Gameplay (Benelux)	Apr, 1998	72 out of 100	72
PC Player (Germany)	Jan, 1998	66 out of 100	66

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Trivia

The first appearance anywhere of a pinball machine named "Balls of Steel" is in level 1, "Hollywood Holocaust", of Duke Nuken 3D. Since 3D Realms and Pinball Wizards (a group formed solely to publish this non-3D title) are both divisions of Apogee, either this early appearance inspired the actual Balls of Steel product or was a leak / early promotion of their pinball video game that would come out of the pipe nearly two years later.

In any case, the references went both ways, as Balls of Steel includes a Duke Nukem 3D-inspired table, with ramps and bonuses named after Duke enemies (octabrain, pig-cop) and power-ups (jetpack, HoloDuke). Icing the cake is the recording of original Duke-y quips by Jon St. John, the official voice actor for the Duke Nukem character.