The Pinball Arcade

Moby ID: 55689
iPad Specs
Add-on (official)

Description

Pinball Arcade is based on the Pinball Hall of Fame series and includes accurate simulations of pinball tables from Gottlieb, Williams, Stern Pinball (which also includes its previous incarnations: Stern Electronics, Data East Pinball, and Sega Pinball) and Bally. The latter two companies were not previously featured. It includes four tables, one from each company, with support for additional tables through commercial downloadable content. The included tables are, in the order they appear on the game:

Almost every version of the game is a free download, and they each come with Tales of the Arabian Nights included for no extra cost, alongside its Pro upgrade, while the PS3/Vita/360 versions, which are paid releases instead, come with the aforementioned four tables; these are referred to as the "core pack" on other versions.

The game also features a large amount of additional tables available for download, including tables that were already on previous Pinball Hall of Fame titles (such as Black Knight, Medieval Madness, Big Shot and Central Park) and other tables never seen on other games (such as Attack from Mars, Cirqus Voltaire and Bride of Pin-Bot), alongside some based on licensed properties (from tables like Creature from the Black Lagoon and Elvira and the Party Monsters to ones like Twilight Zone and Star Trek: The Next Generation), as well as Season Packs, which compile the tables from a respective "season" into one, although table availability varies from platform to platform. The method to purchase tables and season packs also varies depending on the platform, with most versions handling it inside the game, whereas on PlayStation and Xbox versions these are listed on and purchased/downloaded through their respective storefronts, although the Windows version also has the Season Packs listed on the Steam Store.

There is support for achievements/trophies and online leaderboards, and the game includes a few extras, such as a little history on the games and the original sales flyers, plus in-depth instructions on every element of each table. It also has support for online play in the form of various online tournaments held by FarSight.

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Credits (iPad version)

102 People (44 developers, 58 thanks) · View all

Developed by
  • FarSight Studios
President
Technical Director
Director of Development
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Senior Producer
Designer
Associate Producer
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Lead Platform Engineers
Emulation Engineer
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Average score: 82% (based on 8 ratings)

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Average score: 4.5 out of 5 (based on 5 ratings with 0 reviews)

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Discussion

Subject By Date
Table Packs Lance Boyle (1532) Sep 10, 2013
TPA's Kickstarter: The Twilight Zone Lance Boyle (1532) Jun 5, 2012

Trivia

Previously included tables

While most of the tables have had their first adaptation on Pinball Arcade others were previously adapted on different games. Besides those included on the Pinball Hall of Fame collections, there's these ones: Bally's Elvira and the Party Monsters was previously adapted for the 1992 Atari Lynx game Pinball Jam, alongside the Williams table Police Force * Bally's Creature from the Black Lagoon and Black Rose as well as Williams' Tales of the Arabian Nights were adapted on the 2001 PC game Williams Pinball Classics (not to be confused with the European name for the PHOF Williams collection, but coincidentally TotAN was included on the PS3/360 version of said game) alongside Bally's Lost World. This strangely makes TotAN the only Williams table on that collection. * Before its inclusion on this very game and on PHOF Williams, Pin*Bot was adapted into an NES game by Rare in the late eighties, which took some liberties by adding hazards not present on the original table as that would've been impossible in real life. * As with Pin*Bot, Williams' High Speed also saw an NES adaptation courtesy of Rare, which added more hazards as well as minigames. * Following from the earlier Pin*Bot and High Speed examples, the latter's successor, The Getaway: High Speed II, also saw a video game adaptation, albeit on Game Boy, developed by Unexpected Development. Unlike Rare's adaptations, this is a mostly straightforward version, which also includes the "video mode" from the original table, where you drive a car trying to get away from police and get to your hideout. * Haunted House and Cue Ball Wizard were included in 1998's similarly titled Microsoft Pinball Arcade, with the former being the sole table on that game's demo version. Haunted House also made an appearance on its Game Boy Color counterpart. * Eight Ball Wizard* previously had an adaptation released for DOS and Macintosh computers in 1993 by publisher Amtex under license from Midway, who owned the rights to the table.

Pro Mode

Starting with the seventh table pack on iOS and Android, FarSight has added a Pro Mode upgrade for select tables, starting with Scared Stiff, although this was also added to the earlier Tales of the Arabian Nights and Medieval Madness tables. This allows you to enter in the Operator's Menu for the respective table, letting you change the settings (which disables leaderboard posting and table goals until it's reset to the default settings). Pro Mode also has a Table View mode, letting you view around the table; an option to "control" the ball, and tips from professional pinball players. The PlayStation Network versions didn't get it until early February 2013, with the release of both Table Pack 7 and the Twilight Zone table.

Xbox 360 version

The Xbox 360 version hasn't been updated since late August 2012 due to publisher issues: that version's publisher, Crave Entertainment, alongside parent company Fillpoint, had gone into bankruptcy sometime later that year. Microsoft policies for Xbox LIVE Arcade releases do not allow developers to self-publish unless they're a company that does retail releases for the system, which is why FarSight couldn't do anything, and they have been trying nearly a year to gain back the contract they had with Crave so that it could be transferred to another publisher. However, on June 27th, 2013, all of the DLC available for that version had been delisted from the Xbox Marketplace, with the core game itself getting deleted on July 18th. It was later mentioned by a FarSight rep that this was due to Crave getting their publishing contract for Xbox 360 revoked by Microsoft, which means they won't be able to publish anything else. However, almost two years after its removal, both the core game and the three table packs saw a re-release on May 11th, 2015 alongside all current packs up until that point. Interestingly, Crave are still listed as publishers for that version.

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Lance Boyle.

PlayStation 4 added by Caelestis. Nintendo Switch added by Kam1Kaz3NL77. Xbox One added by Sciere. Ouya added by Kabushi. Macintosh added by LepricahnsGold.

Additional contributors: Patrick Bregger, Kennyannydenny.

Game added April 27, 2012. Last modified February 29, 2024.