Mega Pinball

The Good
What did I like about this game? Well, truth be told - not a lot. It looks OK, it installed cleanly and it was cheap. The best I can say about this game is that it was OK in places.

The Bad
However there were lots of things I didn't like. There's no in-game music at all which is disappointing but what really annoyed me is that the game makes use of some really annoying sound effects. You know the cheesy 'booiinngg' sound you get in cartoons whenever a spring is used - that's what the game uses when a ball hits the lower bumpers. There were others but it used a cuckoo clock sound whenever a ball is lost - need I say more.

Annoying sounds can be turned off, what really makes a pinball game are the tables themselves. I played Dragon Slayer first, that's the only table that is named in-game, and my first ball got stuck in the bumpers at the top of the screen so I had to abandon the game. I'm pretty certain that's never happened to me in any other pinball game I've ever played and I've played a few 'coz I'm really old.
The next table I played was the yellow one, I think it's Monster's Rhapsody, and that played just fine apart from the annoying sound effects. The final table was the pink one which I think is Crystal Tower. That was a real disappointment because there was no way I could give the ball enough energy to leave the launch chute and get on to the table. I tried a dozen or more times on two different machines, using various compatibility modes and all the tricks I could think of. Nothing.
So of the three tables I can play two, one of which has issues, and neither was very exciting.

Finally, I ran it under WIN 7 to try and play the third table, it played but locked up my machine on exit. That was the last straw. This game is history

The Bottom Line
This is a fairly old game, 2000, but that's no excuse. There are better pinball games out there, find one and avoid this.

The Good
Well, a few things. Not many though. You enter your player name before you play your first game. You can enter up to 10 characters, and there is an in-game High Score board. There are three tables, and this game can usually be found for next to nothing.

The Bad
There are three tables. Only one table is identified within the game by name, and that's "Dragon Slayer." It appears on the table itself. The second table is "Monsters Rhapsody," I think. I'm going by table design. The third table (again, I think) is "Crystal Towers." This last table is unplayable, and for a very stupid reason. The plunger is too weak to launch the ball high enough in the chute so the ball can enter the play field. Nothing I tried worked. Re-mapping the plunger to different keys? Nope! Nudging the table? Nope! Releasing the plunger at maximum power just as the ball falls back and the two collide? Nope! It did go higher that way, but not high enough.

There is no music, and the sound effects are lame. The High Score board lists the high score by player, and while there is a separate column for each table they are simply numbered. I played the tables in the default order. "Dragon Slayer" was first. The high scores for it are in the "1" column. Then "Monsters Rhapsody." "Crystal Tower" was played last and the scores were listed in column 3.

I own two releases of this game. The first was published by Tropics Entertainment with the title "Snap! Mega Pinball." I couldn't even get it to install on my system. The one that did, and which this review is primarily for, was published under the imprint Casualarcade as "Mega Pinball." Both releases contain the same 3 tables.

My system uses the 64-bit version of Windows 10 Home.

Stated OS compatibility: Windows 98, Me, 2000, XP

The Bottom Line
This game was lame even when it was originally released in 2000. This game is bare-bones pinball and isn't even worth the $2 that I paid for it. Maybe $1.50 if the third table was playable.