Mark Hinds @MarkMSH

Mega Pinball (Windows)

Only For The Desperate Pinball Player

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.

By Mark Hinds on July 14, 2018