Incline Pinball Games on PC

[Great Deceiver]

You can play 'classic single player' in FX3, without any of that leveling up bullshit.

 

[mwnn85]

I'd fire up the Amiga emulator for Pinball Dreams.
Used to love playing that on my Amiga 500+

 

[RuySan]

You can play 'classic single player' in FX3, without any of that leveling up bullshit.

I know, but much of the experience and tournaments (and the new challenge modes) are geared towards the non-classic gameplay.

 

[Kitchen Utensil]

A couple of years ago Visual Pinball/VPinMAME was the best I could find. Was a pain in the ass to set up, but once everything was working, it was a blast. Great classic table recreations, good ball physics, tons of settings, supported pivot/tate fullscreen tables etc. Not sure if it still receives updates, works on Win 10 etc. Definitely worth trying though.

 

[RuySan]

A couple of years ago Visual Pinball/VPinMAME was the best I could find. Was a pain in the ass to set up, but once everything was working, it was a blast. Great classic table recreations, good ball physics, tons of settings, supported pivot/tate fullscreen tables etc. Not sure if it still receives updates, works on Win 10 etc. Definitely worth trying though.

Didn't Pinball Arcade made Visual Pinball obsolete for the tables that were released?

It's a genuine question, i never played Visual Pinball and Pinball Arcade was the first Pinball videogame i played ever since Pinball Fantasies on the amiga (Space cadet doesn't count)

 

[Kitchen Utensil]

I never tried Pinball Arcade and have been out of the loop when it comes to pinball software for a couple of years. But a quick google search indicates that physics-wise, Visual Pinball is still the best. It was pretty close to the real thing back then (depending on the table) and nothing else I tried came even close. Maybe that changed, but I doubt it.

 

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[BLOBERT]

BROS NEVER TRIED ANYTHING ELSE BUT VISUAL PINBALL IS FUCKING AWESOME

 

[geno]

 

[Scarlet Lilith]

That game is so cool and super addictive, it was inspired by Devil Crash/Devil's Crush which is also really good and if you liked Demon's Tilt you should check it out.

 

[Jarpie]

This was preddy gud in amiga at least

 

[Curratum]

The second-best pinball on PC, closely trailing Pinball FX3:

 

[Great Deceiver]

So the new version of Pinball FX came out, unfortunately it's tethered to the Epic Store on PC. Thankfully they did away with microtransaction bullshit and you can just buy the tables for fiat money as regular DLC now.

I'm not sure how I feel about it. The new version (based on UE4 I believe) runs a lot worse than FX3 (on my 3070, FX3 runs easily at 4k/120fps, the new one struggles to reach 70/80 fps), but it supports stuff like HDR and raytracing (the performance impact is ridiculous on RT though), and the lighting on the tables does look significantly better (especially the Williams tables). There's a new Lovecraft-themed table that's pretty good, but I'll wait for it to get released on Steam before I commit to a purchase. I also couldn't notice much difference in physics.

They're making people buy all tables again, which is a very shitty practice. I had around 20-30 tables in FX3 and there's no fucking way I'm rebuying them on the new platform.

They also have a "pinball pass" that gives you access to all tables for a fixed subscription price, like USD 15/month or 100/year, which seems very high.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

this one was the bee's knees

 

[Great Deceiver]

The new version of Pinball FX released on Steam yesterday. There are some new tables. I've only played the Godzilla one but it's pretty shit - the full-color display instead of a classic dot matrix is a terrible idea IMO.

The fact that they're not giving any upgrade options from FX3 tables to this is just max greed. The new front end is significantly worse, too.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I found out about Zaccaria Pinball a couple of months ago and was pleasantly surprised.

Zaccaria was a Hungarian manufacturer of Pinball machines in the late 70s/early 80s, starting with classic electromechanical designs and moving on to solid state. The videogame rendition of the tables is pretty cool, and there are features that are very welcome like tweakable physics and room customization, that aren't available in Pinball FX. There are raytraced glass reflections and you can even tweak how dirty the playfield glass looks. There's a lot that Zen could learn from this little game. There are also many more modes and ways to play (including an admittedly pretty shitty campaign mode). The audio is also excellent.

It's free to download and comes with a really fun table (Time Machine), both the original version and the remake. There are a lot more tables available, and they cost about half of FX tables. Definitely worth checking out, especially for those who are more into the gameplay aspect and less silly stuff like licensed capeshit, and don't mind simpler designs. They remind me somewhat of Gottlieb machines.

 

[randir14]