Video Pinball

[+FujiSkunk]

Video Pinball was the very first game I played on an Atari 2600. A friend of my mother's, who prided himself on keeping up with the latest electronics, showed me his Atari when we visited his house. This had to have been 1981, the year of the game's release, so I was either six or seven years old. I can still remember when I saw the ball hit the roll-over for the first time. "Oh neat, the number changed!"

 

Needless to say, I was begging my mother for an Atari from that day forward. And that Christmas, Santa got the word.

 

I didn't get Video Pinball under the Christmas tree, but a few days later, Mom picked it out at a department store. I had the Atari hooked up to my grandparents' TV at that point, a nice big piece of furniture from the '70s. I fired it up... and immediately got mad, because my game had these two extra holes, making me lose my ball a lot! That wasn't in the game before! Fortunately I figured out the difficulty switches before I pitched too big of a fit.

 

Some time later, after mastering the art of nudging and racking a huge amount of points with the roll-overs, I showed Mom my score. She then gave me an old shirt she had: "Pinball Wizard." I wore that shirt proudly until it fell apart.

 

I think Midnight Magic makes for a better pinball game, but Video Pinball is still very fun to play.

[Tin_Lunchbox]

I played this a lot as well. It's not so much a pinball simulation as a Pong-type game with a pinball motif. Although indeed there are interesting gravitational aspects to the ball mechanics. As someone else said, Video Pinball does have something of an hypnotic aspect to it, particularly if you play in a darkened room.

[dwh]

I first saw Video Pinball at an eighth grade classmates home, back when everyone only bought two or three of the 50 to 60 dollar games a year.Also played the hell out of it when I finally owned my own copy, mostly because there was no other pinball game out yet.

[IAMAMRA]

One of my favs actually!

[Schizophretard]

[Seaquest]

I don't consider it one of the best, but it really isn't that bad of a game. It can be quite fun sometimes.

[PitfallHarry2600]

I never played it, but I heard it's pretty good.

I'm more of a Midnight Magic guy anyway

[AlecRob]

I feel like most of the time spend in this game is watching the ball bounce around. You barely ever even get to hit it, it seems. its like playing pinball in space with low gravity.

[lucifershalo]

I like the game. Somehow I like it better than Midnight Magic even though technically it isn't as good.

 

The Video Pinball/Breakaway IV console is really cool. Very different from any other video pinball I've played. I'm kind of surprised no one ported its games yet, even in a minigame contest or something.

 

I would love to have a Video Pinball-Breakaway dedicated console games ported on 2600

[Tempest]

I feel like most of the time spend in this game is watching the ball bounce around. You barely ever even get to hit it, it seems. its like playing pinball in space with low gravity.

Most early pinball games on home consoles were like that. It took a long time for programmers to start getting the ball physics right.

 

You should play Pinball on the VideoBrain sometime, the ball tends to get stuck between two objects on the screen and will literally play itself for 5-10 min at a time.

[SoulBlazer]

Most early pinball games on home consoles were like that. It took a long time for programmers to start getting the ball physics right.

 

You should play Pinball on the VideoBrain sometime, the ball tends to get stuck between two objects on the screen and will literally play itself for 5-10 min at a time.

Pinball for the Intelivision was a very good game -- probably cause it didn't come out until 1983 and they had been working on it for two years.

 

But besides that one, I agree -- it wasn't until the NES that we started to see good pinball games.