Pinball Gold Pack

I guess I was spoiled by the original Amiga versions (I had a 500 and Dreams, Fantasies, and Mania - which was for some reason labeled, including the screens, as Pinball Dreams II), which didn't have the choppy sound this version has (with the music in Illusions cutting out for long periods at random, it seems). However, shoddy DOS ports don't excuse the flippers in Pinball Dreams refusing to work 'til I copied over a mapper.txt from one of the other games (and then only working with the Ctrl keys and having the spacebar be the ball lauch instead of down arrow and Enter being the table bump instead of the spacebar) or that Pinball Dreams II controls and sounds the smoothest of all five games, despite being so low res that much of the detail is just a blur (seriously, it's like it was designed for a 160x120 screen! The other games look acceptable for 640x480 being expanded for a 19" widescreen). [Windows 7 64-bit, 3.1GHz Athlon II X2, 4GB RAM, 512MB HD Radeon 5670, 19" widescreen monitor, not that it matters]

This is an incredible value for your money. Although there is evidence of a rushed release, I haven't found any glitches that can't be fixed with a little bit of .cfg file tinkering. But more importantly, you get a TON of tables, and some of the more complicated ones like Partyland can keep you playing for hours and hours!

A nice set of retro Pinball tables/games. Some of my favourites - especially Partyland in PB Fantasies. However, there is quite a bit of lag even on a Quad-Core machine with a discreet GPU.

This pack contains: Pinball Dreams (8 tables) - Some nice tables, but a bit too primitive for my tastes. The graphics make the tables a bit cluttered and hard to read. Pinball Fantasies (4 tables) - A step up from "Dreams", particularly the Partyland table. Pinball Mania (4 tables) - Kind of crude, tables are odd and not very fun in my opinion. Pinball Illusions (4 tables) - Now this is where it's at. Beautiful, clear graphics; super fun table layouts with lots of ramps, various missions and good use of the display with mini-games; fantastic music and audio (I dare anyone to play the Vikings table without feeling the urge to hum along within a few seconds of launching the ball.) Basically the game is just incredibly polished and really enjoyable. Illusions is in my top three pinball games along with Extreme Pinball and Psycho Pinball, which I hope will make it to GOG at some point.

Let it not be said that you don't get enough pinball for your money with this purchase. What you're actually buying is four seperate pinball games across three launchers. This nets you twenty different tables, but this has its downsides too. There's a lot of table variety on offer in terms of both theme and gameplay, but that means that for every table you enjoy there's going to be one you don't, and if you're anything like me (and I know I am) you'll end up with 6-7 tables you enjoy spread out across the three launchers. This makes keeping all three launchers installed, booting up the correct launcher for the table you want & wading through the often slow and obtuse menus (only one has mouse support) annoying when all you wanted was a quick pinball fix. Furthermore, when I say there's a lot of variety, I mean a LOT. As someone who enjoys Horror and Sci-Fi themed tables I found enough that I didn't feel shortchanged, but most of the tables' themes left me cold. Both gameplay and sound design too can vary, this time in terms of quality. Even as a Pinball neophyte it's clear some of these tables are boring or badly designed regardless of skill level, and the music (even now that it has the CD quality music included) can either be great or grating. For example on Pinball Illusions (the weakest of the 4 games included in my opinion) Extreme Sports has a great Main Table theme, while The Vikings has the single worst table music I've ever heard. I'd still say you should buy this if you want a handful of enjoyable Pinball tables for a low price, but you're just going to have to live with the fact that you're not going to enjoy a lot (or possibly even most) of the tables on offer here.