Review: MicroPinball Casino

Score:
81%

Author: Gabor Fetter

Version Reviewed: 3.03

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Vintage Pinball

Heady days. 1981 and I used to battle my nemesis, a wind-surfer whose name escapes me, on the university pinball table. Now there are pinball tables and there are pinball tables, but this one was set up perfectly - that unique mix of speed, skill and gameplay that means that an average player will get a 2 minute game and 10,000 points but a really skillful player will get a 20 minute game and 200,000 points. Boasting aside, I (and my opponent) had the measure of the table, in that our caresses on the flipper buttons and gentle (but not so violent as to cause a 'Tilt') coaxing of the metal and glass would take us into stratospheric 'crowd-gathering' territory.

Or maybe I just had a horribly mispent youth. And yes, I discovered Girls, the Guitar and God as well. Kind of forgot to study much, but that's another story for another day....

Being a pinball freak, I quite enjoyed Mile High Pinball on the N-Gage, of course, but got regularly frustrated by slipping down levels and having to re-do them again and again - kind of the point of the game, but I found it annoying regardless. MicroPinball Casino aims to replicate a traditional pinball table with as much realism as possible - which means decent sound samples (right down to the solenoid buzzing when you hold a flipper button down), hyper-accurate ball mechanics and no gimmicky 'mile high' levels. About all that's missing here is any kind of haptic feedback - I'd have liked to have at least seen some 'vibrate' action when mashing '*' or '#' to nudge the table up to the 'Tilt' limit.

MicroPinball MicroPinball

Flipper control is either via d-pad left/right or, more conveniently and intuitively, via '4' and '6' keys on the keypad. Response is good and I loved the fact that I could do the same tricks (e.g. flicking the ball from one flipper to the other) that I could do on real pinball tables back when my reflexes were sharper than a brand new Black and Decker drill bit. The only other key needed is d-pad down to launch the ball up the table, so gameplay definitely benefits from the simplicity of the controls overall.

As with Mile High Pinball, the table scrolls up and down so that you always see the 'action' - in fact, it even scrolls left and right a little here, as the table is wider than the screen's resolution. This isn't offputting though and I found it tastefully handled - after a few seconds play I simply forgot that the table was scrolling at all and got on with the game, which is how things should be.

As with most pinball tables, there's a sub-game, i.e. challenges and objectives over and above the simple mechanics of keeping the ball in play and hitting as many targets as possible. Themed around a Casino, you get ball-saving and multi-ball modes, plus a special 'Gamble' mode in which new targets are selected at random and you have to hit those that flash green but avoid those that flash red. The gameplay is quite well thought out and I especially appreciated that MicroPinball is quite hard - you're doing well to even get to the Casino games, if I'm honest.

MicroPinball MicroPinball

On your side is a Settings dialog that, aside from controlling the volume level, also lets you adjust the game speed, from lethargic to manic - it depends on what sort of pinball player you are and how much coffee you've had to drink, I suppose!

Aside from the lack of vibration in the game, the fact that there's only one table modelled here is ultimately something of a limitation - with more development, I'd expect to see a range of five or six tables, each worth their own themes and games. 

MicroPinball MicroPinball

As it stands though, MicroPinball Casino is a labour of love from a one-man outfit and still makes for an excellent diversion for any pinball fan stuck with time on their hands. 

(In terms of compatibility, any QVGA-screened S60 device will do, up to S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2. A few words of warning though - the detail on the screen is relatively intricate, a phone with a 2.4" or smaller screen may strain your eyesight - play this on the N95 8GB or N96 for full effect. And ball motion will be smoother on phones with graphics acceleration under the hood, i.e. the N95, N95 8GB and N82. Gabor, the author, has also tried the code on the 5800, but this large screened (and non-graphics-accelerated) device just isn't fast enough for smooth action)

Steve Litchfield

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