Play all the Pinballs You Want On Your PC for Free
For the pinball hustler, the visual pinball emulator is god-sent. While there are a number of good PC pinball creations by Microsoft and independent software houses like 21st Century and Amtex software, Visual Pinball not only offers you hundreds of classic and current pinball tables for free, but allows you to use its original ROMs (as in VpinMAME) and modify or create your own using simple vbasic scripts.
The concept is very much like the Apple ][ pinball construction set (above) except this is a zillion times better in every way - graphics, sounds, flexiblity and programming. Creative users can effortlessly whip out a nice simple table like Astro Shooter from a popular Tomy toy pinball (with all the bells and whistles)...
Or use the emulator to do an action shooting game, video poker, blackjack, slots or whatever grabs your fancy! It is not difficult to use the extremely fexible core engine to whip out a game that you have been thinking about (eg horse racing or mini golf) but never imagined how easy it is to create and tweak to your heart's content.
Take this example below of a PacMan game, using the visual pinball engine. This shows how versatile this emulator is.
Fun though these games are, what Visual Pinball does best is pinballs. No programming needed. Just download the emulator from the link above and goto IR Pinball to download hundreds of tables which are thoughtfully categorized. That's all - it's as simple as this.
If you are a purist and would like to dig deeper, try out
VpinMAME. If you are familar with the multi arcade emulator MAME, getting this emulator up and running is no problem at all. This emulator, like MAME, uses original ROMS, thus the game is more accurate and true to the original tables.
The best thing about the pinball emulator is that you can recreate better-than-original classic tables like the first Apple ][ video pinball by Bill Budge and the really nice NES pinball (no more scrolling tables). See above screenshots.
Finally, for those of you who are old enough to remember the no-flippers pinballs (like the one above), you will really enjoy this emulator. I shared this emulator with one of my church pals and he told me how his kid enjoyed it (4-year old - still too young to be skillful enough to manipulate flippers) and then went on to describe how he constructed a few of these pinballs using wood from discarded soap boxes, nails, rubber bands and marbles for the silver balls of steel.
Take it from me, Visual Pinball is more fun than a barrel of monkeys!
