pinballed

this is a game i “finished” today, so while i’m thinking about it i’m going to post this even though there was another game i finished earlier.

high on my list of NES games to play are all the orig. NES games available in animal crossing, almost all of which i think are now available for purchase on ye olde virtual console. i have to say whenever i pick up animal crossing again i always enjoy spending a few days getting back into it, squishing bugs in my dusty house, picking some of the forests of weeds that have grown, getting reacquainted with the townsfolk, and checking out what holidays are coming up. good times. (although, drat, i realized today i missed totakeke last night.)

after my previous escapade with balloon fight (previously recounted here), i tackled pinball. a lot of people have reviewed this game since it came out on the virtual console, including ign.com and 1up.com. although the ign review mentions that this was the 1st effort of nintendo’s HAL laboratory (responsible for the kirby and smash bros. series), both of the reviews lament the limited gameplay and the simplicity.

the user score on ign (currently 7.2 vs. the ign editor’s 5.0) show that the game has its fans, though, and after playing it for a while i def. count myself among them. i’m not turned off by simplicity in games if the game is fun, and even though i have a higher tolerance for repetitive games than some (as must anyone who truly loves NES games) i think the game has a lot more to offer than these reviews give credit for.

granted, this was a game released in 1984, but it’s def. on par with its contemporaries, such as donkey kong junior or the orig. mario bros. (both from 1983). the excellent guide on strategywiki.org describes the game well: “Just when you think you’ve discovered everything the table has to offer there’s usually one or two surprises hidden for you to find later on.” and for that reason i highly, highly recommend you don’t read that guide until after you’ve played the game for a good while.

i hadn’t really played pinball machines, virtual or otherwise, but i enjoyed all the touches that the video game version adds that wouldn’t be possible in a real board, including a bonus round. after some haphazard flipping, i settled down and figured out how to score better, and i’ve gotten to the point where i can break 100,000 pretty regularly (although there are def. a lot of areas where my skills could be improved). there’s something that changes in the game after that that makes the game much harder though, so it’ll take some effort to get much higher.

all in all this is def. a keeper and def. worth a look, and it def. has me psyched to play the other pinball video games out there. my high score prob. isn’t that high, but for now i’m satisfied w/ my top score of more than 110,000. next time i pick this up my goal will be to break 150,000. hahaha.

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