Pinball

"Pinball is pinball"

Hudson's Pinball for PlayStation Portable is about as bare-bones a pinball simulator as you're likely to find, but can be quite a bit of fun and certainly shows how perfectly the PSP is suited to the game of pinball. There are two tables to play on in the game: The Forest of the Fortune Teller and The Morphing Avenger. Both of these are fairly average as far as pinball tables go; you're given a few slots at the top to try and get the ball through and light up each row, with bumpers under that, a ramp on either side to shoot the ball up, various bumpers, and a spot to lock the ball. Nothing surprising or out of the ordinary here. Both tables resemble each other quite a bit, although The Morphing Avenger does have an extra flipper on the right-hand side, and both tables have the annoying tendency that quite a few pinball games fall into that lets the ball slip down the sides or straight through the flippers at just such an angle that you can't touch it a little more often then you'd like.

Of course, each table has to have some sort of gimmick. In Forest of the Fortune Teller there are three Tarot cards on the table --relating to the three balls, duh-- that change as you play. At the end of the game, based on how you play, you are told your Past, Present, and Future fortunes. For instance, playing just now, my fortune is: Past: Endurance, Present: Liberating, Future: Charm.
In The Morphing Avenger there's a guy in a white jacket on the table, who, if you charge up the energy by shooting the ball up the ramps on the table and then activate the correct lights, will morph into a tiger. … That's it.

You play Pinball by turning the PSP to the right and using the screen vertically. Until you see this in action you would never know how perfectly suited the PSP is for pinball. Here you have no scrolling screen to follow the ball, no scrunched table with large blank areas on the sides; it simply fits. In this position, you use the Cross and Triangle buttons to control the flippers, Square to nudge the table, and L or R to launch the ball. It may sound strange, but once you start playing it feels like the most natural setup in the world.

There are a couple different modes in the game, which consist of Arcade, Attack, and Sharing VS. Arcade is simply your standard game of pinball. In Attack, several balls are launched on to the table one after the other, which you cannot lose no matter how badly you play. The goal here is to score as many points as you can within either a one and a half or five minute time limit. And the third mode, Sharing VS, makes use of the PSPs Game Sharing feature, which allows you to play against another person using only one game cartridge.

The graphics in the game are as solid as they come in any pinball sim, and look great on the PSPs bright, crystal-clear screen. A static table background with animated lights, balls, and flippers. You can't mess that up. The sound is similarly solid. Generic pinball music and sound effects are the order of the day.

In the end, I think the title of this game sums it up best: Pinball. An unimaginative title for an unimaginative game. It gets the job done and there's nothing much you can complain about, but there's nothing much you can praise either. There are many better, cheaper pinball simulations out there, but if you're looking for pinball on the go, then this is probably your best bet. Pinball is a perfect time killer that you can get into and out of quickly while going about your hum-drum life. It is also an easy import since everything besides the title screen is in English. If nothing else, it gives me great hope that other game makers will see how well pinball works on the PSP and create games to match that potential. Make no mistake, Pinball is fun, but it's been done before, and better.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 10/17/05