25 May, 2014

Beyond Timeshock

Timeshock was supposed to come out at the end of 2013. At the pace at which things are advancing I am not sure if a 2014 deadline will be respected. Please, do not get me wrong. The ProPinball team at Barnstorm Games are doing a fantastic job. The new version of Timeshock will certainly be the best simulation ever. But I am not sure that it will be profitable enough, so as to justify investing into another ProPinball resurrection. I frankly hope to be proven wrong on this point but I am not overly optimistic. 

So, let us consider the worst case scenario, one where the revival of ProPinballs ends with Timeshock. As far as iDevices are concerned there is no much hope. However for the Mac the situation is less gloomy. One can always install Windows under BootCamp and play the Windows version of all ProPinballs. However, this week-end I stumbled upon another solution. Following some links on the web I ended up at the page of

Paul the Tall

It’s a website devoted to porting Windows games to the Mac. And, what is most interesting, the site proposes ports of Timeshock, Big Race USA and Fantastic Journey. Since BRUSA is my favourite ProPinball I decided to concentrate on it.


The port is based on the commercial application Crossover. I had Crossover for quite some time back (when it went free for one day). Purchasing Crossover will set you back 48 € but it is worth it when you have to use regularly apps from the dark side. Paul’s website proposes what they call a CrossTie as well as a wrapper for the game. The former makes the installation of the pinball into Crossover pretty straightforward. Finally one has to obtain the Windows binary of the game. I happen to have the Good Old Games version of all three available ProPinballs; if you don’t you can purchase each for 5.99 $, a more than reasonable price. Moreover the games come DRM-free, something that I do appreciate a lot. I had BRUSA installed within a few minutes and it plays perfectly.

The next I will try will be installing The Web. Since the game was produced for Windows 95 I expect some difficulties. In any case I will keep you posted.

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