30 May, 2019

The 4th batch of Zen-Williams tables

I was convinced that May would go by without a single new entry for the blog. Well, I was wrong. Just before the bell, Zen did produce the fourth batch of Williams-Bally tables. I purchased them immediately and took them for a test drive. 

Red and Ted's Road show 


is a Pat Lawlor table and, coming after Funhouse, it was inspired from the latter: we have now two talking heads, Ted the bulldozer driver and Red, his female boss. Road Show is a difficult game with a complex set of rules and I feel that I have to spend quite some time on it before mastering all its subtleties.

White Water 


is a table I did not manage to play at all in the FarSight version. It was just impossible to find a "visible" ball. Here there is not visibility problem but after a few games I concluded that I was not particularly attracted to it. 

The third tale is Hurricane


One would not have guessed, just by the title, that the game is an amusement park themed one, with Roller coasters, Ferris wheels, shooting galleries and so on. Unfortunately the Zen version does not include the revolving, back-glass, wheel, which I liked so much in the FarSight version. 


However another surprise was in store. When you loose a ball the clown is throwing a pie at you. It's one of those Zen animations I am grumbling about but in this case, since it comes at a moment when one is not playing, it is a welcome one, adding a touch of humour to the game.