New Zen tables

As you well know Zen Studios are the last surviving digital pinball editors. Once they disappear there will be no more pinballs on the Mac. Since they have joined the Apple Arcade collection they are producing tables under the Zen Pinball Party moniker. As I explained in a previous post of mine I don't wish to pay for an Apple Arcade subscription just to be able to play the new tables. So I am giving you the information without comments. The three new tables are 

Funko Pinball Party Arena

A Peanuts/Snoopy table

and a graphically superb Garfield table

I am a great fan of Garfield and would have liked to lay my hands on this table, but as I said previously I am not going to pay the Apple Arcade tax just for this. Too bad.

Once more new tables

I was convinced that 2021 would go by without myself publishing anything in the blog. I have stopped publishing comments on shitty games involving flippers and, as for real pinball games, nothing has been in sight. In fact, the only ones producing new pinball tables are the Zen Studios guys. A year ago they issued three new tables for the Mac. This year they joined the Apple Arcade and are offering a collection of pinballs under the name of Zen Pinball Party. Most of the tables are ones that already exist for the Mac. However there are also four new ones. They are

Trolls

Kung Fu Panda

How to Train Your Dragon

and My Little Pony

I haven't played the new tables for two reasons. One is that, on the Mac, they require MacOs 11 which I haven't installed (and will not for some time). The second is that Apple Arcade is a subscription service and I don't have any intention to pay a monthly fee to Apple in order to play four pinball tables. So I am just giving you the information that these new tables do exist. 

Now wait for next year. 

At long last, new tables

Again, there has been no post for months. If you wonder about the reason for this you have just to read my January 1st post. Since digital pinball is on life support I am writing only where there is something worth reading. 

I was worried a little about the Zen Williams series but it turned out that in the end there were some good news: the 6th instalment of the series is out and this time it was a  bunch of three tables. First and foremost is Funhouse

The readers of the blog are aware of my admiration for the work of Pat Lawlor.  And for me  Funhouse is one of his best tables, second perhaps only to the Addams Family. The Zen implementation of Funhouse is excellent. There is even a trick allowing you to have a Rudy hit every time you launch the ball (launch with max speed and keep the left flipper raised: the ball is automatically deviated towards Rudy). 

The second table is Dr. Dude. I really liked the table when it appeared in the Pinball Arcade collection. Unfortunately this time it appeared alongside Funhouse and thus it could not attract my interest as it did in 2013. 

Another reason for this is also the fact that the third table, Space Station, is an original, by which I mean that it isn't part of the Pinball Arcade collection. 

I like particularly the spacewalker. He is hit by a meteorite when the ball drains, adding more to the drama of the situation.

All in all these three Zen tables are beauties. Just have a look at Rudy's head: there is no comparison with the drab FarSight Rudy one. And the ball stays visible at all times. And did I tell you that the price is just a measly 3.50 euros per table? I don't think you'll need more convincing. Grab the tables and start playing.

Crystal Caliburn update

It has been ages since I have last written an article for the blog. The reason is simple: nothing is happening in the digital pinball world: just some minor updates of pinballs I do not care much about. But no news from Zen Studios, no new tables for the Stern Pinball Arcade of FarSight, no nothing. And I do not think the current pandemic has anything to do with this.

But then, out of the blue the update notifications on my iPad signalled a new version of Crystal Caliburn. Apparently Fujita-san has not totally abandoned his pinballs. The new version, 1.6, is build with the software development kit of iOS 13. This means that we can be sure that the new version will be working for quite more years in the future. Given the paucity of new pinballs, things like this are precious.

I just hope that Fujita-san updates Tristan as well. However I am convinced that any hopes for a new pinball coming from Littlewing are illusory. Developing a new pinball is a huge enterprise and I do not believe that Fujita-san has time for this. Of course, I would be delighted to be proven wrong. 

Zen-WIlliams volume 5 is here

The three-table pack arrived before Christmas but I decided to post my article with the new year hoping to exorcise the bad spirits that are dooming digital pinball. As always the collection of tables is a fine one. First and foremost we have the Tales of the Arabian Nights

It's a fantastic table, which, curiously I had neglected in the FarSight collection. The graphic quality of the table is unique and the Zen-introduced enhancements do add to the interest of the gameplay. If you buy just one table from volume 5, Arabian Nights is the one I recommend.

Those who follow my blog know that I am a great admirer of Pat Lawlor. Unfortunately I am somehow disappointed by the Zen Studios choice to follow their Lawlor table collection which had started so nicely with Safecracker with two of the most difficult Lawlor tables Red & Ted's Road Show and now No Good Gofers 

I find the play difficult (but then, that may be because of my below-par game) and the graphic additions of Zen Studios do not manage to add to the excitement. Personally I do not care much about the challenge presented by a table. I do hope that in the next volume Zen Studios choose one of the less difficult-more enjoyable Lawlor tables. 

The third table of the collection is Circus Voltaire. 

This is one of the tables where it took me some time before I started appreciating it. One of the reasons is that I find the ringmaster puppet added by Zen downright ugly. So I started playing the classic version before relenting and going back to the "enhanced" one. However, once you are accustomed to it Circus Voltaire is a nice table.

Let's pray for Zen Studios to continue their Williams collection in the months to come.

The end of a morose year

Who could imagine that the pinball landscape would become an utter desolation in the space of one year. Of course the writing was on the wall. When Littlewing called it quits 7 years ago it was clear that the days of glory of digital pinball were over. The close-to-zero prices of the AppStore were incompatible with the development of decent pinball tables. So over the years we witnessed the disappearance of all but one of the major players in the digital pinball business.

Gameprom, who gave us such great tables like RedPlanet and Arcade Pinball disappeared last year. Ditto for Ask Homework, aka Magic Pixel, of Zaccaria line fame. The Pro Pinball revival turned out to be a farce (but did leave all of us ProPinball fans with a bad taste in the mouth). FarSight lost their Williams/Bally license and since then they have gone in radio silence.

Right now our only hope is the Zen Studio line of Williams/bally pinballs. They are doing an excellent job with this but will they manage to make enough money so as to survive? In any case their attempt to monetise their iOS line with the Williams Pinball application has led to a monster which I prefer to forget. 

And just to add to the depression, there are the bad news of Catalina. With the new MacOS the wrappers of ProPinball will stop working. Will somebody provide new and Catalina-compatible ones? I wouldn't hold my breath. 

In 2019 I tried to publish a post per month just to let you know that the blog is alive. I am afraid that this is totally futile. The plan for 2020 will be to publish something whenever Zen Studios present new tables. At least I will write in order to say something positive. 

Two new pinballs by Zen

This time there were only two new tables instead of the usual pack of three. I don't like the idea that Zen may be slowing down. But then they probably tried to get these two pinballs out before Halloween, so let's not be too pessimistic (yet).

The two new tables are monster themed. Monster Bash is a collection of all the famous monsters (Frankenstein, Dracula, the Mummy etc.) against a backdrop of rock concert. 

It's a funny table and the various monsters which become activated as the game progresses add a variety to the gameplay.

The second table is the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Here the backdrop is a drive-in cinema.  While the gameplay is slightly less interesting than the one of the Monsters the graphics are superb.

In this case the Zen animations are absolutely great. One sees the creature swim in the lagoon and it even comes out when a ball drains to inspect the vicinity. Just look at the screenshot below.

There has been also a price hike on the tables but given their quality I do not regret at all the 11 euros I had to pay for them.

Epic Quest and a friend's suggestion

I had already written about Epic Quest in my post on eSports Zen pinballs. At that time I had discarded the table saying that it was hard to follow the ball.  Suffering from the invisible FarSight balls I was particularly sensitive to tables where the ball visibility was not perfect.

But then when I wrote the previous ball on Adventure Pinball (which is a pinball only in name) my friend Marco chimed in and reminded me that he had already pointed out that Epic Quest was worth some attention on my behalf. And thus I decided to give it a second chance.

My surprise was that the game did not make it to the Mac version of Zen pinballs collection. This is somewhat intriguing since the other table of the eSports collection, Mars, does indeed appear among the tables one can play on the Mac. At least Epic Quest was available on the iPad and thus I could try it again.  Since this time I was motivated I took the time to accustom myself to the highly coloured tabletop and was rewarded with a nice gameplay and the typical Zen table layout which makes the ball difficult to drain. (Unfortunately this is not the case for the Zen-Williams collection where the layout must respect the original pinball's one).

If you haven't tried Epic Quest, now is the time to give it a try.

Is this a pinball?

One more of those pinball-based games made its appearance. It is even has pinball in the name (it's called Adventure Pinball) The game is announced as combining pinball, adventure and role playing and comes in old-school graphics and colour:

I watched the short video of the gameplay and I immediately decided not to spend the 2.29 euros: it is not a pinball. If you are interested in role playing you could perhaps find it appealing but if, like myself, you are a pinball fan, you can simply forget about it.

Comparing Zen and FarSight

The title is somewhat misleading. I am not going to compare neither the two companies nor their whole product lines. I am going to focus on just one table I have been playing for the past week: Attack from Mars.

But first a statement. There is no comparison between the physics of Zen pinballs and that of the FarSight ones. Compared to the former the latter give an impression of clunkiness which, for the table in question is aggravated by the angle of the flippers that makes the control of the ball particularly unnerving.

The Zen table

As I said I have been playing the two versions of the same table and I have the impression that the point system is not the same for the two implementations. How would that be possible?  Aren't the two versions supposed to simulate the behaviour of the real table? Still, I am obtaining systematically higher scores on the FarSight table. My personal bests are at around 8 billion for the Zen version and 12 billion for the FarSight one. 

The FarSight table

One thing that I do appreciate in the FarSight layout is the possibility to adjust the table view. I like vertical tables (I was a big fan of the LIttleWing tables) and FarSight offers an angle of view which, while not being a view from above, is much better than the Zen fixed, "perspective", view.

Which table do I prefer? I haven't decided yet. For the time being, I am playing both, trying to improve my scores in both simulations. 

FarSight vs Zen

I would have never believed that I was going to write a post where FarSight would have the upper hand in a comparison to Zen. Well, here it is.

Some background is necessary though. Three weeks ago I underwent surgery in order to repair a shoulder tendon (the supraspinatus, if you are interested in details). As a consequence my left arm was immobilised, with a very clever belt (it still is and will be for ten more days) and I could not play pinball. I was somewhat frustrated but then I remembered Safe Cracker. In this game you only lose the ball after the area shut-down when you are in sudden death. So I started playing SC with just the right flipper. It's not as funny as when you play with both flippers but it's better than nothing.

Now, Safe Cracker exists both in the Pinball Arcade and the Zen Pinball collections. I tried both, with, initially, a preference for Zen. However, as I kept playing I found that the FarSight version had definite advantages, in particular for someone who was losing the ball all too easily. For instance in the Pinball Arcade simulator the launch of the ball is always the same so that it always lights the same lane. One can thus rack up 5 minutes time extensions much more easily. 

Also I like the angle of the PA pinball (in position 3). It gives you more of a bird's eye view and less of a perspective one. I prefer it by far. So this time FarSight is one-upping Zen (and, I know, this is totally subjective).

I wrote to FarSight

The idea is not mine. It was in fact a suggestion of my friend Nick. Now that FarSight has lost the Williams/Bally tables they could try to revive the two great digital pinball lines which have disappeared after trying the adventure of the AppStore:  Littlewing and ProPinball. So I decided to write to them with the suggestion. 

Here  is the moil I sent them.

I am pinball fan and a Pinball Arcade player. Since the non-renewal of the Williams-Bally contract I understand that times may be difficult for FarSight. However I think that there many occasions out there in particular two excellent collections of digital pinballs the rights of which could probably be purchased. I am thinking about Littlewing and ProPinball. Both have now disappeared but could be revived thanks to your experience and offer a new line of income for your company.


I hope you'like this idea of mine.

Let's see if they respond.

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.

Here comes the third batch of Zen-Williams tables

I am not keeping a precise track but I have the impression that Zen is releasing one batch of three Williams-Bally tables every two-three months. This amounts to one new table per month which is not that bad. As long as this goes on we should not complain. Right now with most pinball developers having gone out of business and FarSight moribund (perhaps I am a tad too pessimistic there) having Zen resuscitating the old classics is a real consolation. Of course those are tables that already existed in the Pinball Arcade collection (and which we had paid for) but, who cares, they are there and hopefully will not disappear like the ones from FarSight. Three new table were offered this time:

Theatre of Magic,

Champion Pub,

and Safe Cracker

I played all three in the Zen-enhanced version. Purists can opt for the classic one, which is devoid of any Zen-specific animations. But in the case of Zen-Williams pinballs the animations are unobtrusive and do not spoil the gameplay. One can even argue that they add a "je ne sais quoi" to it. Anyhow the three tables are excellent and definitely worth the 10 or so euros one must pay in order to acquire them. 

They lost their mind

I am talking about FarSight. I have been complaining about the ball which manages due to the reflections they have added to it to make it almost invisible thanks to a chameleon effect. I was hoping that one daythey were going to fix this. Well, I was deluding myself.

The recent update of the iOS Pinball Arcade made things even worse. You can judge for yourself. Here is the ball I selected.

I chose one that was very dark, perhaps not one with the ideal contrast with the table (I usually play with a blue one in this table) but one that suffices in order to illustrate my point. 

And here is what you get. Where did the deep red colour go? It just disappeared  from the mirror-like surface. 

Previously (and I am talking about the times before the Williams divorce) there was a solid black ball without reflections. It was ideal when the table was a light-coloured one. It just disappeared together with the special Wiliams-inspired balls. Why? Does a solid black ball fall under the Williams copyright?

I wonder if the people who are programming in FarSight ever play pinball themselves.

Zen-Williams pinballs for iOS

When Zen Studios released the first batch of their Williams-Bally pinball tables the bad news was that there was no iOS version. In fact my friend Nick was pessimistic even concerning their release on the Mac since the tables were supposed to be FX3 (which does not run on the Mac) only. Well, the tables did get released for the Mac and I could play them and comment. 

Fortunately the iOS-version absence was only temporary. A few days ago my friend Marco let me know that the Williams pinballs were available through a separate application  named, quite predictably, Williams Pinball.

I downloaded the app and installed it on my iPad. Unfortunately it's a bummer. I am not talking about physics or graphics. Those are excellent as is always the case for Zen pinballs. The problem in the case of the Williams app is that it came overburdened with all kind of customisation stuff, which are in fact a not-so-subtle way to push in-app purchases. I would have preferred, and by far, a situation identical to the one on the Mac: you buy each table and that's it. I would even have been read to purchase the same tables a second time. As things stand now, I seriously doubt I'm going to do this. 

Zen Pinball: the second Williams batch

Some two months after the first batch of four (well, one free and three paying) tables from the Williams colllection newly licenced to Zen Studios, the second batch is here. The three tables are:

Black Rose,

Attack from Mars,

and Party Zone.

I tested them both in the classic and the new, "enhanced", version. As in the case of the first batch, the remastered version is (slightly) better. Again, Zen has applied self-restrain and did not overburden the tables with unnecessary animations.

Black Rose is the table I preferred among the three, Party Zzone being the one I will not be playing much. Given the quite reasonable price of the tables you can purchase all three and decide after you have tried them out.

My one regret is that the tables are Mac-only and I do not know if there is some plan to port them to iOS devices in a near future. But then, we would, most probably, have to buy them again, so ...

FarSight tables

In a previous post I was wondering why the FarSight site did not include the Stern tables among those available. My guess is that that was due to the fact that the Stern pinball arcade existed independently from the rest. Now that the whole FarSight collection is present in Pinball Arcade the artificial separation between Stern and non-Stern tables has disappeared and one can find the complete list of tables on the same page.

While the offer is not comparable to one before the loss of the Williams-Bally licence it is still a quite decent one, with 39 tables. Will this offer suffice in order to save the bacon of FarSight? Time will tell.

Stern Starship Troopers pinball

Full disclosure: I am a Heinlein fan. R. Heinlein was a hard traditionalist and his, Hugo winning, novel reflects his ideas, but I do love military science fiction and I adored Starship Troopers. So, I was naturally attracted to the eponymous pinball table.

Of course, the table can only vaguely reflect by the novel and since it lacks moving graphical elements (Zen, I am looking at you) one has to content oneself with just a few dispersed 2D and 3D Arachnids (the alien race that the troopers are battling).

It's not a very sophisticated table and I did enjoy playing it. The extra right flipper must be activated by a special button which is not comfortable at all, but when one masters it (I don't) this can add to the players efficiency. As always the FarSight ball is next to invisible and since in the standalone Stern collection one cannot customise it the gameplay suffers. 

Anyhow, the Stern pinballs have now been incorporated into the main FarSight line but I will continue commenting on the ones that were initially present in the, now defunct, Stern Pinball app.