Beyond Timeshock (bis)

I did continue my experimentation to have the remaining ProPinballs running under emulation. Fantastic Journey did not present any difficulty. I downloaded the wrapper from Paul The Tall’s place and was able to have the game running without hassle. The case of The Web proved to be harder, as expected.

There is somebody in the ProPinball forum claiming to have been able to run The Web under Crossover. I tried but I did not manage. (I also PMed him but I got no answer). Next I looked and found a Wineskin for The Web and indeed the game does run. Only It seems stuck in that crazy mode where the gravity is multiplied by 10, thus making the game next to impossible to play. I do not know whether this is a bug or if there is a way to go back to normal gravity (I do not think so) but as it stands the game is unplayable. In fact following a Crossover thread I found an old report of someone who described the very same situation. So, the idea of a Wine emulator was discarded.

The next solution was to play The Web in DOSBox. Here I got more lucky. Using Boxer I was able to set up the game in a few clicks and had it play quite nicely. The graphics are not bad at all, as you can judge for yourself from the screenshot below.

My only remark is that I have the feeling of a certain sluggishness, as if the game were running a tad slowly. Still it is perfectly playable and one can really enjoy it. 

Since Good Old Games do not distribute The Web (yet?), setting up one’s own emulation is the only way to play The Web on a Mac now-a-days. (If you wonder where you can buy the PC version of The Web, just have a look at Amazon).

One more oldie: Pinball World

I was visiting the site of Good Old Games in order to download the PC version of ProPinballs for my porting experimentations and I noticed that one more oldie had been ported to the Mac: Pinball World.

I purchased it immediately and before giving it a try I decided to dive into the package contents. It turned out that the game plays under the DOSBox emulator using Boxer. 

Not being a PC user I did not know the game. After playing a few games, my opinion is that this 20 years old game is far better than most of the pinball games from the App Store. It’s a game with a plot and instead of having you aim for the highest possible score it takes you on a trip around the world.

Of course, graphics are DOS-era ones (but not that bad after all) and I, personally, hate the scrolling tables. But, overall, it’s an amusing game which costs no more than a Farsight, season three, table. You can give it a try.

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.