They are on a spree

Another one of those non-pinball pinballs has made its appearance. To tell the truth it was announced long ago and I kept an eye open for it. Super Hyper Ball 2 is an evolution of (you guessed it!) Super Hyper Ball where the main innovation is the addition of flippers.

The game is announced as a pinball-breakout hybrid and while I can understand the "breakout" part I don't see how it could qualify as a pinball. Also the finger position for the flipper control is totally un-natural for a pinball player. Of course it could not be otherwise since one has to control also the bottom reflection bar but I noticed that while playing I had the tendency to forget the flippers and take care only of the bar.

Is SHB2 a bad game? Not at all, especially if you like breakout games. (I do). My only critique is that at times the ball stays too long in the upper part getting reflected around and one's attention may drift. But, hey, this is also part of the gameplay. To put it in a nutshell. You could give SHB2 a try. You may like it provided you do not expect a pinball.

Why, oh, why are people insisting on these "pinball" games?

I have often written about games which are supposedly pinballs and which are nothing but games where you kick a ball around with flippers. For me all these games are abusing the "pinball" moniker. This does not mean that they cannot be fun. It's rare but sometimes it happen. I have recently written a post on Pinout a game with nice graphics and which is really interesting. However the last supposedly pinball game, Ascending Pinball

is something we can immediately forget about. It is so stuffed with advertising that you have to spend more time watching videos than actually playing. But this is not so bad as one could surmise: the videos are much more interesting than the game itself.

I am often complaining at the crapware that passes for pinball now-a-days. But games like this one necessitate the creation of a new class: non-pinballs. And unfortunately we are getting more and more of them recently.

Eight Ball Deluxe redemption

It was a game that I was crazy about when it first appeared on the Mac produced by Amtex/Littlewing. After the game was resurrected for the Pinball Arcade I wrote two different posts on the frustrations caused by the Eight Ball Pinball. My friend Marco chimed in pointing out that a) 8-ball is a tough game and b) the pro version did allow one to play with 4 or 5 balls. I did give the pro version a try playing with 4 balls but I decided that it was too much hassle and went back to the basic one. And then I noticed something. The pinball is a faithful reproduction of the original and in low left corner one could see the card with the minimum scores for a replay. 

There was the answer! Eight Ball Deluxe was indeed a tough game and when playing on the real pinball one could get a  free play for just 600 thousand points (and a second free play for 1.1 million). Now, while 600 k does ask for some careful play it is something that one can reach rather easily (and 1.1 M is also a realistic target). So, I forgot about multi-million scores and I started playing 8-ball again with more modest objectives. And I keep improving. I have still to beat the highest high-score but I am getting closer and closer and in fact I have fun playing this great classical pinball game. The morale of this story is that playing pinball is also a question of attitude. You have to acknowledge the difficulty of a game and accept to spend the time necessary in order to master it. Also, do not aim for the top score from the outset, high scores will come after some time.