Pro Pinball Ultra

it is a good game.

Planned updates for the game appear to have been abandoned despite text showing in some of the store pictures. It does seem to play decently and looks pretty great and has some operator options as well to mix things up, but it still feels a little awkward with some of the shots. It's been about 9 years with only the one table existing so I couldn't recommend this unless it were on sale for the very curious or for those that have nostalgic ties to the original table and are seeking a challenge.

Pro Pinball: Timeshock! might be the best pinball table that ever existed. There is not really much more to say.

Ah, one more thing: It has better physics and graphics than what FX will ever have.

This is a pinball simulation with one not easy table, great graphics and great physics. However, development seem to have been stopped.

Best Pinball

best pinball ever

This is the best engine for pinball I've seen in ages. It feels smooth, plays great and doesn't stutter in the slightest (note: Linux native struggles, but Proton has no issues at all).

The only reason I can't recommend this game is that the price is too high for a single table. If this were to ever be expanded on with more content I could only recommend this, but given that it's been 9 years I don't expect much.

Many have said this is the best pinball simulation ever made, and I tend to agree. The table itself is wicked fun and extremely deep. The DMD animations, music, voice and sound effects gel into a whole exceeding its parts: a thematic and aesthetic triumph with a 1990's vibe reminiscent of "The Journeyman Project." There is user access to the operator's menu which allows you to customize tons of behaviors and examine detailed histograms just like a real commercial pinball machine.

But the application is rather technically astonishing as well: I assume there was a great deal of pre-rendering, which, even a decade ago, allowed for high definition photo-realism while delivering great performance even on a potato. A perfect marriage of intelligent design trade-offs and flawless execution.

Unfortunately, this kind of craftsmanship apparently didn't make for a great business decision; the online leaderboards and forum became defunct shortly after a release that must have been deemed a commercial failure. However, every other aspect of the game still runs flawlessly, and the servers are still reliably connecting and delivering assets, so I wouldn't call it "abandoned" so much as "inactive."

This was one of the first modern virtual pinball tables I owned, but I wasn't able to fully appreciate it until after I got a gentler initiation from a couple hundred hours on other platforms. To beginners it will likely feel inaccessible as a bare simulation with no guides, tutorials, or meta progression, and the table itself is relatively challenging. It's a bit like starting up an old version of Flight Simulator with no manual and having never sat in a cockpit. You could go into the operator's menu and tweak the difficulty, but that is not something a beginner is likely to figure out without research or experimentation.

But those who manage to dig in will be rewarded with what is probably the zenith of the genre to this day.

Hard to beat in the simulation chapter. Very nice laid out gaming plan, still making fun after 25 years once in a while.

pinball

One of the best pinball games ever made