Pinball (video game)

Pinball[lower-alpha 1] is a 1983 pinball video game developed and released by Nintendo for their Nintendo Entertainment System. It is based on a Game & Watch unit of the same name. In 1985, it reached North America as one of 17 launch titles.

Pinball
North American cover art
Developer(s)Nintendo R&D1
Publisher(s)Nintendo
Programmer(s)
Composer(s)Yukio Kaneoka
SeriesMario
Platform(s)Famicom/NES
Arcade (Nintendo VS. System)
Release
    • JP: February 2, 1984
    • NA: October 18, 1985
    • EU: September 1, 1986
Genre(s)Pinball
Mode(s)Single-player, multiplayer
Arcade systemNintendo VS. System

Gameplay

Pinball is a game where the player controls the paddles of a virtual pinball machine. The game has two screens to represent the traditional pinball table and one for a bonus mode. Play begins when the player launches a ball with the plunger from the first screen—the bottom of the pinball table—through the top of the screen to the second screen. Play will move to the first screen if the ball falls through the bottom of the top screen and will return to the top screen if the ball is hit back through the space at the top of the first screen. The player controls the flippers on either screen to deflect the ball to keep it from falling off the bottom of the lower screen.

Pinball has a secondary Breakout-like mode, which the player reaches by hitting the ball into a bonus hole that takes the player to a bonus stage where they control Mario carrying a platform. The object of this mode is to rescue Pauline (previously seen in Donkey Kong). The player achieves this by bouncing the ball off Mario's platform and hitting various targets, the destruction of which also earns them points. When the blocks under her are all gone, she will drop. Catching her on Mario's platform earns the player bonus points, but allowing her to hit the ground causes the player to lose.

Re-releases

Pinball was later re-released for the Family Computer Disk System in May 30, 1989, as an e-reader Card game, and is also playable as an unlockable mini-game in Doubutsu no Mori for the Nintendo 64 and Animal Crossing on the Nintendo GameCube and as a downloadable title on the Virtual Console for the Wii in 2006 (November 19 in North America, December 2 in Japan and December 15 in PAL region) and Wii U (in October 24, 2013).

Reception

In Japan, Game Machine listed VS. Pinball on their October 1, 1984 issue as being the twenty-fourth most-successful table arcade unit of the year.[2]

Notes
  1. Japanese: ピンボール Hepburn: Pinbōru
gollark: Not really sure what sort of stuff exists on IRC which I might be interested in, though.
gollark: I might get some sort of web-based IRC client installed (like this: https://thelounge.chat/).
gollark: Which is... not too problematic, but an extra barrier to entry.
gollark: A bouncer is *a* solution, kind of, but it means I have to run an extra program just to get a basic feature which Discord and whatnot support.
gollark: Formatting does belong in the client, sure, except there's not really much of a way to get people to actually standardize on one.

References
  1. "Satoru Iwata – 1999 Developer Interview". Retrieved April 15, 2017.
  2. "Game Machine's Best Hit Games 25 - テーブル型TVゲーム機 (Table Videos)". Game Machine (in Japanese). No. 245. Amusement Press, Inc. 1 October 1984. p. 35.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.