J T wrote:I found a copy of that PS2 Gottlieb pinball collection for $2 at a pawn shop. Maybe I've just been spoiled by the Pro Pinball series, but it's really crappy. The graphics are very blurry and the sound is unnecessarily terrible. It sounds like they bought some cheap recorder, put in a tin can, then wrapped a pillow around it and hid it under the pinball machines to record their original sounds. It's just awful.
The physics also feel off. The ball doesn't feel like it has the correct weight and it bounces off the walls strangely. It's not as terrible as the sound, but after playing Pro Pinball where the physics are so good that I worry about tilting my laptop because I forget it's not a real pinball, this just doesn't cut it.
Yeah, as a whole, I thought the Gottlieb collection was pretty terrible, though I have the Xbox version. The Williams collection for PS2 or PS3 is where its at. Though I wish High Speed table was on it since it was the first big 'swoopy' table I played. Pinbot and High Speed got NES releases, but only Pinbot is on the Williams collection. I hate the outlane drains in Pinbot though, I swear they're magnetic and suck balls directly toward them. Its a shame because Pinbot has my favorite sounds from an old analog table.
Next up, the machines themselves. Apparently Gottlieb's earliest pinball machines were designed for people that wanted to spend some money to watch a ball roll down a hole. I wonder why they put some of these in the collection? They have huge open slots on the side of the machine where both lanes make you lose a ball. They have huge gaps between the flippers. It didn't even feel like a game because no amount of pinball skill is going to save you when the ball never gets anywhere near your flipper to begin with.
Its just old tables in general seem to be like this and from my limited pinball knowledge, it seems like it wasn't until the late 70s they they actually involved more skill than luck. Considering that pinball was originally just launching the balls and hoping for the best like pachinko and only evolved flippers in order to avoid being labeled as gambling machines, having the chance to knock the ball back up the board was a revelation to players at the time. But yeah, having played machines with mechanics from the late 70s on, going back to the old 3-5 second per ball drain machines kinda sucks. I'm sure kids born in the last few years that grow up with most of today's unlimited continue games will think the same of games with limited lives.
