If you’ve ever played pinball in real life, you pretty much know what to expect here. A ball readies itself, and you pull back on the analog stick to release it onto the playing table. Once in play, you will use your L1 and R1 buttons as flippers. Depending on which table you selected, your goals will vary. Your primary goal, however, is to keep that ball from rolling down that inevitable black hole of doom located under your flippers. Some of the tables in
Pinball Hall of Fame: The Gottlieb Collection felt as though they had a high powered magnet located in that hole that kept pulling on my little steel ball at warp speed. Not fun. Other tables were a little more playable.
You start the game with seven tables to chose from (the Play-Boy table is unlockable later):
- Ace High - 1957
- Central Park - 1966
- Big Shot - 1974
- Genie - 1979
- Black Hole - 1981
- Victory - 1987
- Tee’d Off - 1993
I found I enjoyed Genie, Black Hole, and Tee’d Off the most of all the tables, but I’m sure your experience will vary. After you select your table, you will be presented with a menu of choices. You can see your options, which are pretty standard other than showing the unlockables that you will eventually open up. You can view the goal of the table as well as instructions on how to play the table, as each has specific goals to accomplish. However, like I said, my goal was always just to not lose the ball. You can also check out the history of the table and view an old flyer for the original table.
Once you get into the game, it does, at times, feel as though you are actually playing a real game of pinball. However, I found that, more often that not, the game felt cheap. What I mean by that is that I felt as though I didn’t even have a chance to hit the ball as it constantly seemed to zip straight to the losing hole. Perhaps this was the design of the original table -- I have no idea, since I really can’t recall whether I’ve played these exact tables in the past. However, I use to be pretty damn good at pinball back in the day and on some of these tables, the game just lost any appeal as I couldn’t seem to get anywhere.
So move on to a different table you say? That is what I did. As I said earlier, the more modern tables were the ones that seemed to hold the most draw for me. While there are unlockables in the game, I didn’t open any of them as the game didn’t hold my interest long enough at any given time. There were a couple of unlockable modes and a tour of the Gottlieb Factory which is interesting, especially to pinball buffs. These unlockables are listed out in the instruction manual, so there’s no real surprise as to what you are going to unlock.
