Pinball Are there any good digital pinball platforms you'd recommend?

[Slapperpow]

Pinball Arcade and Visual Pinball seem to be the best bets for digital pinball but I thought I'd ask for any alternatives. I'm mostly looking for high accuracy, that normal digital/videogame pinball feel just doesn't do it for me. I've already tried a couple different editions of Pinball FX but it just doesn't feel right.

 

[It's Thinking 2]

I played a lot of Loony Labyrinth on the Macintosh as a kid. It was never ported to console but the company that made it did have a collection of pinball games on the Sega Dreamcast. They were all by LittleWing. If you go to their website now, it's impossible to buy any of their games, but you can still download demos. The demos are timed though. (only about a minute or two of gameplay before it quits.) The only way to play them is to find them on PC and Mac on Internet Archive and play them in a emulator like SheepShaver or Basilisk II.

 

[Goodie]

The latest Pinball FX I feel is pretty good, but that's only when it comes to like, how they emulate real machines. The Williams tables they have, IMHO, are great. My all time favorite table is World Series, and I know that table quite well and I have to say the Pinball FX version isn't bad. I can take the same shots I take IRL and they work, so when it comes to the Williams machine's, I'd say Pinball FX isn't bad. The Zen pinball tables are all garbage though. But that's the uninvolved, download and play option. If you wanna go the full nines...

There are programs like Visual Pinball X where people can create or recreate pinball tables of new and old, or make entirely original tables. You have to find tables that interest you and install them into VPX and then you can play them that way. In that, you can also install Visual PinMAME in conjunction for a nearly 1:1 experience. PinMAME will actually emulate the original game software, other than trying to recreate it, usually very poorly. Though, it is kind of involved and you might run into some areas of tiral and error, but it is worth.

There's also Zaccaria Pinball on Steam as well, another free-ish option. The tables are great, yet they don't have any real major tables just ones Zaccaria made and some digital tablees, but the tables they do have are really fun. You can do a bit more cusomization in the physics of certain things in the game so I like that. Like, I'm a light nudger, so when the game goes full tilt everytime it's annoying, but I can set it to like 30% and get a better feeling nudge.

 

[Sayo]

I've tried Visual Pinball X before but I wouldn't recommend playing it if you don't have a monitor that is adequately set up at the very least, it's not that thrilling otherwise.

 

[dropsmegamega]

Honestly I am still sticking to a version of Pinball Arcade that has the removed tables, can't stand Zen Studios at all

There are programs like Visual Pinball X where people can create or recreate pinball tables of new and old, or make entirely original tables. You have to find tables that interest you and install them into VPX and then you can play them that way. In that, you can also install Visual PinMAME in conjunction for a nearly 1:1 experience. PinMAME will actually emulate the original game software, other than trying to recreate it, usually very poorly. Though, it is kind of involved and you might run into some areas of tiral and error, but it is worth.

This is super interesting to know, I had never heard of it

 

[BinaryMessiah]

I got the At Games pinball machine and it's fantastic. It's a good mix between physical pinball and digital. You can add a board to it that allows you to hook up a PC to it and use Pinball FX on the actual table itself. Some people have rigged up a Steam Deck to it. I added some Gold Leaf switches to mine and it plays like a dream.

 

[BananaJane]

Are there any that are easy to set up, visual pinball doesn't work at all

 

[GeoHikari]

On two sides, I recommend both Pinball FX and Visual Pinball.

Both are great ways to play in your console(or PC) some pinball tables who you can't played, you saw it but not played, or played somewhere and has the like to play again.

Some programs are disadvantages and advantages.

First, I speak my opinion about the advantages: both platforms are free-to-play(if you have downloaded the ROMs/purchased tables), without spending any cents.

And now the disadvantages: Pinball FX didn't have many licensed and original tables we wants to have, such as The Flinstones(the live action movie), Tommy, Congo, Space Jam, Batman Forever, Baywatch, Johnny Mnemonic and Corvette; and have at least popular ones such as Medieval Madness(one of my favourites) and Fish Tales. In case of Visual Pinball, some recreations don't work well at low PCs, since these are made for fans who likes to play the tables with much of HD quality possible.

There are another good pinball recreationg who I like, and it's just Pinball Arcade.

Well, Pinball Arcade are still abandoned, but many are playing in PCs or actual consoles. The platform also have advantages and disadvantages: the good is playing games without use the real money; and the sad is there are only popular Stern and Gotllieb tables, and since 2017 Farsight Games removed the various Williams tables who exists before(and various of those are never avaliable until now on Pinball FX. The Stern and Gotllieb games avaliable are in good variety, but could be better have more tables such as WWE Royal Rumble, NASCAR Challenge and Stargate.