I miss pinball

Saw on Kotaku today, that in celebration of the painfully unnecessary Ninja Gaiden Sigma, that a new Gaiden-themed table is being released for Zen Pinball on the Triple. I curse this, being a Pinball FX loyalist, and also being someone who eschews downloading anything for the Triple, as it is a rocky garden where my gaming seed shall find no purchase.

It also illuminates another troubling trend with Zen Studios. That of the over-the-top table. The third, and final, reason I prefer Pinball FX to Zen Pinball, is that Zen marked a turn for Zen Studios who had, until then, created tables which were, reasonably, realistic.

I've been a fan for, pretty much, all of my gaming "career". Sure, arcade games greater influence cannot be denied, but I always had a special place in my heart for bangin' the ol' silver balls around a bit. My love for them only amplified when I was in High School. I had a job at at the Carmike 6 Theaters which featured two rotating arcade cabinets and one rotating pinball table. During my tenure there, we had two tables. One was a bass fishing-themed one, of which I cannot remember the name. That one, one of the employees figured out a way to lift the speaker on the bottom of the table and get free credits. The guy who rented the tables to us nearly crapped a kitten and chewed out the staff for a half an hour when he found out. The other table, was the classic Addams Family table, themed after the Raul Julia epic.

I always found myself charmed by the just-above-NES pixellated movies displayed on the score screen, the cheapy, Billy-Bass-like rubber fish robot, and effects like the lighter "Ghost Ball", on the Addams table. When playing Pinball FX, I enjoyed that all of their tables, though the technology could do otherwise, restrained themselves and delivered an authentic experience. I liked the fact that the tables would, occasionally, glitch on me when the ball would get stuck after getting knocked into an area that wasn't intended to hold the ball and I'd have to tilt hard to get the ball back. I had always liked the idea that I was playing a machine made of physical parts that were just as fallible as my own meaty frame.

Zen Pinball, however, bucked this trend with features like over the top cannons, balls coming out of places that, mechanically, didn't make sense, and an ever-sodding voodoo drummer. It's the last thing that bothered me the most. Recently, an "Earth Defense" table was released for my darling Pinball FX and an enemy robot was the main feature of that table. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind a robot. I was in love with a pinball-fish robot for the better part of a year or so. I just want one that moves, talks, emotes in a manner I deem realistic.

This post has become a ramble, and I apologize for it. It's a TESTAMENT to my love of the mostly-dead art of the physical Pinball table. Pinball FX had shown me that the sort of table I love still had a place in the digital world. I'm afraid, however, with the way that Zen Studios is trending, that my love is not in the majority. I still enjoy these overblown tables, like the Earth Defense and the upcoming Ninja Gaiden table, I just hope that Zen and other studios willing to produce digital tables will toss me the occasional throwback bone.