Pinball Construction Set

Pinball Construction Set
The square "album cover" box.
Developer(s)	BudgeCo
Publisher(s)	BudgeCo Electronic Arts Ariolasoft (Europe)
Designer(s)	Bill Budge
Platform(s)	Apple II (original) Atari 8-bit, C64, Macintosh, IBM PC (booter)
Release	1983 1985 PC 1986 Macintosh
Genre(s)	Pinball simulation, Game creation system
Mode(s)	Single player

Pinball Construction Set (PCS) is a video game by Bill Budge published by Electronic Arts. It was developed for the Apple II and ported to the Atari 8-bit family and Commodore 64 in 1983. Pinball Construction Set created a new genre of video games—the "builder" or "construction set" class of games. Users can construct their own virtual pinball machine by dropping bumpers, flippers, spinners and other pinball paraphernalia onto a table. Attributes such as gravity and the physics model can be modified. Users can save their creations and develop custom artwork to go along with them. Tables can be saved on floppy disks and freely traded; Pinball Construction Set is not needed to play the tables.

The game was later ported to the IBM PC (as a PC booter) in 1985 and the Macintosh in 1986. A version for the Coleco Adam combined with Hard Hat Mack under the title The Best of Electronic Arts was completed but not released.

Bill Budge, the author of the popular Raster Blaster pinball game for the Apple II series, began developing Pinball Construction Set in July 1982. He did not want to write another game ("all the current (arcade) games are either maze games or Pong; I didn't want any part of that"), but began experimenting with game and graphical tools he had written. As part of the development process he purchased and disassembled an old Gottlieb Target Alpha pinball machine, so his new project could accurately depict its components. Budge does not enjoy playing video games, and described having to play pinball for months while developing Pinball Construction Set as "sheer torture".