Pinball Dreams
| Pinball Dreams | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Developer(s) | Digital Illusions CE |
| Publisher(s) | 21st Century Entertainment |
| Producer(s) | Barry Simpson |
| Designer(s) | Olof Gustafsson |
| Programmer(s) | Andreas Axelsson |
| Artist(s) | Markus Nyström |
| Composer(s) | Olof Gustafsson |
| Platform(s) | Amiga, Atari Falcon,DOS, Game Boy, GBA, Game Gear, GP32, iOS, OS X, PSN, SNES |
| Release date(s) | 13 March 1992 |
| Genre(s) | Pinball |
| Mode(s) | 1-8 players |
Pinball Dreams is a pinball simulation video game developed by Digital Illusions CE (DICE) and originally released for the Amiga in 1992. It spawned several sequels, including Pinball Fantasies, Pinball Illusions and Slam Tilt.
The game's four tables each had a theme, as do most real life pinball & Panchinko machines. The version of Pinball Dreams bundled with the Amiga 1200 had a bug which rendered most of Beat Box's advanced features non-functional.
The ball moves according to reasonably realistic physics, and the game was restricted to using table elements which would also be possible to build in reality. Sound and music were realized with Module files, with this technology several music tracks could be included on the limited space of floppy disks.
Ports:
Pinball Dreams was overall received positive by press reviews.Electronic Gaming Monthly gave the Game Gear version a 5.8 out of 10, commenting that "Pinball never really worked well on portable systems and Pinball Dreams is no exception. The boards are huge, but the game is a little slow."
In 1993 Computer Gaming World criticized the PC version of Pinball Dreams as having "the worst physical model" of four reviewed games, and disliked the "jerk[y]" scrolling. In 1996, however, the magazine ranked it as the 119th best game of all time, stating, "Smooth scrolling and great ball physics made this Amiga game a wizard's choice." In 2011, Wirtualna Polska ranked it as the fourth best Amiga game.
An alternate PC-only sequel, Pinball Dreams 2, was released in 1995 by 21st Century Entertainment (like Pinball Dreams) but was developed by Spidersoft.
It includes four tables:
Composer Andrew Barnabas did not have access to the game while writing its music, and was instead given only a list of song titles and a copy of the original Pinball Dreams. He complained that, "I couldn't even see what the game looked like. It was like composing in the dark."
...
Wikipedia