Actually never played PP before. Tell me more about it!

[frederikjurk]

I guess that makes me a bit weird, doesn´t it? I never played any of the Pro Pinball games for any significant stretch of time before. I´ve been sucked into the genre when TPA got first released and stuck to it pretty much exclusively - I wasn´t even aware that PP existed, and only heard about these games when the first Kickstarter got discussed on the Pinball Arcade forums.

I´ve been meaning to check them out, but not having a Windows system or any way to play the console ports prevented me from that.

Now with the remaster versions coming up in the near future, I´m just sticking to waiting for these, to keep the element of surprise I just had to back the Kickstarter(s) either way, because I´ve heard exceptionally high praise for these games and they look very interesting from videos I´ve seen. I especially like the dedication to the simulation aspect ("fantasy" pinball never really clicked with me).

So, yeah - why do you love the series? Are there any real tables you can compare them to? Timeshock seems to have a strong Steve Ritchie vibe going on, which I really like; I love the relaxed theme of BRUSA (reminds me a bit of Taxi theme-wise), the steampunk look of Fantastic Journey or the fast play of The Web.

(I know that we already have a "I love Pro Pinball" thread going, but I wanted to start a more detailed thread - maybe even as a way for curious newcomers to learn more about these pins, like me!)

[Penguinator]

I understand your feelings. When the Kickstarter ended succesfully, I decided to put Timeshock on hold until the remaster gets released.

When I was a kid and got my hands on Timeshock! for the first time, I was completely blown by the graphics and the music.
Seriously, the previous pinball games I played looked like this:

...or this:

...and then there was suddenly this:

I was too young at the time to understand the rules or invent/learn different flipper techniques, but I still had a blast shooting the middle orbit, locking those balls and starting the Time Machine Frenzy multiball all over again.

[LoB]

[pinwolf]

[frederikjurk]

So curiosity won after all last night and I borrowed the Win7 laptop from my girlfriend to try out Timeshock and BRUSA, which have been sitting on my drive since I got them as the Kickstarter rewards. Installing them was surprisingly painless.

And wow, these games have aged incredibly well! The maximum resolution must have been completely nuts back then - very forward thinking design, I have to say, considering they came out in the Win95/98 days. They looked so crisp I started wondering how on earth these are going to look any better in the Remaster version - until I looked at the iOS lighting sim again.

I didn´t have much time to test them (and it was rather annoying to play them on that bulky laptop), but Timeshock looked like a very streamlined table to me, while BRUSA felt more gimmicky (in a good way) - I especially liked the little U-Turn with the police car in the middle. Since I like weird toys and odd table layouts I´m actually looking forward to BRUSA quite a lot as well.

What I really noticed, however, is how important immersion is to me in pinball games. These old version sucked me in already in a very impressive way, and judging from the lighting sim, the new version are going to properly blow my mind. It looks crazy even just looking and it playing with the light sliders. The insert and flasher lightshow when playing in a dark room are a very sensually exciting part for me, so I´m really looking forward to play this with the ambient light off and just be dazzled by the blinking lights Pro Pinball just feels like an absolute luxury, high-end product to me.

I mean, I really love the work the Farsight team has done with The Pinball Arcade, but it´s still lightyears apart from the photorealistic beauty of what we have seen of the PP remasters. Seeing jagged edges, missing textures and rough geometry together with flat lighting and inserts that make it way too hard to tell whether they are on or off just breaks the atmosphere way too often.

Not that I blame them - especially on the mobile versions doing stuff like this is probably very hard to do. But the PP team absolutely made the right decision when they picked prerendered graphics - a decision that pays off even to this day, with games that haven´t aged at all and are now going to see another breathtaking jump in graphical fidelity and physics.

[pinwolf]

[ErikM]

[pinwolf]

And FJ....?

[ErikM]

FJ doesn't resemble any real table layout that I can remember. The contraption mechanism is rather unique. So is the semi-timed nature of the contraption adventures. Of course, the boiler awards work just like the Addams Family mansion and Twilight Zone's door.

[Pinballwiz45b]