Topic by musicalman 2020-10-04 03:41:42

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Hi all,
I confess the ESP Pinball games are ones which I've wanted to get into and play, but I don't know if I can.

I first tried Pinball classic demo as a kid and had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Then I heard Raul Gallegos playing Old Man Stanley's House (I wish that file was still up somewhere as it was funny!). Then I heard a friend play Safari and really enjoy it, and a while after that I heard PG13 messing around with Soccer star and Haunted House. I couldn't tell how good any of these people were at the games but they seemed to know more than I did.

Over the past few years my spatial skills have improved. I'm now fairly good at Technoshock, Shades of Doom and Monkey Business. The latter is especially interesting to me because of the environmental landscapes, (I'm a real sucker for those btw and I could tell the Pinball games would be really cool for me because of that). I mean, I'm not the best at these games I'm sure, but I at least feel a sense of orientation now I didn't feel before. I still get my mind in knots trying to play Dynaman or packman Talks, but even those are at least a little easier for me to start out with than they were before, even if I still can't get past the first level in either game. Still, I wonder if I could perhaps tackle ESP Pinball now and get it.

So far my results are mixed; I feel like I understand a good deal of what the manual says, but as this game type isn't really my forte, I know I'm going to have trouble. I started off with the Packman table, as it looks to be the easiest, and is 1 out of the 2 tables in the demo.

Before I actually get into this, I was wondering a few things. Maybe these are silly questions, but I don't know anything about Pinball.

I understand the concept of the scanning when your ball gets stuck to the flippers. I have a vague understanding of how the other objects work such as the bumpers, pop-up walls and spinners. I haven't encountered them fully, but while briefly messing with the Packman table, I got a sense that I would perhaps figure them out.

What I'm trying to figure out is how much control does the player actually have over what happens in the game? Right now my feeling is that you only really have control when you're scanning and decide where to shoot the ball. So to get good at the game you have to know the layout of the table, follow the ball well when it's moving, and wisely make shots when you get the chance, hoping that the ball doesn't go in a bad corner in between shots. It's sort of a back-and-forth between active gameplay and passive listening but you still have to concentrate the whole time. Is this a fair assessment, or am I totally wrong here?

Any other insight would also be welcome!

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Reply by assault_freak 2020-10-04 04:03:48

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Those are two different games, ESP Pinball Classic and Xtreme.Both are sooo good. and classics!

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Reply by musicalman 2020-10-04 04:10:01

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Haha yeah, when I say Pinball here, I'm referring to all of ESP Pinball games collectively.

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Reply by cj89 2020-10-04 05:40:54

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Honestly? Just keep playing and trying different things. You'll find that tables can have their own little gimmicks, but I feel like that's just something you figure out over time. There's definitely a big element of randomness to it though, that's half the excitement (or frustration) of pinball. Different strategies work for different people. You can read about table layouts all day and night, but if you don't really ever play the game I'd wager it probably won't do you much good. Some 15 years on and both games are definitely up there with my most favourite audio games. I'm just sad we never got the planned table creator though.

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Reply by Dark 2020-10-04 07:02:56

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I would absolutely recommend the pinball games, some of the most audio rich and generally fascinating arcade style games ever made, also imho far less difficult on space to work out than your average fps. They're games I go back to every so often for a bit of fun and I always find them worth it, indeed my one regret is that there was never a pinball party pack volume 2, much less the promised table creator.

The Packman table is actually a pretty bad representation of gameplay imho, since it has to fit in the rules of the packman arcade game as well, including the sounds and so on, where as esp pinball xtreme's two demo tables, home run and pinball extreme show you much more what gameplay is like.

In terms of how gameplay works, yes, you pretty much read the instructions, launch your ball, listen to it rattle around then, when it hits the paddle decide where to shoot it, however pinball is a relatively casual game, and one with a fair degree of randomness.

You will find as you play that different strategies will work better to get certain objectives, EG sometimes you have to hit the ball immediately the scan shows an object, sometimes a bit before, sometimes after, sometimes try bouncing the ball off something else, but that's all the fun of pinball, and in the mean time you can just have fun bouncing the ball around seeing what you hit.

Heck, other than knowing how to activate the minigames, I don't think I checked the instructions too much myself after initially buying the game.

My only miner issue, is I do wish they'd relied less on you needing to read instructions and provided them in the game itself in a more atmospheric way, as indeed is the more modern process.
But hay, you can't have everything, and even today, these games stand up very well.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
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That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

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Reply by musicalman 2020-10-04 07:34:06

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Thanks @4 and @5 for your input!
Yep Dark, atmospheric guidance would've been cool, but like you say, can't have 'em all. Besides, the atmospheric guidance seems to be a trend in later games. I'm noticing it doesn't show up much in earlier games, probably because it would've made the game bigger/more difficult to finish, with the amount of self-voicing in use at the time.

From reading and messing around, I'm gathering that if I try too hard to map the tables out in my head and keep track of everything, I'll just get confused and wonder why things aren't playing out right. Instead I just, should try things and get a feel for what works and what doesn't, and have fun dealing with randomness. I admit this is new to me; the way I traditionally feel out games is trying to work every mechanic out so I always know what's going on. So this will take some getting used to, but it does seem like it would be fun once I adjust to it. While I don't like luck-based games, I can see that there would be strategies to the different tables once you learn them, which appeals to me.

Multiple people have told me that packman isn't the best table for messing with, so I'll try the demo of Extreme as Dark suggested. For the record, I did clear a table on Packman just now, but only just. Probably not anything to be excited about, in the end I didn't really know what was going on half the time and just aimed for power-ups and ghosts.

Anyway, my last stupid question which comes from my never having experienced a pinball machine. When the ball is just randomly moving, the shift keys have no purpose. The only time they do is if the table instructions say "press shift to do this action," or during a scan. Is that right?

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