Players not used to pinball in general may find The Pinball Arcade somewhat frustrating at first. It's just one of those things you have to persevere with. If you do, you will be rewarded with an experience that hones your instincts like a sport. There is strategy to it, patience, luck, and the need for twitch reflexes. Basically, everything's a target and you are constantly scoring points and bonuses, so it has a highly addictive effect on the reward system of your brain.

A great deal of production time was invested in making the original pinball machines, and that finds its way into the game. Buying all of the tables in The Pinball Arcade may seem expensive to some people, but compared to the cost of owning dozens of actual pinball tables, it is extremely cheap. You can even play the table Tales of the Arabian Nights for free. Some of the tables are works of art in game form, and most people will not encounter pinball machines in their local area the way they used to up until the late 1990s.

The tables in The Pinball Arcade are replicas of ones from the stables of Williams, Gottlieb, Bally, Stern, Data East, and Sega. Farsight Studios (the company behind Pinball Arcade) have produced a string of previous games that attempt to achieve authenticity and pay homage to the history and culture of pinball. They now own the licenses to many of the best tables of all time.

The Pinball Arcade plays quite a lot like real pinball, although the physics are never going to be 100% accurate on any pinball video game, and nudging is particularly easy on The Pinball Arcade. The game manages to look fantastic without adding a layer of graphical effects that couldn't be incorporated into real tables. The tables appear mechanical, although they are of course simulated.

Like most other pinball games, there is a lot crammed into an area that's a different shape to a landscape orientation monitor. Thankfully, in Pinball Arcade, you can swivel the monitor 90° into portrait mode if you have that kind of monitor. Even without this, the game is highly enjoyable and one of the best pinball video games ever made. In my opinion it is much better than Pinball FX2.

Players not used to pinball in general may find The Pinball Arcade somewhat frustrating at first. It's just one of those things you have to persevere with. If you do, you will be rewarded with an experience that hones your instincts like a sport. There is strategy to it, patience, luck, and the need for twitch reflexes. Basically, everything's a target and you are constantly scoring points and bonuses, so it has a highly addictive effect on the reward system of your brain. A great deal of production time was invested in making the original pinball machines, and that finds its way into the game. Buying all of the tables in The Pinball Arcade may seem expensive to some people, but compared to the cost of owning dozens of actual pinball tables, it is extremely cheap. You can even play the table Tales of the Arabian Nights for free. Some of the tables are works of art in game form, and most people will not encounter pinball machines in their local area the way they used to up until the late 1990s. The tables in The Pinball Arcade are replicas of ones from the stables of Williams, Gottlieb, Bally, Stern, Data East, and Sega. Farsight Studios (the company behind Pinball Arcade) have produced a string of previous games that attempt to achieve authenticity and pay homage to the history and culture of pinball. They now own the licenses to many of the best tables of all time. The Pinball Arcade plays quite a lot like real pinball, although the physics are never going to be 100% accurate on any pinball video game, and nudging is particularly easy on The Pinball Arcade. The game manages to look fantastic without adding a layer of graphical effects that couldn't be incorporated into real tables. The tables appear mechanical, although they are of course simulated. Like most other pinball games, there is a lot crammed into an area that's a different shape to a landscape orientation monitor. Thankfully, in Pinball Arcade, you can swivel the monitor 90° into portrait mode if you have that kind of monitor. Even without this, the game is highly enjoyable and one of the best pinball video games ever made. In my opinion it is much better than Pinball FX2.