If I hear one more person saying how great this game is I will scream.
Theatre of magic is a great game!
Who said that? What? I did… what’s wrong with me?
I recently stupidly played one on location and I have to admit it’s not bad.
You see, back in the day, I hated this machine.
It wasn’t one in particular, poorly set up or worn out in one location, it was every one of them I came across.
I didn’t enjoy it.
It didn’t help that this is one of the Williams Games where they had a saggy Naggy, a disembodied female voice that tells you where to shoot the ball and what to hit and where to go and how to play. That is a good reason not to like it, but there was something else, it just didn’t play very well.
It was years later that I figured out that it wasn’t the game that didn’t play very well, it was me.
This is a skill shot game and I was trying to play it like attack from mars or medieval madness where you whack at the ball and hope to God Something Happens.
The drains are vicious though, and I never seemed to get anywhere or get to play very long before my money was spent and the game was over.
It looked pretty cool but it wasn’t very exciting. After a couple dollars I would walk off and play something I knew that I can get some fun out of.
Because it looked interesting I always gave it another try, only to fail of course. I could’ve probably “fallen in like” with it if I had tried it on a pinball emulator of some sort but none of those are accurate or realistic and any way or form. I only play emulators of pinball machines that I know intimately, then I sit there and bitch and moan and complain about how totally inaccurate virtual Pinball is. Especially when somebody or the company is always telling you how accurate and perfect and great and totally realistic it is.
Anyone ever play Pinbot on farsight’s Pinball Arcade? It make the Nintendo cartridge from the 1980s look amazingly accurate in comparison!
That might be a slight exaggeration but come on now the real machine isn’t silver and grey colored!!!
The Wifebot knows they are unrealistic but still enjoys the virtual pinball games on home videogame consoles, especially when she doesn’t want to go down to the game room or play something we don’t own. This is fine because there is no way I am ever buying her a real medieval madness machine!!! Enjoy the fake one on the tv honey!!
But I am way off topic. Back to where we left off, in the 1990s, theater of Magic did not work for me on a quarter by quarter basis. At $.50 per game, I would’ve gone broke trying to get good at it, and Addams family already tried to bankrupt me just a few years earlier.
On FreePlay though you can whack at it over and over and over again until you figure out what the heck is going on and get good at it. I love modern admission fee only arcades!!!
Well whack at it I did, for a good couple hours and guess what? I was having fun and getting somewhere too!!!
Don’t read too much into that last sentence.
In the end, theatre of magic won me over, 25 years too late. Give this one a try or twenty, preferably without quarters!
Landgraaf
South Hadley, MA
London
Bordeaux
Padova
Adelaide