TPA is fun, but it's not pinball. It lacks the somewhat random nature of physical pinball, and the nudging can't really be replicated correctly.

For pinball machines on location, they can often play clunky if not 'dialed in'. Also, keep in mind that it takes a few games to learn the shots. My No Fear can be clunky when I'm not nailing the shots, but be smooth as butter when I'm on my game and cleaning hitting the lanes.

Its fun when I am at work since I have them on android. Recommended because the tables are real but physics not so much. Zen pinball although the tables are made up has a more realistic feel to them but they seem to easy as you can play for hours on end due to ball saves and kickbacks.

tamoore has it right...TOTAN is what got me addicted to pinball in the first place many years ago. The TPA version is so much easier than the actual game. It's nice being able to play the games on TPA....and better than nothing, but the enjoyment level of playing the actual machine can't be duplicated. Good luck on finding that first pin to start your collection.

TPA got me back into pinball, but I've not played it once since I bought my first machine. I do think its done more for the uptick in pinball than any other 1 thing.

I believe I saw a thread a while back with a poll of how people got back into pinball and TPA was a big percentage....I did help give me a kick in the pants toward playing again...though virtual forums got me jump started.

At least for me, I don't see a huge difference between pinball arcade and the real thing. I've played, at one time or another, real versions of almost all of the DMD machines that are modeled in pinball arcade (we had some great bars were I went to school). The pinball arcade versions play like the real thing. I've played the pinball arcade version of T2 side by side with the real thing and the only appreciable difference, other than being able to see the ball better on the real table, was that the pinball arcade's pop bumpers didn't pop as much as the real thing. My 2 cents.

pinball arcade has admitted that they somewhat re-direct the ball in their software to feed into ramps. There's a range you have to hit (say 30 degrees within a target), but they definitely make it easier than the real thing to play, and they do this on purpose so the average player doesn't get frustrated and stop playing

Do you like the comics or movies? I liked the first movie back when it came out, but I could care less about it now. The SM machine does absolutely nothing for me compared to so many other machines. Don't feel you are obligated to like it just because everyone else does.

You need to play a variety of machines to find out which types you like. Plus, I would suggest looking in to Future Pinball (http://www.futurepinball.com/ and http://www.pinsimdb.org/) Though the recreation quality is lower versus TPA, you can try out a significant number of other pinball tables that you probably don't have access to locally. (If you actually DO want to try out Future Pinball, you can PM me if you have any problems getting it running correctly)

This is spot on. The Pinball Arcade is great because you can play tables and learn the rules of games you can't find easily in the wild, or at friend's houses, etc. The video game versions are more predictable accross the board. You just don't get a lot of the nuances that you get with real pinball.

The other thing I'll say is that not all Pinball Arcade tables are created equally. Some seem to eumulate the real tables a little better than others.

All of this being said I'm a HUGE supporter of it. It's not perfect but its pretty damn good all things considered and there are games like Cactus Canyon and Midevil Madness that I would not pay $10K++++++ for. I can get my fix on Pinball Arcade and playing games like that once or twice a year in the wild is good enough for me.

The only game on TPA that I have owned and have enough experience on to judge is whirlwind. I expected the digital version to be terrible because of the spinners, but the digital version actually feels pretty spot on. Just missing the fan. But, just because it plays just the same, it still comes nowhere close to being in front of a real machine and being able to move around, bang it etc.

If you're in London, get yourself to the Pipeline. Possibly the best lineup of games in the country - from memory there is a TZ, AFM, METLE, WOZ, WH2o and a Corvette.

They are well maintained and cared for by a well respected member of the UK pin community.

If you want to get on a train out to High Wycombe, I have a few games you're welcome to play. They're definintely not clunky as I polish them within an inch of their lives!

For the folks who keep saying that pinball arcade is easier than the real thing, I don't really understand the rationale of random ball movement or worse ball physics than Zen. I haven't played em all side by side, but the ones I have are not appreciably different in terms of ball movement or speed. Of course, anything goes when playing real routed machines that are beat to hell.

To me, they are spot on. At worst, PA does make it much easier to hit the ramps on most machines.

But, otherwise, they have pretty much nailed it!

My biggest pro is that unless you get to Expo, etc., it is a chance to play machines you will never get to see, much less play.

Nothing beats the real thing...
A real cab and real parts make the digital experience more complete: shaker motors, DMD, knocker, solenoids, gears, flashers.

This vid is VP notTPA, TPA doesnt support external hardware, yet

Now im going to contradict myself. The centaur outlanes too often send my ball back to the flipper returns on pinball arcade. That's the one thing that I've noticed so far that seems a little easier than the real thing.

I enjoy the TPA (for what it is), but like tamoore stated, it's definitely lacking compared to "real" tables.

I use the game to learn the rule sets of machines

Real pinball machines are definitely a bit clunky and seemingly random feeling at times, even when well-tuned, and that is the appeal. They have just enough natural variation going on whereas they cannot be perfectly simulated in software, and never will be. It is enough to throw someone off that is used to strictly playing the digital squeaky clean / identical gameplay of the simulators, and a big enough difference to keep all of us from selling our physical machines.

I look at the two as completely different experiences though. I enjoy playing TPA as well, but I consider it a straight-up video game. Yes, I can get the general feel and vibe of Funhouse by playing it on TPA pretty well, but playing Funhouse on my physical machine feels completely different.

You started off with this, and then you go on and it's about fake pinball. I think you're confused.

Sure, digital pinball is best when it's laid out like real pinball and in a real cabinet, just feels better that way -- but its still not the 'real thing'.

The Pinball Arcade is a great game. It does a fantastic job of simulating these machines and is remarkably accurate given the limitations. No, you cannot recreate the experience of real pinball digitally. But TPA does about as well as can be expected. Ultimately, playing the real machines will always be more fun, but TPA is a great time as well.

And I gotta say my iPad is quite a lot easier to take to the DMV waiting room than my actual Black Hole and STTNG cabs.

TPA has done a great job recreating the artwork and simulating the rules of these tables, often emulating the roms themselves to the point where even glitches or bugs from the real games can be reproduced in TPA, as well as all the hidden easter eggs.

it's true that their model could use more built-in randomness, though. for example, with a few exceptions, kickouts on most tables kick the ball out exactly the same way every time, which we all know is pretty unrealistic. there's usually a bit of variance. it's not so much that the physics on the tables are particularly inaccurate (although some are considerably faster than real life). it's moreso that the physics are 100% consistent -- the same shot at the same angle bounces off the exact same way and makes the same three ricochets every time, for example. it makes the tables unrealistically predictable, and with a lot of practice, this allows a good player to post unrealistically high scores. otherwise, the tables play pretty much as their real-life counterparts do.

for example, I recently took first place in TPA's kickstarter tournament for STTNG. my winning score was over 108 billion. (they sent me an autographed STTNG translight as a prize! very cool!). That game took about an hour. I don't think it's likely anyone could get a score of 108 billion on a real STTNG without walling off the outlanes (my own best is only about 10 billion IRL). And it's not because TPA's version is "easy". it is a DRAIN MONSTER in fact. casually booting it up and shooting the ball around will result in a VERY short game. lots of people complain that it's too drain-heavy actually (a trait it shares with its real-life counterpart!). but the consistency -- the repeatability -- of shots allows a good player to make ONLY the shots for which he has prior knowledge of the outcome, and exploit that for long, long game times.

The physics in TPA sucks. The tip of the flipper has some major physics problems so that alone completely rules out the concept of pin simulation to the game.
VP is much better..

Every time I think I'll give PA another chance, I fire something up and play for a while and end up annoyed at their faked/bad physics. The last time I gave it a whirl I played scared stiff and 9 times out of 10 when the ball kicked out in front of the crate, it would hit something, roll up around the back of the crate, through the lanes and back into the hole again. Over and over and over.

that scared stiff bug is well known. maybe try a different table?

I think it's great that the video game is introducing more people to real pinball, but I would not call TPA anything close to real pinball. Their games perform different than real pinball machines. In real games coil strength is never exactly the same from shot to shot, there is ball spin and playfield and location imperfections that make each real game behave differently. I laugh when I play TPA and see how easy it is to hit a ramp at full speed.

TPA is great for learning the rules to a machine but its not the same enjoyment of playing the real thing. If you get a chance play some bally/ Williams games instead of games like SM. Stern isn't quite as smooth as those and it took me a little longer to appreciate their play. LOTR on the other hand could be the smoothest shooter ever made. If you can find an early 90's pin you'll probably be hooked simple rules still enough to do and go back to a game like SM after you've mastered some shallower games then you'll really start to enjoy it.

the tables are basically idealized versions, sure. perfectly smooth playfield, max-power flippers, almost no airballs.

and yeah -- TPA is great for learning how to play a wide variety of games. I've never encountered a Centaur in real life, for example, but if I do, I already have the ruleset down pat.

Yep. There's something major wrong with the flipper tips. I figured they would have fixed that mess a year ago, but no one else must notice it, I guess....

"Pinball Arcade" is to a real pinball machine as "Pole Position" is to driving a real Grand Prix car in a race.

eh, more like playing the latest version of Forza. Looks pretty darn close, but it's not what any pro driver would call a realistic substitute.

I would so love to know, of the folks who feel this way about pinball arcade, how many have spent serious time playing the real counterparts to the tables modeled in TPA. And would have any legitimate point of reference. Frankly a lot of this talk resembles the same sort of herd mentality that finds folks loving on Williams/Bally DMDs to the exclusion of most else. I'm not an apologist or an employee of farsight, it just baffles me when folks say this kind of stuff.

Here's a test. Go play Haunted House on TPA, and tell me it plays like any Haunted House you've ever played.

I will say that I own a EATPM, and I think they did a pretty good job on that table. It plays pretty similar, but no where near the same. The ramps are easier to hit. The only reason my scores are better on the real machine than the TPA one, is that my machine is set to remember the position of the ELVIRA bonus, and TPA resets after each game...

I love the Pinball Arcade, it's what got me into this hobby rather than keeping it a mere curiosity!

As far as realism goes, playing on the PS3 or Android seems to be easier than playing on the real thing, often enough. And you don't see any goofy ball action - for example, I've never seen the ball lift up and hit the "glass" in the videogame, or skip over a ramp or barrier, like in a real game.

TPA doesn't reset the Elvira bonus unless you reset the table. didn't like that first ball, eh?

(granted it doesn't remember the state of the Elvira bonus if you go off and play other tables between)

I have spent serious time playing the 2 machines I own that are simulated in TPA (Pinbot & Funhouse), and I have religiously played Centaur, BoPB, and T2 in person. In my experience, all of these tables give you a good idea of the ruleset and general vibe/feel of the game, but obviously lack the natural/real feel of the game. His analogy is good, but is maybe a bit overly dramatic.

without commenting whether it is good, bad or indifferent...

as far as tpa goes... putting physics, gameplay, etc. all aside... the biggest difference is the "human interface device"... it's well done, but it's a video game, it's not a pinball machine... and therein lies the rub... even if the physics and "randomness" were simulated perfectly it would still remain a video game...

the "virtual table" that someone mentioned earlier gets you at least part of the way there on that...

Now that's just taking it a little too over the top.

And by a "little" I mean a "lot".

I don't really like the physics. I responded in another thread I will never play a game significantly other than to try it if I have never played it.

I have TNG and find TPA version both glitchy, too easy for ramps etc and way too fast. The fast may be because I play it on my phone. I have found the ball flying to random places way quicker and it never has spin or drag or anything. It is as if the ball is literally "gliding" around the table.

Personally I hate it on some games like TNG and TOTAN(my friend owns it) and Bride of Pinbot(oh god its ssssoooo easy on TPA).

To each their own. I like their recreations they do excellent work but I will never be on buying a game from them ever.

I love the Pinball Arcade. I own all their games on Mac OSX. Sure, it's not the real thing, but it's the closest thing to it. And I don't have to spend 5-10K, or hunt one down in the wild to enjoy a particular pin either. It's good for the hobby of pinball as it introduces a new generation to the game. It's also stoked my interest in purchasing real tables too. I own a real CFTBL and I'm looking to purchase others tables as a result of TPA. What's not to love?

I sent some emails and made a lot of comments on their facebook page. I wrote a bunch of times something like this:
why do you keep putting out tables instead of improving the physics?

Sometimes i buy a new table to see if this time they did it. The last one i bought was CP. The physics where a little different: Flippers physics continue the same crap but now the ball is way faster. Looks like f**king ping pong, not pinball.
So i gave up, will never buy anything from TPA.... until they waste some time improving the most important thing on a simulation like this.
(when they do, please someone let me know so i can buy tables again lol)

Another thing that i gave up sending emails to support is that on the mac the flipper key and the nudge key don't work pressed at the same time... This ruins the game completely and proves that whoever programed this game doesn't know shit about pinball. very sad

Hell we have vp and it's free.. so who cares, right?

I love TPA and own several pins that they have recreated and I think they've done a pretty good job. There's really no way to make a video game exactly the same as a real pin. Let's face it some weird things happen on a real pinball. I just enjoy it for what it is and will continue to buy there tables.

That's the thing: Enjoy it for what it is. I buy every table that comes out, and I will for as long as they make them...

For a while I had the mindset that Pinball Arcade has a superior look. Now I am starting to move away from that idea. It definitely looks more detailed, but in time I have found that this does not equate to "superior." Sure, it's still full 3D but for me, the additional angles add nothing to the experience. I stand in one spot when playing pinball. The first thing I do when I start a Pinball Arcade game is set the camera to far and lock it.

jpsalas, hassanchop, and any others out there leading the way in VP game creation are really stepping up the quality of some of these playfields. For example, the T2 chrome edition looks absolutely amazing, borderline photographic. And like boogies mentioned, the new MM update is a whopping 40MB and judging from just the video alone, it looks killer.

These guys spending long hours working on these VP games continue to make Pinball Arcade look more and more like child's play. And verses this, that's saying something.

image.jpg

I enjoy the Zen pinball games. It's cool to play recreations of classics in PA, but what I really like about video pinball is playing games that could never happen in reality, but seem close enough to possible that you think "What if...?"

Hey, they're both fun, but a simulation on a tablet or consol is far from the real thing.

I love playing TPA. But i have to say the TPA experience varies depending on which platform you play. The realism factor is scaled down for "lighter weight" platforms like phones etc. I primarily play on an iPad and really enjoy it. Obviously its not the same as playing a real machine. But i think it has brought many folks back into pinball (myself included), and that is a good thing for sure! I definitely wouldn't be a pinball owner if it werent for TPA.

I own them all, I have real pinball machines, I have the Android versions, the Xbox360, the PS2, and I'm building a Virtual-Pinball machine right now.
Obviously nothing compares to real life, because it's real. It's physical and analog. No HD screen will ever be the same as looking at the world. But with that said, some of the video versions are pretty damn cool. To me the Android/Ios PA isn't much better than the PS2 PA. Maybe clearer with better sound, but almost the same feel. However, I was very impressed with a few VP cabinets I've seen. Not all, but some are fantastic. Which is why I decided to build one. And honestly, with the prices anymore it's become unfeasible to keep buying games at 7k a pop. I like Tron and MM, but I'll never drop 10k on a game. Never ever... NEVER.
As the VP build has progressed, more big collectors keep asking me to build them one next. Mine isn't even done yet, but I have 5 more to build when it's done. One guy already gave me 3 newer Stern cabs (where he got them I have no idea). Which shows me that there is a market for them. Not everyone has the room for 40 machines, nor do they have the funds for them. Some people don't have the technical knowledge to keep one game running, let alone several. So I see a growing market for these machines. I wouldn't be surprised to see them on location in the near future. No maintenance, no waxing, no broken anything, makes sense.
I don't see them replacing genuine machines, but with the recent mega-prices I believe Vpins will have a following if they are well built. Well Built being the operative words.

DisneyQuest in Orlando already has 2 of them.