Real-life tables, or virtual tables?
I own all the Zen Pinball games for 3DS (Marvel Pinball and Zen Pinball 3D). I'm afraid to buy any for PC because I know how badly I'll get hooked. I burned so much time in the Captain America table that I managed to hit the top ten for scores on the world leaderboard.

I kind of wonder how they'd run it for GOG/DRM-free versions, considering the "base" game is free on Steam and the tables are all DLC. I imagine it works the same way for Windows Store and consoles...?

Also, are they still Zen Studios, or are they Pinball FX now?
Edit: Wait, no, they're apparently Zen Studios. Zen Pinball and Pinball FX are just brands.

Both. Real Life Tables and video game tables.
I want to add to my Zen Collection and I am trying to figure out what tables are the best. I have the original four (Tesla, Shaman, V12, El Dorado), Sorcerer's Lair, Wild West Showdown, Castle Storm and Epic Quest. It seems people are all over the place on what are good tables and bad tables on Zen. I was thinking of the South Park pack, Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, World football (the soccer table) Mars and maybe Portal and SFII.

I have heard a lot of good things about the Walking Dead table, but I don't like the series at all (generic, lame, predictable, preachy) and almost all the marvel and Star Wars tables require large pack to purchase.

The AVP table and new Skyrim table look interesting too.

I've only played 7 out of the 8 tables I've got on 3DS. I'm currently trying to finally beat the Fantastic Four one. I've gotten to the final sequence numerous times, it's just that after one ball drain, it's all over. No matter how many balls you've got left in play, you need to finish the sequence with just one ball. It's nerve-wracking.

For real-life tables, I'm fortunate enough to live not too far away from a couple pinball museums. Cirqus Voltaire and Old Chicago are a couple of my favorites, although I'm trying to activate the over-the-top buzzer on one of them (I forget the table name, sadly) and trying to get my reflexes to the point where I can do at least decently on some of the more modern tables like Monster Bash or Creature from the Black Lagoon.
Still need to play Addams Family, I just gotta figure out where I'm going and what I'm doing with the darn thing other than just shooting the ball around randomly. First time I tried it, the magnetic Thing hand got stuck and the table went out of commission for the day.

That is awesome that you have a place to play real tables near you. I have no place like that around me. All the real tables I play are on The Pinball Arcade (TPA). Circus Voltaire is a bit freaky to me, and so is Funhouse, I find the giant warbling ead in CV creepy, same with the talking head in Funhouse that taunts you and has the eyes follow the ball around the table.

Monster Bash is one of my favs, I have only activated the wizard mode with all the Monsters and all the Instruments once. But the scoring gets unreal at that point and I blew out my previous best score. My PB now on that game is greater than my three previous best scores combined.

Never played/heard of TPA. I'll have to look into it.

Giant warbling head? In CV? I know about Rudy in Funhouse, but not in CV.
There's actually this fun little rumor that the Funhouse tables are haunted. There are reports of people owning it having the machines turn on in the dead of night with Rudy saying taunts, even without any power/unplugged.
Edit: Ah, you're talking about the Ringmaster that you spend 80% of the time shooting at. I dunno how I forgot.
I always thought it was neat that the backboard even has some gadgets in it, like the cannon.

Eh.

I'd rather have Epic Pinball by Epic Megagames.

There's less licencing hoops to jump though and I won't have to deal with 3D clutter distracting me.

@Zeogold. The warbling head is the Ringmaster. You can see him in action here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IicdV9RLIl4

He has a magnet in the head so his head does a weird shake with the ball on top sometimes too. You can see the Ringmaster use the magnet to lock the ball at 8:21 in the video.

The Pinball Arcade is here:

http://pinballarcade.com/

But you can all the TPA tables in play on youtube.

Isn't the "3D clutter" kind of a normal part of most real-life pinball games, though?

I guess it depends on the sorts of tables and physics you're into. When I played the table for the first time and saw that magnet activate, it immediately became one of my favorites.

By the way, using the "reply" button (you can see it by hovering over somebody's posts) is way more effective since the person actually receives a notification that they've been replied to. I mean, I'm not complaining, I just wasn't sure if you were aware or not. ...oh....oh no...they have so many tables....and even one FOR FREE.....NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
*free time vanishes*

I've read bad things about the Skyrim table, it has some poor design choices apparently. Street Fighter 2 & Ninja Gaiden 2 are very old tables from the first generation so they're not very animated and pretty clunky compared to newer tables, they're also pretty hard, with Ninja Gaiden being arguably the hardest table of them all.

Mars is definitely my favourite & I own most of the tables. I've spent more hours on the mars table than any others and own it on about 5 different platforms. The table is clean and flows well with no cheap ball outs. Big scores come pretty easy but it takes a lot of finesse to master the table as the time limits on some game modes, coupled with precision shots, can be challenging. My other top 2 are Sorcerer's Lair & Epic Quest which you already own.

The closest table in feel to a real world one (albeit easier) for me would be Pasha which was one of the 4 base Xbox 360 tables, they're all good tables, apart from Rome which is a really tough table to get to grips with and has 2 cheap ramps that fire the ball back at you if you don't have enough velocity.


A bit of trivia you may not have known is that a lot of the tables are actually mirrored layouts of real world tables.

And finally here's a link to the excellent table guides by ShoryukenToTheChin: https://blog.zenstudios.com/?page_id=637 Each one starts with a picture of the table layout and detailed game guides which might help you decide which tables you'll enjoy.

The PC version of Zen Pinball is called Pinball FX2, and already has a wishlist entry:
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/pinball_fx_2

Good to know. Odd that it is called Pinball FX2 on Microsoft platforms, but Zen Pinball 2 on all other platforms.