Hi,

For those that don't know, some developers from Cunning Developments have started a kickstarter.

The goal is to make better versions of the existing tables (The Web, Timeshock!, Big Race USA, Fantastic Journey) as well as creating an entirely new table in collaboration with Pat Lawlor (who created the Addams Family and The Twilight Zone pinballs).

Last but not least : BR USA is free to download (14 days left), and a pledge of $2 or more will give free downloads of Timeshock! and Fantasic Journey when they get funded.

The latest update has added some saner prices for getting all 5 tables (new & remastered).

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1790321238/pro-pinball-revived-and-remastered/posts/313133

$20 for iOS/Android; $30 for PC.

That's much better than the $35 and $50 they listed at initially (which had seemed to me more like retail prices than help-us-fund-this prices).

Ugh; I almost missed the new campaign, and there's only a week to go. Bumping these old threads so that people who posted to them will be more likely to see them.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/500643708/pro-pinball-timeshock-the-ultra-edition-0

Are the remastered versions ACTUIALLY WINNABLE this time round?

That always ruined the fun of all pinball: they are impossible to win because the laws of physics and human concentration make it so. Especially in Timeshock's case because it was my first experience with the arcade in general.

I would be VERY lucky to get only one piece of Tachyonium or the crystal before running out of balls, patience and then rage quit after punching my monitor.

I would like to actually win Timeshock out of all tables, IRL or simulated because its my favourite table. much like how James Rolf wanted to win the original Ninja Gaiden's because of his nostalgia.

I also hope that the remastered tables come with the original Timeshock OST and a table based on Bungie's Marathon Trilogy.

EDIT: also one based on interceptor's Rise of the Triad, crossing over with Sonic the Hedgehog (Shadow, S2K6 and SA2)

Timeshock was always winnable, or at least as "winnable" as a score-based game without a definite ending can be (you can complete all the tasks but it's not like the game stops once you've done so, it just loops).

Pinball is difficult. That's the entire point of the genre: it's about getting the best possible score, and that means very little if it takes ages to get there. It's certainly possible to win just about any pinball table, but doing so takes a lot of practice and understanding of certain techniques that aren't always immediately obvious or easy to consistently pull off. Timeshock is actually one of the EASIEST tables I've seen that's built to realistic specifications (as opposed to, like, Kirby's Pinball Land or something). It certainly doesn't have anything on modern Stern tables in terms of mean design, or anything from Pat Lawlor at his more sadistic.

So... no, it's probably not going to be any easier. :-P

I can guess from the :-P at the end of your post that you are as pissed off at the difficulty as I am. I am grateful that other people share my concern.

However, I don't give a flying shit if pinball is meant to be hard: the retardedly high difficulty does nothing except spoil the fun.

The whole point of pinball is to get as many points as possible like you said, but in order to do that, you have to beat the wizard mode,-which could be considered "beating" the game- but the wizard mode is impossible to reach behind a brick wall of irritating timed modes that give you 20 or 10 seconds to shoot a difficult ramp or more.

Failure to do so, which happens 90% of the time, results in a ball loss, the game rubbing shit in our eyes or both. It's sod's law that the ball will always deliberately miss your target when trying to make those crucial final ramps.

The magno save is useless and the nudges are useless, unlike in Sonic Pinball Party on Game Boy Advance. And even that pulled a horribly difficult double timed stage out of its arse for the final story mission.

I can't cheat either because pinball is not the sort of game you can cheat on except for clever tricks that are hard to learn and can only be done on real cabinets such as the dead-save. This is especially true for Pro Pinball which had a realistic physics engine, so altering it could break the realism.

While it's a staple of the arcade, multiball is objectively one of the worst decisions you can make because you have to juggle all 3 balls, sometimes more, and make tricky shots at the same time. Lose two and the mode is over.

They ricochet uncontrollably off each other and the walls, making precise shots impossible and the balls themselves much easier to lose, especially if one or two go up a ramp or orbit after a random good shot but you have to watch all of them at the same time.

Since it's a video game, although real cabinets could have this too if privately owned or in a company rec room on free play: a save-game feature like in SPP's arcade mode would be well welcome, as would a clear and easy way to earn extra balls. (no micropayments allowed)

Video mode is a bit unbalanced too as you have to get enough momentum to go round the top of the tunnel in stage 2 like special stage 7 of Sonic 4 E2.

I hope they do make it winnable in the remastered ones and also hope that Silverball and by extension, pinball manufactures everywhere can take constructive criticism on the arcade's horrible difficulty, bordering on both "rougelike" and "unplayable".

Nope, not at all. I like the difficulty... the difficulty, in fact, is what makes the game compelling at all. Otherwise you end up with tedious Zen Pinball forever-games where an activity that's meant to take fifteen to twenty minutes max winds up taking two hours and becomes tedious beyond all belief.

Complaining about incredibly difficult reaction times and mechanical difficulty in pinball is like complaining about luck in poker or overwhelming options in a 4X: I understand where you're coming from, but the genre just clearly isn't for you.

You have mentioned "beating" the game multiple times. That's not how the genre even works. It's a score attack, and the difficulty is in place to make the score meaningful. Even the wizard mode isn't "beating" the game, it's just another big pile of points. Pinball does not have a win state, so yeah, no wonder you're getting frustrated, you're playing for something that doesn't exist. It's like being pissed because you just can't get a high score in Final Fantasy.

I mean... you keep saying it's impossible and humans just can't do it and so on... yet there's plenty of people who play pinball and, with practice, get EXTREMELY good at it. It's not unplayable, it's just difficult. I hate to say "learn to play" as a response to criticisms because I generally fin it dismissive, but that's really the solution to your complaints here. It's a reaction-based score attack, making that easy would defeat the entire purpose of the exercise. If you have bad reactions, it's not the genre for you.

I've been playing pinball for years so this is clearly the genre for me. I see your point but I think pinball for me is like what vertical shooters are for Ross Scott: they are awesome but very few get it completely right. even your favourites have horrible issues too, but can still be fun when you finally master them, like Marathon on Total Carnage or Halo on Legendary. (sans Halo 2) I think I earned the right to point out flaws I never even thought about or considered for 19 1/2 years.

That said, I locked my first crystal fragment just now and time travelled for the first time as well soon after reading your post. It took 19 1/2 years to do it as I've only seen other time zones by adding more players and choosing the laughably named "novice" mode (which gives you more continents and a longer ball saver, but only one ball).

Maybe I am just finally getting a little better but I still want a savegame feature done Tyrian 2000 style to make it less unforgiving.

Besides, some people have done it but only a select few. the pinball wizard might be one, and he was blind, but he was just a rock opera character from a song by the Who.

I am able to beat wizard mode on Sonic Pinball party because that table is a bit easier with clear extra-ball and unlimited non-useless nudge mechanics to abuse, as well as an easy rule to follow for unlocking wizard mode. (play Ring mode on every table stage) A shame that other tables don't do the same.

EDIT: here's a link to Ross's Tyrian game dungeon episode for a better explanation of what I mean.

http://www.accursedfarms.com/movies/rgd/tyrian/

Full disclosure: I really, really don't like Tyrian. I find it has the same problem as easy pinball: it takes a genre that thrives on quick bursts of intense action and, by making them easier and longer, stretches the runtime beyond what the simple mechanics can support, and by easing up on the difficulty you're removing the adrenaline rush, which is all they really have to offer. It also makes score completely meaningless, because setting a high score is so trivial that it fails to be an accurate measurement of skill, and instead just acts as a motivational gold star. Feels nice to get, but you can't really compete based on it, and pinball is all about indirect competition through score.

Making pinball (or shmups) easier is a bit like making a car chase in a movie longer by having everyone drive at half the speed. I mean, yeah, it's lasting longer, but the excitement is gone, and without that I don't have much reason to watch an action movie.

Basically, pinball NEEDS to have an extremely high skill ceiling, because if it doesn't you get the Zen Pinball problem where people can just play indefinitely. Since there's no ending condition, the game ending relies on the player failing, and if the basic mechanics aren't going to kill the player you either need to rely on unfair bullshit out of nowhere (like a lot of virtual pinball does) or just... accept that scores are going to based on endurance rather than skill. Neither of those are terribly good options.

Timeshock is a difficult game, but it's perfectly fair. It lets you know exactly what it's going to do and has controls responsive and predictable enough to make it possible to consistently do what it wants... but it's difficult and punishes mistakes harshly. However, as you noted, it IS possible to get better, and doing so will get you a better score, which is the entire point!

Now, granted, there ARE pinball games that do what you want. The Pokemon Pinball games were incredibly easy but added alternate goals, Rollers of the Realm on Steam is an adventure game played via pinball, Sonic Pinball Party is one of these as you said, and I'm sure there are others that I'm forgetting... but in all of those cases they're purposefully abandoning the score aspect to do something else with the mechanics. Timeshock is a score-oriented game, and as such, it needs to be balanced to properly measure skill. And to do THAT, it needs a very high skill ceiling, or else it fails as a measurement.

If you want pinball AS AN EXPERIENCE, rather than AS A METHOD OF COMPETITION VIA SCORE, then Timeshock isn't the game for you, and neither is most real-world pinball. But that's not a failure on their part... you're just looking for different things than they're looking to provide. Same goes for Tyrian versus something like DoDonPachi.

All personal preference really. If you like harder pinball tables, I'd recommend Sonic Spinball which is now on Steam. I currently only have the ipad version.

The first zone, Toxic Caves is quite easy when you get used to the controls and physics but the 3 other stages I've played are much harder. I haven't found any extra lives/balls in this game and only Toxic caves has any kind of ball saver. It's one of the few harder tables I know of other than Fantastic Journey or the NiGHTS table in Casionopolis in Sonic Adventure 1.

However, there's no saving between zones which is the main reason I haven't beaten it yet.

I've recently seen the operator's options in the manual. I don't know if they are classed as cheating but they could help me with honing my skills at timeshock.

Personally, I think easier difficulty in some games in a particular genre like Sonic Pinball Party or Tyrian can help people get started on the genre itself as a sort of "training game" and if they like it, have mastered it and/or want a bigger challenge, they can upgrade to something harder like Pro Pinball or Touhou.

I have gotten a little better at the magno save but I do still wish the nudges were a little more powerful, but not too much. It would also be a little more balanced if you could save the game, but only between time zones by default, and that plus after an exploration on an easy mode for beginners only.

That could be something in the remastered version for all 4 games merely as an optional mode only, not the definite rule. You could also have the option to disable saving as well, like turning off the Vita Chambers in Bioshock, or playing Bioshock Infinite on 1999 mode.