Pinball (NES) Retro Review

Pinball is a 1985 pinball game (obviously…) for the NES developed and published by Nintendo. Its based on a Game and Watch of the same name.

Loading up the game i was surprised and a bit happy to hear a tune on the title screen although it felt awkward there was no music in the game itself. I also didn’t know what the difference between Game A and B was at first but unlike the last review i did i quickly noticed Game B was much faster and therefore more difficult than Game A. The fact that this was the only difference was a bit of a disappointment as it really should of been 2 pinball tables. The graphics in the game are quite simplistic but they fit their purpose nicely and i actually liked them alot.

As for gameplay, i found the physics to be quite impressive for the games age, although i felt the controls should’ve of been different. I automatically assumed A and B would control separate flippers but they both control the right flipper while the D-pad controls the left flipper. This felt weird and i never got fully used to it causing me to make mistakes all the time. The board itself is quite nice and makes a believable pinball table with plenty of things to do like bumpers, breakable tiles, gates to pass trough to reveal cards and more. There’s even a mini game if you get into the hole on the lower half of the table. One thing that made this game kinda hard (and a tiny bit annoying) was that everything reset when you ‘died’ meaning you had to do it in one life.

As for the minigame aka bonus stage it is actually quite strange.You had to keep the ball from going past Mario by moving him just like breakout in order to save Pauline (Mario’s old girlfriend). It helped stop the game getting boring considering there was only one table but i never was that good at it. I do have to admit you can play this game alot trying to get a good score though.

Overall its a nice game but the fact it only has one table is kinda sad. However its worth a try for anyone that likes these types of games, especially if you’re the type that challenges themselves.