By Graham K. Rogers

As a teenager in the UK I spent far more time than I should have in a bowling alley on the east coast. When I had the cash, I would bowl. When funds were tight, I would play the pin-ball machines. Like video games, the lights, the sounds, the frustration, attract the user like a moth to light: it is always the next game that is going to be the last.

The original pin ball game developed from games played in the mid-18th century and was really an evolution line. Ray Maloney's 1931 Ballyhoo was a major development. Mary Bellis tells us, it was "a countertop mechanical game with optional legs released in 1931 . . . the first coin-operated pinball game. Maloney went on to found the Bally company, now Bally Tech.

Back in January 2011 I reviewed Pinball HD ($0.99) which I had installed on my iPad. Part of that original review is below. I now see that there is a sightly more expensive ($1.99) pinball app available that takes its theme from one of the most famous movie series in the last 25 years or so. Star Wars Pinball is available for the iPad and the iPhone. On the download pages in iTunes there is a warning that this offers in-app purchases.

The developers, Zen Studios also offer the free Zen Pinball, which has a number of in-app purchases available as well. I could find no link within iTunes to a developers' website. Google, however was helpful and the Zen Studios blog was easily found.

Star Wars Pinball

To be fair, the iPhone is not the best medium for the app, so I put it on the iPad and tried again.

Original Review of Pinball HD (Summary)

Tapping the screen, stops the display movement (and the music). Controls are then visible to left and right. Those on the left are selectors for the current and three other games installed: Wild West, The Deep, Jungle Style and Slayer. This last only offers a 30 second trial period and there is a buy button if we want this.

The controls on the right are: News which links to online information and showed three more tables available for $0.99 each; Scores, which is a two part screen with a World list at the bottom and a local list (empty) to the top; Guide revealing an image of the current table with text boxes explaining the parts; Multiplayer with settings for this feature; and Settings.

I played each of the games briefly and, like their metal, electronic and wood counterparts each has a different character. As with a pinball game, the spring plunger is pulled back and the distance we do this changes the initial play velocity of the ball and its trajectory. In early play I was confused when, instead of the display being still, it moved about to focus on specific locations of the ball or of actions in the game. A real player has a complete view of a game while it is being played and is in full control.

With these tables, at times the flippers were out of my view and it was difficult to adjust my play as they came back into sight with the ball bearing down on them. When I turned the iPad display to landscape mode, I had a full view of the table with none of the focussing or homing in on locations as there is in portrait mode, but of course the game table is much smaller.

One of the attractions of pinball play, as I remember it from my mis-spent youth was the lack of perfection: player and machine. We could always improve, the machine could always throw something else at us with its inaccurate reactions. If we bring that with us when playing this game -- $0.99 for heaven's sake -- then the minor irritations could well be taken as part of the game's inbuilt problems to overcome (which we never will).

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs.