Official Website

Platform: PSP

Genre: Pinball

Number of Players: 1 - 4

My wife, being from Japan, posed an interesting question: why do American’s like pinball so much? Honestly, I have no idea, but that’s like asking why Japanese like pachinko so much. The decline of the arcade industry however has found that fewer and fewer pinball machines are coming to the market, and home video games aren’t helping much either. It’s kind of a sad state of affairs, but the good thing is that the classics of yesterday are resurfacing.

Let’s face the facts; the pinball video games that have been designed specifically for PC or home consoles really haven’t been that good, but there are companies taking the time to bring old games into the modern age. They may not have quite the same feel as the stand up versions, you can’t put a drink on the table, but the playability is still there. Some may have already found some charm and addiction with Pinball Hall of Fame on the home consoles, but the game is ready for a replay, only this time on the PSP, and taking pinball on the road is perhaps one of the greatest things to happen to the system.

Pinball Hall of Fame: The Gottlieb Collection features some of the best pinball machines created by one of the biggest names in the industry, and don’t let the digital approach fool you. These games play almost as good as they did in arcades, and you don’t need to have any quarters on the machine either. Depending on just how avid a pinball wizard you are, some of these games may bring back a number of memories.

Going into full detail on every machine included on this title would really be a time (and space) consuming effort, but if you already own this game on your home console, there are more games to be found. The game consists of classic pinball machines like Genie, El Dorado (a newcomer to the game, and actually a rather challenging table), Black Hole (a game that I love simply because of the mirror portion of the table), Ace High, Big Shot, Central Park, Tee’d Off (one of my favorites in the game), Goin’ Nuts (a game that never actually made it beyond the prototype phase and is an extremely unique pinball game), Victory, and Strike and Spares (pinball bowling.) The game is set up just like an arcade, so you’ll find other attractions that you may find in older style arcades such as the Love Meter, Xolten (the fortune teller), and Play-Boy, a card game that uses balls like pinball.

The controls themselves are very simple, extremely simple actually, but this is pinball, and it’s not about complex controls so much as skills. The analog stick acts as your plunger to shoot the ball while the L and R are your respective flippers. Can you bump that table? Of course you can, and that’s done with the analog stick, but you still need to concern yourself with the possibility of tilting the table.

The PSP version of the Gottlieb Collection brings some new features to the game. Now you have an arcade mode to practice playing the tables, but not all of these will be available at first. Until they are, you will need to pay credits to play them which can be earned from playing different pinball machines. To unlock them, you will find that each table has a goal that needs to be reached and once it is, you will unlock a new table. There is also the Gottlieb Challenge, and in this mode you will play through the tables available in the game, each with a score that needs to be obtained. You will only have three chances per table, and the cheats and other options usually available will not work (sorry, no five ball game option.)

There is also tournament mode found here, and you can play up to four players. If you want to know more about Gottlieb, you can take a visual tour of the factory, and the game also will give you details on each of the pinball machines including a look at some of the flyers used to promote them. Also, each machine will give you the run down on what you need to do in order to get outstanding scores and some of these instructions can be quite lengthy as it includes the right targets to hit and such. Pay Out Mode will allow you to earn even more credits to play machines you haven’t unlocked yet or even buy cheat codes that can be used, and take note that the ones used in the console versions of the game CAN NOT be used in the PSP version.

The Pinball Hall of Fame comes extremely close to looking identical to the actual machines that you may have played in arcades. While I haven’t seen all of them, tables like Black Hole, Tee’d Off and Victory look incredibly accurate, though there are some issues that I had, such as not being able to adjust your line of sight to see some of those more intricate or out of the way areas, but in this case, it really doesn’t take away from the playability to the games in the least. Even the sounds that are heard have that slightly distorted sound that often is heard with pinball machines, so this is as close as you can come to the feeling of a pinball machine without paying quarter after quarter. One thing however that I never found as an option, and perhaps it wasn’t a part of Gottlieb’s machines, is if you lose a ball right after you’ve launched it, you don’t have get it back for replay. Lose the ball, and it’s on to the next.

So, again the question of why do American’s like pinball machines? I honestly can’t answer that, and maybe there is no definitive reason. It could be that there’s more of a challenge or that on a single ball, you could play for quite a while. It could be the sounds, the feel, or any number of other things. What I can tell you however is that Pinball Hall of Fame is a highly addictive game that pinball wizards are going to be thrilled to play over and over again, and even if you already own the console version, the PSP version offers new games, new challenges, and even more fun to ease that pinball addiction . . . at least for a little while.

-mike-