Topic: The Switch Arcade Community Thread

@Zkibu Yeah, I went a little crazy there.

Glad to be able to help.
I've read posts about people who only had a casual interest in pinball games in the past that tried out a couple of tables before all those classics are gone and have fell in love with it now.
So for anyone on the fence, there's still a little time left. I would be such a shame to realise in the next couple of months, or even years that you actually love pinball but that a lot of the best ever created are no longer available and you could have picked them up if you had known just how addictive this hugely overlooked part of arcade history actually is.

My advise for anyone really, is to pick up one of the top tables (I'll make a list underneath), put a good amount of hours into that one table. Learn the rules, learn the quirks and start to develop an understanding on what exactly you have to do and how to handle the ball besides just flipping when it comes your way.
Before you know it, it might click for you and you might be hooked for life as I am.
The important part is, stick to that one table for a long time. That's how you get good at it, not jumping from one to the next. These tables tend to really grow on you once you get to really understand the layout and how to play them. For instance, I already put well over 40 hours into Ghostbusters over the various platforms, and I'm still learning things. Not as much as the first 12 hours, but still.

It might seem simple and repetitive, but it's surprisingly deep and skill based.

The list of tables that are worth picking up if you don't want to go for the complete set of seasons:
These are my personal favourites, so there will be tables that I miss out on since not having put enough time into them myself, or just because they haven't clicked with me yet, which tends to happen with pinball tables. Peoples preferences tend to deviate enormously, besides a bunch of well known tables that are seen as all-time greats. So don't take these as the only ones worth to pick up.

Season 1 and 2 are both must haves in it's entirety. Too many tables on there to leave out.
For instance here's what you get per season, when it comes to disappearing tables:

Season 1:
Theater of Magic
Tales of the Arabian Nights
Ripley's Believe it to Not
Medieval Madness
Bride of Pin.Bot
Creature of the Black Lagoon
Monster Bash
Circus Voltaire
FunHouse
Attack From Mars
Star Trek The Next Generation
Twilight Zone
Scared Stiff
Elvira and the Party Monsters
No Good Gofers

Season 2:
Firepower
Dr Dude
Cactus Canyon
Flight 2000
Champion Pub
Whirlwind
Pin.Bot
Centaur
Terminator 2
Haunted House
Class of 1812
Centaur

Season 3:
High Speed
Fish Tales
Black Knight 2000
Who Dun nit
Diner Black Rose
High Roller Casino

Season 4:
Addams Family
Jack.Bot
Safe Cracker
Xenon
Red & Ted's Road Show

Season 5:
High Speed 2: The Getaway
F-14 Tomcat
Judge Dredd
Rescua 911

Season 6:
Doctor Who
8 Ball Deluxe
Indianapolis 500

Season 7:
Firepower II
Fathom
Banzai Run

Again, this isn't an all-encompassing list, but I think it should help people out anyway.

You can see the full-list of table packs here: http://pinballarcade.com/TablePacks/

The full list of tables that will be removed is as follows:

Attack From Mars (1995)
Banzai Run (1988)
Black Knight (1980)
Black Knight 2000 (1989)
Black Rose (1992)
Bram Stoker's Dracula (1993)
Bride of Pin•Bot (1991)
Cactus Canyon (1998)
Centaur (1981)
Cirqus Voltaire (1997)
Creature from the Black Lagoon (1992)
Cyclone (1988)
Diner (1990)
Doctor Who (1992)
Dr. Dude (1990)
Earthshaker (1989)
Eight Ball Deluxe (1981)
Elvira and the Party Monsters (1989)
F-14 Tomcat (1987)
Fathom (1980)
Fireball (1971)
Firepower (1980)
Firepower II (1983)
Fish Tales (1992)
Funhouse (1990)
Gorgar (1979)
High Speed (1986)
Hurricane (1991)
Indy 500 (1995)
Jack*Bot (1995)
Judge Dredd (1993)
Junk Yard (1996)
Medieval Madness (1997)
Monster Bash (1998)
No Fear: Dangerous Sports (1995)
No Good Gofers (1997)
Paragon (1978)
Party Zone (1991)
Pin•Bot (1986)
Red & Ted's Road Show (1994)
Safe Cracker (1996)
Scared Stiff (1996)
Sorcerer (1985)
Space Shuttle (1984)
Spanish Eyes (1972)
Star Trek: The Next Generation (1993)
Swords of Fury (1988)
Tales of the Arabian Nights (1996)
Taxi (1988)
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
The Addams Family (1992)
The Champion Pub (1998)
The Getaway: High Speed II (1992)
Theatre of Magic (1995)
Twilight Zone (1993)
Whirlwind (1990)
White Water (1993)
WHO dunnit (1995)
Wild Card (1977)
World Cup Soccer (1994)
Xenon (1980)

In a perfect world, I'd recommend picking up all seasons really.
I did this on PS3/PS4/Vita and Xbox One actually and have no regrets whatsoever.
Just wish I was somehow able to do this on Switch as well....

Playing arcade Donkey Kong on the go without needing quarters is spectacular.

https://twitter.com/bezerker99/status/1008739925900922881

@meppi64 Just bought a Saturn to play Sega Rally properly

It's a PAL unit, so those lovely Jap Shmups are out of bounds (I'm gonna get Radiant Silvergun on XBLA for a tenner rather than pay £500 on Saturn!), but I may get a modded / Jap console later. This is my gateway drug For £110 with 11 games and 2 pads, not a bad deal!

Games are:

Sega Rally
Virtua Fighter 2
Quake
Tomb Raider
Firestorm
Worldwide Soccer 97
Sim City 2000
Alien Trilogy
Sonic Jam
Independence Day
Destruction Derby

Not bad overall, the only real stinker there seems to be Independence Day. I had no idea what Sonic Jam was, it's all 4 original Sonics.

But it's all about Sega Rally

@monkeyspasm Sweet!

I recommend not trying the Stratos at first and sticking to the Celica (which is still my favourite) or the Lancia Delta, which are both much easier to control.
It might take a little while to get used to the controls though as I was pin balling all over the tracks the first time I played the game. Don't worry about it, you'll get used to it soon enough. Several Sega Saturn games have quite a bit of a learning curve at first, but when they do click, it's incredible.

The gameplay was adapted to the D-pad in such a way that it kinda feels analogue at times. It's really weird.
Try to use small taps when taking light corners (right, right, right) for instance. Combined with longer taps for steeper corners. Never use your handbrake unless you are at a hairpin turn.
Letting go of the gas for a split second and throwing your steering wheel into the turn will be enough to take a somewhat sharp turn on it's own.
Again, don't become frustrated. Just give it time to learn the muscle memory needed to perfect laps.
Going into Time Attack and just looping around a track for half an hour or so might be a good way to do just that.
Actually, that is why I love doing time attacks in racing games till this day and why 99% of my time in driveClub was spent in Time Attack.

Oh and with some of those jumps in the Forest Track, make sure you position your car correctly before getting some air, and again when you actually land. Tapping left or right during these jumps is crucial as well.

I wouldn't write off import games just yet with a PAL Saturn.
The longest time I was playing with one of these:

It let's you boot up import games and has 4MB of RAM included as well as save memory. So you should be able to play most if not all of those Capcom fighters that utilise the 4MB cart that was only released in Japan with it without any problems. I recommend X-Men vs Street Fighter.
Other games such as Cotton 2 Boomerang also use the memory to give you many more frames of animation.
Some games can't use it though, like certain SNK games, especially the ones that came with their proprietary cart like KoF95. The problem with those was that certain data from the game was actually on the cart itself, so without it, you'd lose background for instance. But these are not very common and are sold with the cart normally.

If you are going to buy a copy of Sokyugurentai, and I highly recommend you do btw, be sure that if you use the 4-in-one cart, you don't buy the original release.
It'll play fine, but a lot of the Japanese text that flashes on screen during boss encounters, or in menus and such will be glitched.
You should get the Otokuyo version instead which has a white border around the artwork like this:

That was a re-release which doesn't have this issue for some strange reason.
If you're playing on Japanese Saturn, this isn't a problem at all though.

Virtua Fighter 2 is brilliant, but I think playing Fighters Megamix today will be a bit more fun since VF evolved quite a lot over the years. Then again, Street Fighter Alpha 2 is still my favourite, so what do I know.
Quake was actually an incredible port that should not have been possible on the system, yet somehow worked really well. Lobotomy were one of the few devs besides Sega that pushed the system to it's limits.
Sonic Jam was really great when it came out. I played that little 3D hub so much, dreaming of having a full 3D Sonic game like it one day... That didn't quite pan out the way I was hoping.

Speaking of dreams, you need to have a copy of NiGHTS into Dreams! But make sure you get a 3D control pad alongside it as it makes all the difference in the world.
Again, another game that's a little hard to get the hang of at first as it's a bit confusing and can certainly be played wrong, but when it clicks, it's pure magic.
None of the ports on later systems (PS2, 360, PS3) did the game justice simply because the controls were never as fluid and precise as the original Saturn version. I know as I have all of them.
If you like football games, Worldwide Soccer was actually really good. I only like arcade sports for some reason, so yeah, I can't really say much about actual simulations.
Not sure if you've played Destruction Derby before, but it's a blast. Even if it's certainly aged a ton since it was released. The Saturn port doesn't run as smooth as the PSone version, but the game is still as much fun.
I even imported both WipEout and WipEout 2097 from Japan because I love playing those on Saturn, even though I have them all on PSone and people keep telling me that the Sega Saturn ports are garbage and barely playable. Just don't listen to them. Well, unless you value graphics over gameplay, which seeing as you bought a Saturn in 2018, I don't think we have to worry about.

If you want to do some time trials for fun, just let me know.
I can pop my Pal copy in to make sure we're on equal footing, although I must warn you that I have a bit over 20 years on you.

If you're looking for more games to hunt down, take a look here, which you might have already done: http://www.outofprintarchive.com/articles/reviews/Saturn.html
The resolution on the site is a little low nowadays since it's created nearly 10 years ago, but if you download the full magazines in their "max-rez" versions, you should get the best possible digital version of the Sega Saturn Magazine out there.

I just came across a channel yesterday that's relatively new it seems.
Looks to be a really well done one too! And it's from the viewpoint of someone who actually knows his stuff and was there on day one, instead of lots of "internet experts" nowadays which are painting a distorted picture because they got most of their info from wikipedia and message board hearsay.

And with that, you got me back into a Sega Saturn mood!
Looks like I'm going to be playing a lot more Saturn this week!
I think I'll be taking some more picture of both my PAL and Japanse games as well as I like looking at those kinds of things myself online.

Also @Shiryu
It looks like none of my imgur pictures show up on the board anymore these last few days.
Could you take a look at what might be causing this?
I uploaded these last few to tiny pic instead.

@meppi64 Superb stuff, thank you so much!

I've played arcade Sega Rally quite a bit (not enough to get any good), and again on Model 2 emulator over the years. But the AI car behaviour was never quite right on M2 emulator, I think the dev got hired by Sega before it was finished (I may be wrong). I love the game. Sega Rally 3 / Online Arcade was amazing on 360 but the first Sega Rally is where it's at! It's just so pure.

I'm well up for swapping time trial times, you'll trounce me but it gives me something to aim for

I had a Saturn back in the day, but sold it as things were beginning to get interesting. I had the original Daytona and Virtua Fighter, as well as a fairly terrible early footy game. I remember Exhumed being brilliant!

It might not be a classic but I used to love Athlete Kings, had loads of fun with that.

I'm a Sega fanboy generally. I have a Mega Drive, Fire Shark is my favourite shmup on that, Toaplan had a great output on MD. In fact, Mega Drive and Everdrive and I'd be happy without any other system. I've had several DCs, I still have one that won't read original discs that I kept as a spare. The DC is my favourite console ever, but as most of the games like Virtua Tennis, Crazy Taxi etc have had releases on newer platforms I've not bothered getting another as the lasers are so flaky. I've got F355 on PS2, that's another of my favourites, it's not as good as the DC version but close enough. I know there are USB GD ROM solutions now. Saturn and Sega Rally though is another story! I got fed up of trying to emulate it. Time for the real thing

I'm gonna get an Action Replay at some point soon. Soukyugurentai Otokuyo is now on my list, it'll be a while though as I've spent so much lately. Thanks for all the useful tips, I really value your advice and input. I'll check out that site and scour some reviews!

@meppi64

I downloaded Pinball Arcade on PS4 when they pulled the Switch version and to learn that they are getting rid of a lot of tables in barely 2 months is annoying since I don't really want to put a lot of money upfront into buying the soon to be gone table.

It also doesn't help that outside of Season 1 & 2, the tables are very expensive ($5.00 per table) if I remember right so you have to commit to a full season if you really want a feeling of discount.

Do you know any reason why the later season's table are so expensive?? I think I might maybe just buy Season 1 or 2 and leave it at that. Also is the Wii U version serviceable?? I have some E-shop card for that that I might use.

@monkeyspasm Ah I see. Shouldn't be that hard to adapt to the controls then.
And I loved Athlete Kings, had so much fun playing against friends back in the day.
Winter Heat as well. So simple, yet tons of fun.
That's what I miss most these days, the simple arcade games that are easy to pick up, yet can take a lifetime to master.
Been playing a ton of Trials HD and Fusion this past week on Xbox one after the announcement of the new game for instance. Looks so simple, you have a gas button and a break button and you can lean forwards and backwards on your motorcycle, yet every tiny little bit of movement can make a world of difference.
And once you get into score chasing in that one, you can spends years on it.

It's been a while since I hooked up my MegaDrive. I really should do that. Been thinking about getting the new compilation since it's much easier to play that way these days then to hook up the old system to the Framemeister, find the right settings, digg out the carts and then put everything back into their boxes afterwards. That's why my Saturn and Dreamcast have their permanent place underneath the TV ever since I got them.

I got all those ports as well, on various systems actually, but in the end, they all play better on the original hardware. Like Crazy Taxi. Even though the controls are very very close, especially on Xbox with a 360, and even moreso with an Xbox One controller, it lacks the original soundtrack as well as voices and has some weird sound bug as well where the fare counter makes way too much noise all of the time. The soundmix as a whole is really bad in the ports, while it's perfect on Dreamcast.

I've been lucky with my systems so far as all my Saturns and Dreamcast still work till this day.
Well besides the one broken Japanese Saturn that I got for free. The laser is busted.
I ordered a new one, but I don't have the tools, nor the knowledge it seems to adjust it to the correct parameters to actually get it to read discs.
I refuse to throw it out though as the rest of the system is okay. Perhaps one day I'll convert it with one of those SD card mods or something, even though I'm not crazy of that stuff.

Oh, and that's my personal site btw. So if you want to download certain magazines and the links don't work, let me know and I'll re-upload them. After a while links get delisted or corrupted on a file host like that. Especially when they have been up for a couple of years.

@nitake92
You have to keep in mind that the Pinball Arcade has been going for quite a few years now, so many of those older tables didn't even start at 2012 when TPA released, but were already created in previous iterations before it got that name. Like Pinball Hall of Fame the Gottlieb Collection and the Williams Collection.
If I'm not mistaken, those earlier seasons were not originally like that either, but were put together later, which is why there are so many more tables in there and thus much better value.

From what I understand, they also can't really do sales and such they way they like as the licenser has quite a bit of control over the price. Which is why they can't do a "going away sale" for the Williams tables for instance.
Overall licensing, not just for the tables, but also the properties, likenesses, music and voices used in certain tables play a big part in how much things end up costing.
Just look at Addams Family, Judge Dredd, Last Action Hero, Terminator 2, Twilight Zone, Dr Who, Starship Troopers and Ghostbusters as an example of how complicated all that stuff can be.
Which is why it's flat out a disaster that Williams, or should I say the company that bought the Williams name and rights, is refusing to renew the contract with Farsight.
It was hard enough to get everything in order for these tables to be digitised and released like this in the first place, and I'm fearing we will not get a second chance with most of them, unless something can still be worked out, and even then the original deals might not be valid any longer.

As for value, €/$5 might seem like a lot for a single table, but when you buy them as seasons, you get an average of 11-12 tables for $/€30 which comes to €/$2.50 - 2.72 at most.
Seeing as how tables from the 60's or 70's can still be a ton of fun today and how the ones from the 80's and 90's are especially sought after and played by lots of people after all these years, the value proposition is actually nuts.
Naturally, it all depends on how big you are into pinball.

Just looking back at my own purchase lists over the years and seeing how I payed 38€ for Pokémon Pinball on GBC, €53 for Fantastic Pinball on Sega Saturn, €45 for Sonic Pinball Party on GBA, €45 for Pro Pinball Fantastic Journey on PSone, and many, many more less that €3 for very close recreations, with great physics I might add of some of the best tables ever creates, certainly was a good enough deal for me to buy all those seasons 4 times over.

I can't speak for the Wii U version since it never was released outside the USA for some reason.
But if it's anything like the PS3/360 versions, they should be perfectly playable, if a little less flashy than the current gen ones. Especially the lighting engine will see a downgrade there.

@meppi64

I originally downloaded Stern Pinball and Pinball FX3 for my Switch because they were giving out free table& game (especially Pinball FX3 when it gave out 3 table free).

So for me, I am not YET that much of a pinball person.

I think that GIVEN time, I might buy more tables over the year.

This is why I hate digital games with lots of DLC that are pulled when there's a problem with licenses. ( The same happened with my PS3 UMarvel vs Capcom 3, I never got enough money to buy the costume that I may want for it before it got pulled)

Also I am in Zone 3 for my PlayStation Store (I am from Thailand) and the Pinball Arcade only offer Season 1 for DLC so I would have to go buy a PS Store card from the US and open a US account to buy all table. This is why I ask about the Wii U since I have a US account and E-shop card though I have checked and the Wii U only goes up to Season 4 (bummer)

Thanks for your answer, I think I'm going to have to make some decisions on whether I want to commit or not.

@nitake92 No worries.

Pinball FX/Zen tables are much easier to get into but offer a lot less depth overall, not to mention how the design can be rather messy and, well, not that well laid out, despite looking flashier than a lot of the real life tables.
The thing with real life tables is that these were specifically designed to sell and to bring in money.
That's why, when you get a little deeper into the world of pinball you'll see a bunch of familiar names pop up over and over again.
Steve Ritchie, Pat Lawlor, John Popaduik, Brian Eddie, George Gomez, John Trudea, etc.
The reason they became synonymous with pinball was because they had the design down to a science on how to make the most fun, unique and long lasting games.
Seeing as how a new pinball machine costs somewhere between 8 and 12.000$ on average, depending a bunch of factors, it's a sink or swim industry.
Compared to digital tables that sell for a buck or two, there's a lot more risk, so they tend to spend way more time designing and adjusting a table till it's just right.

It's not the easiest of hobbies to get into, certainly not in this day and age, that's for sure. Which is a real shame.
For me it came naturally. As I told before, I grew up in a small pub owned by my mom, who did everything what she could to take care of me and my sister after my father, (if you can call him that) bailed.
So my first memories in life are me playing the original arcade cabinet of Space Invaders with a black & white screen and a multicolour strip of cellophane over the screen to try and liven it up, as well as playing a pinball machine, although for the life of me, I can't remember which one.

Thanks to some very old family pictures, as well as memory flashbacks while watching a lot of TNT Amusements videos with Todd Tuckey on Youtube,

So for me, pinball came naturally.

I know very well what you mean about hating digital only stuff.
Once it's gone, you're not getting it back unless you got it when it was available.
Which is why I go to the trouble of hunting down physical editions of games, even if they only came out in Korea (Battle Garrega PS4), Japan, the USA or with quite a lot of Vita games, Malasya and probably a couple more countries in the neighbourhood, perhaps Thailand as well? I bought quite a few from Heavy-Arms store.

Sadly with the Pinball Arcade, the only option we have is season 1 and 2 on PS4 and that's it.

That's why I made the post earlier this week. Because, when people start getting deeper into pinball and start te realise there is much more to it than meets the eye, it'll most likely be too late and a whole bunch of the best tables ever made will be gone already.

So my advice would be, well, buy everything really.... lol
But since that's not feasible for most people, I'd say, pick a season that gives you the best bang for your buck, pick one of the tables that people highly recommend and that looks like something you'll really dig.
And then spend some serious time with it for the next week and dig really deep into it.
If you start to feel the little tingle in the back of your head telling you "oh crap, I never knew pinball would be this addictive!" then you still have a couple of days to pick up a bunch more.

Just be warned that I read that on certain systems, they might disappear a little earlier than the end of the month. So don't sleep on them!

@GrailUK what the hell is that!
I had no idea that was possible at all!

I'm currently ranked 12th in Caravan Mode (Later Version) and appear in the top 15 during gameplay. (At least I was yesterday when I took this screenshot)

@bezerker99 Well done mate!

@meppi64 It's cool right!

@GrailUK oh, absolutely!

New trailer for Psyvariar just dropped btw:

Does anybody know what the next batch of ACA Neo Geo titles will be? Starting tomorrow. Usually they publish articles with information about the next 4 or 5 games, but not this time.

It would be nice if they announced the next Arcade Archives too, but with Neo Geo it was something we could rely on until now.

EDIT: Never mind, I've found it. On Nintendo Everything and later on this same thread. Sorry, I don't read it every day. But I missed the usual news piece on Nintendolife.

Would you recommend The Last Blade 2 over first one or over Samurai Shodown series? Thinking about getting one sword fighting game today

Looks like Play-Asia picked up a great little game to put out as a limited physical release.
Very nice surprise this one.

https://www.play-asia.com/info/exclusives

Unsure of how it will end up playing since I don't know the company making the game, but the artwork is gorgeous and the bullet patterns look really well put together. A nice blend of the familiar and original patters.

First one is great but i have read second one is equally good or better. Samurai Showdown 2, 4 are great too. I would get all of them

@meppi64 I bought seasons 1 and 2. I added also The Addams Family to my collection. I'm probably going to buy five more Bally/Williams table. Currently trying to figure out what should I get. Fathom and Indianapolis 500 looks like fun as well Fish Tales.

Played today Forza 6 for the first time and I think that I prefer it over Forza Horizon 3. Horizon is great, but the Fast and Furious aspect turns me off. Not into super cars, insteas I'm enjoying more driving American classics. Only problem in Forza games that they are not on Switch