Topic: Digital Pinball Competitions

Feel like playing some digital pinball tournaments? Look no further! A small group of us have been holding tournaments for a while now and it would be amazing if you would join us! Every month we play three tables from the different games; The Pinball Arcade, STERN Arcade, Pinball FX3 and Zaccaria Pinball. Play on whatever system you like.

We'll keep scores here (scroll to the right) and for our monthly tournament we combine the scores over here.
To join, simply post a screenshot of your highscore. The current tables for the April round are:

GHOSTBUSTERS | available in the Pinball Arcade and Stern Pinball Arcade
GHOSTBUSTERS highlights the humor of the original GHOSTBUSTERS film released in 1984. It was designed by John Trudeau to be easy to play but difficult to master. The distinctive playfield features beautiful and unique hand drawn art by renowned illustrator Jeremy Packer a.k.a. Zombie Yeti. It integrates traditional pinball devices with unique multifunction two-way ramps featuring a magnetic diverter and scoring switches. In addition, the game features a modern take on a ball transfer target, combative open field drop targets, a ball eject target, a captive ball target and custom molded toys. This table also features an interactive ghost hologram target with animations, "para-normal" magnetic action slingshots, distinctive ramp architecture and additional custom molded toys.

TX SECTOR | availble in the Pinball Arcade
TX Sector (1988): is a highly collectible table from Gottlieb designed by John Trudeau, Constantino Mitchell, and Jeanine Mitchell. The backbox features a combination of hand drawn art and photography as well as a scoreboard that is positioned over the backglass to increase its visibility to others. The playfield shows off strikingly lit ramps and a curving plunger habitrail for exciting gameplay. Using staged captive balls, the game teleports balls across the table during gameplay for added attraction. 2,336 units of this table were produced.

TIME MACHINE | Available for free in Zaccaria Pinball
Time Machine is a Physical Pinball Table manufactured by Zaccaria in 1983. The game casts the player as the assistant to an unnamed Scientist who has invented a Time Machine. Beginning in the future, use the four bottom flippers to shoot the bumpers and standup targets to build up the Bonus Future. When you're ready, head for the Time Hole to activate the Time Machine, retract the main playfield, and enter the distant past. While in the past, shoot the fixed targets to complete the machine and light the Green Special, then build up the Bonus Past. Return to the Time Hole to travel between the past and the future, orbit the Time Bridge to raise the bonus multiplier, then master time itself and get the Machine Special. Among the titles in Zaccaria's modest game library, Time Machine stands out for being one of their more memorable titles, as the retracting playfield was a great innovation at the time.

@Corneel Awesome! Thanks for bringing this all together in one place for us on NL. Between this NL thread now and the dedicated sub-thread we have for pinball-tournaments on our Adult Switch Gamers Discord any and all interested folks looking to play digital pinball together can join and discuss these tournaments.

The only thing to add, is that we also have regular WEEKLY single table based tournaments for PINBALL FX3. These are stand-alone and separate from the MONTHLY 3-table season competitions mentioned above but we can include the details and any score update pics/posts here as well.

The current weekly PINBALL FX3 tournament is on BLACK ROSE and you can access the tournament in-game by using the filter ‘created by’ and typing @cw13 ‘s username CW13. We tend to take turns creating the tournament. The password is ‘pikmin’. I’ve not checked for the past day or so but I think @monkeyspasm currently leads the pack with 80 million approx and the tournament has a few more days to run.

Anyone is free to join on any platform and if you have any issues with joining in-game let me know. For example, PS4 players will need to post pics of their scores as they can’t join Switch users in-game whilst Steam and Xbox can. We are using Classic/Arcade set-up with standard 3 balls.

Here’s some more info about BLACK ROSE courtesy of Wikipedia 😜

BLACK ROSE is a pinball machine designed by John Trudeau and Brian Eddy and produced by Midway (released under the Bally name). The game features a pirate theme and was advertised with the slogan "This game is loaded!". Bally abandoned the idea to use black pinballs for the machine.

The basic goal of the game is to sink ships. The game features a rotating cannon situated underneath the playfield used to aim the ball at targets to award letters in the word "SINK SHIP". During multiball you also get letters for shooting flashing ramps. Once SINK SHIP is spelled, you load the cannon to light the center shot (the "Broadside") to get big points.

Thank you for setting up these tournaments. Gives these classics a new lease of life

Just to clarify, on the TIME MACHINE table in ZACCARIA PINBALL we are using the ‘simulation’ gameplay mode. That’s this game’s more realistic physics. Plus, if not already stated above, this table is FREE. So anyone can install the game and get this solid state table to enter a score.

Congratulations to @monkeyspasm you won this week’s PINBALL FX3 tournament on BLACK ROSE with what proved to be an unreachable score of 84 million approx. Well done!

@corneel (Score 21, 113, 320) @cw13 (Score 8, 387, 300). Last couple of names disappeared off the bottom of the leaderboard screen for me. This happens a lot in PBFX3. Wish it would get fixed.

So @cw13 you once again have the honour of selecting the next table from PINBALL FX3 and creating the tourney. Please post the new table and tourney details and password in here when you have made your choice. Thanks to all who participated.

Some preliminary scores for the current three tables:

TX-Sector:

Time Machine:

Ghostbusters:

@corneel Nice one. Seeing as we’re approaching a week into April’s non-PBFX3 table challenges, I’ll edit in pics of my current progress to this post when I can. Side note: hate how laborious it feels to get photos on here using my phone.

My current scores:

GHOSTBUSTERS (Stern Pinball):

TX-SECTOR (The Pinball Arcade):

TIME MACHINE (Zaccaria Pinball):

Also, happy with my 3rd place finish on BLACK ROSE for this past week’s PBFX3 Table tourney.

Back to back 😢. I felt like the ball just shot down the pipes on Black Rose and had terrible time seeing it half the time! I'll make a selection later and post accordingly

@CW13 Yeah, I found BLACK ROSE to be an unforgiving table with side drains as well as hard to keep sight of the ball and flippers too. But most of all, I couldn’t stand the mash the button ‘walk the plank’ video mode where you have to swim away from the shark to reach the island. Literally failed it 99% of the time, lol!

Well done again to @monkeyspasm for taking the cup on this one. Look forward to the next one @cw13

What is your guys opinion the best pinball game on switch? Not according to realism, but down to just gameplay?

I think your preference or lack of for realism in terms of both game-play physics and table design is really going to inform which pinball games on Switch you might consider. For example, both STERN PINBALL ARCADE and THE PINBALL ARCADE almost exclusively offer recreations of real-life tables. Whereas Zen’s PINBALL FX3 is predominately fictional tables. ZACCARIA is largely based on real-life tables but also mix it up with some fictional variations on those tables.

My advice to you, would to simply try them all as they are all available for free on Switch in the eShop. Although you often only get one free table to start, that should at least give you a sense of each game. I enjoy them all and play them all quite regularly now I’ve been fortunate enough to grow within a little community of fellow digital pinball fans.

Finally, if you really had to lock me down to just one. I would probably suggest PINBALL FX3 as it has the best of both worlds in the sense it caters to both fans of the more fictional tables with non-realistic - easier - ball physics as well as now offering an increasing number of real tables since acquiring the Williams/Bally licence from FarSight (the devs of TPA and STERN). If you want to play the most realistic physics on the best recreated digital tables based on real tables - you have to go with the Williams Table packs on PINBALL FX3. They are simply astounding in terms of their new ‘deep’ ball physics engine.

Hope that’s been of some use and not muddied the waters too much. If you do end up getting into one or more of these games. Why not join in our tournaments? As you can see we have 4 tables on the go across all of the four main Switch pinball games. So you can post scores for any of them.

New tournament is up. Going with The Champion Pub. It's under CW13 password is "ranger". 10 days this time. Goodluck!

@Lroy my score on black rose was 8,387,300.

Edited my leaderboard post with your score. Thanks.

And cheers for setting up the next table tourney for PBFX3. CHAMPION PUB aye, cool!

Here’s some more info on our next table tournament in PINBALL FX3. See @cw13 post above for details on how to join in-game.

(From Wikipedia) THE CHAMPION PUB is a pinball game released by Williams Electronics Games (under the Bally label) in 1998. The theme of the game revolves around boxing in a 1920s pub.

The objective of The Champion Pub is to train and later to fight in the pub by making the right shots with the ball. Toys on the playfield include for example a punching bag, a boxer figure and a jump rope that consists of a rotating wire that the ball has to jump over by using a button-controlled solenoid. A mini-playfield contains plastic fists instead of flippers.

Game features include 4 Multi-ball modes and 15 Jackpot levels, 10 different international opponents and over 300 speech sound effects.

@Lroy Thanks so much! I will definetly look into FX3 If I get into it and get good I'll surely take up the challenge of your tourney! haha

You don't need to worry about 'being good'. These tourneys are for players of all skill levels, many of us are beginners like you and we play purely for fun. Example, in our weekly PBFX3 tourneys the last placed player gets to pick the table for the next tournament. So it's win/win!

@bushidosnail @masterleon @retrogamerandrew @mintendo @tatanak @zkibu @iamcardboard I know you fellas own the Williams Vol. 3 Table Pack featuring CHAMPION PUB as you took part in the tourney on THEATRE OF MAGIC. Any of you folks interested in joining this week’s PBFX3 tournament? How to enter - CW13 is the creator and password is ‘ranger’.

@Lroy Thanks. Didn't get a notification for this one, but did for your response on the other thread. Appreciate it!

@bushidosnail This is where we are going to be posting details of all future Digital Pinball Competitons - as well as further discussion over on the Adult Switch Gamers Discord - so probably best to check in here or over there from time to time.