1990 was the year the PC started to become something big, mostly because of Windows 3.xx and its GUI. The PC had been out on the market for a long time 1990, in 1983 the XT (the first harddisk computer) was released and it even had pong installed.

As the popularity of the PC grew the SX processor was replaced with the DX processor and it all has just keeped on moving upwards.

PC Pinballs

All from the beginning the home PC was meant to be a something for enjoyment too, so games have been made for it all the time. In the 1990's games started floating in. So did pinball simulations. The PC had its early and classic pinballs, but Pinball Dreams (1992) and Pinball Fantasies (1992) was the two first major pinball to be released on the PC. They were both conversions of the popular amiga pinballs with the same name. Since then a number of pinballs have been made for the pc, today there is over 60 ones that I can mention by name.

After the releases of fantasies and dreams few really good pinballs was released, many were just clones, some good, many bad and a few of top quality. This was untill 1995, when Pro Pinball: The Web was released. It was the first pinball since Pinball Dreams that changed something in the pinball genre. It's originality in being one of the first to use 3D in a good style showed the world how pinball simulations really should be made. The Web wasn't really first with a 3D table view, Power Pinball (c64) and Tilt!/3D Hyper Pinball (PC) for example both came out before it, but none of them were anywhere near good (power is kind a fun though).

This year 1998 a follower to the web has been released, called Timeshock!. It is even better than its prequel, it is for example the first pinball to feature a operators menu as found in real pinballs. Then there is lots of other lovely things in it that tells us pinball simulations has really moved on.