!thgin

BRUSA time, at CeBit (a german expo) Empire showed up and demonstrated their games which ofcourse included ther next in line pinball. An attendant posted a msg to this pages msgboard with the following content:

On the CEBIT-Home there was a small stand from Empire. I ask the man:
"What's up with BRUSA?" And he says: "Come on, play it"
Well, great looking, great feeling, great play.
Release November, no demo yet.

For those who didn't attend to that expo there is ECTS'98. Empire will on september 6th be appearing there giving you a chance to get a glance at BRUSA. Read More; Empire at ECTS; Event list for ECTS.

Otherwise, I was told about two interesting (more or less at least) cds, Pinball Classics and Power Pinball. The cds are distributed by some mediocre company called Rom-Man, they have a lousy webstore at www.rom-man.com. Pictures of the cds covers can be found on the webstore. Pinball Classics supposedly contains 31 pinballs of unknown nature. I have no idea what Power Pinball really is (though I'm sure it has nothing to do with Pinball Gold/Pinball Power). An email to rom-man resulted in the answer "We are are primarily wholesalers who do not have the facilities to handle retail sales at this time". Thus meaning one can't order from them. Anyone know anything about these titles, speak up!

While on the subject of less known pinballs, check out KIWI. Apparently they are the creators behind "TDK - The Pinball Machine". At their webpage there is mentionings of other pinball simulations they have made. It seem they specialize in commercial products, creating programs as promos for other companies, something like that.

For those of you who downloaded Pinball Action for MAME I have been told that the latest version of mame (M.A.M.E 33 beta 7) supports sound for the pinball. Haven't yet tried it myself so I don't know what it is like.

And so sierra has decided to release yet another title in their 3dup series, wee!, no I'm not really that excited. The 4th pinballs name is "Nascar Pinball", and hold your breath, it has been approved by NASCAR!!! I'm dead sure that is important, somehow, uh... nevermind.

To continue on the first sentence. I'll skip why a realistic pinball simulation is something I like (my opinion anyway). Lots of fans of pinball simulations wonder what a simulated table with lots of zany stuff on it would be like (a table impossible in reality, I'm now leaving out reality ideas such as hofstaders and similar peoples). As long as you set a line, "this is not a simulation", "this is a simulation", it is good. For example it would be annoying if timeshock had a mode in which a dragon in the prehistoric age stepped out on the table field and began to eat up your ball, you don't want that. In sierras pinballs that would be perfectly normal to see. If the ugly thought that timeshock is a sierra pinball was real, then you could expect ball eating dinosaurs on the table, but then there should be living ramps, balls changing shape and black holes appearing here and there.

Now if one were to break those two rules above it should theoreticly be hard to form something that in the end would take the shape of something someone would like. So far noone has really proved that a pinball simulation table with extreme unrealistic effects can be made in a realistic sence, let me clearify that weird sentence. Sure sierras has made their tables that are really crazy and in some sences quite fun, though I like to say that for some strange reason they aren't realistic. Pinball Prelude (which doesn't really belong in this discussion) is a strange pinball that can be called unrealistic (but the rules are followed quite good here, this pinball shows how the rules can be bend).
Anyway it could be quite fun to see a extremely unrealistic pinball table that: Looks like a pinball table as any simulation does, but that totally leaves out the rules of possibility, that is i.e a realistic pinball table with walking dinosaurs on it.
The point is that the table with unrealistic effects should still feel realistic, the challenge should be to make a table totally impossible to recreate whatsoever, but one that still contained so much of the sence of realism that you though you were playing a normal table with normal functions. The table should not be sierra style where you all the time feel you aren't playing something realistic, the sprites never feel real there, they feel like cad. Just a thought...

I'm not talking down on sierra, I'm as interested as any pinball fan to see what they turn up with next I guess, I'm just wondering what the possibilities for pinball games (games defined as things not possible in reality!) are, the possibilities for simulations has been proven quite well, and their possibility is good. Has it been proven that pinball games with unrealistic effects will always remain a failure for those people who more or less think so today?

btw. The release of MAP might be getting closer, I'm still waiting for my press kit etc on it... Hope I receive it sometime at least.

laters! (hah, you probably though I would write, !sretal)