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Original Publishing Date (y/m/d): 1998-06-23
Pin-Ball Games Ltd.'s second pinball (first was Judge Dredd Pinball) will be a football themed one by the name Pinball Soccer 98'. I'm not sure whetever it has been released or is about to be released, all I know is that a demo of the pinball appeared on the PC Format July issue (which I happen to subscribe to).
In the demo you get to try out the Soccer 98 table and Team 98 table. Both not all that impressing in the whole, the Team 98 table is a multiplayer table which you can play against an opponent in, you play in rounds and the one who err scores most in a timelimited round or something wins that one. In the full version you can also play over networks I think.
screenshots
I'm a little annoyed on the demo since tilting, yes tilt, was disabled in it. It was also on time, the time limit is quite enough for a demo. If you do a demo it is to show off how good it is, you don't disable vital functions. This ofcourse makes you wonder if they were afraid you would discover the tilt was lousy... who knows.
To be honest I wasn't in the whole all that impressed by the demo, the physics were pretty simple, no real life in the ball it just seemed to bounce of the flippers all the time. Thought that might not be totally true, somehow I found the ball movements better than in Tilt! / Hyper 3D Pinball which you can't help thinking that this one is related to. PGL is a independent company, though they are related to NMS... and NMS hasn't got a good reputation in the pinball business. The ball speeds up in the ramps but not near as terrible as in Tilt!. I didn't quite find the way the ball rolled realistic, though that might have to do with the fact the ball had the look of a football. You could aim (well nearly), sometimes it took effort sometime it didn't require as much fiddling, the physics aren't anywhere near perfect but you get by.
If you like football themed pinballs (this one isn't unique with that as a theme if you thought so) you can get some fun out of this one, though I really recommend you get hold of the demo first. I rather quickly grew tiered of it and it isn't exactly something I would rush out to buy... Still I'm an optimist and I'll wait with my final judgement until I have tried the full version, maybe it has a good tilt which helps the overall feeling. Thought I can't help wondering if all PGL wants to do is to get as 
many halfmediocre pinballs as possible out on the market. Their page had quite a list of planned pinballs. I remember reading on usenet rec.games.pinball where NMS were the subject, apparently they had said in a magazine interview that they could produce a new pinball table every month. Though that was NMS, but still think about the time the pro pinballs have been in development or even pinballs such as Full Tilt!, no one months designed tables there. I just wish a little more effort was put into this pinball, it could use it...
Visit the Pinball-Arcade for more information on PGL's pinballs.