Review by: Bob Mandel
Published: March 13, 2000

These are destitute times for pinball lovers. A mere few years ago, there was a ton of competition to see who could produce the very best digital pinball tables. Sierra was designing its popular 3-D Ultra Pinball series, Maxis had released Full Tilt! Pinball, GT Interactive published Balls of Steel, Microsoft rolled out Pinball Arcade, and Empire Interactive gave us the Pro Pinball line. Each company’s product had its own distinct features and advantages, but only the Pro Pinball series tried to be a true simulation of modern pinball, with every detail reproduced with painstaking accuracy.

All those great computerized pinball franchises except for one are now dead, and the one remaining–Empire’s Pro Pinball series–has just released what the company is admitting will be the last installment. When the first in the series, Pro Pinball: The Web, came out several years ago, there was a lot of excitement about the breakthrough features introduced. But as Empire gave us Pro Pinball: Timeshock!, and then Pro Pinball: Big Race USA, critical acclaim waned. The current release, Pro Pinball: Fantastic Journey, pulls out all the stops to try and make the last title in the series the very best. Given complaints that Timeshock! was too complex for the average user, Fantastic Journey continues the trend started with Big Race USA of attempting to simplify the gameplay for those who are not pinball wizards. The storyline and the means of achieving objectives are a lot more straightforward as well. But does Fantastic Journey succeed in its objectives?

The plot revolves around the evil General Yagov holding the Earth for ransom. He is threatening to launch a rocket to destroy the moon, triggering unprecedented disaster. Meanwhile, he is safely secluded on an island that is surrounded by a strong force field. To thwart Yagov, you build four steam-powered vehicles for Professor Steam, and then take each one on an adventure. You use these contraptions to collect four special crystals that can penetrate the force field surrounding the island. The story has a genuine Jules Verne feel to it, and combines elements of Verne’s various novels, including “Mysterious Island,” “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” “Around the World in Eighty Days,” and “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.”

In the drill adventure, you bore to the center of the Earth and avoid a fire-breathing dinosaur; in the airship adventure, you soar into the air above and take on the fearful Yeti; in the submarine adventure, you dive to the bottom of the sea and confront a giant octopus; and in the boat adventure, you journey down the Amazon and fight an anaconda. Unfortunately, the four adventures are almost identical except for different music and animations. This is disappointing, because so much more could have been done with each setting. For example, the submarine adventure presents a huge opportunity for audiovisual cues that bring the ocean environment to life, but virtually none of them are used. After you complete the four adventures, you get to launch an attack on the mysterious island. There is nothing tense or exciting about this climactic struggle, as it merely involves hitting ramps and targets in the same manner as when you built the four vehicles. If you fail in this raid, you then have to undertake the previous four adventures all over again.