Publisher: SouthPeak Interactive
Developer: TopWare
System: Wii
Genre: Arcade
Release date: Available now
Review by: Christopher J. Troilo

My father, for as much as he loved sports and games, never really understood the allure of video games. He could play chess, Scrabble, ping-pong or tennis all day, but getting him to hold a Nintendo paddle was like trying to get me to eat my peas. There was, however, one unusual exception to this rule, and it was pinball. Pinball, I believe, was my dad’s secret vice. We even owned a shoddy pinball machine, but it was falling apart and my father had long since mastered it. When he learned that there was an NES game, aptly named Pinball, he actually dragged me to the store with him to pick it up.

We came home and played for hours; it was wonderful in its simplicity. There was only one “table”, but it had two parts, only one of which would be on the screen at a time. It was completely flat, had two flippers for each section, and a variety of bumpers and targets you could hit to get points. The ultimate prize was flipping over five playing cards to reveal a straight flush, but it took quite a bit of precision to get them all face up.

Once the NES was outdated and the Super Nintendo reigned champion in our basement, my dad once again wanted to bond with me, this time picking me up Pinball Fantasies a port of a semi-popular PC game. The big allure this time was that there were four different tables, which scrolled up and down depending on where the ball went. The graphics suffered from a mediocre color palette, but the heart of the game was there; it felt like you were playing pinball, just sitting down.

Now in an age where games are becoming more sophisticated with better graphics, music and interaction, Dream Pinball 3D has been released for the Wii, in an attempt to bring one of the original arcade classics into the home for the whole family to enjoy.