Very realistic this might be, but this is a PC game after all, so what can it offer over and above? Nothing. It’s pretty immersive and more than comparable to real pinball tables, and for once the music will not make you want to rip your own ears off. All the tables have a variety of sounds and voices which tell you what’s going on, and a little recreation of the score display in the left-hand corner. Anyway, as far as I’m aware she’s from the game Two Worlds and we are not getting an insight into what the programmers get up to in their spare time (search for it yourself to see what I mean). Having no idea who this might be, I Googled her and was…um…surprised by the results. The themes are fairly standard stuff: there’s an aquatic-based table, a ‘monsters’ table and one based on a character called ‘Amber Moon’. This affects the ball’s behaviour in various ways, although it’s not as marked as the developers would like you to think. The game’s ‘gimmick’, as all pinball games must have, is that from time to time you get a different ball made out of a different material – namely gold, wood, ivory and marble. The physics are pretty solid too, and the ball(s) whizz around like someone has applied engine oil. It looks, for all the world, exactly like what you would find on the real thing. There are six tables, which become increasingly cluttered with obstacles and scenery until you’ve got a giant helicopter in the middle of one and a second table level on the last. Graphically it’s wonderful – you’ll be too busy at first trying to work out what the heck you should be doing and trying to keep the ball on the table, but after a while you’ll notice the little details, like the reflections off the glass and the lovely ‘flare’ effects when you hit certain targets. Dream Pinball 3D (what a very mid-90s title) has them in abundance. I’m probably a sucker for flashy lights and shiny things. If there was some kind of award for making large ball-bearings disappear at speed, I would win hands-down.

It’s less ‘lost balls’ and more ‘lost marbles’.

And it will only be a few minutes, for I not only love it but am completely, categorically useless. If I’m walking past an arcade I’ll generally find the table with the most ridiculous-looking construction and try my luck for a few minutes. I’ve owned various virtual tables from the day that I played Pinball Dreams on a friend’s Amiga and became hooked.

Old pc pinball games