Back smack dab in the middle of the pandemic, I got on a pinball kick. FX3 was my drug of choice and it delivered magnificently.
You could not only play games that you remembered from the 80’s and 90’s (like The Getaway:High Speed II or Funhouse):
but also absolutely fantastic games that would never in a million years work in the real world… like Spider-Man:
Or Portal:
Well, walking through Costco the other day, I saw that they were already laying out the Christmas presents and one of the big ones was a Star Wars Pinball machine.
Curious, I wandered up and HOLY COW THIS IS A LIFE-SIZE MACHINE THAT PLAYS THE FX PINBALL STAR WARS GAME!!!
Like, it had A New Hope on there and I played it for a minute or two and it *FELT* like a pinball machine. It had haptic feedback for the various bumpers and flippers. Like, you’d press the flippers and you’d feel the machine jerk just a tiny bit. Hit the ball with the flippers and it’d jerk just a hair more. Get the ball into the bumpers and you’d feel the machine kick against your hands.
It *FELT* like playing pinball.
And you know what? It’s got *10* games in there. Not only the New Hope game, but also the Darth Vader machine, the Boba Fett machine, and The Force Awakens!
So you can look down at a giant Ipad that shakes when you tell it to and it *FEELS* like you’re really playing THIS:
Then I looked at the price and it was a little more than $700 and I laughed.
Because, seriously, you can go to Steam and pick up FX3 and all of the DLC for half that (or buy bundles and save 20-50% on various bundles). And, get this, the games regularly get discounted 50% or more during each and every Steam Summer or Holiday or Spring sale. Heck, it wouldn’t surprise me if they went on sale next week.
But it was really nice to play the game for a minute in Costco.
So… what are you playing?
(Featured image is the New Hope table. All screenshots taken by the author.)
