1990 was the year the PC started to become something big, mostly because of Windows 3.xx and its GUI. The PC had been out on the market for a long time 1990, in 1983 the XT (the first harddisk computer) was released and it even had pong installed.

As the popularity of the PC grew the SX processor was replaced with the DX processor and it all has just keeped on moving upwards.

Early pinball releases for the PC (1982-1993...)
by Darren Prescott

Here's a description of early pinball releases on the PC.

The IBM PC was launched in 1981 and right from the start it had games; a simplistic driving game was included with the first version of DOS.

The following year, a port of Night Mission Pinball appeared. With simplistic CGA graphics. It was nothing to write home about, although it was subsequently updated several times culminating in an EGA version release in 1988.

Three years after this, the Pinball Construction set, written by Bill Budge was released. The construction set allowed users to create their own tables and became a big success, with tables created using the Construction Set still being distributed by Shareware libraries in the early 1990s. The tables were crude by today's standards, though, with 4 colour CGA graphics being the only option available.

1989 saw the release of First Person Pinball, a 16-colour EGA game, as well as a Shareware pinball game. Released by the prolific Steve Moraff, Moraff's Pinball used EGA to display a more colourful playfield. The table didn't have many exciting features, though, with the most noteworthy thing being a mini pinball table to the left of the playfield.

The following year, Pinball Magic was released by Loriciel, a French company. Featuring VGA graphics, it was a colourful multi table game. Each playfield took one screen - to advance in the game, the player had to aim for numbered targets on each level.

Things were finally starting to hot up with regards to PC pinball - 1991 saw Tristan Pinball by LittleWing launched. It feels more professional than the earlier games, due to improved graphics and a decent physics engine. A pinball game called Crüe Ball came out in 1992, based on a rock group called Motley Crüe. It had multiple screens, which was still unusual at the time.

1993 was when the PC pinball scene really came of age, with the port of the Amiga's popular Pinball Dreams. 4 tables, MOD music even through a PC speaker, proper ramps and smooth scrolling VGA graphics blew away the previous pinball games. 21st Century Entertainment then followed Pinball Dreams with at least half-a-dozen more similar games in the next few years (Dreams 2, Fantasies, Mania, Illusions, World - the list goes on and on!), before going out of business. One company which hasn't gone that way is Epic Megagames, who released the commercial Silverball, also in 1993. This was similar to Pinball Dreams, in that 4 scrolling tables were included - Silverball had a couple of extra tables added to it in a more recent release, although the main thrust of Epic's development effort went on the (very similar) Epic Pinball, which was also released as Shareware towards the end of 1993. Around the same time as Pinball Dreams appeared, Sierra released a 1980s-style collection of pinball tables for Windows 3.1 under the name of Take-A-Break Pinball. Simplistic, 16 colour graphics portrayed 8 half-screen tables based on popular Sierra games of the time.

Pinball Dreams was the standout game of 1993, though - it influenced tens of other games released over the following years. It wasn't until Pro Pinball and Tilt! introduced 3D graphics in 1995 that PC pinball really moved forward again. But that's another story...

Digital Illusions and Cunning Developments (1992-1999?)
by Sam Gabrielsson

All from the beginning the home PC was meant to be something for enjoyment too, so games have been made for it all the time. In the 1990's games started floating in. So did pinball simulations. The PC had its early and classic pinballs, but Pinball Dreams (1992) and Pinball Fantasies (1992) by Digital Illusions were the two first major pinball to be released on the PC. They were both conversions of the popular amiga pinballs with the same name. What made Dreams and Fantasies so great was the table design/theme and ball handling, it felt realistic and was fun! DI finished their pinball trilogy with Pinball Illusions, this time they were writing directly for the PC. Unfortunately one member of the team had left the group, this beeing the member that had coded the ball handling in the previous two. This resulted in a new engine for ball handling and one that I never really liked. DI is still around though isn't making pinballs anymore.

After the releases of Fantasies and Dreams few really good pinballs were released for a while, many were just clones, some good, many bad and a few of top quality. This was until 1995, when Pro Pinball: The Web by Cunning Developments was released. It was the first pinball since Pinball Dreams that changed something in the pinball genre. It took the yet not rivaled realism of Dreams and Fantasies to another level. This was achived by having a 3D view of the table, ball handling that again feld just right (but moreso, you could really "feel" the ball touching the flippers) and a innovative table design/theme. The Web wasn't the first table with a 3D view, Power Pinball (c64) and Tilt!/3D Hyper Pinball (PC) for example both came out before it, but where for example Tilt! managed to produce six terribly boring tables The Web had one way cool table that (imho) blew everything away, it was simply fun! Plus I think The Web features the best pinball music ever!

The year 1998 a follower to the web was released, called Timeshock! Where The Web had been realistic T! was just plain impressing. T! took steps no pinball title had tried fully out before, one of the more noticeable things beeing the introduction of an operators menu similar to those found in real pinballs! Again the realism had been increased, the feeling, meaning the ball handling was even more realistic (something I hadn't really expected after The Web, the two titles have very different ball handling, yet both feel very realistic). The table design/theme was very complex but definitively challenging! Indeed Timeshock! has in my opinion been something of the absolute peak of pinball simulation quality and realism.

Timeshock! was followed by Big Race U.S.A, again featuring something new, a multiplayer feature (working over tcp/ip)! The table design was more bright and easygoing than T! A great pinball table I think! Though no leap in realism, but none was really asked for, there was little point in doing so! An impressing thing was that this was the third table in the series, and it managed to be completely different from the previous two and have a thought through rules set and be fun!

In December 1999 we saw the release of the fourth pro pinball title Fantastic Journey which indeed had quality but lacked the fun of the web and depth of T! I played it to the final wiz-mode but haven't really returned to it.

Now in 2002 we (the pinball simulation community) are still waiting for another pro pinball title as Cunning Developments have been busy with a non-pinball Playstation title called End Game (looks cool, I don't have a PS though).

Do I make it sound like all there is to PC-pinball history is Digital Illusions and Cunning Developments? There's more, but that's my favourite part of it (hence the positive words about it)! :)

The world of pinball simulations 2002
by Sam Gabrielsson

Since I first wrote this article in 1997 or something (I just now in 2002 reworded and updated it a little, adding the early pinballs heading and this heading) things have happened in the real pinball world. There is hardly any company left making pinballs, the allmighty Williams has stopped making pinballs! From what I've understood there's currently only a few small companies making new real pinballs.
The pinball simulation world then? Well if you equal Williams with Cunning Developments (though there's a far better chance of Cunning making a new pinball I gather from what I've been told) it feels sort of similar. There's noone around making pinballs you really long for to play (I so remember how we all eagerly awaited Fantastic Journey, a little pro pinball community, the PPPC, had sprung up and was closely following the release)... But things are definitively alive though! And this is all thanks to Randy Davis and his pinball editor Visual Pinball which has resluted in an increadible following! Besides new unique tables, lots of real pinball tables are beeing converted into simulations using the editor and the quality is great, there's no pro pinball realism but it's definitively great! As far as I know the only good old pinball developer that is still around making pinballs is LittleWing who recently released a new title for pc and mac. But the pinball simulation frenzy of the nineties feels sort of toned down. Still, pinball is just as little dead as adventure games. It's stupid to say a genre is dead. If you can still play it, it isn't dead, and there's plenty of pinballs to play!