Simon the Sorcerer Pinball	Adventuresoft
Reviewed: 1999-03-06

- The pinball

Adventuresoft, the good old company that created the adventure game Simon the Sorcerer (which I must add is quite good too!) back when the Amiga was one of the bigger names in the personal computer world, a sequel to the first simon title has since been released and a third (in 3D) is undergoing development. Adventuresoft has now released a pinball based on their simon the sorcerer games. The pinball features one table which is nicely rendered in 3d for a couple of different resolutions. The table music and soundfx is acceptable though not really so impressing (annoying at times), a remixed version of the Simon theme is featured as the tables main theme. The table physics (ball/flippers etc) were quite similar to the infamous NMS engine though somehow I accepted the lousy feeling in this pinball and kept on playing to discover what the table had to offer. Adventuresoft developed this pinball together with a third party that wanted to be anonymous (adventuresoft basicly used the third partys engine and did all the graphics and stuff themselves). Well, gee, can it be Pin-Ball Games Ltd. that is this anonymous third party? I can't think of any other company which they might have worked with and the engine is as said awfully similar to Pin-Ball Games reworked NMS engine.


- The Table

Simon the Sorcerer

The first impression of this table is that it is quite freespaced and ramp optimized.

Lets start by describing the table clockwise from the topmiddle (why not!). First there is some kind of a circular area beneath the table surface (visible trough a glass cover). This is simons magic circle (also called simons magic ring), by shooting certain lock holes you can send away a ball to the circle, the ball will fall down trough the glass cover and be locked. The circle is the key to lighting up the multiball lock.

Two lock holes are also found at the top of the table near the circle. One of the locks will when lit start a multiball, the other lock hole initializes the rescue hostage sequence. Some famous Simon the Sorcerer characters have trapped in the castle and you must rescue them.

Moving on right to the lower top-right part of the table. Here is a bumper collection called swampy's bumpers or something like that. Swampy is a funny figure that likes to cook swamp stew (funny... he is a weird figure at least), hitting the bumpers enough times awards a "swampy stewed ball" (a very slippery and fast ball).

On the bottom right side of the table is the woodworm log (a lock hole, sort of... lock log is more correct). Near the log you will find three drop targets, these targets configure the log to send away a ball to either Simons Magic Ring, Swampy's Bumpers or the Fiery Balcony.

On the bottom left side of the table there is one lock hole called Simons Magic Hat. Shooting it will award a random score award based on what you find in the hat (you have no idea what there really is inside a magic hat). Above the magic hat lock hole is yet another lock that when lit will send the ball to simons magic circle. Above the last mentioned lock hole is a ramp that leads to that evil bastard Sordid's castle (the one who have captured Simons friends), this ramp will open up under multiballs and you will be able to steal treasures from the castle by shooting it.

So the interesting features are Simons Magic Ring and the Woodworm log. As mentioned the woodworm log can be configured to send a ball away to Simons Magic Circle. The Ring is the key to enabling multiballs, each ball send to the circle will fill up one free spot in a multiball set. There is six different multiballs to enable (with varying numbers of balls), there is for example one 2-ball multiball mode, to enable this multiball two balls send to the circle must have been placed in the 2-ball multiball set (it is not really important you understand how this work, but I just wanted to give you an idea of how simplisticly easy it is to start a multiball). Once all the spots in a multiball set are filled the multiball start lock will light up. You can choose to shoot for that lock hole and start the multiball mode or you can try to lock more balls (20 totally can be locked) and fill up every multiball set since that will award a Magic Overload Multiball (6-ball multiball or something like that, don't remember).

Boringly enough all multiballs seemed to be the same, you shoot the castle ramp, two hands rise up trough the table (not as cool as it sounds), you shoot a ball at each hand and the hands will catch the ball (once again not as cool as it sounds). Woila, you get some score and can shoot the castle ramp all the time for treasures (bonus points). Even the Magic Overload Multiball was the same... What happened to imagination!!

The Fiery Balcony. Since you usually shoot the woodworm to lock balls it would be all to easy if there was no danger involved. One of the three mentioned droptargets beside the woodworm will configure the log for the Fiery Balcony. If you accidently shoot the log when the Fiery Balcony is enabled you will either receive a neat bonus sum or a punishment which might involve led balls, lights turned off (the screen goes totally black, I fail to see the fun in that) or reversed flippers (sillily enough if the last happens you can simply hit [ESC], go to the key config and switch flipper keys and continue to play).

The multiballs aren't all there is, if you shoot the upper left lock hole you will start the rescue hostage sequence. Once you have started it you shoot one ramp and then another ramp and voila you have saved one of the prisoners Sordid has locked up inside his dungeons. Saving all six hostages awards a big score (20M+) and maybe a magic ball (a ball which you can lock in any multiballset you wish).

Apart from those two big areas of the table you can shoot the mentioned simons magic hat which contains lots of gooides which randomly award different amounts of score. There is also six rollovers placed on the inlanes, lighting all rollovers lights one letter in S-I-M-O-N. Lighting up simon awards an amount of points.

Supposedly according to the manual the evil magician Sordid will appear on the table and turn your balls into fiery orbs. Well that never happened to me, all I could figure out was that this table was based on scoring, scoring and scoring. The theme seemed to be second hand. The different parts of the table didn't seem to rely on each other, having started all multiballs didn't trigger any special effect, rescuing all hostages didn't advance you closer to any wizmode... The multiball modes are there for you to start and score in, the hostages are there to be rescued for score (and if you rescue them all you get more score). I felt a lack of a really good overwhelming theme that tied all the bits and pieces of this table together. Just something simple and fun that made completing all multiballs and rescuing all hostages feel more rewarding, some small fun mode that would light up if I did that, just playing for score isn't enough to make this table exciting.


- The Feeling

Well, as I said in the beginning, the physics engine remind me of the infamous NMS engine and it probably is that very engine that this pinball uses (just my guess). Well, it doesn't matter, the physics are nomatter what enough to make playing this table possible (though just somewhat possible). The physics aren't very realistic, they are mediocre and you will find it annoying to play at times. Compare the physics to any of Pin-Ball Games releases (Pinball Soccer '98, Judge Dredd) or to the Star Trek Pinball (which also uses a version of the NMS engine).

You have a certain control when playing in the sence that you soon learn how to use the flippers and the tilt (very useful tilt in this pinball) so that you avoid draining all the time and so that you hit targets easier. Sadly enough there isn't exactly real "feeling" involved. In a real pinball you soon learn the power of the flippers (and how the table is sloped etc etc) and can get a feel for how a ball will act when you flip it away (though a certain difficulty is always there and a randomness on launch from lock holes etc is always there). In this simulation it is more knowing how a ball will act when flipped away from a certain caught position and knowing how the ball will be launched out from certain lock holes (a ball released from a certain lock hole will pretty much always act the same way when released, for example a ball released from the top left lock on the table will always bounce against the left flipper and then roll up the right flipper making catching it easy). I suppose you could say you learn the flaws of the physics more than you play by skill. The ball doesn't that often speed up to impossible speeds though it will at times (annoyingly enough), but you can slow it down with a little luck.

I had a hard time getting used to the table perspective, the table feels waay to tilted, it's like you only reach a few inches over the table surface with your head. This makes playing uncomfortable at times, shooting with the flipper becomes a bit weird, though this is a matter of getting used to the view and you will pretty soon adapt to it.

I mentioned the tilt was quite useful and I do mean it, often you will have a slow moving ball heading SDTM, or if you have tried a hold pass and the ball just went straight up the middle in a slowmoving motion... You can easily tilt left pretty much as much as you want and the ball will move left-left-left-left (in a wide arc) and easily allow itself to be steered down one inlane. Normally the table would TILT very quickly when one try this kind of technique (I would find it quite hard to do it in reality too even if I played a table not easily titled) but in this case you can pretty safely tilt as much as you want (I've tilted the table by accident one time and I used the tilt a lot that game since I wanted to spell SIMON and thus had to steer the ball down the inlanes a lot).

Though it has nothing to do with physics but still with the overall feeling when playing I must mention the DMD (dot matrix display). All animations showed on it are soo slow, for example when hitting the woodworm log when it is configured to send a ball up the ramp leading to the magic ring: First you will see an animation showing a log floating around, next an animation displaying "Simons Magic Ring", next an animation for "Ball Locked" and finally an animation showing which multiball set the ball was locked in... After all that (9-12 seconds) you get to launch the ball out again... A bit annoying when you have 20 balls to lock.

Well, I've not been that detailed on the physics, overall you have a certain amount of control enough to make playing this table fun without an all to giant frustration. The realism of the ball and flipper isn't exactly lifelike by any bigger means, simply put the physics are mediocre, but still as I said, you can enjoy playing this table.


- The Whole:

A pinball that might be fun for a simon the sorcerer fan because of the characters and the few references to the game. I would have wished the theme was a bit more exciting and that the multiball modes had been a bit more intriguing. I mean, here they have two simon the sorcerer adventure games to base the theme on, couldn't they instead have created six different multiball modes which were a bit more exciting than shoot the ramp, lock two balls, shoot the ramp for treasure points... With a little work they could have created some modes based on parts of the adventure games, that could have been fun. There really was way to little references to the simon the sorcerer adventure games in this pinball, everything on the table ofcourse refered to the game, the devil characters on the fiery balcony, swampys bumpers, sordids castle, the trapped prisoners (all ofcourse from the advnture game), simons hat and so on... but those are such simple objects, there was no real "modes" or anything that connected to the adventure games.

No, my impressions of the table is as follows: At first it looked mediocre. Secondly, once I got started playing I felt it could be fun to explore the table, was lots of ramps, lock points and multiball modes. It was quite enjoyable to play for a while, mostly I played because I was curious how the theme was build up (how things connected, what would happen after having rescued all hostages, enabled all multiballs, etc). Thirdly, having tried out the multiball modes, rescued all hostages and explored the different areas of the table I just felt disappointment because things weren't connected to each other and didn't advance me against anything similar to a wizmode. Not to mention how disappointing it was to rescue all hostages and only get some measly 20 millions...

I suppose I might have missed out something, but if there is any bigger deeper meaning behind all the modes in this table I missed them. Still some work has been put down on the table and the layout is quite acceptable and neatly set up. The theme as mentioned fails in many ways... Still I don't say the table totally fails, it is possible to play it trying to rack up really high scores and top the hiscore list. The thing is that I just didn't find it so hard to score once I had understood how I started the multiballs. The lust I in the beginning had felt to explore the table turned out to be quite an disappointment. So playing to score is what is left (but where is the point in playing for score in a pinball with just almost acceptable physics), if you do set your mind to just score things become a bit more fun but the table just doesn't last and will get repetitive.

In summary, if you want a pinball simulation featuring a table in a 3d view, rather mediocre physics, a not to challenging theme but one well suited for playing just for score then... well, if you see this one available as budget it might be worth a shot! Not a top scorer but certainly a bit more enjoyable than most of the mediocre mass low-budget pinball releases.

Platform: PC
Operating System: Windows 95 or above

Also available for: -

Simon the Sorcerer

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