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Pinball |
Pinball (as you've probably guessed) is the VideoBrain's attempt to simulate a pinball machine. The game itself is rather weak however as the graphics are blocky, the ball is a bit too big, and the pinball physics are questionable at best. Another complaint is that the pinball table is rather sparse on detail (with almost nothing in the center of the screen), making the game look rather drab. Overall, Pinball plays somewhat like a vastly inferior version of Video Pinball on the Atari 2600.
One interesting thing about Pinball is that the
player holds two controllers and uses the fire buttons
to move the flippers. This control scheme is
much more realistic than the one used in Video
Pinball, where the player pushes up and down to move
the flippers.
Pinball was programmed by Niall Shapero and was the
first VideoBrain game made which may explain some of
the games odd quirks. Speaking of quirks, there
is a bug in the game where the graphics for the left
flipper briefly become corrupted when it is in the up
position. It happens rather briefly so it's easy
to miss which is probably how it snuck by the beta
testers.
Pinball was manufactured from 2-28-78 to 2-14-79 with 2,491 cartridges made making it an uncommon game despite having the longest manufacturing run of all the VB cartridges.
