Williams Pinball Wii

I love me some pinball. I was exposed to arcades from a young age and I was always mesmerized by a good pinball player. It took me years to get a good feel for playing, but I stand a pretty good chance these days of scoring enough for some free credits. When I was going to school at UIC and UIUC one of the things I loved the most was the bowling alleys at each and the complement of pinball games they kept around. If I could have gotten course credit for playing pinball, I would have had a much more padded transcript than I already do.

Long story short – I’ve played a lot of pinball.

I’ve tried a lot of video pinball. Pinball for the Genesis, Saturn, Playstation, PC, etc. It has all sucked. ALL of it.

Williams Pinball Hall of Fame for the Wii does not suck. It is very much lacking in suck. It ventures very deeply into the realms of awesome.

The games? Ten boards dating from the 70s to the early 90s. I tend to pass up some of the older machines when I’ve got a chance to drop my coins into a newer machine, but all of these are great. They are extremely faithfully reproduced and the physics engine is quite great. There have only been 2 or 3 times when the ball has done something that doesn’t look quite right, but that’s probably less often than I’ve had that feeling in real life. The flippers are extremely responsive and the cameras are very smart and easy to switch.

This game is so good that I am convinced I would buy multiple other collections on the same engine if I could have home versions of some newer games I sadly do not have nearby. Simpsons Pinball Party on the Wii? Sold. Addams Family? Sign me up. Monopoly? Gimme.

I think that literally the only thing I would fault on this game is that there is no free roam examination of the different boards possible. I am used to being able to eyeball an idle machine from every angle to be able to see the nuances or read the smaller text that may be relevant to the game. That’s it. That’s my problem with it.

If you have twenty dollars, buy this game.