Those of us who recall the glory days of electronic gaming hold a special place in our hearts for pinball machine tables, and it was only a matter of time before pinball sims started showing up on the iPhone. Oddly enough, some of them are curiously unlike the old mechanical machines that had their hayday in the seventies and early eighties.

The best of the iPhone bunch, however, is a straight-up table simulation called Wild West Pinball. This game serves up a delightful pinball experience, themed with elements of the old west, like a goldmine jackpot, a bank robbery jackpot, and a cute mini-game where you get to “shoot Dirty Harry” with the ball when it hits a mission activator on one side of the table.  This game is stupidly addictive, and I’ve no doubt that, along with its fairly liberal tilt feature, it’s the best free game on the iPhone. 

Pinball Dreaming, on the other hand, is a direct, authentic port of the slower, less-realistic classic Amiga game Pinball Dreams.  There’s a touch of the nostalgic in this game, too, but unlike Wild West Pinball, the Pinball Dreams game’s nostalgia comes from the nifty old-school Amiga music and 2D, vertical-scrolling pinball table, a trademark of Amiga pinball sims back in the early nineties. The paid version of this game includes the four original pinball tables included with Pinball Dreams.

We also took a look at Smallball Pinball, which is sort of a hybrid between a pinball sim and a puzzle game, though we found this implementation a bit frustrating.  It doesn’t feel like Arkanoid, and it doesn’t feel like pinball.  As you advance through the levels, the biggest motivator is not losing your ball and retreating the previous level.  So there’s not a hugely compelling reason to keep playing. That and the physics–which are neither like Breakout nor like a pinball table.

For our money, Wild West is the best pinball sim for the iPhone.

Tags: amiga, pinball, pinball dreaming, pinball dreams, wild west