Tag: Attack From Mars Pinball FX

Attack From Mars on Nintendo Switch Review: Pinball FX AND The Ultra-Rare Pinball Arcade Version

More Pinball FX versus The Pinball Arcade on Nintendo Switch. Remember, the TPA version was listed for only a matter of minutes on April 6, 2018 before being immediately delisted. Did you miss out? In the case of Attack From Mars, no, you did not. Even a very imperfect version of AFM by Zen Studios is preferable to it. This is a special feature, but consider it our definitive Attack From Mars FX on Switch review and remember this does not apply to Pinball FX on other platforms. Read that review.

ATTACK FROM MARS
PINBALL FX FOR NINTENDO SWITCH

Thoughts of a Designer with Dave Sanders: “Experience Attack From Mars for just five minutes and you’ll understand why Brian Eddy keeps coming back to the same ‘two-flipper fan with one big center feature’ style more often than not with relatively minor differences each time. Because it WORKS. This intuitive, easy-to-learn, hard-to-master formula was lightning in a bottle and Eddy is loathe to let that go (and if he doesn’t use it, George Gomez will). Collectors – the primary cash-cow for pinball manufacturers these days – scoff at this as they’re always chasing the next new thing that, as far as they’re concerned, needs to be ‘bigger’ than the last. But instead of blaming Stern for being ‘lazy’, maybe blame Attack From Mars instead for just having been that good in the first place.”

Attack From Mars isn’t exactly a favorite for dueling in our family. We can’t beat Angela unless she has an unfathomable off-day, and frankly, even those tend to end with her getting pissed and leaving us in a smoking crater (what she did to us on the Pinball Arcade version will go down in family lore). But, Angela has questions about this version. “Are you sure the sample table they used to simulate Attack From Mars actually used a pinball made of stainless steel and not a round, unusually reflective rock?” Angela calls it “Boulder Balling” while Cathy says it’s more like the ball behaves like a beach ball partially filled with water. It has a lopsided bounce to it around the flipper zone. In fairness, that weird bouncing usually helps players to avoid the outlanes and makes rebounding a cinch. And that makes us wonder if that’s why it’s there. What if their engine turned the outlanes into Galactus and they had to add the wobble to correct it? Oh, and why does the right flipper just randomly release when you’re holding the button down? It’s not a constant thing, but it does happen. Angela, already furious that Zen Studios removed the replay extra ball (yea, WTF is up with that?!), argued for Attack From Mars to be declared OUT OF ORDER, but the vote must be unanimous and it wasn’t, so she gave it a rating of GOOD. Bit of a mixed message, but Sasha and Cathy dropped their ratings in solidarity. Attack From Mars FX on Switch needs a ton of work that we imagine won’t arrive until the Switch 2 hits. No rush. It’s only one of the most popular tables and a main reason people download FX.
Set: Williams Pinball Volume 2 ($9.99)
Type: Solid State – Dot-Matrix Display
Based on Attack From Mars by Bally (1995)
Designer: Brian Eddy
Conversion: Thomas Crofts
Duel Winner: Angela
Cathy: GREAT
Sasha the Kid: GREAT
Angela: GOOD
Oscar: MASTERPIECE
Dave: MASTERPIECE
Elias: PENDING
Scoring Average: 4.2 – Awarded a Certificate of Excellence
FX Difference: 0.8 Lower
TPA Difference: 1.2 Higher

THE PINBALL ARCADE ON NINTENDO SWITCH ATTACK FROM MARS COMPARISON

Pinball FX
The Pinball Arcade

We were dueling, which was foolhardy to begin with because Angela hasn’t lost a match of Attack From Mars in years. But, something weird was happening: Cathy was winning the game going into the third ball. Angela barely had a billion points at the start of her final ball and would have lost when it drained, but she had already earned the pity ball. And then Sasha just had to open her big yap. This really happened.

Sasha: Wow, Angela got the pity ball. Maybe we should only duel at this version. We might have a chance at beating her.
(Angela turns around looking livid, then turns back around and begins shooting conservatively.)
Oscar: You just had to open your mouth.
Cathy: Yea, what the hell, Sasha? Look at her face now!
Sasha: Whoops.
(After close to thirty minutes of watching in horror as Angela plays like an old lady counting change at the checkout stand, Angela rules the universe, then she plunges the next ball, turns around, drops the controller and lays the remaining game down with a score of 28,795,002,880 as she stares us down with madness in her eyes, then flips us the bird and walks out of the room like a boss.)
Oscar: Way to go, Sasha.
Cathy: Yeah, thanks a ton, Sasha. I was winning that game.
Sasha: My bad………… that was fire, though.
Oscar & Cathy: Indeed.

Angela ruled the universe despite this being a miserable table that, frankly, was nearly broken. Before Angela did, well, Angela things, none of us could get anything going on Attack From Mars TPA Switch. We were getting rejected on every angle, assuming the ball even made it that far up at all. Usually, it just sort of lobbed into the middle of the midfield. The flippers have NO punching power and the ball is even floatier than most tables. We strongly suspect many of the 60+ delisted pins we’ll be covering in these features are actually unfinished prototypes that never got fine-tuning and were submitted for content approval and not for actual listing. It would explain why the gravity was so wrong, even for TPA. However, before going to press, Cathy discovered that the table plays much better in the standard view. If she could have gotten a super combo, she might have even beaten Angela’s high score. Of course, the only reason to want the Switch version is for the ease of setting up the table view, so this defeats the point.

We can honestly say this is the worst version of Attack From Mars we’ve played, ever. Hands down. Angela came to believe that seal clapping increased the strength of both flippers, but shots off the flippers often gained no speed. She only put up the score she did by playing catch-set-shoot, and then she had to change the camera at the last second to finish the wizard mode. “Bad as it is, the angles are right.” So, it has that going for it. The funny thing is, the worst version of Attack From Mars still further cements how amazing this table is. A version with the wrong gravity and crippled flippers still is fun enough and well designed enough to score straight GOOD ratings from us. Sure, that’s an astonishing drop of two full points, but it’s also the final proof needed that Attack From Mars must be the perfect pinball table if such a terrible port can still be fun.
DELISTED
Type: Solid State – Dot-Matrix Display
Based on Attack From Mars by Bally (1995)
Designer: Brian Eddy
Vice Family High: Angela “ADV” 28,795,002,880
Cathy: GOOD
Sasha The Kid: GOOD
Angela: GOOD
Oscar: GOOD
Scoring Average: 3.0 – Awarded a CLEAN SCORECARD

THE VOTES
attack from mars

Cathy: Pinball FX
Sasha the Kid: Pinball FX
Angela: Pinball FX
Oscar: Pinball FX
Unanimous Decision: Pinball FX wins 4 – 0

Attack From Mars (Pinball FX Table Review)

Attack From Mars
First Released December, 1995
Zen Build Released December 4, 2018
Main Platform: Pinball FX
Switch Platform: Pinball FX 3
Coin-Op Designed by Brian Eddy
Conversion by Thomas Crofts
Set: Williams Pinball Collection 1 ($23.99)
Links: Internet Pinball Database Listing – Strategy Guide – Pinball FX Wiki
Angela on Attack from Mars: Attack from Mars is Thanksgiving dinner with my family. It’s weekends with my friends. It’s Christmas morning with the family I’ll make for myself some day. Attack from Mars will always be tied to most of my happiest memories. The table I use when I need to unwind. The table I use to organize my thoughts and find perspective when I’m feeling lost. My own little space. Just me, Attack from Mars, and my state of being. I can’t imagine any other table being all that and more. It even helped me learn math faster. I have Dyscalculia, which is kind of like dyslexia for numbers and math. Attack from Mars didn’t cure it. It didn’t even make it better. Instead, it contributed to my determination to overcome it. I loved this table so much that I wanted to be able to play it by myself and know how good my score was without asking Cathy or our father. My family tells everyone that Attack from Mars taught me how to play pinball, but they’re wrong. They taught me how to play pinball. Attack from Mars just happened to be my classroom, in more ways than one.

Shrug. It’s Attack From Mars! What can I say about it? While it’s not my personal favorite table, it’s the only pin I’ve ever considered to be perfect. Literally perfect. Perfect layout. Perfect sound effects and call-outs. Perfect scoring balance. Any player of any age or experience can walk up to Attack From Mars and enjoy a round of pinball, with no asterisk or strings attached. It’s simple and straightforward, but very challenging. The saucer is THE undisputed greatest driver in the history of the sport, and from there, it slowly eases players into the notion of greater goals and advanced modes. AFM defies any of the labels we’ve created to classify a table, yet it also matches all of them. It requires the precision aim of a Sharpshooter, but it offers gigantic flexibility to create your own strategy, like a Pick ‘n Flick. You can elegantly shoot combos and string together sequence shots, like a Finesse table, but it’s also a pinball machine where your main challenge will be taking control of the ball, like a Kinetic. Whatever your taste in pinball, and whatever era you love, you can have fun. There’s not a lot of pinball machines you can say that about.

Signature Shot – The Saucer: Attack from Mars’ iconic saucer is one of the all-time satisfying targets. The sound design played a big part of that, but I think the gate is understated. You almost breathe a sigh of relief when you lower that gate (assuming you don’t burn your Stroke of Luck on it right off the bat). It’s one of the more nail-biting shots around. Deceptively dangerous. Once the gate is lowered, nothing beats hearing the damage that each shot inflicts. Do a double or even triple shot on the saucer? Ahhh, that’s the good stuff.

If I have to think of something to not like about Attack from Mars, gosh.. okay, I guess the video mode is kind of underwhelming. Go figure that got recycled in Junk Yard, right? And everyone else disagrees with me about it anyway. I mean, even my video mode hating father likes it. I have no complaints about this interpretation from physical to digital. Zen Pinball has created a port that I feel accurately replicates the fast-rolling, frantic white-knuckle gameplay. Even the issues Pinball FX has with bounce don’t feel present here. You can tell they realized this was a table they absolutely had to get right, and they did. No, Attack From Mars isn’t my #1 table, but it’s the table I owe the most to, for it was Attack From Mars that turned Angela into a legitimate pinball player. No, change that. It turned her into a phenomenal pinball player, and it assured the Vice Family’s love of silverball didn’t end with my father and I. For that, it will always have my gratitude.
Cathy: MASTERPIECE
Angela: MASTERPIECE (#1 Rated Pinball FX Table)
Oscar: MASTERPIECE
Jordi: MASTERPIECE
Dash: MASTERPIECE
Sasha: MASTERPIECE
Dave: MASTERPIECE (Pinball FX3)
Elias: MASTERPIECE (Pinball FX3)
Overall Scoring Average: 5.0*  🏛️PANTHEON INDUCTEE🏛️
Pinball FX Scoring Average: 5.0 🏛️PANTHEON INDUCTEE🏛️
*Pinball FX3′ Williams tables run slightly different.
Some review copies were provided in this review, others were paid for.