Tag: Legends Pinball

Battle (AtGames Legends Pinball Table Review)

BATTLE
aka COMBAT

Presumably this table was renamed “Battle” because many Atari 2600 games, including Combat, are on some AtGames platforms. No matter what you call it, the template for Battle makes for a fun game that runs out of scoring options quickly. You can essentially get unlimited extra balls, but they don’t stack. This works towards creating tension until you’ve got the extra ball, but once that happens (and you light the 10x bonus multiplier) it feels like you’re treading water until the next ball. With more dynamic scoring, this could have been an undisputed all-timer. With its open lanes that sometimes even include an extra ball, Battle makes for an excellent defense trainer for newcomers playing their Legends unit that has just enough offensive punch to not bore. It’s also worth noting that this table holds a special place in Angela’s heart. Years ago, a then 10 year old Angela set the world record for “3 Ball Simulation” which is basically the mode you need to win to prove you’re the best in the world at the table. It was the Steam version too, the most competitive of Zaccaria’s releases. She was only recently dethroned (and remains #2 as of this writing), but she spent a few years as the champion of champions for this table. Right before we published this review, she put up a new high score on the Legends Pinball leaderboards, and her score on the Legends table is higher than her previous world record, too. Now, on Legends Pinball, there’s only one mode per table that’s always three balls. That’s lame, and I’m not sure why they don’t offer more options, but she’s top five either way. If you don’t think having a platform dedicated entirely to pinball makes that much of a difference, well, Angela is our best player by a mile and that’s all the proof you need. She fully admits that she originally overrated Battle/Combat as a MASTERPIECE partially because it’s the Zaccaria table she played the most. But, she also insists everyone else except Dave underrated it. The rest of us don’t agree. Games of Battle/Combat go slllllowly and all the fun targets in the world aren’t helped by a table with a tempo that’s generously described as “snail-like.”
Set: Zaccaria Pinball Pack 6
Type: Electro-Mechanical – Real Table
Based on “Combat“ by Zaccaria (1977)
Part of Zaccaria Pinball (Consoles/PC)
Vice Family High: Angela “ADV” 5,433,980 (#4 All Time)
Cathy: GOOD (3 out of 5)
Sasha: GOOD
Angela: GREAT (4 out of 5)
Oscar: GOOD
Jordi: GOOD*
Dave: GREAT*
Scoring Average: 3.33 – Awarded a CLEAN SCORECARD
*Played on Zaccaria Pinball for Consoles/PC

AtGames Legends Pinball – Dr. Seuss Pinball Pack 1 & 2 Table Reviews

Sasha the Kid has worked hard for months on these and provided extensive notes to be turned into reviews. The other three of us just didn’t get around to playing these until this week. The original plan had been to do these first, then Natural History. “Trust me, you’ll want to do Natural History first. Dr. Seuss is……. not good” Sasha told us. She was right, too. Thankfully, up next we’ll be posting the Zaccaria Deluxe line, which will do a LOT better. We’re all very proud of Sasha for the effort she’s put into working on reviews for every AtGames table, including Zaccaria ones. Because of her hard work, we’ll be making regular updates to The Pinball Chick in the form of smaller, individual reviews. Today, we’re finishing up Dr. Seuss Pinball Pack 1 and 2, available for AtGames Legends Pinball HD, Micro, and 4K. And hey, this is now officially the first AtGames exclusive pinball franchise to start earning MASTERPIECE ratings from the group! But, it’s also one of the worst franchises in digital pinball, with three Certified Turds. Dr. Seuss badly needs patches for both sets.

Scoring System

MASTERPIECE: 5 out of 5, the cream of the crop.
GREAT: 4 out of 5, an elite pin.
GOOD: 3 out of 5. A decent but flawed pin. To be clear, GOOD means “good” at The Pinball Chick.
BAD: 2 out of 5, a poorly designed pin or a competent pin that’s just not fun.
THE PITS: 1 out of 5, an actively abysmal pin with a multitude of problematic elements.

Award System

CERTIFIED EXCELLENT: A scoring average of 3.6 or higher awards a Certificate of Excellence. We generally consider a table that’s awarded this certificate to have a value of $15 by itself.
PANTHEON INDUCTEE: A scoring average of 4.6 or higher earns the table a space in our Pantheon of Digital Pinball. We generally consider a table that enters the Pantheon to be a must-own table.
CLEAN SCORECARD: An otherwise decent table that, while not amazing, earned no ratings of BAD or THE PITS. We don’t place a set value on this award and suggest our readers decide what a table we ultimately all approve of is worth to you.
💩CERTIFIED TURD💩: A scoring average of 1.4 or lower earns the table a place in the Sewer of Digital Pinball. While we don’t penalize a set for having a Certified Turd, it certainly isn’t a positive thing.

DR. SEUSS PINBALL GENERAL REVIEW

  • Once again, every table is done in the style of Magic Pixel’s popular Zaccaria Deluxe model series.
  • Despite the license, Dr. Seuss Pinball doesn’t feel like it’s designed for toddlers or young children. We don’t feel most of these would make proper trainer tables for newcomers to pinball, and the high difficulty of a few might actually have the opposite effect and turn young children off of the sport. These are some of the most complex designs to come out of Magic Pixel, for better and (mostly) for worse. In theory, Dr. Seuss can appeal to “the kid in all of us” but that’s a cop-out. This feels like a massive misfire of the IP on the basis of complexity and difficulty alone. Dr. Seuss is ultimately about simplicity turned wacky, and these don’t feel true to that.
  • Although he’s unable to play these as of yet (he’s in the UK, so we’re having trouble getting him an AtGames Legends), pinball designer Dave Sanders, our resident expert at The Pinball Chick (who AtGames & Magic Pixel should really poach from us and put to work making tables and helping them with their score sheets), was befuddled by the look of the tables. “The art looks like it’s lifted straight from the source material which, naturally, it would be. But this creates a problem, since Seuss’ designs and architecture style (which turns up in everything) doesn’t obey, and in fact openly defies, rules of geometry. Like Picasso, Seuss mastered the rules first to know how to break them. But it’s not remotely suited to anything like pinball, where your eyes are meant to be drawn to particular directions. When they fill the remaining playfield space with Seussian squiggles and wiggly lines, what you end up with is an unreadable and incomprehensible mess. There’s no way in the world any of the Seuss tables, let alone the more obscure ones, look intuitive to play in a hurry.”
  • For the most part, the mini-tables in the Dr. Seuss pins leave very little room to actually work the ball. A few would rank among the worst mini-fields in pinball. Poor design shouldn’t be mistaken for challenging design.
    While they might have air-balled the theme integration, we think that Dr. Seuss’s ABC from Pack #2 is one of the best Magic Pixel tables ever. We wanted to get that out of the way before we get to all the negativity to show we’re not total haters.
  • We’re not sure if Dr. Seuss Pinball Pack 1 is glitched or not, but all three tables have their slingshots and bumpers get progressively more powerful, apparently as a result of building up kinetic energy from the bumpers and slingshots like the ball is made of  Vibranium. Hits so powerful that a single bounce on the slingshot can send the ball at such a high speed that it becomes a blur capable of quickly traveling the full circumference of the table. It’s ruinous, and deliberate or not, we’re comfortable declaring Dr. Seuss Pinball Pack 1 the worst collection of digital pinball tables ever made. Even the legendarily putrid Zaccaria Pinball Retro Pack had one Certified Excellent table. The highest scoring Dr. Seuss Pack #1 pin has a rating of 2.0 – BAD.
  • We don’t recommend buying either Dr. Seuss pack at their full retail price, but if Dr. Seuss’s ABC is ever sold separately (or you can get Pack 2 for $15 or less), get it!
  • The sales page at AtGames doesn’t even show you half the tables of Pack #2. Oh, The Places You’ll Go and One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish don’t have any pictures. Neither table is particularly well made (well, Fish would have been if not for a really bad idea they couldn’t resist including), but with patchwork, they could be. If these are patched, we’ll redo this review, and trust us, they really need to patch these.
  • Again, not haters. We’re BIG Magic Pixel fans and big Zaccaria fans. We unanimously prefer their physics engine to Zen’s. But real fans don’t blindly cheer everything a studio churns out. Six of the seven of these Dr. Seuss pins are, simply put, not good as pinball tables, and cheering mediocrity isn’t fandom. That’s infatuation. It’s not healthy, especially when a studio is capable of better. Their Natural History pins, 9 of the 12 of which we rated GOOD or better, prove that. In the coming days, we’ll be posting individual reviews of the Zaccaria Deluxe model pins, some of which are serious contenders for the Pinball Chick Pantheon. But for now, buckle up, because this is going to get ugly.

THE CAT IN
THE HAT

The Cat in the Hat is so badly made that it should be delisted. The absolute worst Deluxe model table from Magic Pixel, bar none. There’s too much packed into the playfield, leaving no room for creativity on the player’s part. Every shot is “railed” to some degree, but there’s not a single good shot on the entire table. The targets are really poorly placed. For example, even after several hours, none of us could consistently hit the “F” target in F-I-S-H. That’s a little crazy, since we’re not bad at pinball in our home. That “F” target is a “beyond the toe” toe shot that Cathy alone hit one time directly off the flipper. We’re not even sure how, since the same angle didn’t work for anyone else. Usually it requires a bump off the slingshot to get it, but with these slingshots? Good luck. For whatever reason, Cat in the Hat and the rest of the Seuss Pack 1 pins have that problem with the slingshots storing punching-power. By the end of the first ball, the slingshots are capable of shooting the ball the full circumference of the table. When this doesn’t hit an orbit, it creates a chaotic “rubber ball” effect. It gets even worse, because like so many Magic Pixel Deluxe tables, the bumpers themselves are too packed together and the ball gets stuck in them quite a lot. But, combine the bumpers with the overpowered slingshots and you could in theory get caught in a cycle where the slingshots send the ball flying up the full orbits of the sides and into the bumpers, which then knocks the ball around before dropping it onto the left slingshot, which could reset the cycle. “The evil cycle” as we came to call it burns away most ball saves, and it’s not that rare to go over a minute between playable shots. At one point, the evil cycle lasted around three minutes before the ball was able to touch a flipper again. If this was a “mode always active” table like ABC, that’d be one thing, but Crap in the Hat uses the “stoplight mode” format, so you can’t do anything else while a mode is going. The penalty for missing a shot shouldn’t be the risk of becoming bored while waiting to get another shot. We didn’t think it was possible to make a worse table than some of the Zaccaria Retro pins, but they proved us wrong. Someone put this cat to sleep.
Pack: Dr. Seuss Pinball Pack 1
Vice Family High: Cathy “IGC” 238,707,850
Cathy: THE PITS
Sasha the Kid: THE PITS
Angela: THE PITS
Oscar: THE PITS
Scoring Average: 1.0 – 💩CERTIFIED A TURD💩

DR. SEUSS’S ABC

Behold: the one truly fantastic Dr. Seuss pin and, perhaps, Magic Pixel’s finest hour. Well, unless you’re Oscar, who we advise not to read this part unless he remembers to take his blood pressure medication. ABC’s novel concept is that a mode is always going, from the first plunge until the game ends, as you run through various alphabet-based targets that are SO SATISFYING to shoot. But, unlike most Zaccaria Remake/Deluxe pins, you can still shoot other targets. The result is one of the greatest pins to come from Magic Pixel. It also led to an epic screaming match in the Vice Household. Oscar had a tantrum over the fact that everyone else overlooked the horrendous scoresheet. Admittedly, it’s kind of breathtaking in how careless the scoring system for ABC is. Among the highlights: multiball does NOTHING but add a second live ball to the playfield. But who needs multiball when the H-I-J-K orbit feeds a spot target that’s supposed to only light randomly but is basically always lit and scores tons of points. It can be shot from either primary flipper, as well. But, despite what Oscar says, nobody was really chopping wood with it. Everyone was trying to clear the modes, which pay-off well and offer a genuine tour of the table. While his gripe is legitimate, his case for not awarding at least a rating of GREAT would have carried more weight if he pointed out that zone-style layouts, by their very nature, feature plenty of low-risk shots and it’s absolutely valid that some of the modes in ABC lack excitement because there’s little to no drain risk from them. If you hate zone-style design, you’ll really hate this one. Oscar isn’t a fan of the style, but other than him, we like them in our house. ABC could use some re-balancing, but we loved this pin. And now cue Oscar for an extended whining session related to one lousy shot.

KICKBACK – Oscar: I cannot believe the two youngest kids voted MASTERPIECE. I’m not mad at you girls. I’m just disappointed in you. ABC’s scoring is not something I can look the other way on. Specifically, the Spot Reward shot is too easy to chop wood on. I’m fine with tables that have one overpowered shot if it has proper risk/reward. For example, the Thing Flips shot from Addams Family. I can get behind that, because it requires different shots to build-up the value, and because it is exciting to watch someone drain one Swamp Shot after another. It’s a difficult shot to master, and that’s what makes it impressive to start sinking with consistency. But, this shot isn’t like that. It’s a very easy shot fed by a primary target that takes no time at all to build the max value of. Value that carries over between balls, even though it has almost no risk factors involved. Once it reaches the magic five million value, it’s that for the rest of the game. I want to believe Magic Pixel made some kind of coding mistake and a patch will fix it.

This is the shot in question. It IS pretty over-valued for such a cinch of a shot.

Whether this was intentional or not, it’s the worst kind of rarity in pinball: a high yield shot that’s not thrilling at all. According to the rule sheet, this target “flashes randomly.” But it’s actually lit more than it’s not, and since even the auto-plunger hits the target, you can deliberately drain a ball save for an easy five-million points that has next to no potential to sink on the return. In fact, it’s a viable strategy to use this shot as a means to take control of the ball, and any shot that’s true of should never pay off so much. No matter how fun the whole layout is, I can’t get behind a table that so poorly weighs the risk/reward. This might be the first original digital table I’ve played that’s a MASTERPIECE in layout and THE PITS for its rule sheet. I’m splitting the difference by plugging my nose and voting GOOD. I’m basing that rating entirely on the way the modes are done and a stellar playfield. Maybe my favorite zone-style playfield since Bally’s Doctor Who table. But, the scoring really puts a damper on the whole thing.
Pack: Dr. Seuss’s Pinball Pack 2
Vice Family High: Angela “ADV” 388,660,420 (Top 40)
Cathy: GREAT
Sasha the Kid: MASTERPIECE
Angela: MASTERPIECE
Oscar: GOOD
Scoring Average: 4.25 – Awarded a CERTIFICATE OF EXCELLENCE

FOX IN SOCKS

Fox in Socks could have been the best Seuss Pack 1 table, which is like saying you prefer a paper cut to having your finger chopped off. If not for the same problems all Seuss 1 pins have where the slingshots become overclocked, Fox in Socks would score at least ratings of at least GREAT from everyone. The stand-up targets are all really placed and make for fun traditional pinball sharpshooting, and the overvalued but energetic mini-field, which scores one million points per target, did manage to feel exciting and was easily the best of its breed in the Dr. Seuss series. But, by its nature, sharpshooting requires predictable rebounding and defense, which becomes impossible when a slingshot is capable of knocking the ball the full length of the table. The violence of the slingshots makes rebounding more luck-based than anything, and the worst part is, we don’t even know if this was done deliberately or not. “Maybe they wanted the slings to feel as hyperactive and ‘wacky’ as Dr. Seuss books are?” Maybe. We don’t know, but the result is two tables that are unplayable. Grinch does it too, but that table’s layout doesn’t lend itself to rebounding issues and instead just becomes boring. Fox in Socks feels like it’s cheating players. They really need to patch this “kinetic build-up” out. Fox would benefit, as there’s a genuinely fun table buried underneath the problematic coding.
Pack: Dr. Seuss’s Pinball Pack 1
Vice Family High: Cathy “IGC” 360,580,390 (Top 30)
Cathy: BAD
Sasha the Kid: GOOD
Angela: THE PITS
Oscar: BAD
Scoring Average: 2.0 – BAD

GREEN EGGS and HAM!

A single element ruins Green Eggs & Ham, utterly and completely. The trollish mode start saucer spits the ball as hard as it can at a shallow angle to the left of the board. It almost always hits the top corner of the left slingshot. While it doesn’t activate the sling, it doesn’t matter, since it already has enough force that it’ll ricochet hard off the corner and probably end up skipping along the right rails, where you have to risk a TILT to defend against it. A shot you have to make, and can’t really avoid making, randomly kills you. Wow. We really hope it’s worth it for whatever glee the design got out of creating a ball return that gives an unplayable ball. Sometimes (especially during multiball), the ball even bounces off the left sling and goes right back into the very saucer it was just spit out of. Why would anyone do this? Did the designer get turned down for the junior prom and this is their revenge on the world?

WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS TO YOUR OWN TABLE?!

Also, the perils of having a digital character pick up the ball and drop it in a box for a multiball lock is that it opens the possibility for a glitch by several magnitudes. Sometimes Sam-I-Am has butterfingers and the ball just doesn’t get picked up and continues along the ball path. This happened to Cathy in her game, and once Sam-I-Am broke, it continued to fail to pick up the ball when the lock was lit for the next cycle of players, who were left unable to get a multiball at all. Then again, the mode start seems to glitch out too. We had a game where something happened during the first player’s first ball, and after that, it never again lit the mode start for any player for the rest of the entire match. Whatever. Instead of rating Green Eggs and Ham BROKEN, the crappy way the mode start saucer is done was enough for us to all agree that this is second to Cat in the Hat as the most unplayable Magic Pixel Deluxe table ever made. There’s no point in talking about all the other targets, since we’d never recommend anyone play any pinball game that wants to play Keep-Away with the ball like that mode start saucer does. We’ll chalk up all the glitches to bad karma brought on by bad design. You’re better than this garbage, Magic Pixel.
Pack: Dr. Seuss’s Pinball Pack 2
Vice Family High: Cathy “IGC” 303,310,070 (Top 25)
Cathy: THE PITS
Sasha the Kid: THE PITS
Angela: THE PITS
Oscar: THE PITS
Scoring Average: 1.0 – 💩CERTIFIED A TURD💩

GRINCH

Grinch was clearly made with the best of intentions, and it pains us that we were so bored by it. It’s just not a fun table. It’s like the evil twin of Dr. Seuss’s ABC, because a mode is always going, and we really don’t want to discourage Magic Pixel from exploring that further. It’s a great idea, and it just doesn’t work with Grinch because of a boring playfield. Weirdly, this is the only AtGames table where all four Vices have reached the wizard and actually gotten, GASP, an extra ball!! We have no clue why Magic Pixel is so stingy with EBs since they’re typically exciting, but in the case of Grinch, it’s hard not to reach the wizard. If not for the Vibranium ball effect that’s there for every Seuss 1 pin, we’d probably still be playing, since when we finally did drain, it was usually a result of an impossible to defend warp-speed launch off the slings. The Grinch is a lump of coal because of the ludicrous decision to have a barrier of targets crowd the primary flippers. What this does is separate the middle of the playfield from the drain and create what is essentially a faux split-level layout. That’s a BIG problem because everything above that row of targets isn’t merely low risk, but NO risk. The result is Grinch is a table without any stakes at all, where games take forever and consist entirely of mindless picking ‘n flicking. Our first game as a family took so long that, half way through the first ball, we put on a 95 minute movie. By the time the movie ended, Oscar had just started the final ball of the session. Normally a player having a long ball would ice the other three players, but Grinch incentivizes wood chopping like no other table we’ve seen, and that barrier of targets acts as a drain pin that keeps the ball well away from the actual drain. We like some of the ideas, like the choo-choo train in the center of the playfield that you have to shoot around. But, like so much else with Grinch, the train does nothing but slow down the gameplay. Or, to put it another way, this is the table we played the fewest games of for this review, but it was also the table we put the most actual time into. Don’t touch this one with a 39-and-a-half foot pole.
Pack: Dr. Seuss’s Pinball Pack 1
Vice Family High: Cathy “IGC” 818,743,460
Cathy: THE PITS
Sasha the Kid: THE PITS
Angela: BAD
Oscar: THE PITS
Scoring Average: 1.25 –💩CERTIFIED A TURD💩

OH! THE PLACES YOU’LL GO!
(We assume the name is meant to be ironic)

“The scores on Places’ leaderboard are pretty low compared to other Dr. Seuss tables! Ooh, that’s ominous!” we all thought. We soon figured out why. Oscar reached the third mode, called “The Way Up” where the object was to spin the spinners. Something went wrong and the table just plain didn’t count any spins, or any other points, even though the targets were still lit. After five minutes of shooting the table’s lit spinners over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over he finally drained, having scored no substantive points that entire time making the shots that the table told him to. We were convinced it was broken, but then Angela actually won this mindless grind of a mode by doing the “and over” part apparently one more time than Oscar did. That’s the Dr. Seuss Pinball experience in a nutshell: a mindless, demoralizing grind that makes you question whether they even wanted to develop this property at all. Why are these Dr. Seuss tables so brutally hard? Imagine if they were developing Sesame Street pins, next. Places has some of the worst target placement from Magic Pixel (including targets you can’t even see because the mini-field is laid on top of them), two inelegant mini-tables, and slingshots so lethal that this feels like a parody of Dr. Seuss and Friday the 13th. Really awful multiball table, too. I’ve never seen so many “everyone out of the pool!” multiball endings on any previous Magic Pixel pin. Oh! The pins you wish you played instead!
Pack: Dr. Seuss’s Pinball Pack 2
Vice Family High: Angela “ADV” 138,467,360 (Top 20)
Cathy: BAD
Sasha the Kid: THE PITS
Angela: THE PITS
Oscar: BAD
Scoring Average: 1.5 – VERY BAD

ONE FISH – TWO FISH
RED FISH – BLUE FISH

After a certain point, decisions made for the Dr. Seuss tables feel almost like self-sabotage on Magic Pixel’s part. Fish is another that would contend for the title of “best table of the Dr. Seuss packs” if not for one unfathomable decision involving a digital character that completely, utterly ruins the table. Besides yet another terrible mini-playfield that’s too tightly packed and has a wall that catches the ball and distributes it right between the flippers, the overall layout is really good. A tour-the-table, combo-slapping thing of beauty. So, what’s the problem? The Gack, which is a moose-like creature, randomly bends over like it has no attention span. When it does this, its humongous antlers block the lanes. It’s like the anti-shooting rhythm trap, and because it happens randomly, you can’t really plan for it. Like we said, self-sabotage.

For how much this.. thing matters, it really isn’t very visible. It’s so easy to lose track of when it’s bending over or not. By the way, “Gack” is slang for “cocaine” which feels fitting because I imagine you’d have to be on cocaine to find any enjoyment from a table that has a character who shuffles about like it’s as bored as we are and randomly stops your shots.

The antlers don’t even function like a wall. Instead they’re like a net and eat-up most of the momentum of the ball, causing it to fall limply near the drain or onto the slings. We said “why would anyone do this?” a lot playing these Seuss pins, but this one hurts, because otherwise this is a table that feels like anyone could enjoy it. Did you even want to develop for this license at all, Magic Pixel? It doesn’t feel like it. What’s a real shame is Fish is probably the most balanced scoring table they’ve done in many ways, but we never once were able to get the bonus points out of the mini-table or even consistently find an angle to shoot the loop. In other ways, it’s not so balanced, as Sasha won the family duel in a clean sweep by chopping wood using the bumpers. While there are some risk factors involved (if the bumpers knock the ball to the left orbit, the ball will certainly drain if you don’t nudge at the right moment), it’s too easy a shot, and you’re awarded huge points for a lousy ten hits of the bumpers. Delete the Gack and we’d certainly give this, at minimum, a Clean Scorecard. Re-balance the bumper points on top of that and Fish might enter the Pantheon! Unfortunately, for now, this awesome layout goes to complete waste.
Pack: Dr. Seuss’s Pinball Pack 2
Vice Family High: Sasha the Kid “KID” 245,227,210 (Top 25)
Cathy: BAD
Sasha the Kid: BAD
Angela: BAD
Oscar: BAD
Scoring Average: 2.0 – BAD

Run for the hills, Horton, before they screw you up too!

 

AtGames Legends Pinball: Natural History Pinball Pack 1, 2, and 3 Table Reviews

Huge thanks to Sasha the Kid, all of 9 years old, who actually wrote a lot of this. She is heir-apparent to Indie Gamer Chick and The Pinball Chick and a very talented pinballer who set her first world record at the ripe age of 8 (she was briefly Exploding Kittens world champion for Pinball FX and since then has claimed a few other records that held on longer). Sasha got the AtLegends Micro for Christmas in 2023 and she’s been putting more time into it than we have our other AtGames pins. She’s worked very hard with all of us to put this together. Like all Pinball Chick reviews, this is the product of my whole pinball-playing family debating the merits of these pins. With that said, each Natural History pack costs $25 and comes with four tables. Presented to you here are quick reviews of all twelve tables in that series so far, along with general thoughts on the Natural History franchise. Enjoy!
WE DO NOT OWN THE 4K MODELS YET, but these reviews should cover those builds as well.

Scoring System

MASTERPIECE: 5 out of 5, the cream of the crop.
GREAT: 4 out of 5, an elite pin.
GOOD: 3 out of 5. A decent but flawed pin. To be clear, GOOD means “good” at The Pinball Chick.
BAD: 2 out of 5, a poorly designed pin or a competent pin that’s just not fun.
THE PITS: 1 out of 5, an actively abysmal pin with a multitude of problematic elements.

Award System

CERTIFIED EXCELLENT: A scoring average of 3.6 or higher awards a Certificate of Excellence. We generally consider a table that’s awarded this certificate to have a value of $15 by itself.
PANTHEON INDUCTEE: A scoring average of 4.6 or higher earns the table a space in our Pantheon of Digital Pinball. We generally consider a table that enters the Pantheon to be a must-own table.
CLEAN SCORECARD: An otherwise decent table that, while not amazing, earned no ratings of BAD or THE PITS. We don’t place a set value on this award and suggest our readers decide what a table we ultimately all approve of is worth to you.
💩CERTIFIED TURD💩: A scoring average of 1.4 or lower earns the table a place in the Sewer of Digital Pinball. While we don’t penalize a set for having a Certified Turd, it certainly isn’t a positive thing.

NATURAL HISTORY GENERAL REVIEW

  • Natural History, generic as it is, is also one of the most consistently good franchises in digital pinball. Most of these are basically Zaccaria Pinball Deluxe models by Magic Pixel. A couple are more like their Zaccaria Remake line due to really simple layouts, but all twelve use LCD scoreboards and overall, these are pretty ambitious pins.
  • The LCD scoreboards are awful. The animations are too slow and too frequent. Some tables might see players go quite a while before they can even see what their score is because animations are constantly going off. We’re not fans of Magic Pixel/Zaccaria’s LCD scoreboards in general. They’re cheap looking, ugly, and pretty slow. We think a lot of the bugs were related to scoreboards, possibly because of the gameplay happening faster than the scoreboard can keep up with. Magic Pixel should consider new ROMs for every pin. It’s not too late.
  • Out of the twelve tables, a whopping nine earned positive marks across the board. In total, there were four tables CERTIFIED EXCELLENT and five that won a CLEAN SCORECARD.
  • Every Natural History pack has at least one table that won a Certificate of Excellence.
  • No MASTERPIECE votes were cast at all. Dinosaur Dynasty 1 would have gone four-for-four if not for the ROM not reading every lit shot.
  • The best overall pack is a little bit murky. Technically, Natural History 3 is the only one that made up its $25 price tag via certificates, as it has two Certified Excellent tables. But, it also has the only 💩Certified Turd💩 in the franchise. Natural History 1, on the other hand, had no votes of BAD or THE PITS cast at all.
  • Four different tables were named “best overall Natural History table” by the four Vice Family players. Cathy named Dinosaur Dynasty 2 her #1. Sasha was the only GREAT vote at all for Amazonia and declared it her #1. Insect World was Angela’s favorite, while Oscar preferred Egypt. We’re all in agreement that if Dinosaur Dynasty 1 is fixed, it’ll be our unanimous #1.
  • Some of the tables crash, which means it just takes you back to the table’s page on the launcher. One time, a table froze so badly we had to restart the whole machine. Nobody suffered worse than Angela. She had multiple high-scoring games that would have easily been the family high scores, one of which was even a world record pace. We couldn’t figure out any reason for this.

AFRICA

Like most of the Zaccaria Deluxe models, Africa is a zoner. If you don’t like that style of pin, you’re not going to like this one. I think all the Vices are fans of Zaccaria Deluxe pins, but they all have the same basic problems. Zaccaria DMs always shoot a little clunky, but I like that. I like that they use non-traditional angles that have to be learned for the first time instead of basing the angles off of famous earlier pins. Africa’s targets are built especially off the supplementary flippers. This is a shooter’s pin, with an emphasis on tight shots off the sup’s. Like most Zaccaria DMs, they never quite learned full scoring balance. The upper right hand corner has three targets that light a spinner that can practically open a scoring floodgate. When it works, at least. Sometimes the ball goes right on target and the spinner doesn’t budge. They need to patch this for Oscar and Cathy to bump their scores to GREAT. I think the overall thrilling targets make up for it. Africa is one of the best Natural History pins.
Pack: Natural History Pack 2
Vice Family High: Cathy “IGC” 274,732,360 (#26 All Time)
Cathy: GOOD – Sasha the Kid: GREAT – Angela: GREAT – Oscar: GOOD
Scoring Average: 3.5 – Awarded a CLEAN SCORECARD

AMAZONIA

They could have just as well based this table on the Panama Canal for how wide the flipper drain is. There’s a drain pin that can be highly effective with practice, but it’s never quite predictable when the ball will lose its bounce on it. It doesn’t help that the table mechanics themselves are unpredictable. The South American Jaguar hole kicks the ball out multiple different strengths and angles, sometimes right between the flippers. So, when playing Amazon, prepare to play defensively. On the other hand, like most of Magic Pixel’s Deluxe line, Amazonia goes BIG with a mixture of classic pinball and a virtual wonderland of ramps, secondary and, uh, third..an..ary flippers. How come “thirdanary” isn’t a word? Modes are short and pay off huge. Completing rows of stand-up targets pays off huge. Like with Africa, there’s a heavily unbalanced and relatively low-risk mini-field that puts a damper on everything because the logical strategy is to go for it and grind-up easy points. None of us hated Amazonia, but none of us loved it either. Except Sasha, but she beat the crap out of us on it.
Pack: Natural History Pack 1
Vice Family High: Cathy “IGC” 117,029,540
Cathy: GOOD – Sasha the Kid: GREAT – Angela: GOOD – Oscar: GOOD
Scoring Average: 3.25 – Awarded a CLEAN SCORECARD

DEEP OCEAN

One of the few bad tables in the Natural History series, Deep Ocean should instead be renamed “Deep Drain” from all the angles the drain swallows-up live balls. Most of the return angles are shallow and aimed at the drain. You’d swear this is a Zen original with how trollish those angles are. A sharpshooter can get away with a table based around rapid-fire transitions from offense to defense, but not a big, complicated monstrosity like Deep Ocean. Also, those left rails are among the consistently deadly of any rails we’ve experienced. This is a table that crosses the line into demoralizing, but it lacks the fun shots that make up for it. The best thing we can say about Deep Ocean is that it speaks to how strong the Zaccaria Deluxe line’s premise is, because it’s not even close to THE PITS for any of us. Instead, it’s just frustrating to the point of boredom.
KICKBACK – Oscar: How did I raise such soft kids? Deep Ocean’s problems are entirely related to how easy it is to work the bumpers for high-yield, low risk points. The return angles are dangerous, but you can defend against them. What was the point of buying an expensive table with relatively accurate nudge detection if you kids aren’t going to use it to defend the drain? Magic Pixel has got to start learning some semblance of scoring balance, but the challenge Deep Ocean presents is hardly insurmountable.
Pack: Natural History Pack 2
Vice Family High: Angela “ADV” 76,847,980
Cathy: BAD – Sasha the Kid: BAD – Angela: BAD – Oscar: GOOD
Scoring Average: 2.25 – BAD

DINOSAUR DYNASTY

Dinosaur Dynasty is the definition of a pinball killer app and potentially one of the greatest Magic Pixel pins ever. But, it’s not, because it’s one of the most problematic pins. Angela especially has a legitimate beef with it, as it became the first table to crash our AtGames pin, and it was after she had a 90,000,000+ ball (a top 50 pace). It also had an uncanny tendency to not recognize made shots during modes. Since all scoring halts during modes, it’s a dinosaur-sized problem to have even one shot be made, complete the circuit, and not count, for whatever reason, towards progress. This happens a lot with Zaccaria’s Deluxe line, but Dinosaur Dynasty 1 is the absolute worst with it. Now, here’s the good news: all four Vices are ready to roll out the red carpet for Dinosaur Dynasty to enter the Pinball Chick Pantheon of Digital Pinball. This DESERVES to be an elite pin, with a killer layout and a wide variety of satisfying shots and targets. The mini-tables never feel like a grind. The layout feels fully optimized for multiball. Look, we all hate the Magic Pixel “no scoring during modes” setup. It’s lame and I hope they mature past it eventually. But, Dinosaur Dynasty is easily one their best tables ever and worthy of a perfect score, and it’s only not getting one due to terrible coding. Magic Pixel, you have GOT to fix this. Dinosaur Dynasty should be your flagship pin. The ROM seems to be pretty slow in general, it takes FOREVER to count up points, but if you fix it and it recognizes every made shot, we will induct this in the Pantheon.
Pack: Natural History Pack 1
Vice Family High: Angela “ADV” 119,203,200
Cathy: GREAT – Sasha the Kid: GREAT – Angela: GOOD – Oscar: GREAT
Scoring Average: 3.75 – Awarded a CERTIFICATE OF EXCELLENCE

DINOSAUR DYNASTY 2

Yep, this is a franchise now. Actually, thanks to the ROM issues with the first table, right now the sequel has a high scoring average. 0.25 points higher, but higher is higher. We greatly admire that this follow-up to Dinosaur Dynasty plays NOTHING like the first. You feel it in the modes, which have a wider variety of targets and no timer running against you. Well, not exactly running against you. You can’t time out, but every mode is potentially high-yielding if you can get your shots off fast enough because they have hurry-ups attached to them. Good thing, too, because DD2 is one of the easiest Magic Pixel pins. This is a positive, though. Dynasty 2 can be an excellent trainer table for the more complex pins in the Deluxe line. On the downside, this is a pretty boring multiball table, which is a shame because it’s an easy multiball to activate. Dinosaur Dynasty isn’t the most exciting table, but it also makes very few mistakes.
Pack: Natural History Pack 3
Vice Family High: Angela “ADV” 289,935,470 (#10 All Time)
Cathy: GREAT – Sasha the Kid: GREAT – Angela: GREAT – Oscar: GREAT
Scoring Average: 4.0 – Awarded a CERTIFICATE OF EXCELLENCE

EGYPT

Egypt is so full of burst-scoring mini-modes that it’s almost a surprise this is a Magic Pixel table. The mini-modes are based around different Egyptian Gods, and each mode is quick to activate and scales based on how many times you activate each mode in a single ball. You can get up to five million per shot with these, if you grind-up the value. Other than the transfer shots required to make your way to the basement, they might be too easy. The transfer from the basement to the primary playfield is done via the plunger in a way that directly feeds the primary flippers. Because of that, the basement isn’t merely low-risk, but no-risk. Unless the game crashes. Angela, yet again, was the victim of a crash, during the basement when she built up a massive value of the easy-to-shoot HORUS mode. At least it was only once this time and there were no instances of the table just not recognizing made shots. The main modes feel like extended versions of the mini-modes, only there’s no timer and optional bonus points to be had by completing an extra task while the mode is live. Ancient Egypt is a digital pinball staple and, while this offers nothing new, the layout is pretty fun, even if the thrills are low thanks to the basement and the main table being so disconnected from each-other.
Pack: Natural History Pack 2
Vice Family High: Oscar “OEV” 430,481,570 (#7 All Time)
Cathy: GREAT – Sasha the Kid: GREAT – Angela: GREAT – Oscar: GREAT
Scoring Average: 4.0 – Awarded a CERTIFICATE OF EXCELLENCE

EXOPLANETS

If Exoplanets were revamped to be more inline with the current crop of new Zaccaria/Magic Pixel Deluxe pins, it’d be one of our top-ranked tables. Magic Pixel’s fatal flaw has long been the fact that all other scoring pauses during modes, but that really hurts Exoplanets. There’s so many fun targets that go unloved during modes. Of course, Exoplanet has the shortest modes of any Zaccaria Deluxe Model. Like, seriously, the first mode is done in a single shot. Not one shot done three times. ONE SHOT! Exoplanet is a great trainer table for pinball newcomers. It also carries over the concept of portholes that act as the multiball locks and suck the balls in, ala the Zen Studios classic Ahch-To Island. Only these seem to create a gravity sink whether they’re “lit” or not. It’s also worth noting that this was the AtGames exclusive we’ve reviewed so far that didn’t merely crash but froze the entire device and forced us to recycle the power. So, beware this one. The good news is that Exoplanets is likable. Almost like the logical spiritual successor to PIN*BOT. We really hope Magic Pixel realizes that there’s nothing inherently sacred about their original builds for all these pins and revamps them all with new rules that open the game up during modes. We think Exoplanets would be a shoe-in for a Certificate of Excellence. Right now, it’s only okay.
Pack: Natural History Pack 1
Vice Family High: Sasha the Kid “KID” 173,538,420
Cathy: GOOD – Sasha the Kid: GOOD – Angela: GOOD – Oscar: GOOD
Scoring Average: 3.0 – Awarded a CLEAN SCORECARD

THE INSECT WORLD

Wait, didn’t Magic Pixel already do a butterfly-themed table? Farfalla Deluxe, right? No? Okay, well, this is a solid table too. It’s one of the easiest tables to juggle a combo with any of us have ever played, but Insect World flows so smoothly that the endless passing between four orbits, two of which are ramps, never gets old. In fact, we were putting up monster scores without even starting modes. It wasn’t until Angela went crazy and shot the lights out after crashing a nine-figure first ball (seriously, don’t make her mad. It just makes her shoot better) that we even found out how to start a mode at all. The mode start is a six-shot locker that’s tucked away from other targets. It’s an odd choice, to the point that it felt like they almost forgot to make a mode start target and just shoved it wherever they could find room. Insect World is such a well-flowing table that we’ll grant them that one instance of inelegance. We liked that each set of lane lights are independent to each flipper, something we’d like to see a lot more of in the future. Angela wants to stress that they need to patch this, because she crashed it a couple times and was ready to quit AtGames reviews altogether. It started to feel spooky that it was only happening to her. It speaks to how good this table can be that Angela wanted to finish what she started. In a solid pinball franchise, Insect World is a standout. Get rid of the butterflies swooping over the playfield, though.
Pack: Natural History Pack 3
Vice Family High: Angela “ADV” 494,643,600 (#8 All-Time)
Cathy: GREAT – Sasha the Kid: GREAT – Angela: GREAT – Oscar: GREAT
Scoring Average: 4.0 – Awarded a CERTIFICATE OF EXCELLENCE

THE LAST ICE AGE

 Last Ice Age is a potentially great table that’s about one-third worse off just based on the violence of the bumpers and slingshots alone. We’ve had entire 60 second timers eaten up by balls bouncing around the bumpers. Mind you, you’re scoring NOTHING that entire time, too. This is one of those pins where the rest of the targets take a nap during a mode. The bumpers are too close too close to each-other, and for a few of the modes, they’re basically unavoidable because the lit shots feed them. The slingshots are equally as violent, so 60 seconds to finish a mode is NEVER sixty seconds of actual chances at winning the mode, especially since so many angles drop the balls straight on those ultra-violent slings. Ice Age is hypothetically a close cousin of Egypt, with lots of mini-modes that would be fun if not for the fact that the slings and bumpers prevent you from even being able to shoot the ball in the first place. This is also one of those tables where you shoot saucers instead of targets or cellars, and even if the shot is on point, it’s a coin flip if the ball will actually score the saucer or just roll out. Ice Age is a GREAT table rendered barely okay. There’s nothing it does wrong that Magic Pixel couldn’t adjust. They should, because the modes are good enough that this should cruise to Certificate of Excellence.
Pack: Natural History Pack 1
Vice Family High: Oscar “OEV” 250,082,060
Cathy: GOOD – Sasha the Kid: GOOD – Angela: GOOD – Oscar: GOOD
Scoring Average: 3.0 – Awarded a CLEAN SCORECARD

NATURE’S FURY

Nature’s Fury was going to be the worst of the Natural History pins even if it didn’t make some of the most mind-bogglingly dumb design choices of any AtGames exclusive table. This is a house ball machine, with several auto-plunges ricocheting off fixtures and down the drain in a way you can’t possibly defend against. Seriously, this plunger needs to be taken out back and shot like Old Yeller, then replaced with a new plunger that actually sends the ball up and into the playfield. It doesn’t matter though, because randomly killing balls is this table’s thing. We only managed to play the first two modes, the first of which is lightning strikes. You have to hit the flashing ramps five times, and while you do this, the table shoots your ball with lightning, stopping the shots dead in their tracks. We’re not kidding. Anyone want to play a pinball table where literal sky magic stops your ball from completing a shot that’s on point? More than once, the ball was literally on the ramp when the lightning hit it and sent it backwards. The final straw was that getting into a shooting rhythm isn’t possible because if you make the ramp shot too close together, the game likely won’t count it. This is one of those tables where the ROM is so slow that you have to wait for it to finish processing the previous made shot before you can make it again. So even making the ramp five times doesn’t guarantee you win because it just plain might not count some of the shots. Hey, Magic Pixel: your scoreboards don’t need as much animation as you do with them, because those animations are breaking the games! They’re scoreboards, not Hollywood productions! Stop it! This table themed around disasters lives up to the theme in the worst way possible.
Pack: Natural History 3
Vice Family High: Angela “ADV” 364,172,320
Cathy: THE PITS – Sasha the Kid: THE PITS – Angela: THE PITS – Oscar: THE PITS
Scoring Average: 1.0 – 💩CERTIFIED A TURD💩

POLAR EXPEDITION

We assume they gave this a polar theme because the pace is glacial. Did this table REALLY need seven jet bumpers at the top? Seven! It slows the gameplay to a crawl, especially since so many angles lead to the eight lanes that feed the bumpers. Yikes. Well, at least they didn’t do anything truly moronic, like tying a high-scoring two-ball multiball to the bumpers. Oh wait, they did. Yea, it doesn’t take that many bumps to activate Antarctic Multiball, where you can juice the jackpot values by shooting the SEAL saucer. Okay, well, tell me that they didn’t further compound this problematic design by, say, tying the ball save to the slingshots, which are basically unavoidable. Oh wait, they did that too. Both Angela and Sasha had 200,000,000 point multiballs from this easy to get multiball alone. So, why aren’t they the world champions? Because they couldn’t avoid starting the low-scoring modes, where all other targets stop putting up any points. Since basically every shot is tied to a different mode start, you could end up stuck grinding out the lit mode shots when multiball will earn you 50x their value. Any table where you DON’T want to start modes is guaranteed to fail. Ignore the 2.0 we gave it, because Polar Expedition’s entertainment value is sub-zero.
Pack: Natural History Pack 2
Vice Family High: Angela “ADV” 396,258,060 (#14 All Time)
Cathy: BAD – Sasha the Kid: BAD – Angela: BAD – Oscar: BAD
Scoring Average: 2.0 – BAD

WORLD OF MICROBES

Easily the most odd of the Natural History tables, World of Microbes has a fairly conventional layout that’s made “wacky.” The mini-field is mostly (but not entirely) accessible through a whiparound loop, which is shaped like a half-moon dimple on the left wall and basically acts as a transfer if shot correctly. It’s so satisfying to shoot, and the mini-field pays off high enough to make it worth shooting. The rest of the table is downright tame, but there’s one final twist: Magic Pixel’s best use ever of digital targets. The “modes” see players shooting at different viruses that roam around the table. While they make for good targets, they’re not as good as they could be. Because the whole Zaccaria Deluxe engine is apparently slow, the little viruses and bacteria sprites that you shoot don’t die on impact. There’s a pronounced delay from the time contact is made until they go into their death animation. Thus, there’s no OOMPH, and without that, it takes away all satisfaction these targets should, by all rights, be loaded with. In general, we’re not happy with the performance of the ROMs for any Natural History table, but World of Microbes is the first one where it actively sucks the excitement out of the gameplay. If they fix this, it’s another game that can cruise to a Certificate.
Pack: Natural History 3
Vice Family High: Angela “ADV” 208,916,960
Cathy: GREAT – Sasha the Kid: GOOD – Angela: GOOD – Oscar: GOOD
Scoring Average: 3.25 – Awarded a Clean Scorecard