Tag: Star Wars Pinball

Darth Vader (Pinball FX Table Review)

Darth Vader
First Released October 15, 2013
Main Set: Pinball FX
Switch Set: Star Wars Pinball
Designed by Ivan “Mad_Boy” Nicoara
Set: Star Wars Pinball Collection 1 ($23.99)
Links: Strategy Guide – Pinball FX Wiki
Be afraid. Be very afraid. In Darth Vader, every shot is high risk, yet this is a table made in the days before Zen started a crusade against ball control. This is a table that says “I DARE YOU TO CATCH AND SHOOT!” That’s tough enough without trollish ball returns. Had this table been made today, they’d aim the orbits at the drain and Darth Vader would be among the worst pins ever made. Hopefully if they take my advice to go back and rework the rule sheets for their old tables, their design staff doesn’t take that as a cue to break the tables. I literally mean “just fix the rules.” In fact, now I’m actually reconsidering this whole “rework the old pins” thing. I’m getting a weird “monkey’s paw where your wish has unexpected consequences” vibe. “Wish granted! Every pin will now be remade.. by Daniel ‘Dolby’ Vigh!” “NOOOOOOOOO!”

Darth Vader is maddeningly difficult, and also one of my favorite tables among the Star Wars tables. I ranked it #1 among the pins included in the Nintendo Switch compilation Star Wars Pinball, which is pretty much all the Star Wars pins in this feature except Classic Collectables and Mandalorian. Enough time has passed and enough replays have happened that I no longer believe that, and actually I’m not even rating Darth Vader a MASTERPIECE. Still top five among the Star Wars pins? I think so, but that’s mostly because there’s nothing quite like it anywhere in the pinball world. The unconventional angles, especially shots off the left flipper, are some of the most nail-biting tight squeezes I’ve seen on any pin. It’s a table where it’s hard to get into a rhythm because the shots themselves are so difficult. Especially the bat flipper, which is essentially an invisible Ritchie Loop. Or maybe it’s the brutal toe shot with minimum clearance that must travel the full length of the table.

Signature Mode – Darth Vader Assembly: Players are given the option to start a game of Darth Vader in what is the only easy aspect of the entire table. You have to shoot zone-style magnetic targets which capture the ball and score a million points a pop. It’s an easy ten million points, which is a LOT of points in this specific pin. There’s no time limit to this mode and the only real catch is that Darth Vader in general has a short ball save, so it’s not completely unlikely you would die during this mode. So what? There’s no logical reason anyone should skip it. You only lose out on one skill shot chance, which is only worth 500,000 points and gives you a crack at an even more difficult super skill shot for a million points. 1.5 million or 10 million. Hmmmmm. If you want your pins to be story-driven, Zen, just f’n do it! Don’t be wishy-washy about it! Stand by your convictions!

The above segment isn’t why I’m dropping my score of Darth Vader. It’s that Darth Vader’s modes require too many shots done with too much precision. It’s not even the checklist itself. There’s set-up shots that put the ball in position to make the check mark that also require complete precision. This on a table that is arguably the toughest-shooting good table in Pinball FX. There’s a reason why Darth Vader’s leaderboard features significantly lower scores than other tables. It’s because even pros would struggle to heat-up on this one. Some of the modes are so out of reach they feel nearly impossible, like an intern accidentally input the wrong number and they just left it in. Like in a mode where the bumpers need to be hit 30 times in 60 seconds. Bumpers being those things that are out of the players hands. A running gag with me and IGC reviews is that I have unfathomably bad RNG luck. Well, in the final check before this review, I played twenty games of Darth Vader, and whenever I wasn’t on a bumper-specific mode, the ball would bang around for several seconds. BUT, whenever I actually needed to hit the bumpers, usually the ball would hit one then fall back to the flippers. In fact, that happens to me all the time with bumper-based modes a lot in Pinball FX and Pinball M. When they’re in the spotlight, they suddenly become shy.

Signature Mode – Trench Run: This mode WOULD be fun, but it goes too long and takes too much effort to unlock. Also, Pinball FX crashed during this after I’d shot down multiple ships. Like, I was kind of stunned by how many I’d shot down and the mode was still going when my Xbox Series X just said “nope” and I lost my game. I was on the 3rd ball with my highest score up to this point, around 80,000,000 points with 99M as the world record. That made two record runs I lost in a single week from a crash or a glitch. If that hasn’t earned me getting an achievement named after me in a future update, I don’t know what will.

It’s also worth noting that Darth Vader is not a table well suited to having a timer at all. Some of the shots, like the Super Jackpot, have a rail that doesn’t have the proper slope or any means to accelerate the ball. One time I valleyed the ball, which inched along the rear habitrail so slowly that it ate up the entire time limit of a mode all by itself. I have argued and will continue to argue that Zen could shut up everyone who complains about re-buying the old tables by completely overhauling the rule sheets. In the case of Darth Vader, this doesn’t feel like a luxury. It feels like something that NEEDS to happen because this table is f’n impossible. Oscar argues that if any table can get away with grindy, brutally difficult modes, it’s Darth Vader. He also concedes that, despite keeping his MASTERPIECE rating, they went overboard. Uh, yeah?! I still think as a pinball experience, Darth Vader is unique enough and the right kind of tough (in terms of shooting, not the modes themselves) that it’s, at minimum, a GREAT table. If you’re a fan of quick-draw sharpshooters, this might actually be Zen’s best table ever. Hell, even the scoring, ridiculously conservative as it is, seems to be well-balanced and spot-on. So, GREAT? Yep. In the discussion for best the Star Wars table? Not at all. Battle of Mimban and Clone Wars are a galaxy far, far away from it.
Cathy: GREAT (4 out of 5)
Angela: GREAT
Oscar: MASTERPIECE (5 out of 5)
Jordi: GREAT
Sasha: GREAT
Elias: GOOD (3 out of 5, Star Wars Pinball)
Overall Scoring Average: 4.0 📜CERTIFIED EXCELLENT📜
Star Wars Pinball Scoring Average: 4.0 📜CERTIFIED EXCELLENT📜
Primary Scoring Average: 4.2 📜CERTIFIED EXCELLENT📜
Some review copies were provided in this review, others were paid for.

Star Wars: Clone Wars (Pinball FX Table Review)

Clone Wars BackglassClone Wars
First Released February 27, 2013
Main Platform: Pinball FX
Switch Platform: Star Wars Pinball
Designed by Ivan “Mad_Boy” Nicoara
Set: Star Wars Pinball Collection 1 ($23.99)
Links: Strategy Guide – Pinball FX Wiki
STOP! If you’re not able to play Clone Wars in the vertical table view mode, it will affect your enjoyment. You could probably drop our scoring average by a full point, if not more. Clone Wars already has massive visibility issues due to the loudly busy playfield, but in standard horizontal viewing angles, you just plain can’t see some of the shots. This NEEDS to be viewed like a standard table. It’s criminal that this wasn’t included in their Arcade1Up.

Ah. Clone Wars. You sweet, sweet thing, you. I was actually surprised to learn this is a more polarizing choice for the Pantheon. I mean, it was close for most of us. Myself, Angela, and Jordi would consider this the lowest of any of our MASTERPIECE votes, while only Oscar is tapping his wrist and saying “more of this. Put it in my veins. Nom nom!” Clone Wars features a layout that feels like a real, honest-to-God Stern table, probably more so than any other Zen original. Is it really that hard to imagine this sitting alongside their versions of Godzilla, Guardians of the Galaxy, Iron Maiden, etc? And it’s not that Clone Wars is hated outside of our circle. I’ve never seen anyone say it’s a bad pin. They just don’t think it’s as good as we do. When Elias joined our team and gave it a GOOD rating, we were disappointed, but not surprised. If you had told me “Elias is going to put the screws to one of our Pantheon pins” I would have said “is it Clone Wars?” Any of us would have guessed Clone Wars, but why? Maybe the loud visuals, or the fast running flipper zone, or maybe unforgiving rails and outlanes. Or, perhaps it’s too life-like, and those playing Pinball FX, or Star Wars Pinball on Switch are seeking a more video game-like experience. Well, no, that can be it. This thing has modes that cannot be done in real life. Really, really good modes, at that. There are plenty of reasons to not rate this as an elite pin.

Signature Mode – War on Christophosis: You’ve never seen anything like this in pinball before. In this mode, a gigantic force field that you can’t penetrate from the outside covers the playfield, leaving only two entry points. You have to convert your ball into a bomb, then flick the bomb against the designated targets. A microcosm of Clone Wars in general, the mode is fun and intense, but far too visually loud. I think every player who genuinely wants to make a go at this one will want to experiment with the visual settings, because it’s too damn hard to see what’s going on. On a lesser table, we’d probably score against it. Elias, who didn’t love Clone Wars as much as we did and, in fact, seems to have barely tolerated it, for sure scored against the visuals. And you know what? We can’t argue with him. It’s totally fair.

So, why do most of us rate Clone Wars a MASTERPIECE? Because gameplay is king. Clone Wars is chock-full of unconventionally-angled orbits that are a joy to shoot combos on. And, unlike many Zen finesse pins, it doesn’t grossly overvalue basic orbital combos. Part of why the shots feel so rewarding is Clone Wars is one of Pinball FX’s fastest-running tables, especially around the flippers. Oh and for anyone who read the last several table reviews and thinks I can’t handle mean-spirited outlanes, hey, I think Clone Wars is a MASTERPIECE, and it has serial killers for outlanes. Clone Wars is probably the most difficult Zen original design to enter the Pantheon. I think that’s why a lot of people think we’re nuts for rating it this high. It can be quite unforgiving if you brick your shots, and snap-shots are harder to pull off here than on any other Star Wars table. You need Jedi-like reflexes for this one. On the other hand, this is one of the few Zen tables that awards extra balls automatically. It’s just a shame they didn’t go all the way with “this is a REAL table” concept and have a replay extra ball after a certain point threshold, like say, 60,000,000. Actually, Zen really needs to start adding replay EBs in general. They’re just fun.

Signature Mode – Clone Training: We’re not big fans of Zen’s mini-fields in general, but Clone Wars stands out for having one of the best ones. Or two of the best, really. Spelling TRAINING while shooting targets lights the sinkhole to the mini-fields, which have their own physics that feels more like a handheld novelty game. The flipper gap is huge, which is normally a problem, but even a grazing shot should be enough to save the ball. Like everything else with Clone Wars, there’s too many shots required, but at least it’s fun.

Admittedly, all the modes have the same problems common to Zen’s original pins, IE “why have a mode require six shots when it can require ten? Why ten when it can be twelve?” Like the force field mode above? That’s twelve total shots, assuming you shoot completely perfectly. Six shots to turn the ball into a bomb and six to deliver the payload. I’ve spent a lot of time pondering “what if Zen reduced the required shots in Clone Wars by 40% or so? Would that finally put Clone Wars in the discussion for Zen’s best table?” I honestly don’t know. You can’t know until you experience it firsthand. Clone Wars is in the 99th percentile of Zen pins, and also none of us feel that it’s even within sniffing distance of Mimban. Is Clone Wars an ELITE digital pinball table? Absolutely. It’s one of the best shooters in Pinball FX. Is it one of the best digital-only tables ever made? Now that’s a debate, and it shouldn’t be. Not with a layout THIS good. Not with scoring this balanced. Not with gameplay so elegant. *I* think it’s one of the best, but I can see why someone wouldn’t. Clone Wars might be the ugly duckling of the Pantheon.. but it belongs in the Pantheon.
Clone Wars SmallCathy: MASTERPIECE (5 out of 5)
Angela: MASTERPIECE
Oscar: MASTERPIECE
Jordi: MASTERPIECE
Sasha: MASTERPIECE
Elias: GOOD (3 out of 5, Star Wars Pinball)
Overall Scoring Average: 4.66 🏛️PANTHEON INDUCTEE🏛️
Primary Scoring Average: 5.0 🏛️PANTHEON INDUCTEE🏛️

Star Wars: Classic Collectables (Pinball FX Table Review)

Classic Collectables BackglassClassic Collectables
Pinball FX non-VR Debut
aka Star Wars: Classic Collectables
Main Platform: Pinball FX
Switch Platform: Pinball FX
Designed by Zoltan Vari
Set: Star Wars Pinball: Thrill of the Hunt ($9.99)
Links: Pinball FX Wiki
Classic Collectables is the +1 of a two-pack with the solid and fun SuperPin tribute Mandalorian. Mando is pretty dang good. Classic Collectables is pretty dang bad. Maybe Anakin didn’t balance the Force, but by golly, Zen Studios did! I never understood that whole “balance the Force” thing anyway. When those prequels started, there were like five thousand Jedi and two Sith. By the end, there were two Jedi and two Sith. Mission Accomplished. When Obi-Wan screamed “YOU WERE THE CHOSEN ONE!” Anakin should have yelled back “DUH, and I did exactly what the prophecy said! The Jedi outnumbered the Sith 2,500 to 1! What did you think would happen if I balanced the Force, dummy?”

Classic Collectables, aka Loopity-Loop Mania, is as boring, as repetitive, and as downright nonsensical as pinball gets. Shoot the Death Star loop, then hurry-up and shoot it again, and shoot a toe shot to the left corner while you’re at it. Those are the only shots of any significant consequence on the table. Death Star Loop, toe shot, toe shot. The center loop is the most important one and the key to the whole table. There’s a scoop above the Death Star, and making a shot on it flings three of the old timey Kenner Star Wars action figures onto the table and begins a hurry-up to collect them. You collect them by shooting the same Death Star scoop that activated the mode, then two shots off the corner flipper that you get by activating a manual bridge. When the mode ends, the figures are refreshed. If you have collected opposing toys like, say, Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker, you can duel them against each other in a two ball multiball where the only shots are the toe shots.

Signature Shot – The Death Star Loop: If this worked every time, I probably wouldn’t hate CC as much as I do. But with a physics engine as inconsistent as Pinball FX’s is, sometimes the ball just loses all its momentum before it circles around and completes the shot. For no reason, and it’s sort of out of the player’s hands when it happens. There’s just too much wiggle room for the ball to wobble and miss. Since this shot is how you get the toys, it’s pretty important it work predictably, and it doesn’t.

The idea of collecting action figures would be fun if there were other ways to do it besides this one sequence of shooting this one, frustrating loop, then repeating the shot once along with the two toe shots, but that’s really it. Anything else you can do is a waste of time and energy when the toys yield the most points for the least work, and that’s not even factoring-in risk. The three shots that grab the toys are fairly safe compared to everything else. Even worse: the hurry-up value you score when you collect a figure is imprinted on it, and factors in for the multiball modes that require the figures. Logically, if you miss your shot, it doesn’t make sense to keep shooting it. Just let the timer run out and start again. I mean, why not? Assigning values to the toys would have made so much sense, and not doing so feels like something done to not trigger a screaming match between Star Wars fanatics and the designer. “WHY DID YOU ONLY MAKE DARTH VADER FIVE MILLION POINTS WHEN BOBA FETT SCORES TWELVE MILLION?”

Signature Element – Action Figures: The collecting aspect of CC is the best idea in the worst possible table. There’s even Mortal Kombat 3-like codes you can do with the toys that gives you more time (and thus more possible points) when you shoot the Death Star to actually start collecting them. For example: if you can prevent yourself from collecting the Luke toy AND the Darth Vader toy until you’ve cycled through all the other New Hope and Empire toys so that the Palpatine toy appears, then you get a three-person roster of Luke, Palpy, and Vader, the hurry-up countdown starts at twenty million instead of five million. It’s a neat idea. It’s just too bad the collecting is so repetitive. We’d love to see Zen do another action figure collecting pin, only with increased ways of getting figures. If they get the G.I. Joe license, they should remake this pin with more shots.

Outside of those three shots, there’s really nothing Classic Collectables offers that makes me want to play it. Any other shot is a massive waste of time. And the table offers all kinds of mechanical hang-ups and rejections that don’t feel tied to how you actually shot the ball. Like how depending on the camera you’re using (say, standard view camera #2) the random award cellar might throw the ball right between the flippers. The table is REALLY clunky with how it shoots. We use the term “bricklayer” a lot, perhaps sometimes inaccurately. Classic Collectables is a no-doubt-about-it bricklayer. The shots are so inelegant and so frustrating that, despite one of the most fantastic themes in Pinball FX, there’s nothing likable about actually playing it. The skillshot is needlessly tight and not worth the effort of hitting it. The bat flipper in the corner that’s tied to the two toy shots isn’t precise enough for what it asks of players. The multiball loses its excitement when it’s super easy to just do the high-yielding two-ball duel where the jackpot is the same toe shots you’ve been doing the entire time. In the dueling two-ball multiball, you can fight the same two figures an unlimited amount of times. They should have limited how many times you could duel the same two figures, which would have completely prevented using a multiball to chop wood. But mostly, they needed more methods of collecting figures. It’s not the worst Star Wars pin because Han Solo exists, but the only thing Classic Collectables will collect is dust.
Classic Collectables SmallCathy: THE PITS (1 out of 5)
Angela: THE PITS
Oscar: THE PITS
Jordi: THE PITS
Sasha: THE PITS
Dave: THE PITS (Nintendo Switch)
Elias: THE PITS (Nintendo Switch)
Overall Scoring Average: 1.0 💩CERTIFIED TURD💩
Some review copies were provided in this review, others were paid for.

Star Wars: Calrissian Chronicles (Pinball FX Table Review)

Calrissian Chronicles
aka Lando
First Released September 12, 2018
Main Platform: Pinball FX
Switch Platform: Star Wars Pinball
Designed by Thomas Crofts
Set: Star Wars Pinball Collection 2 ($23.99)
Links: Strategy Guide – Pinball FX Wiki
It looks like it’s going to be so fun, but it’s one of the most frustrating, annoying, and polarizing pins in the Star Wars lineup.

Lando is the proud owner of some of the most lethal rails in the sport. Rails so lethal that even made shots could be killed by them if the ball drops uncleanly out of the habitrail. It turns a lot of people off the table, while others adore that it’s among the most lifelike tables Zen has ever done. At times, it almost feels like it was made by an entirely different company. No Star Wars pin has a ball that feels so heavy, and with that comes huge satisfaction watching a successful shot glide gracefully around an orbit. Of course, that doesn’t cancel-out watching the ball fall lifelessly into the drain after hitting the dead-center capture ball at the top of the screen, or the agony of seeing a successful lit-shot wobble out of the chute, dance off the rails and then drain down the left outlane. I couldn’t forgive it for that last one. It just happened too many times for me.

Persistent Problem – Rejections: Even the fans of Lando will concede that it’s frustrating to shoot a ball in a way where, by all logic and reason, it should easily clear the orbit and it doesn’t. I’m a lot more frustrated with my family than I am with the table itself, because I don’t see how they can admit it does this and still defend it. But they do. Angela especially is a big Lando fan, plays it recreationally outside of our Pinball FX review stuff, and has held records on it (and she’s still the Distance Challenge Undisputed World Champion as of this writing).

Lando is probably the most polarizing of all Zen tables. Usually, when we split our votes as a group, it’s done so in tiny degrees. For Lando, there was a big gap between us, at least until Sasha came along. I told her “you’re going to be a diplomat when you grow up.” She asked what a diplomat does, and I said “honestly I don’t have a clue but people respect them!” You either love Calrissian Chronicles or you hate it. I hated it. Jordi did. Elias really did. Too brutal. Too unfair. Too many rejections. And on top of everything wrong with how it shoots, some of the modes have the Millennium Falcon and even TIE Fighters flying all over the screen like an antsy kid waving their hands in front of the screen. It’s so distracting and just plain annoying. I think you can add characters and story to a table without distracting from the shots. All of Zen’s best pins do exactly that. Meanwhile, Dad and Angela love Lando. They love the layout. They love the elegant combo-shooting (something my love of is purely hypothetical and based on the shots actually working right), and the unique physics. It seems to have a slope angle that no other Star Wars pin has, or they have an entire different gravity setting just for it. Meanwhile, Sasha is just kicking up her feet and laughing at us for making such a to-do over such a middling pin. Say what you will about Lando, but it sure sparks interesting debate, doesn’t it?
Cathy: BAD (2 out of 5)
Angela: GREAT (4 out of 5)
Oscar: GREAT
Jordi: BAD
Sasha: GOOD (3 out of 5)
Elias: THE PITS (1 out of 5, Star Wars Pinball)
Overall Scoring Average: 2.6* – OKAY
Primary Pinball FX Scoring Average: 3.0 – GOOD
*Nintendo Switch version is, more or less, identical to all other platforms.
Some review copies were provided in this review, others were paid for.

Boba Fett (Pinball FX Table Review)

Boba Fett
First Released February 27, 2013
Main Platform: Pinball FX
Switch Platform: Star Wars Pinball
Designed by Zoltan Vari
Set: Star Wars Pinball Collection 1 ($23.99)
Links: Strategy Guides – Pinball FX Wiki
I have no idea how anyone has fun with this thing. Right now, my best theory is it just looks like it’s going to be fun, and maybe even historically fun. Even though I already know Boba Fett is one of the worst tables in Pinball FX, every single time I see a screenshot, for just a brief second, my brain says “damn, that looks really fun.” It’s an actual succubi that lures you in and then eats you alive. There’s never been a table that looks as good as Boba Fett that plays as bad as Boba Fett.

Boba Fett is one of two Pinball FX tables that plays so incredibly, unfathomably poorly that you’d swear it was a different company besides Zen Studios that produced it. It always leaves me dumbfounded when this table shows up on anyone’s “best of” list. It’s like we’re playing completely different tables. First off, the slope feels too steep, and so the table runs very fast. The around-the-world orbits dive-bomb into the drain like they’ve lost their will to live. It doesn’t help that the table is a total brick-layer. The ball feels like it has a wobble, making already tough shots that much tougher since the ball can’t complete them. The ramps are the most incredibly rejection-heavy of any older pin, especially the two corner ramps. I’ve had flush, full-power shots still eat a rejection. For a table with a ball speed permanently stuck on HOLY SH*T, it sure takes forever for a ball to return off one of those rejections, too. It’s like space time itself folds around the top of the table to add three times the visible length. It’s Star Wars so I suppose you can’t rule this out.

Signature Shot – Ball Lock: In order to start Mandalorian Multiball, you have to turn off Boba Fett and boot-up the much better table Mandalorian. No wait, actually you have to get his ship, Slave I, to land on the board then lock one ball at a time three times. This and the teeter-totter shot that’s a fixture on the playfield are Boba Fett’s only good shots. See, I’m not a total hater. Of course, the multiball that happens when you lock all three balls sucks, because this table isn’t made to play multiball. Hell, I’m not sure it was made to play one ball.

Honestly, I think there’s something wrong with the physics of Boba Fett, because these are easily the worst ramps among legacy tables in Pinball FX. There’s just no consistency to them, and the ball speed just feels incorrect in general. Passes I can easily make on other tables I can’t here. As for the central orbits, they might as well be ramps since a giant chasm cuts through the top of the table that your ball can easily fall into. The slings are violent, tilted to an absurd angle, and feature hair triggers. There’s some neat ideas here, like the “choose your difficulty” Bounty system. I just wish it were on a better table. What’s here was enough newest Vice Family member Sasha and honorary Vice Jordi to keep Boba Fett out of the cellar (and actually both are in agreement that Boba Fett isn’t THAT bad and if the slingshots were fixed, this layout might earn from them a mild GOOD). As for the rest of the Vices, it was between this, Classic Collectables, and Han Solo for worst Star Wars table. It took me a long time to get here (I used to have this table rated BAD), but I actually now think this has emerged as the Star Wars table I want to play the least. Not the worst, mind you. That’s undoubtedly, undeniably, unequivocally Han Solo. But at least I’ll have fun laughing with my family. Boba Fett is all brutality and no charm. Just a terrible, no good, very bad table. And now that I’ve finished this review and never have to play it again, I can finally close the book on Boba Fett. See, I did a thing there. I’m sure you got it.
Cathy: THE PITS (1 out of 5)
Angela: THE PITS
Oscar: THE PITS
Jordi: BAD (2 out of 5)
Sasha: BAD
Elias: THE PITS (Star Wars Pinball)
Overall Scoring Average: 1.3* 💩CERTIFIED TURD💩
Primary Scoring Average: 1.4 💩CERTIFIED TURD💩
Star Wars Pinball Scoring Average: 1.4 💩CERTIFIED TURD💩
*Nintendo Switch version is, more or less, identical to all other platforms.
Some review copies were provided in this review, others were paid for.

Star Wars: Battle of Mimban (Pinball FX Review)

Battle of Mimban
aka Star Wars: Battle of Mimban
First Released September 12, 2018
Main Platform: Pinball FX
Switch Platform: Star Wars Pinball
Designed by Peter Horvath
Set: Star Wars Pinball Collection 2 ($23.99)
Links: Strategy Guide – Pinball FX Wiki
You certainly don’t have to be a fan of the Han Solo movie to love what Mimban has to offer. I’m not at all, but the difficult production of that film feels worth it just for this pin. I don’t want to say this table single-handedly justified our purchase of Arcade1Up’s Star Wars pinball table, but it’s DAMN close.

Battle of Mimban is Peter Horvath’s finest table and almost certainly the best original design to come out of Zen Studios. The ultimate marriage of all-encompassing environments that can only exist in video games with the sport of pinball. Mimban is, for my money, the greatest war-themed pinball table ever made. It’s gritty, and dirty, and raw, and visceral. The layout has that feeling too, like a freshly dug foxhole. A ramshackle network of orbits and targets that are so simply placed and accessible that it feels like a table thrown together in five minutes, and I mean that in a good way. Like a base camp set up by a front line battalion that could be broken down and moved on a moment’s notice. But, wash away the grime and the dirt and you’ll discover an elegantly-crafted, smoothly flowing table. Getting the bad stuff out of the way, the slingshots are a little aggressive and the left outlane is brutal. You’ll want to light the kickbacks, which is simple: shoot the spinner. That’s it. No complicated multi-step process. Even better is that these aren’t violent kickbacks. They catch the ball and drop it in the outlane. AWESOME!

Signature Element – Split Level: Zen has done many multi-story tables, but only Mimban has successfully pulled off the degree of realism that makes you believe the layout is the offspring of real world split-level tables. Specifically, this shares a lot of DNA with Black Knight 2000. Hey, that’s one of my all-time favs so I ain’t complaining.

Zen has a love for cardboard targets, and no table by them has better usage of them. It shifts Battle of Mimban from combo-centric finesse gameplay to white-knuckle sharpshooting on the fly, and it WORKS. It doesn’t feel jarring or gimmicky at all. Instead of clashing, the play-styles complement each-other. It helps that, despite the complex idea of an actual battlefield with attack waves, the gameplay couldn’t be more simple or intuitive. The clean layout leaves little in the way of distraction, making it easy to know which shots are lit and how to get to them. It also really helps that this probably has the best written rules of any of the more complicated Zen original creations. Thanks to the clever concept of alternating between attack formation and defense, modes that would be dangerously close to samey and repetitive instead feel high in stakes. There’s also enough options to allow players to come up with their own strategies in order to tackle them, including high risk side-missions that usually pay off with extra balls.

Signature Mode – Infiltration: In this short but sweet shooting gallery video mode, you use the flippers to aim a close-range cannon to shoot cardboard targets. Just remember: red guys bad, Stormtroopers good. Don’t shoot the Stormtroopers.

In a way, Mimban kind of reminded me of my first game of Risk. The rules felt overwhelming and complicated at first, but it took only like fifteen minutes for me to learn what I was doing. Battle of Mimban does exactly that for pinball, and it can be overwhelming. But actually the flow is really simple to learn and the targets are clear enough that it makes for an awesome shooting pin. One that has none of the typical problems with modern Zen. Just getting the ball isn’t the hard part. You have to make your shots in a way where you don’t kill yourself.  Retheme this as any other property, or any other setting, and Mimban wouldn’t work. You’d ask yourself “why is this layout so.. so.. rudimentary?” Simplicity works in a tactical war setting, especially with spot-on scoring balance. Hell, this pin feels more like it’s based on a board game than any of the tables in their three-table pack themed around board games! The end result is a table that has to enter the discussion of the greatest digital-only pinball table ever. It has my vote.
Cathy: MASTERPIECE
Angela: MASTERPIECE
Oscar: MASTERPIECE
Jordi: MASTERPIECE
Sasha: MASTERPIECE
Elias: MASTERPIECE (Star Wars Pinball on Nintendo Switch)
Overall Scoring Average: 5.0* 🏛️PANTHEON INDUCTEE🏛️
*Nintendo Switch version is, more or less, identical to all other platforms.
Some review copies were provided in this review, others were paid for.

Ahch-To Island (Pinball FX Table Review)

Special Note: Originally all Pinball FX tables were going to be posted to a single review guide, but there would have been loading issues. I’m splitting the guide into individual table posts.

Ahch-To Island
First Released April 17, 2018
Main Platform: Pinball FX
Switch Platform: Star Wars Pinball
Designed by Szucs “ndever” David
Set: Star Wars Pinball Collection 2 ($23.99)
Links: Strategy Guide – Pinball FX Wiki
Kickback – Angela: I won’t argue if you think Ahch-To Island lacks excitement. That’s fair, and if you value edge-of-your-seat action, this might not be the table for you. What draws me to Ahch-To Island is how accessible it is. It’s the only original creation from Zen Studios where modes start automatically in a random order. Instead of girding just to get the game started, you immediately begin light chasing, or collecting lightsaber pieces. That sets it apart from every other pin in the entire Zen Studios library. Not only that, but it feels perfect as a table themed around Luke Skywalker training Rey in the ways of the Force. It might not be “exciting” in the traditional pinball sense, but it’s still exhilarating to shoot combos and hit your targets. The theme and flow give Ahch-To a serene quality that you seldom see in pinball. That’s why Ahch-To Island is my favorite non-Mimban Star Wars pin. In every way that matters, it’s one of a kind, but in a way that succeeds.

Fun fact: we scored over two-hundred pins as a team and this became the first table that was awarded a MASTERPIECE by one of our judges, yet failed to be issued a Certificate of Excellent. That’s on account of Angela losing her freakin’ mind and calling Ahch-To Island a MASTERPIECE while the rest of us have it down as only a standard GOOD table. Ahch-To Island is a genuine throwback to the early DMD-scoring era that lets the tables flow speak for itself. As a tribute to that era, back when you didn’t have to grind to start a mode, it works mostly well. There’s no timer on the main modes, and if you drain, the mode stays active when you start the next ball. No progress lost at all. So, that’s different from what you expect from Zen Studios, and a nice change. But, the rest of us are kind of ho-hum about the table. It’s not bad. It’s just kind of plodding, you know?

Signature Mode – Rey: In the second and third part of Rey’s mode, you have to hit the lane that’s lit. I like that the entire lane is lit-up with magic. That’s quite neat. Iron Man does something like this too. The problem is that it changes too quickly. Two seconds, if that. There’s a LOT of lanes on this table, and while there appears to be some grace period, it’s not enough time. It doesn’t make the table more exciting. It makes the modes a total slog.

It’s bonkers how much the rest of us fundamentally disagree with Angela about the value of the table. Oscar and I disagree about how smoothly it flows. A weirdly placed vari-target along one of the orbits causes the ball to get hung up constantly, as it’s too tight a shot and gives the ball a distinct wobble that kills the flow. Also, we disagree about how tough the outlanes are. The left one especially chews up more balls than a malfunctioning pitching machine, and by the way, a red-faced Angela feels the previous paragraph is not true and she’s threatening to stab me. Meanwhile, Jordi thinks the placement of the spin disk is a waste of space. I’m indifferent to the disk, which closes off during Luke’s mode anyway. The cause of the lower rating I think is all the secondary flippers. They just don’t work for me. They feel inelegant. Mind you, even though we all strongly disagree with Angela’s assessment, we all agree that Ahch-To Island is fine. Angela is right about one thing: it’s a one-off. There’s nothing quite like it, and I think I’m okay with that.
Cathy: GOOD (3 out of 5)
Angela: MASTERPIECE (5 out of 5)
Oscar: GOOD
Jordi: GOOD
Elias: GOOD (Star Wars Pinball on Nintendo Switch)
Sasha: GOOD
Overall Scoring Average: 3.33 * 🧹CLEAN SCORECARD🧹
Primary Scoring Average: 3.4 🧹CLEAN SCORECARD🧹
*Nintendo Switch version is, more or less, identical to all other versions.
Some review copies were provided in this review, others were paid for.