Back in early May, Farsight Studios dropped a bombshell on fans of its baby, the multiplatform Pinball Arcade (Free). The current holder of the rights to the Bally/Williams pinball IP decided not to renew its agreement with Farsight, which meant two big things for Pinball Arcade. First, its Nintendo Switch release, which had been available for the briefest of moments with the familiar table arrangements, had to be pulled and re-released with all of the Bally/Williams tables stripped out. Second, all versions of Pinball Arcade would no longer be selling any Bally/Williams tables after the end of the current contract, which expires on June 30th. Wait a minute! That’s tomorrow!

Yes, the day has arrived, friends. While I rang the dinner bell pretty loudly at the time of the announcement, I thought it would be prudent to give you all a gentle reminder of the incoming Pinball-pocalypse. More than 60 tables will be removed from sale after tomorrow. Farsight has assured everyone that any tables that have been purchased prior to that date will remain accessible and will even receive updates and patches as needed in the future, but if you’ve had your eye on anything, now is the time to go a-shopping.

I put together a little list of what I thought were some of the essential purchases several weeks ago, but the truth is that a top ten cannot hope to contain all of the silverball gold that can be found in the Bally/Williams catalog. The company was one of the biggest and most influential pinball manufacturers when looking at the history of the hobby on the whole, and the loss of those tables from the Pinball Arcade is a devastating blow.  I’d recommend popping into the app and having a look around to see if anything tickles your nostalgia in just the right way, because there’s no telling if any of these will crop up again digitally in the future.