Zen Studios has been slowly teasing their latest Zen Pinball (Free) DLC pack, which is based on three classic Universal film franchises, since early last month. First was a trailer for a table based on E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, then they released the trailer for a table based on Jaws at the end of the month. Then last week they released a trailer for a table based on the Back to the Future trilogy, along with the news that this Universal Classics pack would be released on Tuesday, September 26th. Hey, that’s today! And indeed all three tables are now live in the Zen Pinball app. Here’s all three trailers again.
Each of these new tables is available as in-app purchases for $1.99 apiece. I’m a huge fan of all three film franchises and also a big fan of Zen’s brand of over-the-top digital pinball, so I snatched up all three tables the moment they arrived and have spent a few minutes with each. My initial impressions are that these are three more high-quality tables from Zen that utilize the licenses really well and feature lots of cool “couldn’t be possible in real life" elements. At least, from a visual and gameplay standpoint that’s true. The big drawback here is that the game doesn’t use any of the actual voice clips from the movies, which is understandable, but it also doesn’t utilize any of the actual music from these movies either, which is more baffling. These are three movie franchises with absolutely iconic scores, so losing that diminishes their impact a bunch. That said, they’re still super fun and if you typically enjoy Zen’s licensed tables (and especially if you normally play without sound anyway) you should definitely consider checking out these three new tables in the Universal Classics pack.