Right you are! Also, back in the early days the surfaces were made of wood and that was considerably slower than the Mylar of newer machines by itself. Guess ya gotta be an older guy to know those things.
The more I play this app the more irritating its shortcomings are getting. 1. I didn't want to sign up to yet another dumb proprietary score network when there's a perfectly good Game Center already, so the least you could do is make the damn thing WORK. Every time I try to login I get "Login failed", with no explanation, so I've never seen the leaderboards. I didn't pay all this cash to get spammed with adverts so what do you need my email address for? 2. The absence of individual settings-saving for each table is REALLY shitty. Even my iPad 4 can't cope with post-processing on half the tables (and half of them look really ugly with it on anyway), but if I want to change it I have to trek back through half-a-dozen screens, and then repeat the whole tedious process again to change it back for the next table that happens to look better with it on. At the very least put it in the normal options instead of way back on the main menu page. 3. It still crashes way too often. On my old iPad 1 it was a total nightmare (good luck EVER getting to try out the demo of a table you hadn't bought) and it still freezes pretty frequently on the 4. 4. I'm fed up of the ripoff pricing. "Pro" tables are a really greedy trick, and what happened to the pre-release promises that one table a month would be 99c? And stop making me buy tables I don't really want just so I get gouged less. Asking more than a buck for Big Shot under any circumstances is hilarious. 5. This one's personal taste, but the table choices are really conservative and predictable. Where are the interesting tables with novel features? Where's Mr And Mrs Pac-Man (cool maze game played with just the flipper buttons), The Getaway (universally acknowledged as one of the best tables ever, with dot-matrix minigames), Special Force (ingenious missile-firing aspect), Lethal Weapon 3, Banzai Run (second playfield on backglass), or just some proper mid-period classics like Flash Gordon, Party Animal, Xenon or Vector, instead of just drip-feeding us the stuff you coded almost a decade ago and are now trying to sell for about the fifth time? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinball_Hall_of_Fame:_The_Gottlieb_Collection http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinball_Hall_of_Fame:_The_Williams_Collection http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pinball-Hall-of-Fame-PS2/dp/B0002OALK8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1362959600&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pinball-Hall-Fame-Williams-Collection/dp/B001L8DKIE/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1362959600&sr=8-4 Pinball Arcade is just about the most expensive game on the entire app store (in terms of buying actual content rather than cheats), at about 80 bucks all in so far. Can we maybe have it done properly with a little care and attention for that sort of cash?
I haven't had crashing problems at all, but there are certainly bugs. Still this is easily my most played app and definitely worth it. And they've been putting out some great games. Plus some of your suggestions for what they should put out are low on my list. Some I'd call dreadful. It's all a matter of preference, of course. I'll concur on The Getaway (though I'd hardly say that it is "universally" considered one of the best) and Banzai Run, though. I'm sure these are coming. It's just a matter of time. My one complaint (aside from the need to fix bugs) is that the reward for completing the wizard goals is to disable tilt. Nobody who can complete the wizard goals needs to disable tilt. Instead they should give something unique, like a custom ball or something of that sort.
I do have the crashing issue on my iPad 3- at the red screen where you see all the machines lined up in the arcade there. Pisses me off! Also, I HATE it when I update the game and I have to re- download my tables one by one every time. That sucks too! The Pro table thing is bad, also, I agree. But nobody's forcing me to get that. There are bugs as we all know. And for me, actually really none of the tables DrSpoffo would like to see are on my list, either. As for the issue of hating to pay for spam, adverts, and such, I hate that, too, but just try to download stuff for the Android! That's always a joke!
I like the Pro option of the few I have (Twilight Zone I have from the kickstarter). I like to explore the menus and see what can be changed, make the game harder or what have you. Plus I like to set the clock to get rid of the dot. Pro mode is there for the pinball geeks. I don't think anyone else should pay for it.
As far as what games they should add. As a piece of preservationist history, I think they should have every game, even bad ones. Yes, even Popeye. I bought the Bride of Pinbot pack even though I think BoP is a pretty lousy game, and Pinball Arcade verified that for me. It's awful, but I still enjoyed playing it to get all the goals, and for posterity. I'll probably even fire it up on occasion still. Yeah, I'll even play bad pinball machines. In no way am I saying that BoP is as bad as Popeye, though. Not even remotely.
Im with you 100% on that, ive got my favorites for sure but I will buy/play everything because I love pinball, doesnt matter how sucky I am at most tables lol. I would like tighter physics though, some tables feel better than others but no one reaches LittleWing levels, still love PA and feel that the iPad is a natural home for pinball games.
Those Gottlieb tables are a blast! Genie was interesting and different. It was my prime motivation to go for that table pack. Attack from Mars, being the MM rehash/prequel, is strictly an interesting "plus" for me. Ball speed is a bit much for me - gives me heart attacks. Central Park, ignoring the compulsive drainage form its design, is also fun and different. I don't know if it will hold my attention for long, but right now I'm having fun just following the ball so closely and nudge it back to the flippers. I'm wondering if it's me who's missing something, or is Cactus Canyon simply as bland a table as it initially seem? Some high ramps and a few themed targets, meh. Might be good enough for Zen Pinball but expected more out of a Bally table. Farsight's change of policy regarding single table purchase is disappointing.
This is unfortunate, but I think it's been the last 3 or 4 updates that they've only offered "table packs" where they bundle a newer table with a retro table. Now, for me, it hasn't been an issue since I would've bought all the tables anyway, but I think they should let the consumers decide.
Yes, seems like a very puzzling decision. Personally I have zero interest in any tables post Blondie's last number one hit single... I'd throw down a couple of bucks on just about any table pre early to mid 80s, but one would have to really grab me for me to even consider also paying for something I'll almost never play in the bargain. And there's the principle of the whole thing of course.
Im playing Central Park and every time my ball #5 drains the ball count comes down to 4, giving my another ball #5 for play, is this a bug or this table used to do something like this? Edit: it stopped, the ball went to the drain at least 5 times before the last ball expired, maybe its because I lasted too little on each attempt? Im finding this table rather hard but having a blast playing it.
Extra balls on Central Park Not a bug... you earn extra balls very easily on this old school table, and can only have 1 per ball up to 15 per game max. That's just how the old electro-mechanical tables did it before digital electronics. It's clear what's going on if you read, carefully, through the table instructions.
