Rick Healey writes "My rage is as vast as the infinite reaches of space, and seldom do I have a target so deserving as Dream Pinball 3D. I know, when you pick up something by SouthPeak Games, you're not about to pick up high quality. You're picking up something thrown together in a few weeks to justify a quick cash grab. I've come to terms with that. There's a reason I don't pick up their games until Best Buy is practically throwing it in my basket after picking up another volume of anime. So I have really low expectations out of Dream Pinball 3D. How SouthPeak manages to fall short of even those is impressive. It's like earning the gold medal at the Failympics – you just have to fail that much harder than anyone else.
Now, in theory, the concept behind video game pinball should be fairly simple. Make a video game approximation of a pinball table, make it competent in terms of both physics and table layout, and let players have fun. It's worth noting that, thanks to the Virtual Console and WiiWare, there are already three games proving quite competent at this task – Alien Crush and Devil's Crush, both originally for the TurboGrafx-16, and Alien Crush Returns on WiiWare. (And if you're willing to go primitive, the original NES Pinball is also available.) Not only is it possible to come up with a simple and engaging pinball game for the Wii, it's already been done three times. Is it too much to ask for SouthPeak to do it as well?"
As of yesterday, July 23, 2012, TopWare Interactive announced the release of the pinball simulator, Dream Pinball 3D for iOS devices. The iOS comes with four tables, each having different themes and mechanics.
Dream Pinball 3D is a very good but not great attempt to recreate pinball at the height of its glory. The makers of the game chose to reach for graphic glory rather than imaginative gameplay, and the game suffers because of it at times.
GI.net Writes: "I really used to enjoy pinball in my not-really misspent youth. I wasn't the greatest player in the world, so I didn't generally earn extra balls, and my quarters only stretched so far. I was excited about getting some pinball action on the Wii where I could play as long as I want and not go broke in the process.
There are six different pinball tables with Dream Pinball 3D. They're all the fancier, more high-tech kind of tables that I saw toward the end of my pinball-playing phase. The tables are Knight Tournament, Monsters, Dino Wars, Aquatic, Spinning Rotors and Amber Moon. To the best of my researching abilities, it looks like all of these games are new as pinball sims. I would like to see some old classics converted, but that's not to be with this package.
There are four levels of difficulty available for each game. Easy gives you seven starter balls, normal gives you five balls, hard has three balls and expert has one ball. Beyond that, the higher the level of difficulty, the shorter amount of time you get in your save period during gameplay. If I look in the manual, I'll also see that the level of difficulty sets how many points you have to earn before your ball changes materials (more on that in a bit) and sets how long the special modes will be active once earned."
You can't get a much lower score than that!
It must really be a stinker!