Flipnic: Et tu, Capcom?
by Zube (zube@stat.colostate.edu)
Created:  Jul 30, 2005
Updated:  Jul 30, 2005   
http://www.stat.colostate.edu/~zube/flipnic.txt

I like pinball.  Been playing it for most of my life.  But unlike the 
decidedly hard core, I also like to play pinball on the PC or a console. 

Sadly, most pinball sims are awful.  Some scroll so much and so poorly
that they are unplayable at best.  At worst, they can make you physically 
sick (No, I'm not kidding; try 10 minutes with SNES Pinball Dreams and 
you'll see what I mean).

The last two Pro Pinball games (Big Race USA and Fantastic Journey) for
the Playstation are perhaps the gold standard for console pinball.  They
play extremely well and can be had for very little ($9.99 whenever I saw
them).  They were released for the PC as well.  If you like pinball, 
these are the ones to seek out.

The other pinball game that is worth playing (but only up to a point) is 
High Speed for the NES (!).  Rare, a company with an excellent pedigree, 
did a lot right.  For example, the screen splits when the ball is at the 
top of the playfield, leaving the flippers always visible.  Double points 
for this.  It works very well.

However, Rare did one thing very wrong: they tried to turn pinball into a 
video game, with predictable results.  Here is a sample from the High Speed
manual:

***
Enemies:

Acid patch -- dissolves your ball.  Destroyed by shooting a ball quickly
across it, by shaking the playfield or by using a Lightning Bomb.

Rust balls -- Dissolve your flipper mounting.  Destroyed when touched by
a ball, by a Lightning Bomb or by shaking the playfield while they are
on your flipper.
***

Now, I will allow that perhaps this is an interesting meld of two
genres, but at the very least, there should be a way to turn the
garbage off so that one can play pinball instead of not pinball.  Call
me crazy ("Zube, you're crazy."  "Thank you.") but I think that pinball
games should appeal to those who, um, like pinball.  Thanks to these
"improvements," I haven't played the game in years.

With that background, on to Flipnic.

Flipnic for the PSX2 was recently released in the USA by Capcom.  To say
I wanted to like this game is the epitomy of understatement.

Because I want to support console pinball, I can forgive the so-so flipper 
action, the zillions of cut-scenes, the annoying "clear this level to go 
on to the next one" and the "I'm-too-sexy-for-my-cat" graphics.  I'm old
and crotchety and I'm not the target market.  Ok, I can deal with all
of that.  Besides, some of the graphics are impressive and some of the
"tables" are cool.

Here is what I cannot deal with.  In one of the first areas, if you don't
do something in 30 seconds, you lose your ball, complete with an idiot
cut scene of a newspaper report of a UFO (!) absconding with it.

(Deep breath, count to 10) Dearest Capcom, this isn't pinball.  In pinball, 
one plays until it drains, period [1].  This is doubly unforgivable because 
Capcom produced some of the best *real* pinball ever, including Break Shot 
and Flipper Football.  The company should have known better.

The full title of Flipnic is _Flipnic Ultimate Pinball_.  Does Ultimate
mean "not" in some part of the world that I don't know about?

In short, Flipnic may be flashy, it may be cool, it may be fun at
times, but alas, it isn't pinball and it will probably collect dust
even better than High Speed since the PSX2 case is larger than an NES
cart.  My advice is to go buy Katamari Damacy instead.  It's the same 
price ($19.99) as Flipnic and far, far more interesting and fun.

**

[1] A long time ago, some pinball games featured a gobble hole that
swallowed the ball in exchange for points or other goodies.  Yes, you lost
the ball, but it was an exchange not a simple loss.

The last game with a gobble hole was Sweet Hearts (1963).  You can play
Ace High (1957), which features two gobble holes, on the PSX2 
Pinball Hall of Fame: The Gottlieb Collection by Crave Entertainment.
Predictably, that collection isn't very good either (although Ace High is ok).