Also, firing up Cirqus last night, I remembered how much I hate the shitty outlanes and big-ass flipper gap. Makes for quick multi-ball sessions. I did put up a 51M spot last night and I know I can improve on that. Game on y'all.
That's pretty much my main gripe with
every Pinball Arcade table; it seems like they all have shitty outlanes and huge-ass flipper gaps. I realize that the tables are just digital recreations of actual tables and that many of those actual physical versions have legendary reputations of being difficult.
But there's something really messed up about the frequency with which balls sail into the outlanes and dead fall into the center. It may be a faithful representation but it's straight up infuriating a lot of the time as a result.
And while Zen Pinball lards up its tables with a questionable number of ramps, at least the outlanes and flipper placement are a lot more sensible, along with more plentiful ball savers and lane guards. Also, I've been able to bangback-save my balls dozens of times in Zen, whereas in PA I think it's happened maybe once.
To me, Zen is generally the more fun game because it's built more fairly from the ground up. If I'm totally ignorant of ways to save my ass in PA I'd love to be educated, but I've read the table guides and I've watched many a video and it seems like those classic old tables are just punishing by design.
They remind me of the many games that were total quarter-munchers back in the day, like Simpsons Arcade Game or other brawlers where you could expect to go through several dollars just to beat the game. Presumably those games' settings were the way they to better collect money for the arcade owner who bought the cabinet from the dev & pub, yes? I really do wonder if some of the older pinball table designs were at all influenced by the same motivation.
Anyway despite my grousing I do like Pinball Arcade. The fact that Farsight is digitally preserving these tables and making them available to people who would otherwise never be able to experience them is a great work indeed. I just wish that I didn't get my balls handed to me when I'm playing with theirs.