Collection essentials #92: Pinball (NES)

This is another very early, fairly simple game from Nintendo. If you have any familiarity with real-life pinball machines then you already know the concept, which involves controlling a couple flippers to hit around a ball so it can collide with objects to score you points, and you want to hit it in a way that it won’t fall to the pit of death below your flippers. Pinball for NES has two screens’ worth of pinball action in its table, and they’re stacked on top of each other, meaning that if you’re on the lower screen it is possible to hit your ball up enough so that it reaches the higher screen. Each screen has its own pair of pinball flippers for you to control. 

There’s also a special third screen you can reach which is different from anything you’d see in regular pinball. In this screen, you play as Mario holding up a small platform (as seen in the cartridge artwork) and move left and right so that the ball deflects off the platform he’s holding rather than fall into the pits below and back into the regular pinball play area. If you do it long enough, Mario’s girlfriend Pauline (from Donkey Kong) will fall down and you’ll have a chance to save her for bonus points.

Public opinion on Pinball is pretty mixed. It’s not considered an iconic classic in the same way as some other Nintendo games of the era. However, I’ve always enjoyed it. I didn’t play or know about the game as a young child, but Nintendo wound up re-releasing it a lot so as a young teen I both unlocked it in Animal Crossing for the GameCube and also got it for the Game Boy Advance e-Reader, so I played it quite a bit via both those methods. So nostalgia may be part of my fondness for the game, I’m not sure I’d like it as much had I first discovered it now. But I do find it genuinely fun to play. It wouldn’t contend at all for the title of my favorite NES game, but I still consider it an essential.