Pinball Fantasies was feeling lonely all by itself on the shelf. He had wanted his younger or older brother beside him for some time now. Preferably his younger brother, because he could belittle him better than he could his older brother. Although he was so much more fun than his older brother, his older brother looked and sounded better than him and he was always going on about it.

So he was quite excited when his younger brother showed up. But, wait a minute, what’s this? His brother looked nothing like how he remembered him. Instead of the ugly purple and yellow box, he looked nice and green. He even had the same lettering on the box as he had. It looked good! And he was very proud that his little brother wanted to look more like him. That he apparently had had a falling out with the Amiga and had converted to the IBM side didn’t even bother him that much.

This version of Pinball Dreams comes on a floppy that still works. Installing took a little bit of finding out how to mount in Dosbox. I put up a picture here for future reference.

In the box are also a getting started guide, a thick manual, a large post card and an add that says that you can even wear the t-shirt.

The manual is cool because it describes each table in detail. It’s also necessary, because it functions as copy protection. Every time you start the game you have to enter a specific word from the manual. I found out that headings also count as a line by the way. And that’s not all. During installation I was promoted to enter a serial number and that I could only install the game three times before the disk would be rendered unreadable. Talk about paranoia!

I was especially curious how the music would sound, because I read on the box that the Roland is supported. It turns out it’s the MT-32 that is supported and not general midi. It sounds nice I guess, but not as nice as the Soundblaster. And certainly not as nice as the Amiga version. For this specific soundtrack samples sound way cooler than real instruments.

And now about the game itself. It’s not as much fun as it’s sequel. But I knew that already. The pc version on my setup has terrible lag and is unplayable. Because the midi music also isn’t an improvement I will rather play the Amiga version instead. It’s cool to have this box anyway though.