Codex Gamicus
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Pinball Dreams is an Amiga game from 1992 developed by Digital Illusions CE. It spawned several sequels, Pinball Fantasies, Pinball Dreams 2, Pinball Illusions, Pinball Mania, and Pinball World. Pinball Dreams, Pinball Fantasies and Pinball Illusions are the best known, each having come from the same developer, Digital Illusions CE. Slam Tilt was the last Amiga video game from that developer.

The ball moved according to reasonably realistic physics, and the game was restricted to using table elements which would also be possible to build in reality.

Tables[ | ]

Its four tables each had a theme, as do most real life pinball machines. The version of Pinball Dreams bundled with the Amiga 1200 had a bug which rendered most of Beat-Box's advanced features non-functional.

  • Ignition, themed around a rocket launch, planets, and space exploration.
    • Similar to the Williams Entertainment-designed "Firepower" pinball machine.[1]
    • The Expert Software Pinball 2000 port of the game renamed this table Rocket.
  • Steel Wheel, themed around steam trains and the Old West.
    • Similar to the Williams Entertainment-designed "Bad Cats" pinball machine.[2]
  • Beat-Box, themed around the music industry, featuring charts, bands and tours.
  • Nightmare, themed around a graveyard, ghosts, demons, nightmares and generally evil things. It is similar to the Williams Entertainment-designed "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" pinball machine.[3] Unlike the other tables in the game, the name of the table in the menu did not reflect the name displayed on the table itself - Graveyard. Some ports of the game (notably the GameTek port to the Game Boy) name this table "Graveyard" in the menu as well.

Ports & Conversions[ | ]

21st Century Entertainment published the original Amiga and Atari Falcon versions, while GameTek published the ports for the Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, Game Gear and SNES. Rebellion Developments published the original MS-DOS versions on GOG.com for Microsoft Windows, macOS and GNU/Linux.

Sequel[ | ]

A PC-only sequel, Pinball Dreams 2, was released in 1995. It was released by 21st Century Entertainment (like Pinball Dreams) but was developed by Spidersoft.

It included four tables, including

  • Neptune, themed to underwater exploration
  • Safari, themed to an African safari
  • Revenge of the Robot Warriors, themed to a battle against robots
  • Stall turn, themed to aerobatics

Minimum Specifications[ | ]

MS-DOS MS-DOS Minimum/Recommended Specifications
Minimum Specifications Recommended Specifications
CPU Intel-logo 80286AT @ 20 MHz CPU Intel-logo 80386SX / Intel-logo 80486
RAM 530 KB
Display VGA @ 800 × 600 resolution
Storage 2.5 MB, 3.5" Hard disk
Sound Adlib, Soundblaster, Soundblaster2 and Roland sound cards supported



External Links[ | ]

References[ | ]

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