Sharpin’s Digital Pinball Machine brings old-school arcade action into your home

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/10/01/sharpins-digital-pinball-machine-brings-old-school-arcade-action-into-your-home.html

While I appreciate the need to foster the joy of pinball in the greater community, and not everyone has room for the full deal, I have to tell you that this line is some pretty blatant false-advertising bullshit:

The result is a gameplay experience that feels exactly like playing a real pinball machine.

Virtual pinball feels virtually nothing like real pinball, and this one that you can send flying across the room for so much as a nudge (that it can’t even sense) feels even less like it. I’ve played some virtuals that at least try, with solenoids and sensors beyond just the flipper buttons. They get it close. This is an Android tablet in a pressboard box and they’re not even trying to offer a pinball analogue.

All sales final? Yeah, I can see why.

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On the other hand it’s a thing I could build that’s not yet another arcade cabinet.

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You can get the old Epic pinball pack for $6 on GOG.

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You could build a pinball game from cardboard.

How is nobody noting that this thing is $600 on sale!?!?!?!

Seriously, you could fix up an old pinball machine for that price.

You could build a similar cabinet, and run a digital pinball emulator on it for considerably less.

Or, you know, just buy a PS5, realizing that a digital pinball game won’t even begin to recapture the experience of playing a physical pinball machine.

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