Why must there always be a tragic hero in the third row? Ok, I know I'm late to this party again, having played my old pinball simulations for ages, totally ignoring what's happening more recently. I also have to admit, that I'm not investing enough into PC hardware to keep track with the state of the art in general and I actually don't have to, because most games I'm interested in are old enough or not very performance hungry. I did know of the Pinball FX family though and have heard of other projects, but Zaccaria Pinball wasn't amongst them.

Could be because it still seems to be early access on Steam, which makes me wonder why I found Zaccaria Pinball on Nintendo Switch recently, but having not seen Pinball FX/FX3 or Pinball Arcade pop up on the e-store as well when I was looking for the genre, I'm wondering about the quality of my searches in general anyway. With any of the three platforms coming with at least one free table I was having a blast nonetheless and having fun with the HD rumble on my pro controller and the OLED screen in vertical, I was also beginning to buy DLCs.

And here's where the tragic journey begins, the reason I'm picking Zaccaria Pinball as my review subject at this very moment, but let's please emphasize first that it's actually me spending dough on a free platform to buy everything extra for. Yeah, that's not me, except for deals on Capcom Arcade Stadium for instance, because I did find some sales for Pinball FX3 and though I don't see me buying individual tables for bloody 15€ to use on the recent Pinball FX, I just had to spend another tenner on the FX3 Williams three-pack containing Attack from Mars, the machine I was doing two hour train rides to play back in the nineties.

Given that favorite pinball tables can be very autobiographical, I actually appreciate at least a split to affordable bundles, but on the other hand I would maybe be interested in more tables, would I have the option for a demo that the Switch versions of both Pinball FX and Pinball Arcade don't offer. It's another huge problem Pinball Arcade lost a part of their licenses, so my only chance to access the AC/DC table for instance was ordering the Stern Pinball Arcade package sold individually. I still hope the code in box version will work when it finally arrives.

However, Zaccaria Pinball did impress me instantly with next to the two free tables every other installment is playable as a demo. They have nothing to hide and that's for a good reason. Zaccaria Pinball is a simulation dream. You've got everything essential from the competitor's systems,but you can go much deeper by setting ambient light or wear on the table next to physics and camera. It can take minutes to study the possibilities before even thinking of playing and the attention to detail is plainly awesome. Having played, you get statistics for each ball's points and the distance they rolled. You immediately recognize Magic Pixel Games love what they're doing.

I'm willing to believe simulations of their signature tables are authentic in design as much as they are in physics, but here starts that issue because of which I'm not dumping all my money into Zaccaria Pinball right now. What they do have is fifties to sixties style retro tables I'm not sure existed. Then you've got the original electromagnetic and solid state Zaccaria tables from the seventies and eighties I can't remember having played, though it's possible long ago at a bar or something. I just don't have a relation to those tables with typical themes from sports to space etc. and as much as I love pragmatic old school designs, none of them catches my attention enough.

Whilst you can set the gap in the middle to a more modern narrow spacing on the old tables, Zaccaria Pinball actually offers remakes of their popular themes not like fantasy tables by Zen, but more like an authentic built as if the company had released them at the beginning of the nineties when their production had ceased. Those tables use elements that could just work as well as a real table and they're really fun to play. Same goes for deluxe versions that are comparable to Pinball FX interpretations of cabinets like Fish Tales, where you have digitally animated figures enhancing the design.

It really seems like they're doing everything right, having something in store for any generation of classic pinball fans and though they might not have the captivating music and knocking on the remakes, they still manage to add more familiar elements without denying typical leveled structures for instance. I appreciate this a lot, but do they want to be a sleeper like that?

Licensing is a very big issue in this segment and on one hand Magic Pixel Games are my heroes for creating their own level of simulation, but on the other it was very brave to enter competition just with one catalog available. I'm sure there are ecstatic fans who are very satisfied, but in this niche of gaming, Zaccaria Pinball occurs to be a whole niche on its own, for that alone I'm willing to spend a few Euros.

They're not even asking too much, I think. The contents of the packs between 5 and 10€ still appear generous, even though single tables can be purchased for between 2 and 3€ each. So what Zaccaria Pinball at least is doing is showing how it's done to the other big players Pinball Arcade (who need to really be revived) and Pinball FX who are going in the wrong direction right now.

But of course right now I want to play tables I've once found in the wild or I'm still looking forward to. It so happens I have a huge history with cabs from the Williams sets on Pinball FX3 and I've just played the Ghostbusters table in the Stern pack a few weeks back at the Dutch Pinball Museum in Rotterdam. I'm still looking for Data East stuff as a simulation, especially the Batman 1989 license that I visited a local ice cream parlor for after school as a kid. But I doubt Zaccaria Pinball will ever go that direction.

So in conclusion this is probably the best game I'm not going to play very soon, which is sad, but Zaccaria Pinball seems like built on a limitation from the start being nothing but an impulse as a great example maybe, but I don't feel the table have enough charisma to carry the game on their own. It's great for fans and except for slight bugs of caught balls on at least one remake, which might actually rather add to realism, it looks finished enough to me to play it. On Switch that is, of course.

I don't know if we can encourage Magic Pixel Games to just use the same engine on a follow up simulator for other licensed tables, but we should at least honor them with a purchase or two. As soon as I'm back on budget I will start buying everything just to enlarge the collection and send my thanks for an operation that doesn't seem to make a lot of sense but that they mastered anyway. It's maybe only adding to the variety of my tables, but when I'll start Zaccaria Pinball, I'll sure enjoy it.

Perhaps you like other of my related backloggd reviews like
Psycho Pinball
Stern Pinball Arcade
Pachinko Challenger
Puzzle Uo Poko

 Zaccaria Pinball is a game focused on emulating the tables of the Italian pinball company Zaccaria, with an emphasis on strong physics simulation. Zaccaria produced pinball tables from 1974 to 1987, and was one of the most successful manufacturers of its time. The pinball tables they engineered were made to the standards of their time—while they can be fun to play, the strength of their layouts and gameplay styles vary greatly, and they lack the design sensibilities of modern tables. For example, many of the older tables have greedy outlanes or a large amount of space between the flippers, which can easily cause balls to sink instantly without player error. Combine that with the fact that starting with a ball saver didn't become common until the '90s, and you have a lot of wasted quarters. To give another, but somewhat different example, old people sure did love to slap Native American stereotypes on everything and call it a "theme." All of that, minus the quarters, carries over into Zaccaria Pinball. Magic Pixel's newly-designed tables, many of which are Zaccaria tables reimagined to be from different eras, also tend to follow these design principles. The result is that we have cool and accurate digital representations of these real tables, preserved in our computers so their legacies can live on. When it comes to playing these classics, however, we end up with a few great and fun tables, a few too many godawful tables, and a good majority that are decent, if dated. To be fair, however, there's a whole section dedicated to modernized versions of classic tables, and these tend to be the most fun for me. Many of them are designed extremely well, and feel great to play.

 As far as the program's actual features go, Magic Pixel does a pretty solid job. The ball simulation is fantastic, especially on simulation mode—the other main option being arcade mode, which makes the ball a bit slower and more "video gamey." While the menu and UI leaves a lot to be desired, the actual tables look great and there are a lot of settings players can adjust to their liking, including lighting, reflections, glass visibility, weather conditions outside the window, and more. Speaking of weather conditions, players can change the environment surrounding the table itself. The room can be spruced up with decorations, but they're not particularly appealing—yes, you must have an ugly statue on your ugly console table. It's all very '70s and '80s, which I assume is meant to match the time period of the tables, but it feels like a wasted opportunity. It's all well-made, and looks great in VR (which is a stupid DLC purchase), but the option to have more modern surroundings would have been nice as well. Audio depends largely on the table. Bumpers and slingshots and whatnot tend to sound great and punchy, though by this point I've just turned the announcer voice off due to how incessant and annoying they can be.

 Ultimately, it's worth checking out. The program itself is free, the physics are great, it comes with a few tables, and players can always buy more if they feel like the DLC is worth the price. Just be aware that when buying packs, there may be just a few stand-out tables.