Xenotilt — Revenge of the Cyber 'Gator

Videogame pinball is a bit like videogame sports. You take something that is inherently physical and try to simulate it with an inadequate interface. Early attempts were named pinball, but turned out to be middling forms pachinko or Breakout. HAL Laboratories managed to combine all those forms into a somewhat acceptable form for NES called simply Pinball. Rare started "porting" real-life pinball tables such as Pin•Bot and High Speed to NES, but its limited simulation meant the tables became slightly more predictable. It wasn't until Digital Illusions (yeah, the Battlefield developer) released Pinball Dreams for the Amiga that things became more interesting.

Well I say that, but HAL had done something rather interesting on NES. Real-life pinball tables during the '70s and '80s started becoming more and more complex and part of that was introducing mini-playfields complete with separate flippers. Pinball on NES had a small screen without scrolling and the developer took the mini-playfield concept to its logical conclusion, by effectively pasting two pinball cabinets on top of each other. Then HAL repeated that trick on the Game Boy with Pinball: Revenge of the 'Gator. The Game Boy screen was so tiny, that they pasted four miniature pinball cabinets on top of each other. (And then evolved the concept in Kirby's Pinball Land).

The idea of going beyond the standard cabinet became a thing, but wasn't fully explored as pinball itself became "old-fashioned". Regardless, I still think I've spent far too much time on the PlayStation 2 game Flipnic trying to scratch that itch. all of this is just a lengthy pre-amble to give you the right mindset in which to view Xenotilt: Hostile Pinball Action. The game itself is a sequel to Demon's Tilt, and both titles use that multi-storied cabinet approach, while going absolutely ham with the graphics, presentation and vibe.

And dear lord, going ham doesn't properly convey what's happening here. It eschews the tilted view in 'proper' simulations for the NES/GB style direct top-down view, but everything is neon, has some crazy sound or graphical effect and douses it in a cyberpunk aesthetic that is just sublime. You can even dial that aesthetic up a few notches with graphical filters like a CRT-filter and VHS-lines and it's simply delicious.

Now, a lot of the appeal of pinball comes down to watching a ball roll through the Rube Goldburg-guts of an intricate machine, and Xenotilt nails that while using the presentation to put force behind every action and reaction. It's intense in a way that other pinball games usually only reach with a multiball. When Xenotilt hits a multiball, you can probably best describe it as a pinball orgasm with the amount of stuff on screen that's happening.

There's plenty to discover as well, especially once you start hitting EX-Mode, which introduces a light ayer of unlockables and bonus areas which I can't help but feel are inspired by the Nintendo pinball games as well. It's the kind of game I sneak in-between other stuff, only to find myself cracking into a high score of billions while it takes up the entire evening.

Even if you have only the slightest of interests into pinball as a whole, this comes highly recommended. And if you are a pinball enthousiast, this should be part of your collection already.