Previous Next

This game now gives you the opportunity to play this classic game in the comfort of your own home - or wherever you like in fact!

Choose from one of seven different pinball tables: Shark, Terror Dactyl, Double Agent, The Legend Of Robin Hood, Galaxy Wars, Ancient Temple Of The Aztecs and Motel Hell. Each table is based loosely around a popular film or film genre and has music which you'll almost recognise as a well known theme tune - but not quite, as presumably the real song would have cost too much in royalties.

Using the D-pad and the A button to move the flippers, the idea is to keep the ball in play and knock it against the various devices on the table to score as many points as possible. And that's it.

Although that's the problem with this game. There is so little to it. Whilst this is the case of some classic videogames which have been brought onto the Game Boy Color, they at least don't lose anything in the translation. The game of pinball however, does.

Surely the whole point of pinball is that you have the table between your legs (so to speak) and the speed of the ball around the table tests your hand-eye co-ordination to the limit. Part of the whole concept is 'feeling' the game, as the silver ball rattles around.

Although the tables in Hollywood Pinball are sufficient, it's not the same as having the real thing in front of you, obviously. On top of that, whereas on a real table it's obvious where all the bumpers, holes, etc, are, it's not so clear in the videogame version which areas of the table are obstructions for the ball and which just part of the pattern on the surface.

Finally, one of the most important things about real pinball is that you can affect the power of the flippers by adjusting the pressure you apply to the buttons. In Hollywood Pinball however, because the Game Boy Color buttons obviously aren't analogue, you don't have this control.

Overall, Hollywood Pinball just doesn't make the grade and the cluttered screens mean early frustration as you lose track of the ill-defined ball. Give it a miss.