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Once upon a time, in the depths of the magic forest, where jolly goblins passed the day discussing insider trading and fleecing holidaying elves with slick tourist traps, there lived a game called Pinball Dreams. It was a happy game, and would spend its time spinning electronic simulations of metal balls across electronic simulations of pinball tables.

One day, a merry pixie happened across it and fell instantly in love with its fabulous playability and tore it bodily from the magic forest and showed it to the world and proclaimed it to be of fabulous playability. This merry pixie's name was Stuart. "Roll up, roll up," Stuart would command sternly in his nervertheless twinkling pixie voice. "Come and see Pinball Dreams, the wonder of the age. Fabulous playability, it's pinball on the Amiga, guaranteed to retard the ageing process or something." And many people came to listen, and bought surprisingly-reasonably-priced copies of the game from authorised dealers, and found that they were indeed of fabulous playability. And Stuart saw that this was good.

A little later upon the same time, Stuart was again skipping through the magic forest on his way to cut himself in on the goblin tourist trade or something. Anyway, as he was passing a road accident involving a lot of socially backward people from St. Ives, he heard the unmistakable sound of someone scoring a five million point bonus by traversing a loop anti-clockwise with a small steel ball. Pushing aside some leaves he carried for just such an occasion, Stuart was amazed to see Pinball Fantasies, an incredibly fabulous pinball game with four magnificent tables and more playability than a goblin shell-and-pea game, and nowhere near as deadly to your health should you actually win.

Capturing the frisky game in a quickly fashioned mantrap, he rushed to town to tell the people and further the cause of really very good games indeed.

On the way he bumped into Jonathan. "Hello Jonathan," said Stuart breathlessly. "Look at this incredibly fabulous pinball game." "Pinball?" asked Jonathan, his brow wrinkling in an endearing fashion. "I've never played a pinball game. Is it any good?" "Don't be stupid," admonished Stuart, lightly punching him in the face. "It's stupendous. You just cannot get better than this. The tables are classics, the action never lets up, the satisfyingly huge bonuses are tricky but attainable, you can play for fun or strategically, you can have eight players taking part, and it's staggeringly addictive. And it looks good. And sounds better."

Jonathan put his arm around Stuart's shoulders in a friendly and yet somehow sinisterly conspiratorial manner. "Concisely put," he nooded, "and a fine summary considering the enormous amount previously written about the game which means that repeating it would be pointless and irrelevant," he grinned. "I happen to have the A1200 version here, and it's exactly as you described, except it obviously looks better than the standard versions. And you can install it on a hard drive, although, inexplicably, this means you lose the groovy table-selection screen and music! Do you think we could come to some arrangement by which I can use your well-crafted paragraph and thus avoid writing a regurgative review myself? Oh, hang on, I've already done it. Thanks anyway. 'Bye."

And, clapping the bewildered Stuart on the shoulder, and adroitly stealing his watch, Jonathan went on his way, whistling in a particularly smug and irritating style.

Uppers: Look, it's Pinball Fantasies, right? But with better graphics. What's the matter with you anyway? And it's hard drive installable.

Downers: Er, er, there's no table-selection screen. Why, I've no idea, but at least it means I can put something in this box.

Apart from the improved graphics, exactly the same as the original. Although the standard version was more-or-less gameplay perfect, the smarter presentation adds quite a bit to the game. Fab.