Absolute Pinball

Absolute Pinball is a video game in the action genre developed by Unique Development Studios AB and published by 21st Century Entertainment Ltd. originally released in 1996. It is currently playable on DOS.

After publishing a series of excellent pinball games that they developed in-house, 21st Century Entertainment decided to outsource the development to a third party company, in this case the Swedish company UDS.

The result? A thoroughly mediocre pinball game that doesn't do justice to the classics of the early 21st century. Pinball pro Martin Mathis says it all in his review: Absolute was designed by UDS (Unique Development Sweden), a growing company that got its start in the Atari world.

It features four different tables whose themes - Paris-Dakar rally, Hollywood, deep water, baseball - are not entirely original, but different enough from what has been done before. The 2D scrolling plan view can be used in three VGA and two VESA resolutions: 320x240, 360x270, 320x400, 640x480 and 480x640. The latter is called 'VESA Flip' and rotates the tables 90 degrees. It is the only display that does not flip, but requires turning the monitor on its side. A clever idea, but how many people are really comfortable doing this every time? Unfortunately, the next best, and preferred, resolution is 'VESA standard' scrolling, which manages to display about 23 frames at a time. The space is taken up by the dot matrix display at the lower end of the tables.

Absolute supports up to 8 players. All games are 5-ball and the 5 best scores are recorded. High scores can be reset, but default back to the annoying preset scores. Tables can be moved left, right and up, the tilt seems to be rather insensitive. The screen resolution can be changed on the fly using keys 1-4. All keys are fixed and cannot be customized. However, Absolute is compatible with Thrustmaster Pinball Wizzard (even in DOS) and with Philips Virtual Pinball Controllers (which I don't own) considerably. The only other gameplay option available, apart from sound volume, is a separate resolution for multiball play. The multiball here is rather unexciting and why bother anyway, why wouldn't I already play at the most optimal resolution during single ball? There are several video modes with the usual hand-eye coordination skill games. A lot of effort has been put into the beautiful dot animations.

Quality-wise, Absolute is somewhere between Pinball Fantasies and Pinball Illusions, with a touch of Psycho Pinball. It has sharper graphics, more complex layouts, and more advanced features than the older Fantasies, but it doesn't beat the non-scrolling Pinball Illusions (which is still the best game of '21, in my opinion) in either originality, excitement, or ball physics. The physics has again particularly disappointed me. The ball generally moves smoothly and slowly, unnaturally for a steel ball, which makes the gameplay somewhat disconcerting and boring soon.

In the flipper area it gets downright annoying. The slingshots are somewhat delayed, exposing a chunk of the rails to direct hits where the ball bounces too hard and often arcs out of flipper range: it's right there but you can't reach it and have to wait for the trajectory to complete. Also, unless the ball directly touches the pivot, you can't stop and cradle it, it just rolls off the flippers. An absolute botch for something that wants to call itself a simulation and advertises on the box 'authentic ball movement to perfection'.

As for the sound, both the effects and background tunes are marginal. The Absolute is mediocre, more of the same, nothing new or exciting. However, it is a bargain and does not require the most advanced system. The four tables have many similarities, although they also have their quirks. Whether it is necessary to offer 'several tables for your money' can be discussed again.

To me, in the end, it still feels like I'm playing a single game and this one has nowhere near the intensity of StarPlay's pinball simulators or the Pro Pinball series. Quantity is no substitute for quality, but it can make you feel a little better'.

It is possible that we have multiple downloads available when different versions exist.