Pinball World

Pinball World is a video game in the simulation genre developed by Spidersoft Limited and published by 21st Century Entertainment Ltd. originally released in 1995. It is currently playable on DOS.

Pinball World is one of the latest releases from 21st Century Entertainment, arguably the best developer of PC pinball games next to LittleWing.

Since Pinball Dreams, the company has consistently delivered exciting, high quality and well-designed pinball games. Hot on the heels of Pinball Illusions comes Pinball World, a little-known sequel that offers some new twists to the genre, though it's not as polished as 21st Century's other titles.

Breaking the rule of the classic four-table game, Pinball World features no less than 9 tables. As the title suggests, each table represents a real country. You'll visit Africa, Australia, the Far East, South America, Hollywood and many other famous locations across a variety of pinball layouts. The sizes of the tables change from one to another, some are so large that they span three times the width of the screen.

Your goal in the game is to travel around the world and find the secret location. Each table contains hidden secrets and two or fewer exits leading to other countries. The secrets are usually bonus tables, special bonuses that you can collect or words that you light up to activate the bonuses and exits.

If you enter the bonus table, you will find yourself at another table whose theme is related to the part of the world you are visiting. For example, if you enter the bonus table from Africa, you will play the Egypt table. This means that Pinball World doesn't just include 9 tables that you can access immediately, but actually 15 plus the secret location.

As if giving fans their money's worth with this number of tables wasn't enough, Pinball World also offers new rules that really break the mold. The game starts with a very unusual table design. Although the two flippers at the bottom of the table still exist, the bumpers, rails and other traditional elements of a pinball table are gone. What you'll see instead is a series of targets named after different destinations. For example, if you shoot the ball towards Hollywood and then miss the ball, your first stop will be this particular destination.

You also have more flippers to control. These are usually placed in pairs, meaning you have a pair of flippers on the right and left of the table and another pair on the right. Although a bit confusing at first, you will soon get the hang of this control scheme after a little practice.

Another good idea is that when you open exits leading to other tables, you sometimes play with transition sequences. In these sequences, the space bar will move any vehicle forward, the down arrow will move them backward, while the left and right shift keys make them go left or right. If you fail to reach the destination before the time runs out, you will lose one of your three balls.

With a lot of cool ideas, Pinball World is another excellent game from 21st Century that pinball fans should add to their collection, although the graphics are not as amazing as their previous games.Two thumbs up!

Pinball World is available at a reduced price on the following websites and is no longer abandonware.