Retro Arcade: Pinball Quest (Jaleco, 1990)

I came across this surprisingly big pinball game on my game box.  Pinball Quest has four tables available.  The top three are decent tables on their own, scrolling up and down as the action happens, with extra flippers and plenty of action.


But the real discovery is the 4th table, called "RPG Mode"?  RPG Mode for a pinball game, really?  You start out on a simple board with two trees and a little angel who comes out to say hello.  But if you knock the ball up to the top left, the whole layout slides down to show the second level where some skeletons dance and you have to knock their blocks off.

If you finish them off, you get a devil to fight, who drops a key.  Go through the door at the top to get into a room with a little demon character where you have three options: PURCHASE, LEAVE and STEAL.  My version was in Japanese, so I didn't know what I was clicking on until I watched some videos of people playing the English version.  You can buy flippers and stoppers there.

If you STEAL, those little red bat eyes will beat you up and take you back down to level one.  I should note that if you lose the ball, the angel will pop up and ask you a question with two possible answers.  Again, Japanese, no idea what I was choosing.  But choosing the first answer gives you another ball.

It looked like this was going to go on forever, with those endless replays, but after fighting the devil guy again, I fell back down to level one and after shooting the next ball into play, it turns out I had no flippers.  So there was no way to continue.  I don't know if the floating skull I saw destroyed the flippers, or whether they are gone for good.  I left it there.

I was not expecting a pinball game from so long ago to have so much to explore.  This was superbly designed, with all kinds of ball tricks and misdirections, and the challenges were all very interesting to figure out.  There's a level with a boat that carries your ball up to a fighting arena where you break one golem at a time and its essence moves on to animate the next one.  Clever and unexpected details throughout.  I did not make it through the whole thing on my first run, but here are some players who did:
Aqfaq and NintendoComplete

Note: NintendoComplete starts with the long RPG Mode, but halfway through the video his does switch to playing the other tables as well.  In his walkthrough, he uses some key combination to apply the new flippers and stoppers he bought.  There is definitely more to learn in this one.




Although you can find hundreds of pinball apps these days and some of them have incredibly advanced graphics, I have to say I was not expecting such advanced progressions, movement and game play from an app as old as this one.  The cleverness of the design just keeps unfolding one surprise after another.  I will slog through a lot of old, out-of-date games hoping to find a gem like this one.



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