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Pinball Dreams – Amstrad CPC Review

Amstrad CPC

Written by

Matt James

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Pinball Dreams as many will know is best known for its original release on the Amiga and kickstarted the successful series of pinball games for Digital Illusions, of which this and Pinball Fantasies are considered all-time classics on the Amiga. But this isn’t the Amiga, this is the Amstrad CPC!

Developed by BG Games also known as ‘Batman Group’, a group of demoscene and game developer enthusiasts with a love for many classic 8-bit and 16-bit systems, they decided to turn their hand to a port of Pinball Dreams for the Amstrad CPC. Quite the challenge, given the rich, colourful, smooth visuals and excellent soundtrack of the original.

Upon loading you will recognise the intro music and the 21st Century Entertainment logo, lovingly recreated to mirror the Amiga’s original epic intro. Skipping the rolling credits, we go to the table select screen where all four of the original tables can be found – Ignition, Steel Wheel, Beat Box & Nightmare.

The thing that will first hit you is the really impressive use of the CPCs palette and what they have managed to achieve. Kicking off and springing the ball into the playfield, it is almost unbelievable that this has been achieved on the trusty CPC, the scrolling, ball physics, music and features of each table are all here.

Verdict

Can you even imagine as a CPC owner if this had come out back in the day in this state, FINALLY, the Amstrad owners would finally have some serious ammo to fire back at their Speccy & C64 friends and enemies! Sure it’s made to work on the slightly beefier CPC 6128, but you’d be hard pushed to find many other modern homebrews to be as good as this.

I cannot reiterate enough how much of an amazing job BG Games have done with this port. Be sure to try this out, seeing and playing is believing!