Weird GBA games #1 - Pinball of the Dead

Entry posted by atari2600land July 5, 2017

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New blog topic!
I don't know why, but I've suddenly taken to reviewing odd GBA games. I was wanting to try a couple of them I had always heard about but never got to try. Some urge struck so I bought them on eBay. Didn't know cart-only GBA games were going to be so expensive, they were about $10 each! So once they come in, I'll review them and put them in this blog topic. But first, here's a review of one odd GBA I already had but never got around to playing until now. So I got out my Game Boy Micro, charged it, and played it. I don't know why it didn't need to be charged very long, I never played the thing in a few years. Seemed kind of odd. Like this game.

Pinball of the Dead.
A mindless zombie...could do better at this than I could. I absolutely suck at this game. But hey, I suck at all pinball games. I don't know why. I guess reflexes slow down as you age but I'm only 34. Oh well. Dark, macabre stuff and pinball seem to go hand in hand. Like Ruiner Pinball for the Jaguar, or Alien Crush for the Turbografx 16. This is sort of like Metroid Prime Pinball for the DS where stuff walks around on screen (in this case, what appears to be zombies, I'm not sure, it's too hard to tell because they're so small) and you try to hit them with the ball. But I suck because my final scores are nowhere near the top 10. Either that, or they made the top score so ludicrously high that it forces the player to think they can pass it? Or what? It's obvious if you gave me one million years to play the game that I would never reach a score that high.

The only reason I ranked #9 on one of the tables is that the game gave me a 10,000,000 point bonus for shooting a zombie. Which brings me to the next point. After each ball, there is a "minigame" where the objective is to shoot a zombie by pressing a button. The problem is the target aimlessly wanders around and it looks like you're drunk or something, so it's hard to figure out if the target will in fact hit the zombie when you press the button. If you do hit the guy, you get bonuses (one of which was apparently 10,000,000 points.)

The game has three tables, or layouts. My favorite one is Cemetery. I don't know why. Perhaps it's because it's the one I got to #9 on! The other two are also interesting. I'm also wondering why the intro says it's February 26, 2000 and there's destruction and zombies. The game was made in 2002. Or perhaps we're living in a hologram world and there really ARE zombies walking around.

And after you lose your last ball, the game gives you a password. I don't know why, seems kind of ridiculous to me. But the good thing is that the game has a battery to save high scores...if you're lucky enough to get one. You know what I think? Pinball games need to save high scores based on the PLAYER'S SKILL LEVEL, not what the programmer's idea of a high score is. I have yet to find a pinball video game that does this. Racing games do this all the time, but never pinball games. Why?

Next time: Hey, what's that green stuff between your front teeth?