iOS: App Store Promotion: “Portable Pinball”

Ah. Sweet. Apple is featuring pinball apps on the App Store. There’s a whole section for “Portable Pinball”. Very cool.

Finally, perhaps Rob-O-Bot will finally catch a break, and it’ll get the truckloads of money that it deserves. There are seventeen apps listed, surely it’ll be there.

Let’s see, we’ve got “Pinball Arcade”, and “Zen Pinball”. Those are no brainers. We knew those were going to be here, and they deserve to be spotlighted. Great, what else?

Oh, okay, there’s the “Pinball HD Collection”, from Gameprom. Can’t say that I’ve played anything from these guys since Zen came out, but these tables used to be pretty popular back in the day, when our options were pretty limited. So it kind of makes sense.

What else? So, um… A.S.K. Homework released another collection? Those tables are alright, I suppose. They’re decent. But didn’t I already have this collection? What’s so Pro about “Age of Pinballs Pro”? Oh, I see, it’s got the “Art of Pinball” tables in it. But didn’t they already offer that as an in-app purchase in the old “Age of Pinballs”? Ya know, the amateur edition? Why did we need another app for this?

This smells of Gameprom. It’s like they’re trying to get you to triple and quadruple dip and buy everything that you’ve already bought, just to get it all inside of one icon. But I’ve already got all of these tables, don’t I? A couple of times over, I think. And besides, even with the in-app in “Age of Pinballs”, and with “Age of Pinballs Pro”, they’re still not including all of their tables. There are two tables, a third of the tables from the “Art of Pinball” collection, that still aren’t included: “Beast Master” and “Fire Fighter”. So even if I get this new collection, I still can’t get everything in one app. Grr, that’s annoying. But, whatever. I digress. I suppose these tables are decent, and they probably belong in this promotion.

So that’s four, of seventeen. Lots of spots left. But where’s Rob-O-Bot? I see there are a lot of redundant choices. “Slayer Pinball Rocks HD”, “War Pinball”, and “The Deep” are already available inside the “Pinball HD Collection”, why are these should-be-obsoleted separate versions listed here? That’s a total waste.

And “Real Pinball HD” is available inside of “Age of Pinballs: The grown-up professional edition”. So is “Art of Pinball: Aliens”. If you buy “Age of Pinballs Pro”, these two are already included. For free even. Why are these taking up spots? In the Pro collection, you’re getting the Universal tables, for iPhone and iPad. Buy these separate and you’re getting it for more expensive, and you’re only getting it for either the iPhone or the iPad. It’s completely stupid. But again, whatever. Nine down, eight to go. What else?

And then there’s Retro Pinball. I suppose they have to have some throwback digital pinball in here, for the nostalgic amongst us. Retro Pinball isn’t a bad choice, it’s pretty not bad. But where are the Cowboy Rodeo tables: There’s no “Pinball Dreams” or “Pinball Fantasies”, the originals or the remakes. Those tables are great, they should be in this promotion. But they’re not.

We get a bunch of garbage, instead, like “Super Mushrooms”. I tried to play this, but I have no idea what’s going on. It’s more than pinball, I guess, but not in a good way. The pinball element is tacked on, and there’s more instructions in the beginning than I could tolerate. And it’s free, so it’s probably a scam, with tons of in-app purch–

Holy crap, there’s a $49.99 in-app consumable for this thing‽ For a pinball app? Yeah, no thanks.

“Undead Attack! Pinball”, eh? That one was pretty decent, if I remember correctly. I haven’t played it in a while. But wait a minute. It says I haven’t purchased this. But I know I have. Oh, okay. It’s been re-released, now with more ads. I love it when that happens. But at least they probably optimized it for the 4″ screen. And it was pretty old, so I don’t think it supported retina back in the day. Surely it’s got those things now, right? Nope. Pass.

“PinballCraft”? I wasn’t familiar with this one. It has expansive tables, and it feels more like you’re playing in the bonus stages of Sonic the Hedgehog. It’s unique, I guess. I don’t hate it, but I’ll probably never play this one. It’s just not really my thing. But it is pinball, and they don’t seem to be running any in-app shenanigans, so I’ll give this a pass.

“Momongo Pinball”? It’s alright. I played this a bit, and I didn’t hate the experience. But I wish the ball moved a lot more realistically. But I do like all of the different missions, and how hard it is. But it’s no “Frogger Pinball“, an app which, incidentally, isn’t here in this promotion.

“Pinball Maniacs” is similar to Momongo, in that it’s a “Cartoon Pinball Adventure”. But it’s much more traditional, much less fun, and it’s much more of an in-app racket. No thanks. “PinTiki Ball” is also included in this promotion. It’s similar in that it’s a cartoony, very video-gamey pinball table. But it sucks. The ball moves horribly.

Lastly, they’ve included “Pinwar”. This is very non-traditional, but it’s kind of great. Sure, there are in-app shenanigans in this one, but they’re not really necessary. There are enough missions in this one to keep you playing, and you’ll earn enough virtual currency to unlock everything just by playing. It’s also got these great same-device two-player modes, where you can battle head-to-head, or where you can work cooperatively on the same mission. It’s pretty innovative, and it’s a lot of fun. No hate here, this is a good selection.

That rounds out their promotion, but there’s a lot that’s missing. The biggest snub, for me, is “Revenge of the Rob-O-Bot”. That table is great. The developers are working on lots of new features for the table, but even now it’s up there with both Zen and Farsight. I like it a lot more than most of those tables, actually. It’s much more challenging than anything that the big two are putting out, and performance wise, the ball moves so much better in Rob-O-Bot than it does in a lot of the Pinball Arcade tables.

Also, where are the Littlewing tables? “Tristan Pinball” may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but “Crystal Caliburn II” is undeniably great. It deserves to be in this promotion. “Pinball Dreams HD” and “Pinball Fantasies HD” do, too. And where are the Matmi tables? Weren’t “Multiball Pinball” and “Monster Pinball” pretty popular? They certainly deserve to be included more than a lot of these others do.

But I’m ranting. I’m glad to see that Apple is promoting pinball, it’s one of my favorite things on the App Store. I just wish they did a little better job of presenting what’s out there.

+1 for the most part ,

rbot and little wing slap all orginal tables

again well said

The problem is that purchases of the "all in one" and the separate tables cannot be combined unless the developer does it (like FarSight does).

So you have to have separate apps as well as the collection if you want to keep them updated and not piss off your players who'd otherwise have to purchase the tables all over again.

Major lost opportunity and it is ColorMonkey's fault. If you don't put the word Pinball in the game title how are consumers and Apple supposed to find the game when you hit search. I mentioned this in their thread here and I have seen that others have posted this elsewhere.

It's a real shame as it knocks spots of all the other sims, except PA of course which is equally good.

I guess it stretches the theme a bit but I sure wish pinfinder, pinball map, even pinball scores, and pinball 101 got mentioned. More people with those maps is only good for real pinball.

SilverBalls said:

If you don't put the word Pinball in the game title how are consumers and Apple supposed to find the game when you hit search.

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Isn't that what tagging is for? Or at least one would assume that tags could be used.

Should an app have to be named in a reductive fashion simply to get placed in the appropriate category. Based on your definition, every game should have a description of the type of game it is in it's title.

FPS - call of duty, or JRPG - FF III, Pinball - Revenge of the Rob-o-Bot.

That gets a bit ridiculous after a bit, no?

It's not just about tagging the games or putting the genre in the title, it seems fairly arbitrary how Apple choose what to put in their themed sections. They opened up a Retro section a while ago and although I had 8 retrogame style apps out there, all of them well-reviewed on sites like Toucharcade, Pocket Gamer and Tap magazine, for ages they simply didn't put any of mine in. A couple of months ago they finally added one of them. There doesn't seem to be any sure way to get an app listed, you just have to hope someone at Apple notices I guess.

netizen said:

Isn't that what tagging is for? Or at least one would assume that tags could be used.

Should an app have to be named in a reductive fashion simply to get placed in the appropriate category. Based on your definition, every game should have a description of the type of game it is in it's title.

FPS - call of duty, or JRPG - FF III, Pinball - Revenge of the Rob-o-Bot.

That gets a bit ridiculous after a bit, no?

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If you go to the playstore or appstore now and search for "Pinball" you will get pages and pages of results. In that mix there will be marble games, etc because the developers would have used keyword tags including the word "Pinball".

So what does an average user looking for a Pinball game do or an Apple employee coming up with a list of good Pinball games. They scroll through that long long list reading the titles and looking at the icons. Rob-o-bot's name nor icon indicate it's a Pinball game, so people skip past it. You NEED to sell yourself.

Pinball is Pinball, so adding the word to the title isn't ridiculous and will work wonders, believe me.

an ox said:

It's not just about tagging the games or putting the genre in the title, it seems fairly arbitrary how Apple choose what to put in their themed sections. They opened up a Retro section a while ago and although I had 8 retrogame style apps out there, all of them well-reviewed on sites like Toucharcade, Pocket Gamer and Tap magazine, for ages they simply didn't put any of mine in. A couple of months ago they finally added one of them. There doesn't seem to be any sure way to get an app listed, you just have to hope someone at Apple notices I guess.

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Did you just post it and hoped somebody notices, or actually tried to market your games? Apple probably noticed it when someone showed it to them.

The gold rush era is over - now it's like every other market - if you put it up, they will NOT come. You must make people aware of your app somehow. Like anything else on the Internet - if you don't tell people or advertise, no one will find out.

It is a bit sad that the average consumer looking for a pinball game will probably pick one of the lousy ones, if they go by sale or comments. There is only a handful worth getting and most of the others are complete garbage

SilverBalls said:

Major lost opportunity and it is ColorMonkey's fault. If you don't put the word Pinball in the game title how are consumers and Apple supposed to find the game when you hit search. I mentioned this in their thread here and I have seen that others have posted this elsewhere.

It's a real shame as it knocks spots of all the other sims, except PA of course which is equally good.

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For the sake of research, I searched for "pinball" on the App Store to see if Revenge of the Rob-O-Bot came up. I gave up before finding it when searching all iPad apps, but found it quickly when I restricted the search to paid apps. This makes its exclusion all the more baffling—who can we contact at Apple to have this oversight corrected?

karl said:

It is a bit sad that the average consumer looking for a pinball game will probably pick one of the lousy ones, if they go by sale or comments. There is only a handful worth getting and most of the others are complete garbage

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I can't imagine how frustrated Colormonkey must be. They really have a fantastic pinball sim. Rock solid and feels great- it's my most played table of any pinball sim. Having said that apps don't away and this won't date for many years so it can still take off in terms of sales.

Worf said:

Did you just post it and hoped somebody notices, or actually tried to market your games? Apple probably noticed it when someone showed it to them.

The gold rush era is over - now it's like every other market - if you put it up, they will NOT come. You must make people aware of your app somehow. Like anything else on the Internet - if you don't tell people or advertise, no one will find out.

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Uhh yeah, I am aware of that. The games were reviewed on all the main sites, some of them got frontpage previews on TouchArcade, most of them got put in New and Noteworthy by Apple themselves. Not saying I couldn't use more marketing, only that them knowing about a game does not equal them featuring it in one of their special categories. Clearly Rob-o-Bot should be in pinball category without a doubt, we just have to hope someone at Apple goes "oh hey that should be in there" and puts it in.

Worf said:

Did you just post it and hoped somebody notices, or actually tried to market your games? Apple probably noticed it when someone showed it to them.

The gold rush era is over - now it's like every other market - if you put it up, they will NOT come. You must make people aware of your app somehow. Like anything else on the Internet - if you don't tell people or advertise, no one will find out.

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Worf, look up Jeff Minter and realise who you are giving game-business advice to

Well, it's not as if he advertises that he's Jeff Minter. Heck, he doesn't even use "llama" in his handle.

No llamas, no YAK, what's this world coming to?

Anyway, anyone who can make me not regret owning an Atari Jaguar is all good in my book.

KithKanan said:

No llamas, no YAK, what's this world coming to?

Anyway, anyone who can make me not regret owning an Atari Jaguar is all good in my book.

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I bought some of Jeff's games on an Atari. I remember meeting him once at a UK based Micro fair - it might have been a Personal Computer World show - he had a giant screen playing Attack of the Mutant Camels on it. This was around the mid 80s and I not sure what technology it was in those days but it was the first time I had seen something like it. Great to have him in these forums.

Impressive profile, but honestly, other than Centipede, I have never heard about his games at all.

So I do apologize for that.

However, still doesn't compensate for well, not recognizing ANY title on the Wikipedia page... (though during the 80s and 90s, it was all about begging the parents for software so...).