What Video Game Did I Play Yesterday?

Pinball (Intellivision Flashback)

August 16th, 2022

Right now, I'm in the midst of a few scheduled-activity-free days off to finish my vacation, so I did a little site work this morning. Basically, I set up a few game pages and added alphabetization headers to my games' index page, which I felt like helped a lot here. Eventually, I want to have a second game index, sorted by system rather than title, but I'll worry about that later.

Anyway, yesterday, I got all the way home from my vacation and proceeded to do almost absolutely nothing. While I was at my mom's house, though, she asked if I wanted an old Intellivision mini console, which was more exciting than it should have been! I hadn't ever played Intellivision before, and I think the controllers are neat, so I was interested in getting it set up, trying it out, and adding it to my artillery of decorative retro games.

The first thing I tried on it was Pinball, because I like pinball games and am nothing if not predictable. For last night, it was also the last thing I tried because I kind of got glued to it. I'd expected the graphics to be about Atari 2600 level, so I was pleasantly surprised at the level of detail and vibrancy of the colors when I got the game running. It's a pretty harsh pinball game, though! The chance of whiffing a ball at launch, before you get your first chance to hit it, seems way higher than it does in other video pinballs I've played, and I felt like the flippers didn't have the effect on the ball's path I expected, which is understandable, considering the game's age. Those complaints in mind, I sat and played it for 45 minutes. My scores went up as I played, so it does seem possible to get the hang of this. With all the pinball options I have on hand, though, I don't know that this'll become a standby for me. That's not a diss against this game at all, it is just how it is.