Pro-Pinball: Timeshock

Discount Price: $10.43

Accessories:
PC Gamer (1-year)	Games for Windows: The Official Magazine

Customer Reviews:

The best pinball game to date [Posted on 2002-12-13]
Pinball simply doesn't get better than Timeshock! Sharp graphics, great sound, amazing "plot", and seemingless endless play and goals, this game has it all. Not only is the pinball board itself great, you have the interactive games that you can activate as well, with graphics that are astounding in their simplicity.

I'm a pinball fanatic so I have a nice collection of pinball games. However, if I were to have only one pinball game, this would be the one.

Rollin' Silver Through The Ages [Posted on 2003-07-01]
I gotta admit, Pro Pinball: TimeShock! is amazingly true-to-life: the games tend to be frustratingly short and low-scoring, and the ball never quite goes where you want it to, just like real pinball!

But seriously, I am amazed by how closely this baby imitates its three-dimensional brethren. And I'm not just talkin' bout the painstakingly detailed and amazingly realistic graphics, either. The ball travels around in a way that you'd expect it to-- though not necessarily in a way you WANT it to-- as if it was the real deal. It even gets hung up on the more remote parts of the machine on rare occasions, and may require a bit of a nudge to dislodge. Just don't `nudge' it too hard, or you'll activate the TILT function and lose the ball you'd intended to keep alive! Also, sometimes the silver sphere can get trapped in the gap between the third flipper and the right wall. But the real kicker that seals the deal: I've noticed times when the sphere goes `airborne', and I can actually hear it hitting the `glass'! Now, THAT'S payin' attention to detail! The only thing missin' is the bumps you feel as the silver orb caroms off of the flippers and between the pop-jets. Timeshock! even makes that annoyingly loud `snap!' whenever you earn a free game!

Please note, however, that the action on the table ain't necessarily the only action around. There's also a Video Mode where you use your flippers to maneuver your time vehicle down a tunnel. The object is to avoid the mines and pick up all of the reward icons. If you collect all of the reward icons in the first two levels, you win an Extra Ball. You can only hit three mines pre level-- if you hit a fourth, the video game is over and the table game resumes. I've done a pretty good job of mastering the first two levels of the Video Mode- I manage to grab the extra ball about two-thirds of the time. This game usually pops up when you start play on Ball 3-look for an orange light on the floor in front of the big green crystal; if it's on, then Video Mode is ready for activation-- and shoot the hole right in front of the crystal.

Of course, there's also a few side games that involve shooting the ball through the system of ramps in order to win various artifacts that can help up your score. These various games modes commence when the sphere is shot down the side-flipper ramp. When the side game starts, the player has a minute to shoot the ball through all of the lighted ramps in order to win the round. I rarely do well at these matches-the ball usually drops outta play before my time is up!

There's four table views one can choose from including looking straight down from above. But for me, the `standard' three-quarters view (the way it'd look if it were a real machine, and I was standin' up and playin' it) is the only way to go. Hey, call me old-fashioned if ya wanna, but that's the way I play it...

`Late

INCREDIBLE! [Posted on 2004-03-01]
This is the pinball game of pinball. If you ever wanted to play a challenging, addicting, sometimes fustrating pinball game...This is it. Once you play it and learn more about it, you just won't get enough. It would take me all night to write all the great details about this table...lol. Just read the other reviews. I just wish they had more pinball games like this out there.....(think i might have to wait forever.) On a scale of 1 to 10.....THIS IS A TWENTY!

READ THIS BEFORE BUYING TIMESHOCK [Posted on 2006-04-01]
Timeshock is the ultimate pinball simulation (this is NOT an exaggeration). Not only is the pinball table and balls hyper-realistic, but Timeshock has great music and fantastic game play. And even though this game is almost ten years old (!!), the graphics are absolutely phenomenal, and any current (up to the year 2006) pinball games utterly pale in comparison. WARNING: However, a warning about this title: Make sure you purchase the ORIGINAL Timeshock CD as sold by Empire Interactive only, as this is the one and only version of Timeshock that I know of that includes the music sound tracks. All other Timeshocks (in pinball CD game compilations, such as that of the "Gamefest" or "Pinball Madness" CD series) disks that are re-packaged and re-sold by other companies exclude the music on the CD for a reason that is unclear. (How important is music while playing Timeshock? Well, try watching your favorite movie with the sound off, and then you'll get the idea how important music is...). Another issue is that on some systems -- no matter how fast or modern the computer -- the game can become unplayable due to jerky (and/or blurred) ball movement. This can be fixed by: 1. Make sure you have patched the game with update V1.07 (available on the Empire Interactive Website); 2. Turn off "screen flipping" in the Timeshock setup menu; 3. Defragment your hard drive; 4. then, if all that does not work: Reduce the amount of hardware acceleration (NOT your video resolution) on both your accelerated graphics card and on your sound card to the lowest slider level, and then start to increase the acceleration to just below the point where the ball hitches during movement. Now sit back and enjoy Pro Pinball Timeshock: It is the greatest pinball game that ever was, and that ever will be...

Great Pinball Game [Posted on 2006-08-28]
Great Pinball Game -- many objectives to complete, good sounds & music, a fun PC pinball experience.

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