First things first: it's a pinball game, so most of you probably won't want to read much further.
For the two or three of you still interested, it's a SCEI internal title, created by the Fantavision designer and with some other Fanta alumni on board. Kanetaka's obsession with pseudo-70s kitch cutscenes continues here, which you'll ether find charmingly offbeat or grating: I tend towards the former, and it does fit in with the pinball theme, broken Engrish and all.
There are four tables/stages, each containing upwards of six screens' worth of play areas. Everything is rendered in realtime 3d and is graphically rich, with some truly lush colour work - the third stage, Optics, is aptly some of the most impressive visuals I've seen on the PS2. Ball physics and flipper response are good, and controls (all four of them) are customisable. Music runs a bizarre course through 70's surf lounge, calypso, and electronica but is at worst bearable and at best great.
Each stage is riddled with mini-games above and beyond the usual pinball targets, almost overwhelmingly so; and many sections have fairly brutal time limits to achieve objectives in, which can make the first few plays a little frustrating. Only the first stage is available for play proper until it's completed, with the second and third available to sample on a five-minute time limit, and the fourth locked away.
There's a free play mode, but it's only available for the stages you've unlocked, and the way the first stage is structured makes even the score attack mode like a time attack, as the inbuilt time limits still apply. It would have been nice for a free play to be just that, or perhaps to have thrown in an "ordinary" pinball table to play on, but they're minor niggles (and possibly unlockables).
There's a set of two-player games, again locked until the corresponding stages have been reached - the only one available to begin with is "Pinball Football", a table football game with an array of bumpers instead of players, which you globally raise or lower to force the ball across the pitch into the opponent's goal. It's got novelty fun value, but the pace and lack of immediate control makes it a little too random to keep a second player entertained, something I think will probably be true of the other 2P games as well.
Thus far (about a night's play, and not having made a dent on progression) I'm more than happy with it. It's arguably worth the price of admission for the packaging alone, it's enthusiastically barmy, good-natured and fun, and if you like pinball titles you're not exactly spoiled for choice on the PS2 anyway. That said, its biggest failing might be trying to straddle being a love story to old-school pinball and overegging the pudding by about 10,000 eggs: all the bonus sections, boss fights and coin-collecting may deter those looking for a straight pinball machine, but just being a pinball game is enough to kill off interest outside its niche.
For the two or three of you still interested, it's a SCEI internal title, created by the Fantavision designer and with some other Fanta alumni on board. Kanetaka's obsession with pseudo-70s kitch cutscenes continues here, which you'll ether find charmingly offbeat or grating: I tend towards the former, and it does fit in with the pinball theme, broken Engrish and all.
There are four tables/stages, each containing upwards of six screens' worth of play areas. Everything is rendered in realtime 3d and is graphically rich, with some truly lush colour work - the third stage, Optics, is aptly some of the most impressive visuals I've seen on the PS2. Ball physics and flipper response are good, and controls (all four of them) are customisable. Music runs a bizarre course through 70's surf lounge, calypso, and electronica but is at worst bearable and at best great.
Each stage is riddled with mini-games above and beyond the usual pinball targets, almost overwhelmingly so; and many sections have fairly brutal time limits to achieve objectives in, which can make the first few plays a little frustrating. Only the first stage is available for play proper until it's completed, with the second and third available to sample on a five-minute time limit, and the fourth locked away.
There's a free play mode, but it's only available for the stages you've unlocked, and the way the first stage is structured makes even the score attack mode like a time attack, as the inbuilt time limits still apply. It would have been nice for a free play to be just that, or perhaps to have thrown in an "ordinary" pinball table to play on, but they're minor niggles (and possibly unlockables).
There's a set of two-player games, again locked until the corresponding stages have been reached - the only one available to begin with is "Pinball Football", a table football game with an array of bumpers instead of players, which you globally raise or lower to force the ball across the pitch into the opponent's goal. It's got novelty fun value, but the pace and lack of immediate control makes it a little too random to keep a second player entertained, something I think will probably be true of the other 2P games as well.
Thus far (about a night's play, and not having made a dent on progression) I'm more than happy with it. It's arguably worth the price of admission for the packaging alone, it's enthusiastically barmy, good-natured and fun, and if you like pinball titles you're not exactly spoiled for choice on the PS2 anyway. That said, its biggest failing might be trying to straddle being a love story to old-school pinball and overegging the pudding by about 10,000 eggs: all the bonus sections, boss fights and coin-collecting may deter those looking for a straight pinball machine, but just being a pinball game is enough to kill off interest outside its niche.
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