Pinball? Famous?

Another one bites the dust! This time it was Pinball Hall of Fame: The Gottlieb Collection for Gamecube. It's a bunch of pinball tables! Alrighty then!

Pinball Hall of Fame: The Excessively Long-Named Gottlieb Collection is an amalgamation of several old-school (and I stress old) pinball games all rolled into one (get it?). It includes tables from all the way back in the 50s, to some that are a little less stupid. I kid. But seriously, compared to current video game pinball tables, some of these are lame.

And I guess, there's a reason for that. They're trying to conserve the nostalgia of the older tables. They have no music, they have really strange themes and backgrounds, and I kid you not, one of them has a score counter that can go no higher than 9,999. Wow.

In all seriouslessness, though, some of these tables aren't too bad. There's one from 1993 with a golf theme. That one's pretty good. And really, none of them are terrible. In fact, the physics are, for the most part, quite accurate to real life.

But we haven't even got to my favorite part yet. You can enter cheat codes. And one of those codes lets you play forever. How amazing is that? Yeah, I know. Cheat codes are for cheaters. No duh. But I think that's about the only way to unlock everything. Which I have done.

Ok, so, in addition to the pinball tables, they have a few old-style arcade machines, like the love machine, that randomly selects how much in love you are with the other person. I recommend not playing this game with a sibling of the same gender.

Also included is a Playboy table. Seriously! But it's not what you think. It's Playboy as in rich person who gambles, not Playboy like Women-As-Objects Monthly. It's not so much a pinball table as it is a table with holes in it that you launch a pinball into. Each hole is marked by a playing card, so you try to get good cards (as if you can control it) and get the best hand. Yup.

So, in conclusion, I believe there's a reason this one is a bargain bin title. It's pinball, yeah. And I love pinball. But after games like Metroid Prime and Pokemon themed pinball, it's hard to go back to stuff like this.

Pros:

• Classic pinball tables
• Realistic physics
• Bonus arcade games

Cons:

• BOOOOORING! (sometimes)
• Annoying announcer
• There's a scary monkey on the 'Central Park' table

This game has earned a Blatantly Biased: