Space Pinball Prototype Dumped

Another World

Emulate the Planet!
OP
Former Staff
Joined
Jan 3, 2008
Messages
10,579
Trophies
2
Age
48
Location
From Where???
Website
wiki.gbatemp.net
XP
5,535
Country
Colombia
gallery_111084_186_42317.jpg

Just before Xmas the dreams of many VB gamers came true with a working dump of Space Pinball. The dump is of a complete game which features 5 unreleased pinball tables. The tables are completely different from those released in the final version of the game, known as Galactic Pinball. In this regard, Space Pinball is considered its own game and not a prototype of Galactic Pinball. Reportedly the only missing aspect is the highscore feature. The ROM has been successfully tested on both emulation and actual hardware.



Remember, never ask for ROMs at GBAtemp!
 

funem

Retro Powered..
Member
Joined
Nov 4, 2006
Messages
1,161
Trophies
1
Location
out of nowhere....
XP
478
Country
United Kingdom
More info taken from another website, cant list it as they may host roms, (I couldnt tell for sure, better safe than sorry)

When you start up the game, you see an early version of the adjustment screen, after which the game jumps directly to the title. No Precaution or Automatic Pause yet, but that wouldn't have made much sense anyway in an early exhibition software, would it? While the title screen looks a bit different with the different game logo, the following stage select screen has barely been changed for "Galactic Pinball", there are also five options which can be selected by rotating them. Instead of 4 tables and the highscores there are 5 tables in this prototype, though, and here at latest, it is becoming very interesting.
None of the 5 available tables can be found in the final version of the game like they are in the prototype, but some still remind of "Galactic Pinball" more or less. I will try to describe every table in the following lines, but due to them not carrying names, I'll go clockwise:

Table 1:
A confusingly looking table, the playfield is bordered by dots. There's an area on top with 3 diamond like bumpers and box with a star on it which blocks one of the ways to two tunnels above this area when hitting. Those tunnels lead to a mini playfield under the main one. There are two variants depending on which tunnel you hit. On one you can only make blocks appear with the L and R buttons, the other it is not interactive at all, the ball just bounces around in there and comes out again with a cool puck-hits-the-player's face animation. On the top right there's an alley, which is blocked at first, but on the second hit, it leads to table 2.

Table 2:
This table has three satellites flying over it, which act as kind of a slot machine, which can be activated by shooting the ball over a blinking dot in the middle. Three stars mean an extra ball, which does not make sense, since there's no puck counter. A tunnel on the left gets you a bonus. This is the only table on which I could not find a way to proceed to another table.

Table 3:
This table CAN be found the final version, not selectable though, but as a bonus table in "Cosmic". Well, sort of, it looks similar to it, but has depth with several layers of bricks, which border the playfield, going down in to the screen. It has 30 stars on the screen, which you have to eliminate, but those are not moving, but spinning around themselves, and they're massive, so you have to hit them instead of just moving throught them. When all stars are gone, you move to table 4.

Table 4:
There are three "springs" in the middle which make one or two ramps of rings (like on the "Alien" table in "Galactic Pinball") appear for about 20 seconds when they're all hit, there are three different combinations of ramps. Getting the ball to move through them, brings you 1 million points for the first time in one "phase", 2 million for the second and so on! On the top right there's a small tunnel, through which you can shoot the ball out of the playfield, when there's no ramp of rings at that moment. On the left is a small building or something like that, on which a rocket is build up every time you shoot the ball into it. After the third hit, the rocket is ready, on the fourth, you fly to table 5. Three bumbers on the top, and a small alley on the top left which gets you a bonus when you shoot the ball in it complete this table.

Table 5:
This is a very early version of the table "UFO" from "Galactic Pinball". It has an UFO sitting in the top middle and little UFOs (2 bigger and a group of 3 very small ones) coming from a tunnel and moving from left to right. When you hit the very small ones, a door opens at the huge UFO, which leads to table 1. You can make the huge UFO spin around by shooting the ball into the gap between it and the playfield border, and there's a counter which shows how many seconds it spun in total. Shooting the ball all the way round the UFO makes it rise and reveal three bumbers with something in the middle, which resets the counter when you hit in it. The counter and UFO thing does not make sense as it seems. The whole table seems to be only an unfinished filler like number 3.

So when playing "Space Pinball", you're constantly changing tables, as they're all linked together clockwise. While the tables in "Galactic Pinball" had more interactive stuff, it looks the developers experimented a lot with the VB's 3-D capabilites in the beginning.
Also, we finally know, why there's no "puck" counter in "Space Pinball"; the game just jumps back to the stage select screen when you lose a ball, now it makes sense that there is no save function, also since the points seem to keep adding even if you lose your ball and restart the table.

Music and sounds in this prototype all seem to be familiar from to the final product. Also, the ball physics have not changed much after this version, the only thing I recognized was that the ball sometimes bounces back very weirdly, especially near the paddles.

This all makes me think of "Space Pinball" more as some sort of technical demo for the public, all tables are very basic at best, some are just fillers. I can understand why people didn't like the game that much at the tradeshows. Overall it is far more interesting to us collectors and VB fanatics than for the average gamer.
 

mrgone

old man
Member
GBAtemp Patron
Joined
Nov 6, 2002
Messages
1,330
Trophies
3
Age
45
Location
close to the oktoberfest
XP
2,877
Country
Germany
Waiting for a VB emulator for 3DS..
If it'll ever happen.

i'm still hoping for a psx emulator which supports the wiimote as lightgun.
I think you mean NES emulator, because otherwise that sentence makes no sense whatsoever.

really? why?
didn't u know there were lightguns for psx?
didn't you know there is a psx emu for the wii?

but both things we wish for seem to me very unlikely

although the nes lightgun support for wiii would also be neat
 

Site & Scene News

Popular threads in this forum

General chit-chat
Help Users
    SylverReZ @ SylverReZ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLN9qrJ8ESs