Reviews

For a 16K effort dating from 1983, this pinball game from Sagittarian Software is pretty playable and addictive.

Whereas many pinball games tend to use a white ball on a dark playfield, this game has it the other way round as you propell a black ball around a very lightly coloured cyan and white play area.

As pinball tables are much taller (longer) than they are wide, they don't naturally fit well on a TV set. Some pinball games get around this by leaving a bit of unused space on either side of the screen and later 16-bit games famously used vertical scrolling.

Here, the chosen solution was to effectively use a double width table which looks rather like two tables joined together, having four flippers in total. In this case, the approach works pleasingly well and at least the entire screen is put to good use.

The animation of the small 8x8 ball sprite is very fast and smooth and the "physics engine" whilst suitably basic appears well implemented.

The game features the usual assortment of bumpers and bonus modes but does seem slightly simplistic when held up against pinball games of later years, certainly it lacks more advanced features and modes.

The power of the plunger is fortunately user controllable, and depends on the duration that the "launch" key is held down. This proves very useful in initially launching the ball to an approximate area of the upper screen.

There is no TILT in this game although it does have a FREEBALL mode that can be activated.

You'll possibly want to play it until the bonus word "SAGITTARIAN" is completely lit up which is quite satisfying to do.

So although we have the choice of far more elaborate and graphically impressive pinball games, even on the speccy, I find this one a quite enjoyable early effort, even today.

Seen with today's eyes it would look rather basic, like a pinball table from the 60's, but Sagittarian Pinball is one of the most realistic and accurate pinball simulators you can find for the Spectrum - and it runs on 16Ks!

THE BEST PINBALL GAME FOR THE ZX SPECTRUM.

This to my knowledge was one of the first pinball games on the ZX Spectrum and it's widely regarded as one of the best. It's fast, colourful, realistic to a certain degree, the ball physics are a little bit off and seems to have a mind of it's own at times but still it's a fine example of a proper(ish) pinball game and it's all in 16K!

Definately worth a look.

A nice pinball game, in 16K, and quite addictive.
Its short on surprises, but was a game I came back to quite a bit back in 83. Because of its focus on delivering the simple things well it still retains some playability now.

Saw this mentioned in the reviews for Macadam Bumper and couldn't believe I never reviewed it myself. Though a memorable game it is not without its faults, the ball physics are still a bit funny and the flippers are much wider than they should and thus this messes up the collision detection. But saying that, it's still a far better game than Macadam Bumper and still quite a worthy pinball game given its age.

A very good pinball game for the Spectrum, coded in 1983 in only 16k of memory.

It features four flipper bats which gives it an original and cool touch.

With no sophisticated graphics, the classic pinball sounds and an accurate physics of the ball when moving are enough features to make it an addictive game to spend hours with, one of the best pinballs for the Spectrum.