7:46 Hey, it's Samus Aran! To access the Samus mini game... Hit the ball into the top-right of the Cosmic screen. Start the "Bumper Clash" sequence and hit all the bumpers. If done correctly, the bumpers will be replaced with [S] symbols from Super Metroid, and the puck will turn into the ship, along with a spoken "Let's Go, Samus. Then it will switch into a sort of Galaga/Space Invaders style shooting bit, complete with a Virtual Boy music rendition of "Flight of Aran".
Dunno if it's terribly relevant but Epic Pinball's tables were probably split up to fit the episode model used by other shareware at the time, where you could buy the episodes (usually 3-4 per game) individually or as a big pack which would be the full version. Wikipedia is a bit confusing but it sounds like the price for the whole game was 45$ and in 1995 the CD version with all of the tables included was released. I wouldn't call them add-on packs but that's probably in the eye of the beholder.
This game oozes charm. Nice music, great visuals, fun themes and gimmicks. As someone who plays a lot of real pinball these days, the aspect of the game that has held up the least are the physics, but it's still entirely possible to get used to it. Seeing the Samus mini game for the first time when I was a kid was great, being a huge Metroid fan at the time. Also, that asteroid mini-game demonstrated in the video looks fantastic in 3D. I really appreciate how 3D aspects were implemented very tastefully in this one.
Knowing that this system failed as quickly as it did it's almost a little melancholy to see how progressive some of its games were. For the time, this game looks fantastic and the parallax effect you reference at 4:30 is really impressive. Makes you wonder where it would've ended up with two, three years of games under its belt
I'm not sure it was THAT advanced, 1995 was two years after Doom was released and the same year as Descent came out, a bit of parallaxing wasn't really going to blow any minds at that time.
I wasn't aware of the Super Metroid connection. I wonder if that link made the (very good) Metroid Prime Pinball for DS seem like less of a logical leap a decade later. The two games don't seem to share any developer DNA that I know of (outside of Kenji Yamamoto doing the music for both), but I wonder if Galactic Pinball planted the seeds of that weird little project.
The Samus Aran mini shooting game is really neat. It plays a bit like Galaga when there are only a few of them left on screen. It's a shame he couldn't get it in the vid. I wonder if Nintendo had considered making this a Metroid Pinball game at any point. I also love Metroid Pinball on the DS. It's in my top 5 favorite games on the system.
It surprises me you had a hard time finding the metroid minigame as thats why i clicked on the video, I thought it was more common than you said. This was one of my favourite games in the Virtual Boy that a friend bought some years back with a bunch of games, and I remember having an easy time triggering the minigame and enjoying it a lot, and loving the music.
It's interesting to consider the rumours that suggested the early Virtual Boy prototypes were full colour. It might not have saved the system, but it would have given a marginally different impression. Supposedly, it was reduced to monochrome to save costs, and red was used because it was the cheapest option available...
This is one of the few VB games I never owned. I have played it though, because I rented it back in the day. I've just never been a big fan of pinball, so I passed on this one. Looking forward to the next episode though! I loved Teleroboxer!
1:19 Is that Gus Rodríguez interviewing Yokoi? Longtime Club Nintendo (the official Nintendo magazine in México) editor and onetime host of the Nintendomanía TV show Gus Rodríguez?
@@JeremyParish Yeah, I'm sure I saw that specific interview back in the 90's when it first aired in the TV show. It feels odd to see it again as historical footage. Gus is still one of the most recognizable gaming media personalities in México. You ever met?
@@JeremyParish Yup, that's Gus Rodriguez of Nintendomania fame (the only channel who featured a long gameplay of Dragon Hopper, one of the VB's holy grails)
Afraid not-I don't know a whole lot of international game journalists aside from the UK-based folks I've worked with. Events tend to be region-specific so there aren't a lot of opportunities to meet foreign colleagues.
I loved my Virtual Boy, and I adore pinball games, but my feelings on Galactic Pinball were mixed. My main problem was that it felt like the physics weren't especially dynamic. If you hit the ball at a certain point on the flipper, it would fly off in the same direction every time regardless of the incoming angle. I'm used to that sort of thing in breakout, but with pinball it's weird. I did really dig the 3D effects though.
When it comes to Galactic Pinball's contemporaries, I would also include Sierra's excellent "3D Ultra Pinball" (which coincidentally was also sci-fi themed).
Someone needs to put together a comprehensive chronological list of video pinball games, because I had a hard time finding firm info for that portion of this episode. (Someone who is not me.)
Pinball Dreams and Pinball Fantasies had been out for a couple of years when this came out and I've spent way more hours playing those than this one, but maybe I've misjudged the game somewhat, I felt the levels were a little bit empty and because of that got a bit boring after a while, I still think it was a good game. This and Teleroboxer are the two games I've enjoyed most on a real Virtual Boy. (only played Wario through emulation).
IMHO, Mario Tennis was a good choice for pack-in. It did a good job of giving that 3D sensation at a time when 3D was still a new idea and showed off what the system was capable of. While it seems primitive by today's standards, I remember spending a lot of hours plugged into the headset playing Mario Tennis. As good as Galactic Pinball was, it just didn't matter. Nintendo's marketing push for the console was so underwhelming that most players only got the console once it was on clearance. (Myself included.) By then it was too late to revive the system, no matter how impressive it was. Worse yet, most players had the same two games I had at the time: Mario Tennis and Red Alarm. Red Alert was so popular due to its promise of 3D wireframe graphics. Red Alarm wasn't as impressive or playable as one might like, leaving players like myself to go back to Mario Tennis in confusion. In fact, the Virtual Boy may have been better off had Red Alarm never been released. (Even though I still have a soft spot for it...)
was really excited to try this game out when I finally had access to a Virtual Boy and while I like a lot about it, the way the pinball(puck) hitches and gets slightly stuck on the flippers really hindered my enjoyment. It makes timing shots feel so unreliable, I'm surprised that got no mention in this review
4:30 Could you include more side-by-side footage like this in future videos, for those of us who know how to look at stereograms? I mean, you're making sacrifices in the video conversion no matter what, so why not do it in a way that allows some of your viewers to see the 3D?
No, not really. I can't capture both VB images myself, and I try to minimize my use of borrowed footage. If you really need it, there's plenty of stereo capture available for viewing on TH-cam a single search away.
The 3D SBS footage is cool, but probably not ideal for this style of video.. You'd be crossing and uncrossing your eyes a bit too much. :P That being said, there high quality SBS 3D videos for just about every released Virtual Boy game. Just search for Virtual Boy 3D or 3D playthrough and they should come up. I used to watch some of them on the 3DS, which was actually very neat, but either Nintendo or Google has since made that impossible. Now it just says that your 3DS has encountered an error and must reboot. So annoying. :(
As always Jeremy, this is incredibly well done but unless there is a way I can play Virtual boy games without using a virtual boy I will never be able to play it due to issues with my eyesight and light sensitivity. Keep up the great series as always. It's always great to hear of games that are surprisingly good on this system.
You know, given when the system launched, and it's capabilities otherwise, the sound chip seems exceptionally primitive... Really seems like an odd choice for a system whose nearest contemporary was the n64...
3:01 The filter you're using to emulate the virtual boy's actual color is pretty off. It's giving the brightest color a pink hue, when it needs to map more to #FF0000 or bright red. Loving the series so far, thanks for your amazing contribution to video game history.
Yeah, as a former VB owner, this is something that I've noticed, and agree, something like 255, 0, 0 RGB is more accurate for filtering "white" pixels to the real -- really red -- thing.
Apparently pinball was already invented before the French revolution and Marie Antoinette and her brother used to play. The inventor was nearly executed by suspicion of creating gambling machine. But as he won it wasn't gambling apparently,and thankfully due to that stroke of luck we have video games today..!
7:46 Hey, it's Samus Aran!
To access the Samus mini game...
Hit the ball into the top-right of the Cosmic screen. Start the "Bumper Clash" sequence and hit all the bumpers. If done correctly, the bumpers will be replaced with [S] symbols from Super Metroid, and the puck will turn into the ship, along with a spoken "Let's Go, Samus. Then it will switch into a sort of Galaga/Space Invaders style shooting bit, complete with a Virtual Boy music rendition of "Flight of Aran".
gotta love that oh-so-subtle mid-video FlipGrip shout-out.
Nothin' subtle about it, mon frere.
Woot! I bought on for me and my friend for Xmas. Worth the $12.
Oh no, you´re giving me a reason for actually wanting a Virtual Boy!
You need the Hyperflash
Dunno if it's terribly relevant but Epic Pinball's tables were probably split up to fit the episode model used by other shareware at the time, where you could buy the episodes (usually 3-4 per game) individually or as a big pack which would be the full version. Wikipedia is a bit confusing but it sounds like the price for the whole game was 45$ and in 1995 the CD version with all of the tables included was released. I wouldn't call them add-on packs but that's probably in the eye of the beholder.
When I rented the VB from blockbuster, this was a must play game, my friends and I loved the 3-D gimmicks and even ignored the terrible eye-strain...
Highly pleased with the Rush shout-outs. And if I can ever swayed back into console gaming, I will totally get a Flip Grip.
This game oozes charm. Nice music, great visuals, fun themes and gimmicks. As someone who plays a lot of real pinball these days, the aspect of the game that has held up the least are the physics, but it's still entirely possible to get used to it. Seeing the Samus mini game for the first time when I was a kid was great, being a huge Metroid fan at the time. Also, that asteroid mini-game demonstrated in the video looks fantastic in 3D. I really appreciate how 3D aspects were implemented very tastefully in this one.
You absolute madman. After "Doubles vision" for Mario Tennis, I said "NO WAY" to a pun in the title of comparable thoughtfulness.
Well played.
Knowing that this system failed as quickly as it did it's almost a little melancholy to see how progressive some of its games were. For the time, this game looks fantastic and the parallax effect you reference at 4:30 is really impressive. Makes you wonder where it would've ended up with two, three years of games under its belt
I'm not sure it was THAT advanced, 1995 was two years after Doom was released and the same year as Descent came out, a bit of parallaxing wasn't really going to blow any minds at that time.
I wasn't aware of the Super Metroid connection. I wonder if that link made the (very good) Metroid Prime Pinball for DS seem like less of a logical leap a decade later. The two games don't seem to share any developer DNA that I know of (outside of Kenji Yamamoto doing the music for both), but I wonder if Galactic Pinball planted the seeds of that weird little project.
The Samus Aran mini shooting game is really neat. It plays a bit like Galaga when there are only a few of them left on screen.
It's a shame he couldn't get it in the vid. I wonder if Nintendo had considered making this a Metroid Pinball game at any point.
I also love Metroid Pinball on the DS. It's in my top 5 favorite games on the system.
This is legit a criminally underrated title.
It surprises me you had a hard time finding the metroid minigame as thats why i clicked on the video, I thought it was more common than you said. This was one of my favourite games in the Virtual Boy that a friend bought some years back with a bunch of games, and I remember having an easy time triggering the minigame and enjoying it a lot, and loving the music.
Thanks for giving me a shout out! - To get the Samus mini game - you need to break all the bumpers then hit the Metroid logo
I will always love virtual boy more than any oddball system. So unique I love it
This make me wish Pinball gets a "Tetris Effect" treatment.
This game also has an absolutely bangin' soundtrack
Unexpected but great Evangelion reference at the end.
It's interesting to consider the rumours that suggested the early Virtual Boy prototypes were full colour.
It might not have saved the system, but it would have given a marginally different impression.
Supposedly, it was reduced to monochrome to save costs, and red was used because it was the cheapest option available...
It’s a Metroid game for me; with this game in mind, Metroid Prime Pinball makes a lot more sense.
Awesome job!
Just wanted to say I love all your videos man!
Just came in here to say well played on the Rush reference in the title.
*I must help my VB stand up straight*
I see red
Hurts my head
Couldn't we play something else instead?
This is one of the few VB games I never owned. I have played it though, because I rented it back in the day. I've just never been a big fan of pinball, so I passed on this one. Looking forward to the next episode though! I loved Teleroboxer!
I really love this game!!!! One of my favorite title on the VB.
1:19 Is that Gus Rodríguez interviewing Yokoi? Longtime Club Nintendo (the official Nintendo magazine in México) editor and onetime host of the Nintendomanía TV show Gus Rodríguez?
Yes, that seems to be. I am not super familiar with ’90s Latin American video game programming, but I do believe that is correct.
@@JeremyParish Yeah, I'm sure I saw that specific interview back in the 90's when it first aired in the TV show. It feels odd to see it again as historical footage.
Gus is still one of the most recognizable gaming media personalities in México. You ever met?
@@JeremyParish Yup, that's Gus Rodriguez of Nintendomania fame (the only channel who featured a long gameplay of Dragon Hopper, one of the VB's holy grails)
Afraid not-I don't know a whole lot of international game journalists aside from the UK-based folks I've worked with. Events tend to be region-specific so there aren't a lot of opportunities to meet foreign colleagues.
@@KGRAMR Wow, I'll have to find that.
I feel like by the end of this series I'm going to be sad how many solid games the Virtual Boy took down with it
i remember the music in this was dope af
I loved my Virtual Boy, and I adore pinball games, but my feelings on Galactic Pinball were mixed. My main problem was that it felt like the physics weren't especially dynamic. If you hit the ball at a certain point on the flipper, it would fly off in the same direction every time regardless of the incoming angle. I'm used to that sort of thing in breakout, but with pinball it's weird. I did really dig the 3D effects though.
When it comes to Galactic Pinball's contemporaries, I would also include Sierra's excellent "3D Ultra Pinball" (which coincidentally was also sci-fi themed).
Someone needs to put together a comprehensive chronological list of video pinball games, because I had a hard time finding firm info for that portion of this episode. (Someone who is not me.)
Man, I love video pinball games, but there is just such a deluge of them in the 90s that such a list would be a hell of a lift!
7:45 Hi Samus
I dig the low poly art style, aged pretty well in my opinion and that tilting of the table is a pretty smart design choice.
4:30 Some quick cross eye stereoscopic 3D here.
Subtle uses of 3D are often more effective than grand showstopping uses.
oh no I want a virtual boy now
Pinball Dreams and Pinball Fantasies had been out for a couple of years when this came out and I've spent way more hours playing those than this one, but maybe I've misjudged the game somewhat, I felt the levels were a little bit empty and because of that got a bit boring after a while, I still think it was a good game. This and Teleroboxer are the two games I've enjoyed most on a real Virtual Boy. (only played Wario through emulation).
I laughed way too hard at the first sentence
Is that a Rush reference in the title? Hah!
You got a voice smoother than Kentucky Bourbon
Mila Kunis has her own personal cask of my voice on reserve at the distillery
IMHO, Mario Tennis was a good choice for pack-in. It did a good job of giving that 3D sensation at a time when 3D was still a new idea and showed off what the system was capable of. While it seems primitive by today's standards, I remember spending a lot of hours plugged into the headset playing Mario Tennis.
As good as Galactic Pinball was, it just didn't matter. Nintendo's marketing push for the console was so underwhelming that most players only got the console once it was on clearance. (Myself included.) By then it was too late to revive the system, no matter how impressive it was. Worse yet, most players had the same two games I had at the time: Mario Tennis and Red Alarm.
Red Alert was so popular due to its promise of 3D wireframe graphics. Red Alarm wasn't as impressive or playable as one might like, leaving players like myself to go back to Mario Tennis in confusion. In fact, the Virtual Boy may have been better off had Red Alarm never been released. (Even though I still have a soft spot for it...)
Do you plan in tackling Bound High! as an extra episode? Its one of the best unreleased titles for the VB :)
Yes, there'll be a home brew and unreleased games roundup episode.
was that a Destiny reference lol
was really excited to try this game out when I finally had access to a Virtual Boy and while I like a lot about it, the way the pinball(puck) hitches and gets slightly stuck on the flippers really hindered my enjoyment. It makes timing shots feel so unreliable, I'm surprised that got no mention in this review
4:30 Could you include more side-by-side footage like this in future videos, for those of us who know how to look at stereograms? I mean, you're making sacrifices in the video conversion no matter what, so why not do it in a way that allows some of your viewers to see the 3D?
No, not really. I can't capture both VB images myself, and I try to minimize my use of borrowed footage. If you really need it, there's plenty of stereo capture available for viewing on TH-cam a single search away.
@@JeremyParish Aww, didn't realize it was borrowed footage. Well, nevermind then.
The "source credit" attribution running beneath the footage gives the name of the channel where the footage came from, so you can find more there.
@@JeremyParish Yeah, I totally overlooked that. Probably because I was too busy crossing my eyes, haha.
The 3D SBS footage is cool, but probably not ideal for this style of video.. You'd be crossing and uncrossing your eyes a bit too much. :P
That being said, there high quality SBS 3D videos for just about every released Virtual Boy game. Just search for Virtual Boy 3D or 3D playthrough and they should come up.
I used to watch some of them on the 3DS, which was actually very neat, but either Nintendo or Google has since made that impossible. Now it just says that your 3DS has encountered an error and must reboot. So annoying. :(
As always Jeremy, this is incredibly well done but unless there is a way I can play Virtual boy games without using a virtual boy I will never be able to play it due to issues with my eyesight and light sensitivity. Keep up the great series as always. It's always great to hear of games that are surprisingly good on this system.
There's emulation!
A non-bashing review of a Virtual Boy game that isn't Wario Land? Pinch me, I must be dreaming.
what song do you use for your outro o.o
You know, given when the system launched, and it's capabilities otherwise, the sound chip seems exceptionally primitive...
Really seems like an odd choice for a system whose nearest contemporary was the n64...
@5:01 I noticed the site the Flip Grip is sold on had a Japanese language option. You could use the katakana conversion フリップグリップ for it.
Fangamer has an entire arm dedicated to sales in Japan. They're on top of it.
Oh, ok.
3:01 The filter you're using to emulate the virtual boy's actual color is pretty off. It's giving the brightest color a pink hue, when it needs to map more to #FF0000 or bright red.
Loving the series so far, thanks for your amazing contribution to video game history.
Basically it should zero out the green and blue channels rather than treat it as a hue/saturation change.
Yeah, as a former VB owner, this is something that I've noticed, and agree, something like 255, 0, 0 RGB is more accurate for filtering "white" pixels to the real -- really red -- thing.
Apparently pinball was already invented before the French revolution and Marie Antoinette and her brother used to play. The inventor was nearly executed by suspicion of creating gambling machine. But as he won it wasn't gambling apparently,and thankfully due to that stroke of luck we have video games today..!