273 · Rollerball
Rollerball is a pinball simulation for one to four players.
There are two different game variations included. The first is Skyscraper, which is a four screen tall pinball table where each player competes individually for the highest score. The second is called Matchplay. In this game two players compete against each other to see who can reduce his opponents score to zero first. Each player has a set of flippers and a ball in play, and points are awarded or taken away by hitting the various targets in the playfield.
HAL Laboratory made this for HAL America, a pinball game billed as having "a distinctly American touch." That touch is a Statue of Liberty and a Big Apple on the main menu, and we noted there are no American designers on it. It is pinball, and it works, but it isn't doing anything above water.
What works
- Things to do. Each screen has missions: light up letters, hit bumpers until they disappear, open bonus modes. It is still just points, but it is more than most earlier pinball games gave us, and the last one had no theme at all.
- A very long table. Skyscraper is four screens, about twice the length of a standard table, like a stack of short pinball machines. Fall off one and you land on the next, and you only lose a life past the bottom one. With that safety net, a game can run longer than you'd care to play.
What doesn't
- The top is the dull part. The little bonus area is the least interesting section, and you can sit there a long time. With no risk up there, we wanted multiball, locked bumpers or dead flippers.
- The theme is wallpaper. You go from ground level to the top to the sky with a blimp, but only in the background. The Statue of Liberty is pixel art, and we wanted to light that torch.
- The menu. The select screen offers Skyscraper or Match Play, plus two blank screens that look like locked modes. They unlock nothing. Skyscraper also sounds like a map, or the machine's name, not a mode.
- The side exits. Two drains on the side that you can't control. We hate them, and figure they are there to eat quarters. The game didn't invent them.
Match play and the donkey
Match play is the two-player mode, on a much smaller screen. Each player has a set number of points, and the first to lose them all loses. You share one side of the screen, so it is a race to stay alive, not air hockey.
The Japanese version has an elephant and a giraffe. Here the giraffe became a donkey, which left us wanting a presidential debate pinball game.
Worth knowing
- The title. Last episode we spitballed a roller derby game on skates. Instead the ball rolls, so we'd call it ball roller.
- The score. The player one marker sits next to your score, so you seem to start with 100 million.
The bottom line
Skip it. Nobody voted it onto the Essential Games List. Sean called it his favorite pinball game so far, though he said that is a low bar. Joe said it works fine but will blend into the other 700 NES games and every other pinball game. Nothing about it stands out.
Written from our conversation in this episode.
- The action packed pinball game with the distinctly American touch
- NES Longplay
- Introductions
- That American touch includes ZERO American game designers. This is HAL labs with Satoru Iwata
- The American touch is the ESB and the Statue of Liberty
- Why all the Pinball suddenly? Back to back months after YEARS of no pinball (Pinball launch game WAS made by HAL)
- That American touch includes ZERO American game designers. This is HAL labs with Satoru Iwata
- Overview
- Composed of four screens, which, by proportion, would be about as long as two standard pinball tables if it were a real table.
- Gameplay
- On the main menu it looks like 2 modes are locked
- The layout
- Is there a lot going on?
- The longer table makes for longer play
- Pinball Physics
- Pinball vs Video Game
- Match Play
- 2 Player mode, smaller screen, The first player to lose all his or her points loses.
- In the Japanese version, the left player's animal is an elephant, and the right player's is a giraffe. In the English version, the giraffe was changed to a donkey, likely in reference to the Republican and Democratic U.S. political parties.
- Sequels and Spinoffs
- HAL wouldn’t stop making pinball games
- Kirby’s Pinball land
- Pokemon Pinball
- Revenge of the Gator
- I’m sure there are more
- Kirby’s Pinball land
- HAL wouldn’t stop making pinball games
- EGL
- Next week - Super Spike V'Ball
- NEStalgia Byte - Cocoron
Auto-generated transcript. Each paragraph starts with its timestamp. Speakers are not identified.
Rollerball, the action-packed pinball game with the distinctly American touch.
And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sean. I'm Joe. And I'm Joe, is what I normally say. Yeah, I was like, whoa, hold on a minute. It's been a couple weeks, I forgot.
Last episode, I think we said you were out trying to find Sam. No luck there? I found him. And I'm working on getting him back. Great. Oh, okay. Good update. I thought you found him, but you just decided to leave him. No, I found him, but for, you know, I don't want to spook him. So I'm not telling anyone where he is. I'm just, I'm the only one who knows where he is right now, and I will keep working on him and maybe I'll convince him. Okay. I like that. It's the game with the distinctly American touch, but I just have to note right off the bat that there are zero American game designers. This is Hall Labs with Satoru Iwata. This is weird, right?
Obviously, the American touch is referring to like the Statue of Liberty and the big apple that's on the main menu screen and shit like that. But it feels weird that it has an American touch without any Americans working on it. Well, I'm just glad to see like some representation of American culture in an NES game. Like it mostly is just stuff from like pre-industrial Japan and some German influences, but you never really get to see, you know, the big U.S.
in video games. Yeah. Finally a game for Americans. It's a good point though, Sean. Where is the Genghis Khan pinball game? Where is the Nobunaga pinball game? True, true. But why have more of those when you've already gone to that well so often? You have to, you have a fresh well of American culture right in front of you. You know what well they don't go to that often in NES video games? What's that? Pinball. Why all of a sudden is pinball back? It's back-to-back games of pinball after years of no pinball. Maybe that's something they just like notice, like, hey, we haven't gone to this well too often, only like twice now. Um, so let's, let's try again, but, but make it like, if you had to make a pinball machine, but just put it on a cartridge.
Uh, pinball, the launch game, the very first one that was years ago now, um, that was also made by HAL Laboratories. They, they don't want you to know that. They want you to think Nintendo made all those black box games. It's not true. Uh, so with that in mind, I think last time we had a pinball game, it was trying, it was trying to not be pinball. It had all these other modes that were like, you know, there was a ball and there were flippers, but for the most part, it was this competitive pinball style thing.
The original pinball, um, was a little more like video gamey pinball where there was actually like at one point you play as Mario with the ball and in the bonus level and stuff like that. Where does roller ball fall into the whole, like, is it pinball? Is it video game pinball? Or is it trying to like be more video game than pinball can be? I think that at least to what I noticed, it is, it is not video gamey. Like it is not something that a pinball actual physical pinball machine couldn't do.
Am I missing anything? Is there any, even in the multiplayer, which I'm sure we'll get to like eventually later, but like it's all stuff that you could physically build. Well, well, nobody's, nobody's ever built a pinball machine that long. Yeah, no, this is, this is like, uh, if you had like, this is animation compared to live action in a way. Like it, it is, it's not doing anything, uh, like super crazy. Like having like mini games that completely change what pinball is. Everything is very pinball forward.
Um, but like, yeah, I think it's like twice the length of what a pinball machine could possibly be. Uh, you've got, uh, you've got actual little like sub missions now that you, that you find in a lot of real pinball machines. But like, it's like, if you could only, if you had a wishlist of things and you decided to put all of them in the same pinball machine, that's sort of what you got here.
So, I mean, this is, I'm a guy who does not play almost any actual pinball in his life. But why is this, uh, twice the length that a pinball machine could actually be? Like, why couldn't a pinball machine be this length? Is there technical limitations to the size? Yeah, there, there's actually a, uh, physics, like a physics equation, um, that tells you that it tells you how long a pinball machine can actually be. Uh, I don't know if you're messing with me. It's Pins, Pins Theorem.
Pins Theorem? Yes. Okay, now I know you're serious. You're right, Joe, you're right. Because Sean might have misspoke there a little bit. It's not as, it's not twice as large as a pinball machine is possible. It's just twice the standard pinball table, you know? Like, usually the size of a pinball screen would probably be like two of these screens, but because now there's four screens in this game, you just would picture a machine that's twice as long. Uh, I, I don't think it, there's anything stopping it from happening other than just people being like, that's bar real estate. I can't see the ball up there.
Yeah. Yeah, though that too, I guess, Drew. I guess you don't scroll, your face doesn't scroll up the screen like it does in the, in the game. You guys are science deniers.
On the main menu, when you get to the select game screen, uh, you are greeted with skyscraper or match play. And I'm not sure skyscraper is a great word for, um, the only real mode of pinball. I'm not sure if that's the way I would describe it. I, skyscraper feels like, uh, like a level, like you're going to unlock, um, I don't know, the statue of Liberty next after you beat skyscraper.
But then there's also like two blank screens below it. And it kind of feels like, you know, uh, PlayStation two style video games where like those modes are locked and you either have to put in cheat codes or beat these modes to unlock those other two modes. It's just that those two screens aren't used until you select your next option in which it asks you how many players.
Uh, I always have issues with menus and this is my biggest gripe with this one. So I'm bringing it up. Okay. Yeah. I mean, it, the whole name convention is odd. Like it's as if, if there was a second roller ball, um, then it would like, it sounds like skyscraper is the name of the machine. Like you, if you went to an arcade, uh, skyscraper would be the thing on the like display header with the score and, uh, you would start playing and maybe roller ball is just like the name of the series. Uh, but there, as far as I know, like this is the only map, not map, this is the only machine. So no, but you're right. Map is like map is what skyscraper sounds like. Like you're on this map.
Yeah. And I think that that also plays a little bit into why I was kind of, uh, I don't know, un, not unimpressed, but like I was let down a little bit by the, by the name skyscraper, because I thought that like skyscraper would be actually something that is like absurdly unrealistic in real life. Like I thought it was just going to keep going up and up and up or down and down and down for like 30 flippers worth. Right. I think it already is, but I get it. I get it. Yeah. Like, I don't know. It's like, it is maybe one more like level of flippers than I would expect to see on an actual pinball machine. Right. It's like two, it's two levels of flippers.
No, there's like four total. There's a top five, two more than you would expect to see. Yeah. What I'm saying. Cause I forgot there's that top level that you don't start and that you can get up into that like bonus little area. So you're right. Two more, but I don't know. I guess I was just thinking like, Oh, like they skyscraper, like they must've really gone
like all out with this where it's like, it's just like, it's like an endless runner in pinball form. I just want, I just want to clarify like what, what, what I would expect out of a pinball machine. Like, okay, so you've got the two at the bottom. That's a given. It's not pinball. If you don't have the two at the bottom, then if you're lucky, you'll usually have like one off to the side of that.
Like it might be on the left and like, it'll trigger at the same time as the left bottom one or on the right. And it'll trigger as the right, the same time as the right bottom one. But this has that, this has the bottom and it's got like two sets of like off to the side ones. And then it's got two additional screens. Uh, and then it's got the bonus one. So it's like, there's like five or six levels of flippers in this game, which is at least three or four more than, than I would expect. So this is absurd.
And when I'm saying levels of flippers, which obviously is the correct term. That is the scientific term. For what we're saying. Um, but I was talking about like, just like other, like duplicates of those bottom two flippers, like the flippers off to the side, I wasn't counting, but I feel like I've seen those pinball machines, even though I just said earlier that I never really played pinball, but I feel like I've put, I've seen pinball machines that have like a second version of those two bottom flippers that you can try and like stay up there now, but I've just never seen three or four of them. Mike would know.
I don't think it really matters. Uh, the point is, is that the point is, is that the screen is really long and, and it's also divided. So it's not like you're seeing all this information at once. It's divided into screens where on any particular screen, uh, there are mostly, uh, two flippers.
So you're basically just playing one pinball machine at a time. True. Only, only that when it falls through, it just goes to another pinball machine. Yeah, it goes to the next area. Or another pinball machine. You know, you're just like, you're playing, um, theater of magic and then you're going over to tales of the Arabian nights. Right. But the difference is there. If you do well enough on tales of the Arabian nights, you can get back to theater of magic by flipping yourself back up. That sounds like a great digital pinball idea. Like somebody should be doing that. Yeah. Just like be pasting together all the like real, real machines.
Uh, all right. Hold on a second. Uh, just to, just to like reframe the original question of like, is this pinball or is this video game me pinball? Like, I don't, I don't really think that question ever meant anything. So, uh, I'm going to throw that one away. And instead I'm going to ask about, you know, we have lamented in the past that the other ones are about points and not necessarily what the great feature of the games I just talked about tales of the Arabian nights and theater of magic are is that those are like, there's a story and there's missions and you try to do specific things. And this game actually has that for the most part. Like there are things that you can do on each screen that, uh, don't tell a story necessarily,
right? Like you're not trying to, uh, dock in Ellis Island or something. You're just, you're just, you know, lighting up different letters and, uh, hitting certain bumpers so that they all like disappear. So that bonus modes open up, but that is still more than what most of the pinball games have given us so far. And so what did we think about that?
Yeah, that was sort of my main criticism for the last pinball game that we played was that it was still just like, there was no theme. It was just stuff. Uh, it was just bumpers and flippers and, uh, things that go that, that, that, that like make noises when you go through them. It, but, which is pinball. Pinball is just not very interesting pinball.
And this actually does have a theme and it does have little sub categories and side missions and, and yeah, they're not, you're not doing like when you do those side missions, you're not like, Oh, you're unlocking the cage. Uh, the bonus points are indicative of like an animal on the loose or something like that. It's still just points and, um, like bonuses, but I liked that there was more going on here.
Yeah. I noticed it too. I do think that I am just bad at playing pinball, not even skill wise. Well, although that too, but like, just in the fact that like, I don't really know what I'm trying to do. I'm just trying to keep the ball up. I see there's all these other things, but because I don't care about the score, like, I don't know. I did see all of these, like, you know, like up in the top, there's like, you open the gate or by hitting the same spot a certain amount of times.
And I was trying to do that, but like, I'm just randomly arbitrarily picking things to try and do. So maybe that's because I'm just not experienced enough with pinball to know like, what am I supposed to be shooting for? Joe, you mentioned skill. And I do think that not only is pinball a game of skill, it's not just, uh, luck as people would like you to believe.
Um, there's, there is a different level of skill here though, because of the amount of screens. I feel like this is one of the longest games of pinball one can have. Did you, are you kind of implying that you, uh, would lose often? I didn't find, especially as long as you stayed one screen ahead, it, this could go on for longer than you'd care to play. No, I'm not saying I lost often. I'm just saying I was a little aimless.
A lot of sure. Sure. Okay. What should I be trying to do next? But no, I agree. I feel like it was like, is I always felt like, cause you always feel this little bit of a safety net too, where it's like, oh, I'm up at like the top, like set of flippers. So as long as I keep up here, I'm good. And if I fall, no big deal. Just got to stay on this level for a bit. You know, you got a long time before you get to that, before you get to that bottom, like final layer that you can't let the marble fall past or else you actually lose a life.
Yeah. One of the things that like this game doesn't have the luxury of is, um, it, yeah, it's, it's like a bunch of pinball machines put together, but they're very short pinball machines and they don't have like the kind of wild things you could do in an actual machine. Like, oh, you got it up on the rails and, um, there are like ball locks, but they're not as impressive to see.
Um, and you can end up in that top little bonus area sky high, uh, for like Mike said, longer than you really find interesting. And it is the least interesting, uh, sub map of the game. Uh, so yeah, I, I do agree with that. Sean, you're bringing up a great point there that like, they're not even sorted by order of interesting, uh, if you will. So like the, the grand, uh, the grand stage at the top of the skyscraper might not even be the most fun or, or dynamic version of it. Uh, and, and that is the one where like, uh, it spells out skyscraper and you have to hit these, um, little targets on the side to open up the gate at the top. It's like, all right, cool.
You know, something's going on there, but I would prefer if you make it all the way to the top, that's where like things just get crazy. Like hit this and we go, we go to multi ball, hit this and bumpers are locked, hit this and flippers don't work. Like go crazy there because you've made it all the way to the top. There is no risk while you're up there, right? Like you have four screens to go down. So start getting wacky with it.
Yeah. And that's, I think that that does kind of bring at least my opinion, kind of full circle to that first question of, is it video gamey? Or at least the way that I interpret that question, which is, and, and maybe people don't agree with this that are like really into pinball because it's not as pure to pinball. So like, I understand that too, but like you can get as wacky as you want. Cause you're not limited by like actual physics. You can make crazy shit happen up in the very top section, make it like actually impossible.
Awesome things. I don't know why that's kind of like always a thing I'm, I'm calling for on pinball games. And maybe it is because like, I'm just not a big pinball fan. So I'm looking for this stuff, but like, I don't know. I feel like it's a missed opportunity to not have like some really, like, I can't come up with the good examples, but some really crazy things that you couldn't do in real pinball. Well, sure. And we're seeing that now in video game pinball, the kind of examples you're talking about. So it took them a long time, but they got there. But like, you know, the FX pinball machines that you have to buy, like the individual pinball
machines for, they have like a whole Star Wars theme of, of FX pinball machines where like the characters actually interact with your ball and do crazy things. And like story beats happen and the X-wing might do something to your ball. It's like, it needs that level of interaction just with the, just with the motif of a skyscraper,
right? Like, I don't know. We're not even like, we're not even traveling up the skyscraper really. Like it doesn't feel like you're entering different rooms or even like traveling up an elevator or something. I don't know. Not that that would be interesting either. There's a little motif there. Like you, you start at ground level and then you're kind of at the top of the skyscraper and then you end up in the sky with a blimp, which, you know, and New York City is a giant, like
rock island that, uh, you might see out of like Bioshock instead of like a, you know, it's got some, some feeling to that. Only, only in the background though. Nothing's actually happening in the stage. Like even the Statue of Liberty is just pixel art in the background. You should be able to. It's not incorporating those things. I want to light that torch.
Am I crazy for thinking that? Like, am I, no, no. I love that. Like turn the lights on and it's like the building. Yeah. And like make that a mode and then make a mode that's just more traditional anyways. You know, like, I don't know. Think of like, think of like lunar pool. You could just play pool in that game. Right. But you can also do all kinds of crazy stuff. In that game, they literally let you turn off gravity so that it just goes nowhere or you turn gravity to infinite and it never stops moving. The game is actually, it's actually the coefficient of friction, Mike, not gravity. My bad. I wonder if anyone listening to this thought that like our criticism was be like, there should be less gravity and more, more fire in this game.
More lighting of, of torches. Yeah, exactly. The score never matters in video games for us, for whatever reason. I can't figure out why, but like, it never matters. And it definitely doesn't matter in pinball, which is weird because that's the whole thing.
I think we can all agree there, right? Is that you're hitting these, you're just hitting buttons to score points. And yet I still don't care. Like I'd rather, I'd rather the objective be something like save the princess, even if it was in a pinball game. But what I'm getting at is, is that when you start the game, you select how many players. And if you're just selecting one player, but this is applicable for every mode to indicate that you are player one, it shows a one next to your score. And so when you start this game off, it looks like your score with all the zeros filled in is 100 million.
Yeah, it's 100 million. And it's like, that just to me, it automatically like diminished my feeling of score because I'm only scoring like 300 points or whatever at a time. So to be, to start with like 100 million, theoretically, of course, not true.
Just, just shows how silly points are in these games. Unless, unless you're one of those people who really cares about it, but I feel like that's a smaller audience. It sounds like, you know, with how this kerning issue has affected your experience in the game that you are one of those people. You, you've caught me red handed, but no, I'm not, I'm not one of those people. I promise you, I don't even remember what my score got up to. Like we were saying it like some dirty thing to be, like I'm not one of those people, I swear.
But no, it is, it is weird. I didn't notice that. But I don't know how damning to the game it is, you know? Yeah, I didn't even notice that because I literally didn't even like glance at the score.
In the, in the Japanese version of the game, the left player's animal, in the, I guess in the two player mode of this game is an elephant. And the right players is a giraffe. But when they brought it over to the English version, the giraffe was changed to a donkey. To, I guess, like make a commentary on American politics. And, and even if not a commentary, I guess if they're saying like, oh, this is the American game. Here are their two major political parties represented in pinball, like just like what everyone wants.
You know, now I would really like a competitive pinball game that is just like, you know, a presidential debate. And that, that's, that's what you do. I don't know what the little, like, what the little sub missions would be. Maybe it's like, you have some way of causing the other person to like have a gaffe. Yeah. That'd be pretty fun. Or like you can speak like after your time is up for like a couple seconds or you can like interrupt. Yeah. That's multiple. If you hit the right. Yeah. Multiple. Exactly.
Okay. But Joe, you brought up a pretty interesting thing just now, which is that we just played rock and ball, which was the other pinball game. Not to be confused with this completely different game called roller ball. Um, which one, yeah, which one had the more American touch this one that is about skyscrapers,
uh, and has a little light mention of the statue of Liberty or rock and ball, which actually had like, you know, um, like a 1950s America feel with the rock and roll and the diner and the cheeseburgers and stuff like that. Like maybe rock and ball not only was released a month earlier, but also ate its lunch by, uh, stealing the American theme because that game in Japan was a completely remember that was Pac-Man. Yeah. I mean, I don't remember anything on the back of rock and balls box saying anything about America. So I give it to this one.
Yeah. That could have been any culture. Yeah. It's that easy. I haven't been everywhere in the world. There might be other cultures that are exactly like that. Yeah. I'm like desperately searching for the rock and ball, like back of the box now, just, just to see if I can prove you wrong. Um, no, remember that was the one that's back of the box was pinball is famous in video game history, which just can't be true.
Wait, that wasn't rock and ball. No, that was rock and ball. Pinball is famous in video game history, which just can't be true. Uh, they weren't, um, talking about anything American. So I guess you're right. Yeah. Uh, in fact, they even had the, that they had all those other modes, sports, pinball, nine ball battle flipper.
This one's only mode is a match play, which is a two player mode with a much smaller screen than the four screens on the skyscraper mode. And in it, it's a little different the way they do their two player mode. It's, um, it's like both players have a certain amount of points and the first player to lose all of his or her points loses the game. It's not about, um, like dropping the ball into your goal, if you will. Yeah. It's also, you're on the same side of the screen too.
And that's, that's where you get the, the weirdly political mascots. Yes. Right. One of you is, one of you is the elephant. One of you is the donkey. Mm hmm. But yeah, you're on the same side of the screen. So it's also not like as it is one on one, but it feels a little more like you're both just competing to stay alive. Granted, you can definitely like screw the other person over by knocking the ball or a bunch of balls into their zone, but it's not as like direct. You're not facing off against like opposite each other. Like you would be in like air hockey. Yeah. Uh, which is, I guess, more rock and ball.
Um, and, and I guess there's a little bit of like, it's a strategy there because you can rack up points if you've got the ball on your side the whole time. But, um, I don't know. Uh, I didn't have somebody to play with, so I can only think about this mode theoretically. Yeah, no, I played against nobody and won every time. So, but I did play two player. It would have been cool to have a friend. Wow. We have to get you guys friends.
Hey, I put a lot of two player. Yeah, that's true. Mostly the zapper games though, which is also kind of funny. That's true. Cause they're not really two player. You're just inviting people. You're just passing back the board. Archon. Archon I played. Well, that's an essential two player game only. That's true. I mean, I don't disagree. Still essential. There you go. Uh, question for you guys that is not necessarily roller ball, rock and ball, uh, related, but it's. Video game related. No. Yeah, actually that's true. It's true. It's not video game related unless, unless you consider pinball part of the most famous part of video games. Yeah. And so this is a pinball question.
Is it like satisfying to lose in pinball when you don't have control over how the ball exits? Absolutely not. And what I mean by that. Yeah. What I mean by that is not like, not like, Oh, should you be able to stop it always? It's the, it's the fact that there are two exits on the side that you can't control that they can just fall through.
It shouldn't it just be the middle that is the open lane? I mean, uh, I think, I mean, it's not just this game that does it and you're right. This is, this is a pinball question. So yeah, I think that those are there to eat quarters and, um, not particularly any like satisfaction based game design. So I think for a pinball machine to be profitable, it does need those, those side, uh, column voids. Um, and I hate them and no, it doesn't make me feel good to play.
I also get very frustrated with those. I do wonder if I were good at pinball, if I'd be able to, if I would be more of the opinion of like, okay, it went down there. I had no control. But if I think back far enough in my game, I did have control. Like there is some point where I could have done something different. No, no, no. I think at that point, like causality and butterfly effect, just like take over. They take the wheel and there's no way to strategize for that.
We'll have to see. I'm going to have to get better at pinball and let you know. I agree with Sean. I believe it's there to eat quarters, but since it's not satisfying, uh, game design and it's clearly for gambling, which pinball was considered part of and was outlawed for a while. Why would it come over to the video game side of things? Is it just a holdover? Is there nobody smart enough in video games to just be like, yeah, it's just bad design. And for my video game that doesn't eat quarters, but cost a one time fee, I'm going to eliminate those and make it so that only you can be responsible for your game over. I think it's a holdover.
Yeah. I still think that this, like, at least the way that I'm thinking about this is not the way that is not actually what the pinball market was where like, oh, you want this like new version of pinball that works in video games. I think that probably this exists because it's hard to have like an actual pinball machine in your house. It's easy to have a cartridge. So maybe more people that would buy this game would want just like pure pinball flaws and all. Yeah.
Because, you know, unless you've got like if you've got some actual reason to change it up, like it's sort of like playing, playing bowling or bowling with the bumpers on like, yeah, it's impossible to play a competitive game if you're not just bowling strikes and spares the entire time. So the bumpers aren't really making it easier for an amateur to play in the same way that the sides of the pinball machine aren't.
You know what? I kind of lost the plot halfway through this, but I'm going to stick by that. It's kind of like the bumpers and bowling and I'm going to end it there. Yeah. Because once you let go of the bowling ball, you don't have control over the ball anymore. It could go right in the gutter. Yeah, exactly. It's this butterfly effect. But you threw it.
Yeah. Well, through causality and like wind. Who knows what could happen on that lane after you've let go of the ball. It's pure random chance. Right. Yeah. You've pretty much picked game over on any bowling alley the second you walk in. Right. That's true. That's why I don't even go. I don't even go. Someone will bowl that lane if I'm not there.
All right. You can do one thing to this NES pinball game, Rollerball, to make it better. Not make it on the essential games list or not change it permanently in a way. You can just alter one thing about it. What are you changing? Well, for me personally, I don't know if I would say this is necessarily making it better. But for me, for what I would want out of a skyscraper pinball machine, I want 40 more of these layers of pinball in this thing. I want it to just be like endless and like maybe you're losing points in other ways and stuff. But I want it to be crazy.
You would have to have some way to like make it a little more challenging because it would be really hard to lose. But yeah. Joe, Joe, I'm going to work off your idea. And I like that because I was going to say more screens, too, just to be funny. But like, yeah, it's the Empire State Building. So it's 102 floors. So there's 102 screens. But you only have eight hours because it's an eight hour work day. So you only have eight hours to get to the 102nd screen.
And that's the that's the risk. Oh, yeah. Like there you go. That could be the goal is getting the further up you get. Like, oh, oh. And I think that there should be floors every like, you know, 10 floors or so that are just save points. And if you there's like one little hole and you can like that's where you can save. And if you can't get in that hole, you just you're not saving this hour. Right. That's where you get your promotion on every 10th floor. You get your promotion until you become the CEO who naturally sits up on the 102nd floor.
Right. But also in like a kind of reverse to the save point, I think to solve the problem that you're never at the bottom and therefore like it's very hard for you to lose. There can be holes that you drop in that are lost. You lose. Yeah. So then like there is some danger. You're trying to get as high as you can without falling into one of the pits or to one of the spots that's like a dead zone. Yeah. The pits are like, oh, recession. You've been. Yeah.
Yes. I love the that it has. You're right. It does. No matter what we do, it does have to like be one to one analogous to like just going to work in the big apple. My, my, my change is, is, is similar in that it's a, it's a change to the, like the theming. And, but I think I'm just going to go with my original idea of just reframing this entire thing as a political debate and having the little micro objectives have to do with what you might do in a debate. So I'm going with that.
If I was going to make this game better with just one small change, I would make it so that when you're on the select game screen, there were only two screens to choose from and not an additional two blank ones. So you would know that there aren't modes that are going to be unlocked. Yeah. I would agree, but I would add to that, that every button on the controller should just move the cursor down on the menu. No matter what you do. Yeah. Well, since we can't change the game, we're going to judge the game based on how it is in the essential games list.
All right. So I'm starting this roller ball. Well, one thing that I'd like to address because the essential games list is your opportunity to just say things and people aren't supposed to interject because it's your vote. The title doesn't feel like very pinball-y to me.
Roller ball was something that Sean and I spitballed last episode that would be about like, you know, like a roller derby. Yeah. Like, you know, you and a bunch of people in a line fighting another people in line, all with skates on roller skates specifically.
That game didn't happen here. Instead, we got a pinball game that sure the ball rolls, but I'd call it ball roller. In that case, I wouldn't call it roller ball, but they went for that and they failed on the execution of the title. They failed in the execution of the title screen and they kind of, I don't want to say they failed on the game because they did deliver. It's pinball and it works.
And if you like, you know, NES style video game pinball, you're here to be entertained. But I don't think there's really enough here to warrant any additional discussions about the essential games list. It's just another pinball entry. You're going to see another baseball entry. You're going to see another shmup entry. This just falls in line with those things. It's not, it's not doing anything above water. So no, it's not on the essential games list.
Sean? I think that roller ball is, it's probably the most whole pinball game that we've played. Like it's, I think it's my favorite pinball game, but that's, it's a pretty low bar to clear, even though I don't dislike any of them either.
But yeah, that it's not essential. Joe? Yeah, I, I, I'll also say this, this functions perfectly fine as a pinball game. It works well. Maybe it has like, you know, one kind of additional quirk that you wouldn't see in other pinball games. But in the end, I think it's inevitably will just blend into the other 700 games on the NES or however many there are. And also just blend into other pinball experiences. So I don't think it stands out in any way that would warrant it becoming an essential game.
You know, the format of this show has really changed because I am now going to do the sequels and spinoffs because I totally forgot about it. Before we went into the essential games list. So real fast, not that you should expect sequels and spinoffs. And I'm not about to list every video game pinball thing. But I think it's worth mentioning that like, how as a company wouldn't stop making pinball games here. Like, yeah, they made the original pinball that was part of the NES launch. They made rollerball. But they're going to just continue to make pinball games on Nintendo systems and Nintendo handhelds for a long time. Just listing off a few. We have Kirby's Pinball Land, Pokemon Pinball, Revenge of the Gator.
I mean, I'm sure there are more. This is, it's kind of pathetic. Like, it sounds like they've got a real like, subconscious desire to just make a pinball machine. And I haven't heard of them actually doing that. Uh, they just keep, they just keep making video pinball games. Like, just, you know, grow a pair and make a pinball machine. Yeah, I think the same thing about shmups. I'm like, these people just want to make planes that shoot other things and they just keep making video games.
That's what I think about like, George Lucas in Star Wars is that like, he clearly just wanted to start an evil empire out in space and just didn't have the balls to do it. Yeah, this is just his fanfic about how it would go. Next week, uh, the fanfiction of nostalgia continues as we continue to speculate on what games will be like. Uh, we're gonna play Super Spike V-Ball. Uh, a little more obvious about what this game is gonna be, right? Uh, any wild guesses?
No. I got a notification. Um. Yeah. I was pausing for that. But I guess we'll just leave that in. I thought maybe you were getting texted the answer. Yeah. I think V-Ball, it's like vertical, it's like vertical pinball. Like, it's not going forward and up a slope that the ball comes down. It's more like, uh, reverse pachinko. Like, you have to get the ball up from the bottom.
Hmm. I mean, I should save this for next week's episode, but it's kind of crazy that Super Spike V-Ball has like two things in its title that like other Nintendo consoles would wind up. Like, Super for Super Nintendo, like all games. Like, this one would just be called Spike V-Ball and then it would get re-released on Super Nintendo as Super Spike V-Ball. And then V-Ball kind of sounds like Virtual Ball, which would be like for the Virtual Boy. So it's just kind of crazy that like, you know, Nintendo probably saw Super Spike V-Ball and was like, oh, we could start working on the Super Nintendo and the Virtual Boy right now based on this game.
This is the game that actually gave them the idea for both. Yeah, absolutely. They started going right into R&D from here. Actually, R&D started with the development of Super Spike V-Ball. Wow. All right. Join us next week where we actually talk about the game for real and not stupid shit like this. Hey. Thank you.
