| | Bally did a silly thing coming up to the year 2000--they tried to reinvent pinball. I can only imagine that this was a desperate attempt to revive the declining pinball market, but their "Pinball 2000" tables, of which Revenge from Mars was one, could only have served to alienate much of their remaining fanbase.
So they took a tiny pinball table, mounted a small monitor over the far end of it, and set up slanted, a semi-transparent piece of glass or something at the end of the table to reflect the video screen and make it appear like a natural extension of the end of the table. The net result is that even though the table is shorter than normal, you can't see what the heck is going on at the end of it, because it is in the shadow of the video screen above it and covered by a reflecting piece of glass showing distracting video images. These images are supposed to provide simulated interactive elements, like monsters straddling pinball lanes and so forth, but you can't see the lane and the monsters, at least in Revenge from Mars, are pretty poorly-modelled pre-rendered 3D constructions.
Now maybe this table has some fun scoring modes or something once you get into it--chances are that I'll never know, because the presentation is so off-putting. To make things worse, it seemed like all I was really doing was shooting the ball right up the middle--I could tell there was some kind of lane in there somewhere, and it seemed like the most likely thing to try for. |
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