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Pinball Arcade Loses All Bally And Williams Tables
Virtual pinball is heavily rooted in nostalgia of past tables lovingly recreated in a digital form, but Pinball Arcade is about to lose a lot of its best tables.
Developer FarSight studios posted some grim news for the game today on their Facebook, announcing that WMS Industries, which holds the rights to Bally and Williams' pinball trademarks, has declined to allow their tables within Pinball Arcade any longer. This means that 61 titles, including much-loved tables like The Addams Family and Black Knight 2000, are going to disappear from the collection as of June 30.
The good news is, if you own the tables already, you won't lose access to them. If you don't and think you might want them, you have just under two months to get them. FarSight confirmed in their Facebook post that, per their current agreement with WMS, they are not able to offer discounts on the tables before they disappear. Below is the full list of games that are leaving the collection:
- The Addams Family
- Attack from Mars
- Banzai Run
- Black Knight
- Black Knight 2000
- Black Rose
- Bram Stoker's Dracula
- Cactus Canyon
- Centaur
- The Champion Pub
- Creature from the Black Lagoon
- Cyclone
- Diner
- Doctor Who
- Dr. Dude & HIs Excellent Ray
- Earthshaker
- Eight Ball Deluxe
- Elvira and the Party Monsters
- F-14 Tomcat
- Fathom
- Fireball
- Firepower
- Firepower II
- Fish Tales
- Fun House
- The Getaway: High Speed 2
- Gorgar
- High Speed
- Hurricane
- Indianapolis 500
- Jack Bot
- Judge Dredd
- Junk Yard
- The Machine: Bride of Pin•Bot
- Medieval Madness
- Monster Bash
- No Fear: Dangerous Sports
- No Good Gofers
- Paragon
- The Party Zone
- Pinbot
- Red and Ted's Road Show
- Safe Cracker
- Scared Stiff
- Sorcerer
- Space Shuttle
- Spanish Eyes
- Star Trek: The Next Generation
- Swords Of Fury
- Tales of the Arabian Nights
- Taxi
- Terminator 2: Judgment Day
- Theatre of Magic
- Twilight Zone
- White Water
- Whirlwind
- WHO Dunnit
- Wild Card
- World Champion Soccer
- Xenon
This affects all versions of Pinball Arcade, which is currently on Android, iOS, macOS, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, Xbox 360, PC, Kindle Fire, Ouya, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Wii U, and Switch
[Source: FarSight Facebook]
Our Take
It's a shame that this happened, though I suspect it means WMS plans to compete in the same virtual pinball space and are thus pulling out from Pinball Arcade. The addition of a lot of those games to the collection were causes for celebration, so it must feel rough to lose the license so abruptly.
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