GAME CONSOLE & PC RELATED: "Pinball Construction Set"
~* More Games *~
Pinball Construction Set
The EA Wall of Games
During our recent Dead Space Community Days trip to EA Redwood City Studios, Aeropause, along with the other attending sites, were given a tour of the EA facilities. While the developer area was cool, nothing could of prepared me for “The Wall”. This was a long hallway, that had the cover of every EA game ever published, going back to 1981 with their first game, Archon. Some of the highlights for me were MULE, Hard Hat Mack, Starflight (which you can hear me babble about), Bard’s Tale, Pi
Apple II, Atari 800, Commodore 64, Apple Macintosh, DOS (booter)
Release date
1983
Genre(s)
Pinball simulation
Mode(s)
Single player
Media
5¼" disk
Input methods
Keyboard and joystick
Pinball Construction Set (PCS) is a computer game by Bill Budge published by Electronic Arts. It was released for the Apple II and Atari 800 in 1983 and was later ported to other platforms, such as the Commodore 64 and DOS (as a booter).
Description
Pinball Construction Set created a new genre of computer games—the "builder" or "construction set" class of games. With PCS, users can construct their own virtual pinball arcade machine, by dropping controls onto a table. Controls included bumpers, flippers, spinners and other standard pinball paraphernalia. Attributes such as gravity and the physics model could also be modified. Users could save their creations and develop custom artwork to go along with them. Tables could be saved on floppy disks and freely traded.
History
Budge originally published and distributed this game via his publishing "company" (really just him and his sister), BudgeCo. In the more competitive publishing era of the 1980s, however, he willingly allowed EA to publish his game when they approached him in 1983, since he didn't really want to be an entrepreneur.
Budge was inspired to program the game after developing Raster Blaster, the first pinball game for the Apple II. He encountered many hurdles in trying to develop an open-ended pinball development tool, mostly because of the Apple's relatively limited processing power and graphics capabilities.
Pinball Construction Set was ported to the numerous home computers of the era, including the Commodore 64 and as a PC booter. PCS went on to sell over an astounding 300,000 copies in all platforms. EA followed with Music Construction Set, Adventure Construction Set and Racing Destruction Set all from different authors.
Reception
Computer Gaming World considered the game quite revolutionary, and easy to understand because of its representative icons and drag-and-drop method of constructing a table. The nine-page manual was considered "overkill", since Pinball Construction Set required no programming knowledge; CGW reported that an eight-year-old had no problems creating his own tables.
Legacy
In 1993, Budge went on to port his game to the Sega Genesis under the name Virtual Pinball.
Awards
Pinball Construction Set is an inductee in GameSpy's Hall of Fame.
In 2008, Pinball Construction Set was honored at the 59th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards for "User Generated Content/Game Modification". Bill Budge accepted the award.
See also
Adventure Construction Set
Music Construction Set
Racing Destruction Set
The Incredible Machine
References
^ Besndard, John (May-June 1983), "Pinball Construction Set", Computer Gaming World: 12, 43
