Flippin' Geometry Wars: Hyperspace Pinball
Pinball shoot 'em up
I'm a huge pinball fan and I get even more excited about that weird subgenre of games that splice pinball with something else. Stuff like Sonic Spinball, Devil Crush, Rollers of the Realm and Odama. The latter's "tactical wargame + pinball" is one of the best I've ever heard and even though the eventual execution wasn't great, I'm still glad that something so peculiar exists. More of that sort of thing, please.
Hyperspace Pinball's [official site] blend of pinball and Space Invaders isn't quite as peculiar. It seems to work quite well though and I'm keen to see more.
I've had a quick blast at the beta and everything seems to be in order. Ball physics are good and I haven't encountered any glitches (there are reports of the ball occasionally passing through flippers at high speeds but either the issue has been fixed or my balls are moving too slowly). I don't think Hyperspace will replace Pinball Arcade as my flipper-to-ball game of choice anytime soon but it does the pinball 'em up concept proud.
Hyperspace has also reminded me to revisit Rollers of the Realm, which I was very excited about and then promptly forgot about. There must have been a reason. Maybe my software needed to update and I rebooted overnight and lost a few memory clusters.
A search through the RPS archives reveals that there was an earlier version of Hyperspace Pinball from the same developer. Given my desire to play all of the pinball spin-off games in existence, I'm saddened that I had never heard of it.
This new version is due to launch for Windows, Mac, and Linux on September 30th.