Looking for a fun pinball game and I see that GOG has a few. For those who have played
these pinball games, which one is most enjoyable and why?

I've found the Pinball Gold Pack to be the best, especially now that it has finally been patched on GOG to include the Deluxe version of Pinball Dreams 1 & 2 and the music for Pinball Illusions.

I've never been a fan of overly complex pinball games, and I'm not a fan of 3D views either, especially when they cannot be dynamically shifted. The Pro Pinball games are great and realistic games, but I've found they are often more hindered than helped by their fixed 3D perspective (part of the trick with real machines is obviously moving your head around to see where the ball is), and the clutter of the Pro Pinball tables doesn't really work on a computer screen.

I've not played Dream Pinball to any great extent, but it suffers from the same problems, with the possible exception of the issue of the 3D (it has real 3D).

I found Balls of Steel kinda dull (not to mention dodgy ball physics).

For me (even if I don't have it here yet) it would be Pinball Gold Pack, as it packs a lot tables into one bundle, giving you a lot of variety.

If you like realistic simulation-type pinball games you can't go wrong with any of the Pro Pinball games (Timeshock is my favorite). They have fairly deep rules, realistic physics and graphics that still look good today despite their age. The only negative is that you only get one table per game. The quality is very high though.

Dream Pinball 3D and Pure Pinball 2 Redux are not that great. You get multiple tables per game, but none of them are even close to the quality of the Pro Pinball games.

If you're not looking for realism, there are two good 2D pinball games here: Pinball Gold Pack and Balls of Steel. They are both quite entertaining, but they're much simpler than the 3D pinball games and the visuals are from a different generation.

Think I'll go with the Gold Pack then. Thanks everyone for the help.

While I found Pinball Fantasies etc. always quite nice, I still always much preferred the likes of Pro Pinball series where I see the whole table at once, without any scrolling. Just like I do with real pinball machines.

With the scrolling pinball games, I'll mostly have to guesstimate where I should be aiming to reach some target in the upper part of the screen.

Agreed - I'm a Pro Pinball series fan as well...

It's funny you should say that, because after almost 20 years of playing Digital Illusions' pinball games, I actually know each table back to front. I don't need to guesstimate :)

Balls of Steel. It's in the name.

I think I'm being messed with. When I joined here in December one of the first things I asked was for the best pinball game here and EVERYONE told me "Balls of Steel" without question, and now it doesn't even get a mention until the bottom of the first page. I can picture everyone sitting around reading my post laughing and thinking, "I can't believe we talked him into getting that!"

Either way it's a fine game and I'm happy I bought it but is the Pinball Gold Pack really [i]that[/I] good?