Zaccaria Pinball on Switch is hypnotic fun
I am a little ashamed to admit that before yesterday, I had never heard of Zaccaria Pinball. I am a videogame enthusiast, but the pinball world is a little more specialized, and insular. While a large pinball community still exists, I just don’t have a lot of exposure to that world. I love playing pinball, but I would never play in front of someone that is actually good at pinball. I feel like I should be better than I am, and I have never put in the time needed to build a solid baseline of skill.
Zaccaria Pinball is a new title on Switch (I guess it has been around for a while on mobile and PC) that is committed to digitally recreating the Zaccaria Pinball Company’s tables for a modern videogame audience. Zaccaria Pinball was active from 1974 until 1990, and produced 47 different pinball machines, many of which are represented in the new Switch title. Zaccaria was not a company that focused on licensed titles, so instead of KISS or Star Trek: TNG machines, you will find machines with titles like “Space City”, “Combat”, and “Tropical”. But as I quickly discovered, there is a lot of charm and great gameplay hiding in these older pinball machines, and seeing them digitally recreated as they looked when they were shiny and new is a historic treat.
The first thing that knocked my socks off about Zaccaria Pinball is the sheer number of options available. At first, I just saw simple options, like the ability to play with three balls or five (Five? What are we, savages?). But digging a little deeper, I realized just how much work and love had been put into this pinball sim. You can choose the backdrop against which you play (I chose to play in a game room on a tropical island), the time of day you play (which dramatically alters the lighting effects on the table), the ambient sound that surrounds you while you play (arcade? airport? forest?), the type of floor covering you see beyond the table, and those are just the setting you can set after you press the “Play” button. In the options menu, you can alter physics, throw a skin on your ball, dictate the wear and tear on the table, monkey around with the camera options, change the flipper gap, it just goes on and on. This game goes deep, making me wonder just how long this thing has been in development for.
The game plays fantastically, delivering just as much tension and pinball action as anything I find in my beloved Zen Pinball (or PinballFX, or whatever they are calling it these days). Like most of these pinball sim games, you get a free table with the download, and I spent most of my time on this table (Time Machine), realizing that I wanted to do a bit of research before investing in more tables via DLC.
One feature that I really enjoy (in addition to the solid table mechanics) is the live leaderboard that shows up on the corner of the screen while you play. As your score goes higher, you can see an ongoing scroll of the names of all the chumps you are passing on the leaderboard whizzing by. This dynamic absolutely pushed me to play longer and focus harder, as it offered real-time stakes to the standard table play. I made a goal of being in the top 500 on the leaderboards, and before a half-hour had gone by I had achieved my goal (427!).
This is a perfect game for the Switch, with the built in screen offering enough detail and the precision rumble tech put to great use. I can’t wait to dig into this title a little deeper. I’m hoping to check out some of the earlier 1970’s tables soon, as I doubt I will ever come across these tables in real life. I highly recommend checking this game out, as you can play on the default table endlessly, only investing as much as you see fit into additional tables (you can try every table up to a certain score). I guarantee that you will immediately start checking out the other tables with a covetous eye, just as I am. The ten commandments don’t say anything about not coveting pinball tables, so I think I am in the clear to go insane and buy them all.
