Pinball: Revenge of the 'Gator (Game Boy) Review

Hit a ball into stuff using the flippers and win points. That's the gist of just about every pinball game, right? It's no different with Pinball: Revenge of the 'Gator. Rather than simulating a true arcade pinball experience, however, this one is a bit more on the cartoony side of things. Granted, it would have been mighty difficult to emulate pinball simulators perfectly on the black-and-white 8-bit portable, anyway, but there's no reason at all why fans of table top arcade games wouldn't have enjoyed this at the time.

As the name suggests, alligators are the main graphic on each screen, as the idea is to keep the ball from falling to the bottom pit where a hungry 'gator will eat it. Activate switches and open doors on certain screens to get higher up the table and travel to bonus stages to rack up points and try to get that high score. Naturally, as with many pinball games, there can be an element of luck involved; sometimes there is no way of getting the ball to go exactly where the intention is, or from stopping it from falling down the sides, but persistence is key to getting up to the higher screens. There really isn't anything complicated about the game, and it can be both a pleasant and mildly frustrating time-waster.

Sadly, due to the original game not having battery backup, high scores are never saved and recorded. They will only remain for as long as the game is not reset, and this unfortunately makes it a pain when coming back to challenge old scores. There is a two-player mode in which players can take turns by passing the 3DS back and forth when a ball is lost, so that's always a plus point, but the versus multiplayer options are locked due to the Video Link Cable requirement of the cartridge version. Nothing has been edited in this download variant to enable these modes, which comes as a shame.