Building your own Pinball FX 2 table

Pinball FX table

I've been thinking about this for a while, and I might actually do it. Pinball FX 2 is a great game from Zen that combines modern, hardware-based physics simulation with incredibly well designed tables (see my review of several tables, elsewhere on this blog). I also have friends who are into Raspberry Pi hardware hacking and others who enjoy collecting physical pinball tables, so that gave me some ideas...

What if you picked up a junk pinball table from eBay or Craigslist and then put a TV screen on top of it? A 50 inch TV that's fairly thin should fit well, but you should probably measure the specific table and get something that will fit correctly. The junk table should not cost more than a few hundred dollars, and you'd pay that much for any decent piece of furniture.

Administrivia: I've moved to Google Plus comments

This blog is now using Google Plus comments. Mostly, I'm doing this because Google Plus comments handle spam better than Blogger, so it makes sense for maintainers like me to switch.

Pinball FX 2: Table DLC reviews

Star Wars Pinball logo

On my Google+ feed, I've previously reviewed Pinball FX 2 for Steam, but I've been playing quite a lot of it recently, and thought it was worth a line-by-line review of the DLC that I've purchased for it during the summer sale. Below, you'll find reviews of 4 out of the 10 available DLC packs which includes 11 tables. I'll review the others when I have time.

For those who are new to Pinball FX 2, here's the short version: Windows-only (Microsoft, so not likely to change on that point) Pinball simulation with some "fantasy" elements (that is, events during games which are physically impossible on a real table) where the first game is free to play and each subsequent table comes as part of a 3 or 4 pack for $10 or alone for $3 when not on sale.

Warlock: Master of the Arcane on sale

 Warlock: Master of the Arcane (along with it's DLC) is on sale in an Amazone Bundle this week. This is a really nice game that's kind of like a fantasy version of the classic Civilization series of strategy games.

Update on RIFT free-to-p(l)ay

Well, it's looking good for RIFT. They've had too raise the caps for number of active players and have started splitting servers! Great news for the community! Rift Junkies has the whole story...

I'm particularly pleased to see that they have not offered any of the best PvP or PvE gear for purchase on the ingame store. True pay-to-win is the  curse of MMOs, and I'm glad to see that Trion isn't falling for it.