Weekend Gamer: Virtual Pinball Wizard

Zen Studios

Since buying the AtGames Pinball Micro, I have been on a pinball kick lately. I hook up my Lenovo Legion Go to the AtGame machine, and although it works, I don’t really find it that compelling. Instead, I just really enjoy playing Pinball on the Legion Go, itself. Thanks to the detachable controllers, you can put the Legion Go sideways and take advantage of the vertical screen. It honestly looks really good (the Legion Go screen looks so much sharper and colorful than the AtGames machine (which looks low-res and dull colors).

There are only a few companies that makes pinball games on the PC, and if you’re into pinball, you’ve come across Zen Studios, the Hungarian video game company that produces Pinball FX 3. When I started buying pinball games, I started investing in Pinball FX 3 (the sequel to Pinball FX 2 and Zen Pinball 2). I don’t know how much money I sank into this system, but I have about 50 tables out of 100 available. Most of it were Marvel Comics games, including my favorite Infinite Gauntlet table.

In 2023, Zen Studios released Pinball FX. To me, the decision to make players re-pay for tables they already own on Pinball FX 3 was a big mistake. While the reasons for this is because this new game uses the Unreal Engine, and the old tables were not compatible. Still, the least Zen Studios could have done was offered some sort of discount for us to move to the new game.

Of course, I hesitated on moving to the new platform, and so for a long time I just didn’t buy any tables for the new Pinball FX. Unfortunately, for fans of Pinball FX 3, there were no new tables developed for this old game. It had officially died in 2022. If you want to play the new Star Trek: The Next Generation pinball game, you have to get it on Pinball FX.

So, I bought a few tables for Pinball FX, thanks to the holiday sales, and it’s been pretty fun. I got the Star Trek one, and I thought they were just using sound clips from the television show, but when I heard “prepare for multiball,” I thought perhaps they had Patrick Stewart recorded those new lines… but it could be possible they hired a voice actor or used AI. Who knows, it was just weird to hear Picard say “multiball”.

I think I also paid $3 for The Princess Bride, in honor of Rob Reiner (RIP). This is one of my favorite comedies, and it’s great to see the movie come to life with the pinball game.

Although Pinball FX lists over 130 tables available to buy, there are still many tables that was previously available on Pinball FX 3 that have not made its way to the new game. This includes my personal favorite Fallout Pinball, which is STILL awesome. It still looks and plays great.

Zaccaria Pinball

I have never heard of Zaccaria until I played some of their tables via the AtGames Pinball Micro. Zaccaria, was named after the three brothers Marino, Franco and Natale Zaccaria) was an Italian pinball and arcade manufacturer from 1974 to 1987. They were definitely before my time.

At the height of their popularity, in the late 70s, they were the third largest pinball manufacturer, behind Bally and Williams. Unfortunately, in the 80s the arcades (particularly Pac-Man in 1980 and Galaga in 1981) were fast replacing pinballs machines and with declining sales, Zaccaria went bankrupted in 1987 and was sold to tecnoplay.

Starting in 2016, Magic Pixel Kft., a developer from Debrecen, Hungary, were recreating digital pinball tables, based on classic Zaccaria machines. They released the game as Zaccaria Pinball on Steam in Early Access. Nearly a decade later, Zaccaria Pinball was officially launched on October 16, 2025.

I have been checking out Zaccaria Pinball on Steam and it plays much smoother and better than Zen Studios games. I found that the overall design is just too busy and too much going on (lots of tabs). It also was clearly designed to be played with a keyboard/mouse situation, as the first time I launched the game, my controllers on my Legion Go did not work. I had to use the touch screen to navigate to controllers and changed it to the mouse/keyboard default to “x-input” controller. Most modern games auto-detect controllers, so that’s a knock against Magic Pixel for making it difficult.

With over 100 tables, plus some arcade games (assuming these are all Zaccaria-exclusive arcade games), there’s a lot to check out. Unfortunately, if you want to unlock everything, that will cost over $200 dollars. If you want to unlock some gameplay, such as campaign mode, you’ll have to pay. Everything costs money, except for one or two tables (that was not very good). So that’s another knock against this game… all the microtransactions.

Based on the ‘Zaccaria’ branding, I am assuming you are limited to only Zaccaria tables, so it seems this can be very limited. The company only produced about 50 tables, but even if you reimagined or retro or deluxe re-designs, it’s still limited.

The only good value I can see is that you can get 40 Retro tables for $5. That’s a fantastic deal… however, the retro designs are not that fun. These tables are very simple and the designs are very … of its time. I personally like the new/modern remakes such as the deluxe games – those have a lot going on and I find they are much better.

The other good thing about this Zaccaria game is that you can try out most (if not all) of the tables as a “trial”. After maybe a minute, the game will stop… but it’s enough to give you an idea if you’ll like the table or not. I’ve tried out some tables, but I’ve yet to purchase any tables so far. Perhaps if there were a sale or a value package, such as that $5 promo.

Bonus: Digital Skateboard

I wrote this Pinball article before Zen Studios re-released their Bethesda Pinball games (including Fallout) on their new/modern Pinball FX game in March 2026. Yes, of course, I re-purchased those tables on the new platform and it was my intention to those new/old tables… but unfortunately, there were little or no changes from the 2016 version. In fact, I can say it’s downright disappointing. It comes down to this, if you already own the 2016 version and is happy with it, you don’t need to re-buy it.

Also, another thing, my brother and his friends came to visit for a long weekend of skateboarding. As you know, Jacksonville is a legendary city for skaters around the globe by housing the world’s oldest skatepark Kona and a new 8.8-million-dollar free skatepark under the freeway called The Artist Walk Skate Park.

Our guests were really into that little AtGames Pinball Micro machine! It was a lot of fun, and the pinball machine was a winner in my house. I may have sold them on buying their own… although currently the machine is sold-out on Amazon.

Anyway, if you are not from around Jacksonville, you can check out Kona Skatepark via Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4. The game came out in November 2002. A modern/remake of the game (retitled Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4) was released in July 2025, and is available on the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2 and PC.

I only entertained on buying the game (when it was on sale) for my brother, but he said no. Looking at the reviews, a lot of users are saying the game is expensive and the new graphics are not good. Some positive reviews mentioned that they like the inclusion of new punk rock music. Some songs were left out of the new game due to licensing.

Yours,

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