Pinball is one area of gaming that I’ve spent most of my life ignoring, for whatever reasons. A few games of pinball at my local GameWorks, though, and my outlook changed forever. Not only is it super fun, but if you’re good enough at it… you get free games. FREE! You don’t get that with your Ski-Ball or your Virtua Fighter.

As I believe every man, woman, and child should never be without a Nintendo DS, I was browsing new DS games and one in particular piqued my interest: Dream Pinball 3D. If pinball is as good on a DS as on a real life, I might have found a way to bring the joys of GameWorks into my own home, and it’ll always be free! So I checked it out, and for the most part, I ended up satisfied.

Being a relative noob to pinball, the features that this game offered were more than enough to satiate my pinball desire. However, I feel that most pinball fans, the old and the new, can appreciate what the game brings to the portable pinball table. A cool feature that this game has is that you can use six different material balls: 2 types of wood, marble, ivory, steel, and gold, all of which feel and react differently. Dream Pinball 3D is by no means the most advanced, challenging, exciting version of the game you’re likely to play, but as a game you can grab any time and start tiltin’ tables, it will definitely suffice.

There are three different modes in Dream Pinball 3D: Classic Mode, Mission Mode, and Wireless Multi-Player. Classic mode is just what it says, a good ol’ game of pinball. Try to rack up as many points as possible using your 6 allotted balls and all the secrets of the various tables (I’ll get to them in a second). Mission mode has five different objectives: Multi-Ball, Extra Ball, Super Combo, 10x Multiplier, and First Mode. You can play Classic mode and Mission mode on any of the six themed tables. “Knight Tournament” is a medieval-style table, particularly filled with armor and horses and knights, as one would probably expect. The “Monster” theme is a cool one, it’s filled with portrayals of the creatures and beasts of yesteryear, like Dracula, Frankenstein, the Werewolf, etc. “Dino War” is exactly what it sounds like, but then again, I guess they all kinda are. “Dino War” is definitely a bit more bland than the previous two. “Spinning Rotors” consists of planes, helicopters, and paratroopers, with a stereotypical Pilot’s voice for an announcer. “Aquatic” is an ocean-inspired table, with a diving theme, and ocean life sound effects. The last theme is “Amber Moon”, which is chock full of goblins and witches and such. It actually looks like the creators just threw the contents of a fantasy novel onto a pinball table.

The controls are easy enough: the shoulder buttons control the flippers, B and Y change cameras (there are seven different camera views, one stationary and six dynamic), X is pause, Select is return to main menu, and A does the same thing it always does. Pressing any direction on the D-Pad results in a tilt of the machine. Be careful, though, because too many tilts lock up your flippers for a specific amount of time.

Each theme has its own sound effects and soundtrack, as well as individual narrator. These things usually enhance the pinball gameplay, except for the themes which have annoying sound effects, which is basically all of them, but specifically “Aquatic” and “Monsters”. Often times the sound effects conflict with the soundtrack music, which can get quite frustrating while you’re trying to concentrate. Each game you play, no matter what theme/gametype, has multiple difficulties, but they don’t really make any difference; your score just goes up in smaller increments as you turn the difficulty up. But the fact that the developers have included all of these features is what matters. It may not be perfect, and you might have to turn down the volume sometimes, but Dream Pinball 3D is enough pinball for 75% of pinballers out there.