Creating a sequel is always a tricky proposition, but trying to craft a follow-on to a pinball machine is an even more difficult one. This is what Zen Studios have tried to do with Super League Football, a table that acts as a spiritual successor to Midway’s World Cup Soccer.
Last week’s new table for Zen Pinball 2 and Pinball FX 2, Super League Football comes in several different flavours, if you will, with versions available for Arsenal, Liverpool FC, FC Barcelona, Real Madrid C.F., A.C. Milan, Juventus Football Club, A.S. Roma, and the ever-so-slightly fictional Zen Studios FC. They’re hoping to add more teams to the roster soon.
But each version is a simple re-skin of the same table and each team has to be a separate £2.39/€2.99 purchase for accounting reasons. On top of that, the Cross-Buy functionality is a bit jumbled, so that you get the table on PS4 if you buy from PS3 or Vita, but not the other way round. As long as you pay attention to what you’re buying, you’ll be fine, but it’s disappointingly confusing at this moment in time.
Thankfully, the table itself is really nicely designed. In contrast to the layout of World Cup Soccer, it’s jam packed with a much more dense set of passages to shoot the ball into. There’s a definite sense that they “get” football much better than 1994 America, with each path labelled with a form of pass.
It could be a one-two which hurtles back down to the flippers in the blink of an eye or a long ball, which sends the ball swooping round the table on a long wire ramp. It’s cleverly designed, if you’re paying attention to the writing on the board, but doesn’t really need an intricate understanding of football to enjoy.
The main aim of the table is to chain up these passing moves to fill up a bonus meter on the bottom right corner of the table. As this fills up, it starts to eliminate the opposition’s defending team, so that when you launch an attack – send the ball through the two channels on either side of the flippers – you have fewer moving objects to get past in the goal area to score.
But dilly-dally for too long or fail to get passes away, which can be surprisingly tricky to master with the crammed table, and the multiplier will drop away, you can lose possession and find yourself having to fire the ball through all of the passing channels so that you don’t go a goal down.
There’s plenty more to the table, and they’ve figured out ways of integrating penalties, penalty shootouts, half time, a full tournament against the other teams and on and on. There’s even a corny commentary track.
The presentation is quite unique too, with the table set in an arena rather than a mock 3D pinball table, and featuring a miniature mascot and football player who plays around with a ball on the side, kicks off a game and sits down for a sandwich during the half time multiball bonanza. At least, I think he’s eating a sandwich, I’ll admit I’ve been more focussed on not losing balls.
For the veteran pinball player, they’ll get to progress to further matches, once the clock has run down, and I’ve already seen astronomical scores from those players who are able to rack up the goals scored for millions of extra points and progress to further matches against other players.
Despite the confusing purchase options, you can get a taste for the table thanks to the trial versions of this and every other table in the game. Even if you’re not into football, it’s certainly worth a look for a pinball fan after something new and interesting.