Mario Tee Shot
A friend on the internet told me about this game. He had been
sending me tables and said that I had to play this one. At first I had a
hard time getting it to work as it is not just a simple drag and drop. But
when I did finally get it working, it was well worth it! This is one of
the most impressive tables made for Visual Pinball. And with the DMD
display (which stands for dot matrix display), it is as impressive as some of
the VPinmame tables.
The first thing you will notice about the table (outside of the extensive use of the color green, but what do you expect from a golf course?) is the DMD display right there in the middle of the table. The neat thing about this is that it changes and goes along with the game. As you accomplish different things in the game, you will get different animations and pictures. Very cool!
The game offers quite a few things to do from castles to hit the ball in to targets to knock down. There are also quite a few different bonuses that you can accumulate and are given to you at the end of the game. The graphics are very nice with bright colors and a nice assortment of characters from the famous video game series, including Luigi, Mario's less famous brother.
The sound effects come directly from the series and are for the most part well implemented. A little background music may help some as long as it was kept low. There are some critters talking that sound a lot like the Chipmunks (as in Alvin and the Chipmunks). At first they are cute but they get a bit repetitive and annoying. But then I feel the same about Alvin, so I guess that is expected. But overall, the sound is excellent and there is enough to keep things fresh.
One minor problem I did find is very trivial but I will point it out. When you lose a ball, things go silent and unless you look at the text on the right, you will not know what is happening. It takes a few seconds to collect your bonus the first few times I wondered what was going on. A little sound effect of the points being added or something to let you know what is happening would have been nice. As I said, it is a very trivial thing and that I have to look that hard for a fault should give you an indication of what a great table it is.
While there are quite a few Mario themed tables (I think with this one, there are five different ones, not counting Donkey Kong tables), this one is heads and shoulders above the rest and that include the actual arcade releases. I do not know if the person who made this table (author is listed as only Scott) made any other tables, but I would love to see more work from him. This has quickly become a favorite of mine and I am glad that I took the time to get it to work.