Pinball FX - My Little Pony Pinball by developer and
publisher Zen Studios—Sony PlayStation 5
Review written by Nick
with a copy provided by the publisher.
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
Pinball FX - My Little Pony Pinball proves that Zen Studios
can take pretty much any theme, and make a solid pinball table out of it. While
the theme of this one doesn’t really hold any appeal to me, I can’t deny that
it’s pretty well done and should appeal to a younger, slightly different
demographic than many of the other Pinball FX titles out there.
If names like Applejack, Rarity, Fluttershy and the show’s
music are all familiar to you, then Pinball FX - My Little Pony Pinball is
probably right up your alley. Admittedly, I don’t really know the property
myself – even my youngest kid is twenty one years old, so I’ve likely long but
passed by being the target audience for this one.
That being said, this table would be an excellent one for
helping those who do enjoy My Little Pony, or are perhaps new to the Pinball FX
ecosystem, as it is certainly one of the easier tables to play. The flippers
are close together at the bottom, making it quite easy to keep the ball in
play. I don’t know that I’ve yet to lose one down the center of the table – it’s
usually off to the sides (and even those start with a one-time save on each
side to kick the ball back into play). Whether this is real or perceived, the
ball just seems slower and floatier as well as it soars about the table. My
first round playing, I lasted nearly half an hour, and I wasn’t in any way
familiar with the layout of the table yet.
The table does not have quite as much going on as more advanced
ones I’ve played, but there’s still some cute missions baked in here such as
gathering apples or cooking up cupcakes. As the pinball moves across the table,
it even has a rainbow tail trailing along behind it. If it were any more
vibrantly colorful and sweet, it would be digital sugar. The visuals are
pleasant and should appeal to fans of the property, while the sound effects and
voice acting seem perfectly good as well. I’m not familiar with the show
itself, but I decided to look up whether or not the voice cast was used for the
sayings on this table. General consensus seems to be that the voice for
Twilight is, but the others are inconclusive. Regardless, their speaking parts
are all nice and fit the overall presentation, even if they did get pretty repetitive
after a time. My wife was making dinner in the adjacent kitchen as I played
this table and asked at one point how often they were going to repeat themselves.
In terms of the table layout, it’s visually interesting. There’s
a lot of ramps and rails, which make it seem bigger and busier than it really
is. It took me several tries to get the ball up the rainbow ramp near the
center as I got a feel for the aforementioned floaty-ness of the table. Some
tables feel very vertical, but Pinball FX - My Little Pony Pinball is not
really one of them. It has the rails and ramps, but there’s not a lot to do at
the top of the table, and even when stuff is happening up there, it’s kind of
obscured by the cloud-like bumpers and the upper level platforms.
Obviously I’m not the target audience for this particular
table, but I think Pinball FX - My Little Pony Pinball would resonate with a
younger crowd, especially so if they’re fans of the source property. I can
appreciate how impossibly cute the whole thing is, but this is likely not going
to be one of the tables I go back to on a regular basis either, as there’s
other themes that appeal to me more and feel more challenging than this one. On
the whole I’d say it’s above average, but not really for me.
Score: 6.75 / 10
