Reviews

Back in 1982 we could never have dreamt of such a good pinball game playing on a Spectrum. In Time Scanner you have to defeat 4 tables, each spread on 2 screens consecutively (with an up down 'scroll') to be a true champion. The +3 disk rerelease is the one I emulated which saves on multload interruptions.

Smooth movement, ball inertia, poppers, buzzers, bells and whistles are all present including great sound fx and good in game music that changes for each table. The tables all offer different challenges and recognise that this is an arcade game producing some flourishes that a real pinball table couldn't offer.

The fourth table 'Special' combines a Breakout game using 3 flippers in the top half of the table.

Each table is mono. The first is blue and yellow but you get used to it. There is slowdown when you have more than one ball on the table but this does not greatly effect the enjoyment.

I rate this game 4.5 so have rounded up to 5 here by necessity.

Very impressive pinball game. Nice graphics, great music, has a good feel on a pinball machine, very hard though. Still when it comes to pinball games on the ZX Spectrum this is among the best of them.

This is without question a well polished pinball game and on look alone it is one of the finest pinball games to grace the Spectrum. However, the ball physics seem very off as the ball will effortless fall off the side of the table or sometimes even through your flippers. In one go I launched the ball only for it to reach the bottom half of the table and then between the flippers without having touched the ball at all, now that is unfair. If only for that this would have been a quality game, but the ball physics are the essence of a pinball game and this one is lacking.