I'm a huge fan of Pinball Arcade. It was one of the first games I picked up for PS4. I just grabbed Whirlwind/champion Pub from season two as Whirlwind is considered one of the great pins. Of course there's no fan blowing on me while I play it but all things considered it's fun. Plus I have neither the time or money to own real Pinball tables. I never got to play the Pinball Hall of Fame titles that were on PS2/Gamecube But if I recall most of those tables are in Pinball Arcade now. Zen Pinball I'm just kind of OK with. The tables aren't really realistic nor do they seem all that well designed. Going back aways I really liked Pinball Quest on the NES. That one was pretty creative. I never got to play Odama on Gamecube but that too seemed like a unique take on Pinball. Any other video pinball fans? Actual Pinball?
I own quite a few tables in Pinball Arcade, although there's no substitute for a real pinball machine. Pinball Dreams and Fantasies along with Epic Pinball were good as a kid, but they don't hold up too well now, even though they have awesome soundtracks. However, the Pro Pinball games have really good physics for late 90s DOS games and are still good to play. Odama...ugh, the game has such an interesting premise but it's way too hard even without having to use voice control that's spotty at best.
I wouldn't call myself a huge fan but there was a time when I was really addicted to Galactic Pinball on Virtual Boy. Over at my friends house we have a choice of a coin-op dart board and this pinball machine by Atari called Middle Earth. Sometimes his kids will stop hogging it long enough for us to get a few rounds in.
Aaagh, you beat me to it. I love Galactic pinball, I still play it. I like how it sounds, the 3D is alright, but the immersion the Virtual Boy allows is great. I also like the table variety, keeps things fresh. I also remember playing the crap out of that Windows XP Pinball, I think it was just called Space Pinball, or Space Cadet, or something. For such a simple pinball game it really had the ability to suck me in, was a well designed table I remember.
I really loved Pin*Bot for the NES. It's the only video pinball game I know of where your paddles can be slowly destroyed and make the game nigh impossible if you're not careful.
I liked Sonic Spinball on Genesis and Sonic Pinball Party on GBA. The latter had interesting stages based on other Sega games.
I liked Extreme Pinball on the PS1, then again it was one of like 4 games my friend had for the system before I moved away.
There was a PC pinball game I played as a kid, but I can't remember the name. It wasn't a DOS game; it ran on Windows.
Surprised no one has mentioned Alien Crush, Demon Crush and Jaki Crush! Those are my favourite's by far.