The 22 Best Pinball Video Games of All Time

From arcade-era cartridge classics to slick modern simulations, digital pinball spans four decades of flippers, ramps and multiball mayhem, with occult cult favorites, licensed blockbusters and genre-bending oddballs all in the mix. Which one earns the high score?

1

Balls of Steel

Wildfire Studios' 1997 DOS set of over-the-top original tables published by Apogee.

1000pts

2

Pinball Fantasies

DICE's 1992 Amiga classic with four themed tables that set the bar for early digital pinball.

899pts

3

Pro Pinball: Timeshock!

FarSight/Cunning Developments' 1997 simulation prized for photorealistic physics and one of the deepest single-table designs ever made.

750pts

4

3D Pinball: Space Cadet

The Full Tilt! table bundled with Windows that introduced a generation to digital pinball.

660pts

5

Epic Pinball

Digital Extremes' 1993 DOS shareware favorite famous for its Android table and driving soundtrack.

592pts

6

Rollers of the Realm

Phantom Compass's 2014 hybrid that fuses pinball physics with an RPG party and story.

592pts

7

Yoku's Island Express

Villa Gorilla's 2018 open-world 'pinball metroidvania' that reinvented the genre.

513pts

8

Sonic Spinball

Sega's 1993 Genesis title that dropped Sonic into a physics-driven pinball dungeon crawl.

513pts

9

Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection

FarSight's 2008 anthology of beloved Williams and Bally solid-state tables.

513pts

10

Kirby's Pinball Land

HAL Laboratory's 1993 Game Boy game built entirely around bouncing Kirby through themed boards.

513pts

11

Odama

Vivarium's 2006 GameCube oddity mixing pinball with real-time strategy and a voice-controlled army.

513pts

12

Pinball FX3

Zen Studios' modern platform and licensing juggernaut, home to Star Wars, Marvel and dozens of original tables.

420pts

13

Star Wars Pinball

Zen Studios' acclaimed set of Star Wars-licensed tables spanning the whole saga.

420pts

14

Demon's Tilt

WIZNWAR's 2019 bullet-hell tribute to Devil's Crush with 32-bit occult chaos.

420pts

15

Dragon's Fury

Tengen's 1992 Genesis sequel to Devil's Crush, a fan-favorite fantasy-horror table.

420pts

16

Pinball Dreams

The 1992 DICE original that proved a home computer could convincingly simulate a real pinball table.

308pts

17

Devil's Crush

NAXAT Soft's 1990 TurboGrafx-16 cult favorite with an occult theme of skulls, demons and mutating targets.

308pts

18

Metroid Prime Pinball

Fuse Games' 2005 DS spin-off that folds Samus into a rolling Morph Ball across Metroid tables.

308pts

19

The Pinball Arcade

FarSight Studios' meticulous digital recreations of real-world Williams, Bally and Gottlieb machines.

171pts

20

Alien Crush

NAXAT Soft's 1988 TurboGrafx-16 biomechanical pinball forerunner to Devil's Crush.

171pts

21

Pokemon Pinball

Nintendo's 1999 Game Boy Color hit that turned catching Pokemon into a rumble-pak pinball table.

171pts

22

Video Pinball

Atari's 1980 2600 cartridge, one of the earliest home pinball simulations.

171pts