Pinball Construction Set

Description

PCS created a new genre of computer games—the "builder" or "construction set" class of games. In PCS, users constructed their own virtual pinball arcade machine, by dropping controls onto a table. Controls included bumpers, flippers, spinners and other standard pinball paraphernalia. Attributes such as gravity and the physics model could also be modified. The user could save his creation and develop custom artwork to go along with it. Tables could be saved on floppy disks and traded with friends.

Pinball Construction Set is still recognized as one of the most important games in video game history.

History

Budge originally published and distributed this game via his publishing "company" (really just him and his sister), BudgeCo. In the more competetive publishing era of the 1980s, however, he willingly allowed EA to publish his game when they approached him in 1983, since he didn't really want to be an entrepreneur.

Budge was inspired to program the game after developing Raster Blaster, the first pinball game for the Apple II. He encountered many hurdles in trying to develop an open-ended pinball development tool, most of these existed because of the Apple's relatively limited processing power and graphics capabilities.

Pinball Construction Set was ported to the numerous home computers of the era, including the Commodore 64 and as a PC booter. PCS went on to sell over an astounding 300,000 copies in all platforms.

In the 1990s, Budge went on to port his game to the Sega Genesis under the name Virtual Pinball.

See also