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| Source // Steam |
Pachinko. It's quite the pastime for some folks, but it needs a little bit of a spruce up to get the rest of the world to pay attention. How about we fire ball bearings at a specific colour of pegs? Pegs that score tens of thousands of points? With levels that end with 'Ode to Joy' and rainbows?
You've got yourself a game. What's it called? Peggle.
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| Source // Steam |
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| Source // Steam |
Fun Times
Peggle is simple. Dead simple. Simple enough for anyone to get started in a game and stay for the long haul.
You've got a certain number of ball bearings and need to remove a certain number of orange pegs from the level. Bouncing a ball bearing off a peg will highlight it, score a load of points, and send your ball pinging through the level, racking up points by colliding with everything else in sight before falling out the bottom of the screen or, if you're lucky, in a bucket to be reused.
Everything highlighted disappears, making it easier - in theory - for you to aim and fire at the next target you need to get rid of. Let fly and see what happens.
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| Source // Steam |
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| Source // Steam |
Levels come in all kinds of shapes, with different colours of pegs rewarding you with the likes of bonus points or an additional ball pinging around for as long as it can. When you run out of ammunition to launch from the top of the screen, you either lose the level and get to try again or get rewarded with a slow-motion close up of your game-winning shot before the ball bounces over bonus point buckets. Will you land in the 100,000 pointer, or the 10,000? Who cares, Beethoven is blaring out of the speakers.
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| Source // Steam |
Frustrations
Peggle isn't a whole lot more complicated than that. I didn't play very much of it - and like Pac-Man Championship Edition, I only had access to Peggle Deluxe, and don't know the differences between it and the original - but when I failed a level, that retry button, as dated and ugly as the graphic design of it was, was so easy to click, and the game so easy to keep playing that the only reason I stopped was to eat.
But I didn't then go back to play any more of it after eating because I wasn't interested. It felt like a game you play when you don't actually want to play a game, you just want to see something happen, and have some bearing (no pun intended) on what happens.
I did that million point shot. I had no input after aiming the shot and hitting the fire button and had zero idea where the ball would head after hitting its first peg, but I did that...
Final Word
It didn't feel truly satisfying, and yet, almost annoyingly, I could see it being a silly little game that I spend too long playing. It's addictive, or it could be. It's practically designed for it, as countless mobile ports and versions would attest to.
Fire a ball bearing at some targets. How hard could that be? Ooh, multiball? Ooh, a free shot. Aww, didn't manage to get them all. Ooh, instant second attempt...
And there seems to be an awful lot of levels to keep players glued to. Making them must be a piece of cake - it probably took much longer to create these cartoony characters and bright graphics than it ever took to make the game itself.
Peggle didn't make it to mobile phones until after a PC and Mac OS release, but it's basically that kind of game. Simple, garish visuals, annoyingly addictive... You can guess what you're going to get out of it, and it won't be anything substantial - but you don't always need something substantial, do you?
Fun Facts
One of the themes considered for Peggle before it had any artwork was of Norse mythology and would have been quite a dark take on pachinko indeed...
Peggle, developed by PopCap Games, first released in 2007.
Version played: Peggle Deluxe, PC, 2007.