Review: Williams Pinball Volume 8 on Pinball FX

With Zen Pinball's announcement of more Williams pinball recreations on the horizon, I figured now would be a good time to discuss their most recent batch of Williams tables. These digital pinball reviews are solely my opinion and while I will briefly discuss the history behind each table and my thoughts on them, I also want to discuss how they play and whether the physics are comparable to the real physical machines. Digital pinball is not a replacement for physical pinball but it can serve as a “gateway drug” for younger audiences that might not have known about pinball, and can give experienced players a chance to practice these 80s & 90s tables.

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Williams Pinball Volume 8 is available for all Pinball FX platforms and most recently got ported to iOS / Android on the Zen Pinball World app on the day of its release. The collection includes three alphanumeric tables released by Williams in the late 1980s, including Pat Lawlor’s earliest forays into pinball design and one of Steve Ritchie’s most iconic pinball machines ever.

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Banzai Run

Banzai Run was Pat Lawlor’s first ever pinball machine designed for Williams, and he established incredibly early on that he wanted to be a trendsetter for the industry. A few pinball machines had interactive backglass toys up to this point (see: Stern’s Catacomb or Williams’ Big Guns), but Banzai Run brought the idea to the forefront with a mini playfield taking up the entirety of the backglass space, making the cabinet bigger and heavier than many of its contemporaries.

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Banzai Run is a motorcycle racing-themed pinball where the player takes on four different opponents then must take on the king of Banzai Hill to score the jackpot during a difficult multiball. The machine has incredibly clever programming for its design courtesy of Larry DeMar and Ed Boon, which accounts for many “edge cases” like completing two sets of racer targets at the same time or substituting playfield features if the mini-playfield is broken. While the game can effectively be played for score by shooting the “cliff jump” shot at the top of the mini-playfield repeatedly, I find its way more fun and less repetitive to play the intended way, going for multiball, scoring the jackpot, and then trying to cash out as many victory laps as possible.

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It was always going to be a little difficult to convert Banzai Run to digital because of the vastly different physics on the mini-playfield, but in my opinion, Zen has gotten them down to a science (it helps that one of their earliest original tables, Paranormal, has a backglass mini-playfield that behaves similarly). The ball never feels like it flies past the flippers at speeds that are too fast to react to, and every shot can be consistently made… though the captive ball shot is still as difficult as expected and gives me as hard of a time here as it does on the real machine. The table is also prone to sending balls flying straight down the middle from the bumpers if it isn’t nudged carefully, but this isn’t a fault of the simulation; the real machine can be just as frustrating and mean.

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Though this table might be grindy if you’re playing for score, I can still wholeheartedly recommend Banzai Run to just about anyone, especially newer players who are interested in pinball history and some of the weirder designs that have come out of the hobby over the years. The excellent audio work by Brian Schmidt (who would later go on to create the BSMT sound package for Data East) cements this table as a classic, as odd as it looks from first glance.

Black Knight 2000

And here is where I ruffle some feathers with these reviews. For what it’s worth, I love the theme, audio, and art of Black Knight 2000. Steve Ritchie wanted to introduce the Black Knight to a newer generation of pinball players and he did so in the flashiest way possible, with a hair metal-styled musical score and an upper playfield that feels slightly easier to control than the one on its original 1980 counterpart did.

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Black Knight 2000 is a textbook “multiball” table where balls are locked on the upper playfield, and the lock shot also serves as the jackpot. Additional points can be earned from the table’s myriad of loops, which include a U-turn that qualifies double knights challenge, and an upper loop that can be repeatedly shot from the upper flipper to light bonus held and extra ball. Where this table falls flat to me is that its layout heavily emphasizes the right flipper. Both shots on the upper playfield, and the main method of entering the upper playfield from the lower flippers, are incredibly important and all can only be reliably hit from the right flipper, making the left flipper feel incredibly underutilized.

Oddly enough though, I might like Zen’s take on this table more than its real-life counterpart. On the physical copies of Black Knight 2000 I’ve played, balls that exit the upper playfield do so at a safe speed and can easily be caught on the right flipper just by holding it up; but on this digital version, there’s a bit of spin on the balls that exit the upper playfield, meaning sometimes they can bounce off the right flipper towards the left flipper or even straight down the middle if the player isn’t wary enough. I don’t think this physics change singlehandedly makes the table great, but it does help me enjoy it more than I otherwise would.

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Black Knight 2000 is an incredibly famous table for good reason. Though my review of it seemed negative, I really do enjoy it and think it serves as a good table for newcomers to practice, especially those who aren’t adjusted to upper flippers and how they behave as there is low risk to using this table’s upper flipper compared to a lot of more recent tables. And there’s no denying that the music carries this table even if you’re not a fan of its layout.

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Earthshaker!

This is another table like Black Knight 2000 where I like it overall but there’s one flaw when it comes to its scoring and layout, and I like it about the same as that table. Disaster themes seemed to strike Pat Lawlor’s fancy, between this table, Whirlwind and Dialed In!. Though I prefer Whirlwind, which improved on some of the problems of Earthshaker! and has a better layout in my opinion, I still enjoy Earthshaker! for what it is.

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Earthshaker! is themed after the earthquakes that are considered a rite of passage for San Francisco residents. The player collects zones on the earthquake institute building then must take shelter by shooting either the side ramp or lock sinkhole. Multiball begins once two balls are locked and the player can score the jackpot by shooting the center ramp to light it, then the side ramp to collect it. All the while, the player’s miles are increased with center ramp shots, with massive payoffs at the end of the road after collecting 99 miles – 200k points per ramp shot!

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Said end of the road bonus is what gets in the way of my enjoyment of this table and what tends to prevent it from being used in tournaments. Thankfully, looping the center ramp in Zen’s version of this table is slightly more difficult than usual, and if you’re just a little off with the timing from the left flipper you might have to fight back for control over the ball. I couldn’t find the upper loop shot consistently on this digital translation but given that the side ramp shot is far more important than it and I’ve long since adjusted to the timing required to hit it, this is likely a personal skill issue.

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Just like Black Knight 2000, I like this table quite a bit but fully understand why people wouldn’t be into it, especially if they don’t like tables where “one shot rules all”. The theme is integrated incredibly well, a nice mix between being a time capsule of late 80s slang and fashion combined with stylish 50s art & music.

The Enhancements

As expected, each Williams release comes with visual enhancements that are on by default but can be turned off with the press of a button.

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Zen seems to be getting better at these with every Williams release, as all three don’t feel too distracting from the gameplay and all contribute to the theme each table is going for. Banzai Run features an animated cyclist that moves between the lower and upper mini-playfields and jumps from the top to bottom of the cabinet when cliff jumps are scored, and Black Knight 2000 features an animated model of the Black Knight above the lock mechanism that adds to the fun of starting multiball. But the biggest enhancement of them all are the two on Earthshaker!: an animated earthquake institute building that calls back to the original prototypes of the machine where the building would sink as balls are locked, and a model car that moves as the player hits the center ramp and can help them get into a rhythm of repeatedly shooting it.

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I always loved the enhancements Zen includes that bring back proposals for the table from prototypes. My favorites up to this point were the ones on The Getaway: High Speed II that re-introduced the mountain sculpt and donut heaven sculpt that were intended for the original table but scrapped due to production costs. Even if the trivia available for each table doesn’t always discuss these additions, I appreciate them anyway and feel that they reflect a lot of care put into converting these tables by the developers involved.

Conclusion

All three tables in Williams Pinball Volume 8 aren’t perfect - they can be frustrating and sometimes rely heavily on one scoring option over others – but man, are they fun to play, and they’re tables I find myself returning to the most consistently out of any Williams back besides the first one that Zen released. My ratings for the three tables included in this pack are:

• Banzai Run – 8/10
• Black Knight 2000 – 7/10
• Earthshaker! – 7/10

With the knowledge that the next Williams release will include some more alphanumeric tables, I’m excited to see what Zen has planned next! High Speed, Pin*Bot, F-14 Tomcat, and Taxi are the big ones I’m expecting from them, but I personally would love to see some Bally tables get added to the mix. Mousin’ Around and Radical! are two favorites of mine that haven’t ever been officially digitized and I’d love to play them, especially given the influence Radical! has had on modern pinball design. We’ll just have to wait and see!