Marvel Pinball 3D

Genre: Compilation / Pinball

Players: 1-4 Competitive (Alternating)

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Review:

Marvel Pinball is a Compilation of multiple Pinball tables designed by developer Zen Studios featuring popular Marvel Comics characters. While versions of Marvel Pinball were released on other platforms, the content offered in the Nintendo 3DS version (released in 2012 on that game system) is somewhat different.

More specifically, this game includes the pinball tables The Invincible Iron Man, Fantastic Four, Captain America, and Blade. It bears mention that Zen Studios’ latest Pinball game, Pinball FX3, includes the Captain America and Fantastic Four tables in their Marvel Pinball Legends DLC pack, as well as the Iron Man and Blade tables in their Marvel Pinball Original Pack… but curiously neither of those DLC packs are available in the Nintendo Switch version of Pinball FX3. So if you only own Nintendo game systems or want to play your pinball on the go, and one of these is your favorite hero, the Nintendo 3DS version of the game still provides you with something different.

The visuals in this game are good, showing extremely detailed 3D Pinball Tables that are mostly designed in a way that they could realistically exist in real life, with the exception being the actual characters standing around on these tables and occasionally interacting with the table based on your actions, with Mister Fantastic stretching his arms out for you to hit, Captain America flinging his shield around and then hopping up to the corner of the table to defend against incoming gunfire, and Whiplash on Iron Man’s table menacingly flinging out his whips.

While there’s a lot of detail in these tables, that detail may be a bit too much for the Nintendo 3DS, which doesn’t really have the screen resolution to display it all, and as a result it’s difficult to parse everything in these boards at times (you can change the camera view, but no camera perspective seems quite ideal). In addition, while the characters in this release are all voiced, those voices don’t sound like the live action or animated versions of the characters I’ve seen, and as a result they all sound odd to my ears. Likewise, the generic superhero-style music in the game doesn’t strike me as particularly memorable.

Beyond the difficulty of actually making out what’s in the pinball tables, the gameplay here is pretty good, with solid physics, good game mechanics, and a good amount of variety in the pinball tables available. These tables seem pretty well-designed, and have some fun surprises in store for players. Beyond this… I’m not sure if there’s much more I can say about this game.

Marvel Pinball 3D is ultimately a pretty decent Pinball game within the limitations of the platform and presumably the license. At $8 for four tables, this seems like a fair enough package for the price, and the quality of the game and tables are both excellent. It’s just a shame that the Nintendo 3DS’s small screen and relatively low screen resolution make it harder to play this game with the same visual fidelity of its console counterparts. However, if you’re looking for some fun Marvel Comics-branded Pinball on a Nintendo platform, this should satisfy you.

tl;dr – Marvel Pinball 3D is a Compilation of multiple Pinball tables featuring Marvel characters (The Invincible Iron Man, Fantastic Four, Captain America, and Blade). The quality of the tables and the game’s mechanics and physics are good, the low screen resolution of the Nintendo 3DS can make it hard to parse the details in the game. As a result, this is still a very good Pinball game, but it’s clearly not the ideal platform to play this content on.

Grade: C+

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