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Pinball Construction Set
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Pinball Construction Set | |
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| Developer(s) | BudgeCo |
| Publisher(s) | BudgeCo, Electronic Arts & Ariolasoft (Europe) |
| Designer(s) | Bill Budge |
| Release date(s) | 1983 |
| Genre(s) | Pinball simulation |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Rating(s) | N/A |
| Platform(s) | Apple II, Atari 800, Commodore 64, Apple Macintosh, DOS (booter) |
| Media | 5¼" disk |
| Input | Keyboard and joystick |
Pinball Construction Set (PCS) is a computer game by Bill Budge published by Electronic Arts. It was released for the Apple II and Atari 800 in 1983 and was later ported to other platforms, such as the Commodore 64 and DOS (as a booter).
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Pinball Construction Set created a new genre of computer games—the "builder" or "construction set" class of games. With PCS, users can construct 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. Users could save their creations and develop custom artwork to go along with them. Tables could be saved on floppy disks and freely traded.
Budge originally published and distributed this game via his publishing "company" (really just him and his sister), BudgeCo. In the more competitive 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, mostly 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. EA followed with Music Construction Set, Adventure Construction Set and Racing Destruction Set all from different authors.
In the 1990s, Budge went on to port his game to the Sega Genesis under the name Virtual Pinball.
Visual Pinball, a Windows program that allows users to create pinball tables, would be seen as the modern follow-up to PCS.
- In Space Quest IV, a game is available in the bargain bin of the Software Excess Store. It is known as the Checkerboard Construction Set by Phil Fudge. It is advertised as a followup to his smash arcade hit tic-tac-toe construction set.