How to: Play Classic Pinball Machines for Free with Visual Pinball

Posted 12/06/2009 at 3:00pm | by Alex Castle

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A while ago we wrote about setting up a MAME machine, which allows you to play faithfully emulated old arcade games on your computer. In an aside to that article, we mentioned that a similar program exists for the other arcade staple—pinball machines. Some pinball fans have written in, asking for more information, and because we love all arcade technology equally here at Maximum PC, we decided to do a quick writeup on how to get started playing classic pinball machines  with Visual Pinball and PinMAME.

Installation

So you want to play some pinball, huh? There’s two programs you’ll need if you want to run your favorite arcade pinball machines at home: Visual Pinball and PinMAME.

Visual Pinball

Visual pinball is a physics simulation program that allows you to play original and recreation pinball tables. The tables’ geography, artwork and gameplay are rendered faithfully, and the physics engine delivers a top-notch pinball-playing experience. The latest release is version 9.0.3, although many tables still only work with version 8. It’s worth the upgrade, though, for the enhanced physics in version 9.

 Visual Pinball is also a powerful editor for creating your own tables. The Visual Pinball community has used this editor to recreate most classic pinball tables.

PinMAME

PinMAME, as the name would suggest is the pinball analog to traditional MAME. Where MAME simulates the electronics inside of old arcade machines, PinMAME simulates the boards inside of pinball machines. This means that PinMAME is needed, in conjunction with Visual Pinball, to simulate more sophisticated pinball machines. Visual Pinball simulates the physics and the table, and PinMAME simulates the electronics inside, which most importantly run the LED scoreboard.

Both programs need to be installed, along with several other resource packs. Fortunately, this process is made a lot easier if you use the all-in-one installer provided at VPForums.org. VPForums.org is the primary hub for all things Visual Pinball on the web, so if you’re interested in this stuff, you should definitely give them a look.

Just download the VP Installer linked to above, and run it. It’ll first run the Visual Pinball installer, use the default settings, and at the end make sure that the Install VPinMAME box is checked before you press finish.

When the VPinMAME Installation program pops up, just click the Install button.

When the Installation program has no buttons grayed out, you’re ready to install some tables and launch Visual Pinball.