Video pinball tends to fall into two types of game- Re-creation of existing tables and fantasy layouts that couldn’t work in real life. Granted, that doesn’t leave any room for more games like Flipnic, which feels like an odd omission, but with Pinball FX and Demon’s/Xenotilt there’s a decent supply of silverball action out there. Not quite as well known is Zaccaria Pinball, which started out as a re-creation of the tables of the European manufacturer but soon expanded into originals based on the themes of Zaccaria’s original forty licenses. The retro tables have some great weird designs that focus on careful nudging and weird flipper placement, Remakes are a grab-bag of early 70s to mid-80s designs, and Deluxe is modern. It’s a great selection of mostly realistic tables but everything had gone quiet for a couple years.
A Collection of Pinball Styles From 40s Through The Modern Era
Thankfully, Zaccaria Pinball wasn’t so much dead as revamping itself, with the big change being all-new artwork that doesn’t shoehorn in the designs from the original tables onto completely different layouts. A couple of the Deluxe tables also got new music, but the big announcement was the first new table in a very long time. While Zaccaria Pinball had added two sets of tables based on Postal and Postal 2, that was still back in 2022 so the arrival of Blackbelt Deluxe is a welcome addition, as is news that it’s the first of several updates to come.
Zaccaria Pinball is a Tour of Obscure Silverball History
Like all the Deluxe tables, Blackbelt features a large number of table toys that vary between possible and a little fragile for real life, like the dangling targets in the temple mini-board. It’s a fairly crowded little table overall, divided between the lower and upper halves, but with a clear system of progression once you’ve played a couple rounds or taken the time to read the instructions. Like most Zaccaria tables earning multiball is a bit of a quest, but pays off nicely with the online leaderboard progression when earned. While it doesn’t stand out from the other tables in the Deluxe collection it does hold its place, helped in no small part by being really nice to play a new Zaccaria layout.
Blackbelt Deluxe and the other upgrades are all available now, and while the Zaccaria Pinball collection is still in Early Access after all these years it’s fairly obvious by now that the 1.0 version is going to be a monster of content when it’s finally ready. It also helps that all tables are fully playable in VR, which I’ll admit as a feature has faded a bit in the last few years but is still the absolute best way to play digital pinball. Zero controller lag and being able to track the ball by moving your head exactly as you would on an actual physical table can do wonders for both understanding the board layout and improving rank on the online leaderboards, but the flatscreen version is every bit as playable as one would expect as well. Zaccaria Pinball had been quiet for a while but it’s back now, and it’s great to be able to look forward to whatever is coming up next.
