Arcade Paradise is a bit of a beast. One of our favourite games from 2022, it acts like a compilation of over 30 arcade games housed in a sim-builder. But, if we were to have one criticism, it was always missing a pinball table. No arcade is truly complete without one. But this wrong has been righted in the form of DLC for Arcade Paradise, bringing the Vostok Inc Pinball table into your blossoming arcade.
Vostok Pinball is a table based on Nosebleed Interactive’s other offering on Xbox, Vostok Inc. There are also a couple of nods to Vostok in Arcade Paradise, including a completely separate arcade cabinet called Vostok 1983. That is concerned with shooting down aliens, whilst the pinball machine tasks you with keeping the ball on the table for as long as possible.
It is worth noting however that in order to access this table, you will need to be near the end of the game, with about four or five arcade expansions under your belt. That is, if you are adding the table to the arcade midway through a game. If you are starting fresh with the recent High Score Edition then the table can occupy any larger space on your arcade map.
Once you have downloaded the DLC, head to the Arcade Imports webpage on your computer and it will be waiting for you there. Providing you have enough room it will be delivered the next day, thrown out of the back of the truck in a way players have now been accustomed to.
The table itself is littered with drop targets, not just at the side but in the main section too, and more can be unlocked if you complete certain tasks on the table. There are three ramps to aim for; one leads to the spaceship toy and the focal point at the back of the table, another leads to what looks like a sandcastle and is for the multiball, with a final ramp on the right leading to a really cool looking warp speed implementation. There are bumpers in between the ramps too that can be tricky to get at, but thankfully any related tasks don’t require too many hits to complete.
There is also a faux dot matrix scene just above the main table and it really gives it that feeling of being a mid ‘90s table, exactly in keeping with the time period of Arcade Paradise.
The main artwork on the table features Vostok’s mascot Jimmy with a handful of cash riding a big space shuttle. That’s the overall theme of Vostok Inc, but you don’t really get that sense of corporate greed on the pinball table. Instead, the missions have you seemingly taking down UFO ships by any means necessary.
It does however feature many of the same pinball tropes and mechanics you would expect: skillshots, kickback, extra balls, ball saver and multipliers galore.
And being a part of Arcade Paradise means that extra love and flourish is here once again. Not content with just creating a pinball table, you can tilt it (however, unadvisable) and there are even several different views you can cycle through with the B button. It still comes with an online leaderboard and in-game goals to increase its popularity and everything else you would expect.
It can be a tricky beast to control though. The ball is rapid along the table, but for the most part, the physics behave themselves. It is telling that a pinball minigame is better than some of the recent single tables that have released on the Xbox Store such as Touchdown Pinball and Jurassic Pinball. Their sole focus is a pinball table, Vostok Pinball is DLC for a much larger game and yet manages things a lot better.
But to give you an idea of the difficulty here, one of the goals for the game is to reach a high score of 9999999, just shy of ten million. At the time of writing, there isn’t a single score above 6000000 on the online leaderboard. My highscore of just over 3200000 is currently sat tenth. You may call this a humble brag, and you’d be absolutely right.
The difficulty comes from the rapid ball but also the missions resetting themselves after each ball is lost. The ramps can be hard to hit and resetting progress each time just further ramps up the difficulty. Pun intended.
With the plethora of arcade cabinets already present in Arcade Paradise, it can be forgiven for not even thinking twice about a lack of pinball table to play on. But Vostok Inc Pinball is another solid addition to the arcade. It may lack the polish of fully fledged pinball titles, but it is also far better than some others too. Tricky but highly replayable; it is just what you want from a pinball game.
