Sorry for bump, but I got this too and I have some impressions (crossposted from weblog).
Pinball Hall of Fame is a $20 (okay, $15) collection of tables from D. Gottlieb and Company, a giant among pinball makers whose history dates back to the 1930s... and stretches to the mid-90s like everyone else in pinball. There are seven real Gottlieb tables in this collection:
* Big Shot (1974)
* Black Hole (1981)
* Ace High (1957)
* Genie (1979)
* Central Park (1966)
* Tee'd Off (1993)
* Victory (1987)
You'll also discover a few other unlockables, including an ancient bar-top bagatelle-ish thing called Play-Boy and one of those Tom Hanks Big fortune-telling machines, earned by completing specific goals on each pinball table. These goals are pretty damn tough, though -- basically amounting to total mastery of the machine -- so it'll likely be a while before you can even hope to unlock 'em.
Now, anyone with a bit of pinball knowledge is likely cringing at this list. Gottlieb mostly sucked from 1985 on, after all, and the lack of any pinball classics a normal person would actually remember (such as The Addams Family or High Speed or Theater of Magic, for starters) does hurt this Gottlieb-only collection. Out of this selection, however, I think Tee'd Off is the only utter-crap table -- the very old ones were the forefront of pinball back in their time, Black Hole boasts one of the most psychedelic designs in the genre's history, and Victory ain't that bad.
On the implementation end, PHOF does a great-to-superb job. Sound effects and music are perfect, although hardcore folks may disagree with the "ambient noise" tuning all the sound gets in this game (it's set in a virtual game room, like Crave's Intellivision collection). The ball physics seem fair enough to me, and the Xbox controls are spot-on. My two main complaints: the tilt sensitivity is too high (of course I'd say that, given my play style), and it's hard to find a camera angle (the game offers six) that always gives you the best view of the action, forcing you to switch from angle to angle during play, which is a drag. This is especially true for Genie, a wide-body table that actually forces horizontal camera scrolling. Eesh.
Overall, though, this is definitely worth the $20 (okay, $15) and I'd say it's way better than the Intellivision pack, not to mention the rest of Crave's library (sorry, Crave). If you're expecting a collection of modern pinball (as most buyers are, I'm sure), you'll be disappointed. This really is a hall of fame, of sorts, and if you're new to this sort of thing, it'll help you appreciate how much of a finesse sport pinball was three or four decades ago, when flippers were wimpy and the game was played less with your fingers and more with your hips. Buy it, and hope that the sales convince Crave or Midway or whoever has the WMS rights these days to make a flashier collection.
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