First there was Ultrapin by GlobalVR and now a company called TAB Austria has created their own electronic pinball game called “Virtual Pinball” and at least one distributor in the US has picked it up, BMI Gaming. It’s specs include a 42″ plasma screen (admittedly I’d like to see how these hold up under arcade stress in this format), shock sensors including tilt sensors and vibration feedback. The game can receive new game updates online or “via hard disk” (perhaps an SD card? I can’t imagine them selling actual hard drives to plug into it) but comes with 6 preinstalled games, 3 of which are video pinball games(it appears they are not based on real pin tables if Space Captain is any indication), 2 are “video action games” and 1 a “video strategy game”. If you look closely you can see that the cabinet comes with a trackball to that must be used for those titles. According to the page it has a pretty good ROI, paying itself off in about 10 months.
One thing I can see about being a problem is that the hardware design differs from a typical pin so hardcore pin fans may turn away from it but also with it’s different design is always the possibility of bringing new players to the idea pf pinball.
