Welcome to 8 Bit Horse

8 Bit Horse is a website dedicated exclusively to 2D video games for all systems, old and new.

Lessons in 2D Game Design

We delve into the design lessons learned from classic 2D video games.

Picks of the Decade

Our picks of the most memorable games from the previous decade.

A Celebration of 2D

Our list of notable 2D video games.

Showing posts with label Villa Gorilla. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Villa Gorilla. Show all posts

Yoku's Island Express

A game by Villa Gorilla for PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Switch, originally released in 2018.
Pinball has a long and storied history, going from barely-interactive distractions to electrified coin-operated equipment with flippers, gameplay objectives, and scorekeeping systems that allowed players to employ strategy. In many ways, pinball machines stand as early precursors to arcade machines, and at the very least, the two forms of entertainment were cozy neighbors during the arcade heyday. Pinball machines continue to be developed to this day, as do video games that attempt to emulate classic tables, or create impossible constructions limited only by the imagination.


But somewhere in the middle of all this are genre crossover video games that use pinball mechanics as a basis for their core gameplay. There have only been a handful of such games over the years, but they are always notable, if for no other reason than their sheer strangeness. One early example is Pinball Quest, a role-playing game where the player uses flippers to knock a spheroid character across the environment and into enemies. Another such game is Odama, which sees the player operating flippers and using a microphone to issue commands to an army as they lay siege across battlefields in feudal Japan.