Sometimes a sports or arcade game is so good that it starts to compare with the real thing. It happened with Virtual Pool Mobile and it has happened here, with Wild West Pinball. Unashamedly a labour of love from the developer, the table is a full 3D model, as can be seen from the cinematic table element flybys when the game starts. With hyper-accurate ball physics and pretty good gameplay, Wild West Pinball induces the same excitement and the same addiction as a real pinball table in your local arcade.

Armed with perfect (and I mean PERFECT) physics, a bevy of digitised sound effects from a real table, the aforementioned 3D modelling and an imaginative table design, it’s easy to suspend disbelief that you’re not controlling a real ball on a real pinball table. Play with headphones for an especially immersive effect!

The Wild West theme is well implemented, with a ‘Bar’ (of course), a steam train track on which your ball rides, a bank (again, of course), a bevy of bonuses and targets, plus an innovative ‘Shoot Harry’ mini-game. When activated, an animated bandit skulks out of his cave and you have to time your aim and then fire the pinball at him – kill him for a hundred thousand points or so. It’s a nice touch.

Ball control is via the two flippers, of course, each activated by a touch on the appropriate side of the screen. This flexibility means that everyone can find a way of holding the game which suits them, though it does take a little while to get used to controlling flippers from a capacitive touch screen that reacts instantly – it’s easy to anticipate a flip (especially if you’re used to the slight time delays involved in activating a mechanical flipper on the real thing) and move the flipper too early. However, you’ll quickly get used to the feel of Wild West Pinball and I was impressed that many of the ball juggling tricks I used to do at university on real tables also worked on the 3D virtual table here, again a testament to the accuracy of the physics.

On the downside, the game is a little bare-bones, in that there’s no multi-ball and no help screen – tap past the opening fly-by and bang, you’re into the action. You do get to submit your high score to a worldwide table, at least, but that’s about it. Master the table and you’re done – there’s just the one table design, sadly – I’d like to see more like this.

However, it’s really a fallacy to talk about ‘mastering’ a table, since you’ll always be eager to beat your previous score. I tell ‘ya, it’s addictive!