Demon's Tilt (2019)

#ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
"D" game completed!

Something I didn't really know about this game going in is that Demon's Tilt is... Pretty traditional video pinball. It's a single table with a few special sub-boards. I was really hoping it had more of an adventure mode akin to Flipnic or Sonic Spinball, but alas. It is just a single board. Because of that, I kinda just played it for a few hours and beat the high scores.

That single board is polished to a mirror sheen though, and for the $30 I payed for a physical copy of this one, I think it's worth that price. The board is incredible dense with board elements and objectives, and when you really all the events rolling, it becomes something of a bullet hell shooter, with mechanical abominations shooting crap all over the screen to impede your path. It gets pretty hectic, but the sound and visual design here is absolutely outstanding.

On the Switch, it also comes with a TATE MOOOODE built run in, and it led me to uh... Ordering a tate mode grip for the Switch in handheld mode. It zooms the board in to a more appropriate resolution, and this is the best way to play.

Overall though, being limited to a single board kinda makes it... Forgettable. Like yeah, that one board is really good. One of the best ever. But when video pinball games all the way back in the 90s featured multiple boards, and when things like Pokemon Pinball came out and added broader long-term objectives to supplement only having two boards, it kinda feels scant on content. It's gonna be one of those games you pick up, say, "Wow, this is really cool!"... And then never play again.

But man, does this ever have me wanting a new Pokemon Pinball or high-effort adventure pinball game like Flipnic...

I've never owned or even played an actual TurboGrafx-16. But years ago I emulated Devil's Crush on a whim, and I've found myself returning to it fairly often.

Demon's Tilt does a really good job of capturing that spirit while introducing some unique mechanics and taking advantage of modern resolutions. The higher fidelity makes it a little harder to follow, but the pixel art's delicious and the table feels less luck-based to me. I'm no better at playing it than I am Devil's Crush, but it's fun to try.