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It’s been 14 years since Portal 2, and, well, the wait for a new game in the series isn’t exactly over. But if you’re a die-hard fan, if you have a lot of money lying around and nothing else to do with it, and if you like pinball, you can go for Portal on the P3 Pinball Platform, complete with the passive-aggressive stylings of GlaDOS delivered by actor Ellen McLain.
The P3 Pinball Platform is a real pinball machine with a 1080p video display, “state of the art ball tracking technology” on the main table, and a modular upper playfield that enables different components and themes to be quickly swapped in. It’s a bit like old cartridge-based game consoles: Pop in a new playfield module and you’ve got a new game to play, except in this case it’s always pinball.
Still, the Portal Pinball machine sure looks impressive, and it promises “many physical and virtual features modeled after elements from the Portal 1 and Portal 2 videogames” including “10 RGB illuminated physical playfield portals and 6 additional scoop portals, through which the pinball can ‘travel through’ instantly.”
And yes, that’s really Ellen McLain’s voice you’re hearing in the trailer: GlaDOS “supervises and taunts you throughout the game,” but if you’re able to complete the objectives of seven “test chambers,” guided by new “Teambuilding Personality Core” named Reggie, you’ll have the opportunity to get some payback against her in a final face-to-face “wizard mode” battle against the ever-so-slightly bonkers AI.
A Pinball News report says the Portal pinball machine is fully licensed from Valve, and that Valve developers worked with Multimorphic, the maker of the P3 Platform, to provide access to assets from the game and ensure all the details are right.
I used to play a good bit of pinball back in the days when arcades were traditionally filled with cigarette smoke and seedy characters, and I can tell you this: Tommy wouldn’t have a problem here but I don’t think I’d be able to cope. Age has dulled my reflexes, but the real issue on the table (so to speak) is the matter of sheer sensory overload. I’m supposed to track the ball and make shots while simultaneously watching the big display underneath and doing videogame stuff, all while the machine is constantly yammering about my sub-par skills? And then Turret Multiball kicks in? Three balls kicking around in the then-revolutionary High Speed was more than enough for me, thanks.
Not that it’s something I need to worry about, because the Portal pinball table costs significantly more than, to choose one easy example, the replacement value of my car. I initially saw the $2,000 price and thought, “Damn, that’s an expensive table,” but then I realized that’s just the deposit: The full table costs $11,620, plus shipping, which isn’t going to be cheap because in case you didn’t know, pinball machines are very heavy.
Oh, and that’s for the “standard game kit.” If you want the “extended game kit,” which adds an extra flipper to the chaos, that’s a $2,500 deposit and final purchase price of $12,500.
By my math, that works out to 50,000 quarters; if we assume five minutes per session (which isn’t great, but I’m trying to keep thing simple), that’s 250,000 minutes of table time: 4,167 hours, roughly 174 days, or just shy of six solid months spent banging flippers and bumping tilts. My parents would’ve been furious. (If you already own a P3 table, you can get the Portal game kit by itself for a relatively paltry $1,000, which I don’t think would’ve made them much happier.)
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Kurt Indovina
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