Tarnobol (C64) Commodore 64

A game of Renaissance pinball ∇

♣ V1.0

Tarnobol is ye long forgotten game wherein demonstrates the roots of invention towards the game that we know today as... PINBALL. Coinciding with and conceived with the birth of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the mighty fortress city of Tarnopol.

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Some explanation or thoughts on the game from lazyjones,

"A quota-based inventive historical-fantasy based imagining of a new type of pinball where you must eliminate the different color pinballs with your controlled pinball's pinball. (Breathe)

A shooting-gallery shooter hybrid neo-pinball game. I give it an extra 1/2 point for sheer originality.

But actually it's also part survival game too as well as an original spin on pinball, which does make it fun to use your offense + defense, shoot or out-maneuver enemy balls. And very much like pinball you can position and bounce your pinball's pinball (bullet) using bumpers to rack-up the points and quickly obliterate some of the opponent enemy balls.

Each enemy ball operates differently. Instead of deadly gutters in traditional pinball, there are 2 tunnel gutters center (red & white) that allows the player to either dodge, exploit, move to other side, etc. The bottom hole-of-death in traditional pinball? I suppose that would be getting trapped in one of the areas on the playing field and getting killed by one of the balls is its equivalent.

Interesting I am noticing in this breakdown a historical pattern about being bombarded from all sides and where this playing field or "fortress" castle or city of Tarnobol is a wild expositional historical stage. Pretty wild. Like life maybe, there is no tilt unless you consider the game itself full-tilt!

The mechanics can reveal themselves just by seriously playing.  I load it up sometimes because for some reason I like how your pinball shot bounces with a slick easing effect and its audible. But if you plan on playing really I think you have to invest maybe 20 minutes at least to pass to the next levels that progressively get harder. So like pinball again it a high-score bound game.

Speaking of audibles, I will mention the background music, while fine for me will probably drive some people crazy who lack a sense of humor or have low tolerance. I find it zany and while you can just turn down the volume, as mentioned the bouncing and shot sounds are really part of the fun like real pinball as well. The sounds are weird and quirky and maybe hypnotizing. This could a bad or good thing. LOL. But I admit I do like the weird and unusual sometimes." (lazyjones)

* Requires any free C64 emulator, such as the free, cross-platform VICE emultator available on any OS and very easy to auto-load game by selecting the file or a Commodore 64.