Flip out with Lego’s new playable Icons Arcade Pinball Machine, which lets you make a table and smack some balls

If you play pinball, you get it. To the uninitiated, pinball tables look like unwieldy slabs of glass, metal and plastic, with players sporadically whacking buttons while a ball semi-randomly pings about. But pinball fans know even classic-era tables were deep, demanding precision and care to rack up high scores. Modern ones are as mesmerising as any arcade game. Maintaining a table, though, is a total nightmare. Well, until now, because the Lego Icons Arcade Pinball Machine ($229.99/£189.99) just needs a quick dust now and again.

Once you’ve put it together, at least. In all, you’ll spend some quality time mainlining that song by The Who as 2,274 pieces gradually fashion a desktop mini-table, complete with a spring-powered launcher, dual flippers, spinning bumpers and an up-and-over ramp bridge. This isn’t just a display piece either: you can launch the ball and spang it about, in an attempt to reunite the classic space astronaut with a space-roving baby astronaut, all by hitting a key asteroid target. Because that’s science!

Extra ball

At 24cm (9.5in) high, 38cm (15in) long and 28cm (11in) wide, this is proper desktop pinball-table territory – no mere tiny trinket you could lose down the back of an atom. And it’s sure to be catnip to a certain time of gamer. You know, like me. That said, whether the wider market – or even pinball fans – will flip out is another matter. 

That’s because while this set looks fantastic, it lacks the lights and sounds that bring so much to real-world tables. I’m surprised there’s no Light Brick. Also, the table itself is very simple, and so players may rapidly tire of it. That said, I’m still merrily playing stripped-back pinball efforts like Central Park and the ones in INKS years after discovering them. So perhaps this Lego kit might just be a slice of pinball wizardry after all.

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Craig Grannell Contributor

About

I’m a regular contributor to Stuff magazine and Stuff.tv, covering apps, games, Apple kit, Android, Lego, retro gaming and other interesting oddities. I also pen opinion pieces when the editor lets me, getting all serious about accessibility and predicting when sentient AI smart cookware will take over the world, in a terrifying mix of Bake Off and Terminator.

Areas of expertise

Mobile apps and games, Macs, iOS and tvOS devices, Android, retro games, crowdfunding, design, how to fight off an enraged smart saucepan with a massive stick.