Crush Pinball: Alien Crush / Devil's Crush / Jaki Crush / Dragon's Fury / Dragon's Revenge

The Crush Pinball Series

Full disclosure: my emulator shits the bed and crashes the game whenever I try to take TG16 pics, if it even lets me take one, but these games look pretty damn cool so I went all out.

Later in life I discovered I really enjoy pinball and began tunneling into the niche world of video game pinball stuff. There are lots of weird and wonderful games within this space, but one of the gold standards is the TurboGrafx-16 game Devil’s Crush, which would be the inspiration for Demon’s Tilt.

The TG-16 predecessor, Alien Crush, is visually cool, but it isn’t as captivating as this one.

Compile released the final game in the series, Jaki Crush, for Super Famicom. Jaki Crush’s lower table requires that you hold the flippers open to allow the ball to reach the second level. I don’t like that aspect of the design, I feel like the ball should be able to go wherever while the flippers are at rest, but it does add some challenge for those who prefer it.

Finally, I guess gameology obligates me to mention the weird dragon pinball games born of the Crush series. Tengen ported Devil’s Crush to Genesis and renamed it Dragon’s Fury. I have no idea why they changed the title (probably because devils aren’t allowed in some places), but it’s a faithful and enjoyable port and honestly not all that weird.

They also released a sequel called Dragon’s Revenge. Dragon’s Revenge is super weird. It has lots of breasty women and for some reason, there are sound effects of a woman moaning. I dunno why a group of people sat down and decided this was The Plan but ok.