There are a lot of reasons apps are placed on sale at the App Store. Christmas was huge, Valentine’s Day was big and even Earth Day is finding itself the sudden motivation for iPhone app developers to drop their prices. But maybe the best is Gameprom’s reason to drop the price of their Wild West Pinball from $2.99 to 99 cents–Grandmom’s birthday. I love this but not as much as I love Wild West Pinball for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Wild West Pinball starts with a flyover of the table and the instructions to tap the screen to play. Once you tap the screen, the rest is pretty straightforward. It’s pinball. Pull back on the spring to release the ball then tap anywhere on the right of your screen to move the right flipper and anywhere on the left for the left flipper. Along the way you’ll get as close to playing real pinball as you can on this device. No lag, great sounds, no fancy digital effects, just clean, realistic pinball fun. When you finish up you can check the global leaderboard and see how your score stacks up (see my high score below). My one drawback is the lack of instructions. Don’t get me wrong, I really like not having to go through a menu to start the game but a little “i” somewhere so you could find out about things like how to kill Dirty Harry and how you can pause the game (tap on electronic scoreboard on the top of the screen) or how to get back to the game once the leaderboard has been displayed (flick back to the game screen) would be good. There are some instructions in the app description at the App Store but it would be handy to have them somewhere in the game. All in all, Wild West pinball is the perfect pinball game experience for the iPhone or iPod Touch. And until May 1st, you can get it for the low price of 99 cents. If you like real pinball, grab it now!

The good: Clean, simple, 3D graphics; no lag in graphics; realistic sound; global leaderboard.
The bad: No help options.
The bottom line: Fantastic pinball game that could provide the user a little help along the way.

Download Wild West Pinball from the App Store