Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
A few weeks ago, I was catching up on an older episode of the Android Faithful podcast when host Ron Richards mentioned a new Android game that’d been ported from Windows by an indie dev — the famous 3D Pinball Space Cadet. A few hours later, as I was browsing Twitter/X, I came across a viral post by one of the developers who worked on the original Space Cadet Windows port from the original Full Tilt! Pinball title. It felt like a sign that I should break my no-games-on-my-phone rule and install this oldie but goodie.
I grabbed the Space Cadet Pinball APK, installed it, and was immediately taken back in time to 1999, sitting in front of my first PC, starting Windows 98, and discovering it came with a few games pre-installed. 3D Pinball Space Cadet was one of those games, and it quickly became my go-to time-waster during school holidays and on weekends. Now, more than 25 years later, would I still like it?
A whiff of pinball and Windows nostalgia The answer to that is a resounding yes. From the moment I launched Space Cadet, the familiar electronic sounds greeted me, and I smiled as that blue-yellow-purple space-themed pinball machine design looked so out of place yet so right on my Pixel 10 Pro XL. The board doesn’t even fill the entirety of the screen, but I’d rather it stay like that than force itself to a weird aspect ratio to conform to my 20:9 display. And although the game has a “Full screen” option, it doesn’t seem to change much in how it looks or behaves on my phone. There are also settings to turn off the music, sounds, and skip the intro, but where’s the fun in that?
I’m fine with skipping intros and removing the music sometimes, but the game’s sounds are part of its folklore. I couldn’t imagine playing Space Cadet without those 80s-90s synthesised electronic sounds, the high-pitched tones, fast tempo bloops, chirps, and harmonies.
But it’s the game itself that gave me the biggest whiff of nostalgia. The adaptation to a touch screen is perfectly executed. A long tap launches the ball, a short tap on the left of the screen moves the left flipper, and a tap on the right moves the right flipper. The mechanics are also perfectly ported, with the ball launching, rebounding, bouncing, and falling exactly like I remember it. There’s no lag, no jitter, and no instance in which I felt it reacted in a weird way.
This immediately immersed me in the game, and it’s part of the reason I keep coming back to it, even though I’ve sworn off games on my phone (I tend to get too engrossed and forget work and responsibilities). But there’s something quick and satisfying about a pinball game, not to mention the small stress relief of triggering the flippers in manic succession or flinging a ball as far and as powerfully as I could muster, even through a touch screen.
Wait, Space Cadet had missions?
My naive teenage self always took Space Cadet at face value. Launch the ball, try to avoid it falling, and score more points. But as I played it now, I realized there were missions, bonuses, and actions that gave me extra points or an extra ball. There’s even a way to switch the entry points’ lights manually. Now we’re talking! You mean this game was competitive all along? I had no idea, and neither did my husband, even though we both played it at the same age in the same era.
The Space Cadet Android port opened my eyes to this, and now I don’t just play to avoid letting the ball fall, I play to take on the ramp, hit specific targets, and achieve certain missions. I’ve started learning the difference in physics between every flipper flip, when to let the ball reach the bottom of the flipper before flinging it up, and when to shoot it up immediately. A millisecond and a millimeter are the difference between taking the ramp to accept a mission and bouncing aimlessly around the board.
It’s all stuff anyone who’s played a pinball game understands innately after a few rounds, but instead of doing it aimlessly, now I’m trying to force a specific angle at a specific moment to hit my next target. It’s all focus-demanding and equally satisfying when the ball takes the ramp, goes into the hyperloop or wormhole, hits the bumpers, or re-enters precisely like I aimed for it to do.
I’m still learning the ropes, though. My best score is a laughable 3,133,500. I see people easily hitting 20 and 30 million on the Play Games scoreboards, with one crazy person reaching over 96 million. I can’t imagine how long that game lasted and how focused they remained through it all. I think I just got sympathy arthritis in my thumbs at the thought.
If you want to take a stab at Space Cadet Pinball, you can grab it from the dev’s website at that link. It was removed from the Play Store (presumably for copyright purposes), but it’s still officially available on the App Store for iOS. The game is free, ad-free, and supports Play Games leaderboards.
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