Space Cadet Pinball on Linux

Stephen Brennan • 09 May 2026

To my fellow Linux users who grew up using Windows XP: did you know, you can have Space Cadet Pinball on your Linux machine? This is not breaking news, but it’s exciting to me, and I’m the one who decides what I write about. So here’s your PSA!

Space Cadet Pinball was bundled with Windows XP, and growing up I played it a lot. As a result it holds a special place in my heart. I found that it was the most engaging game that was bundled with Windows. Solitaire was too mindless, and Freecell, Hearts, and Minesweeper were too complex and boring to me at that age. But pinball held my attention, and so I played it a lot.

Anyway, somebody has gone to the effort of using a decompiler and reverse engineering tools to create source code, and then put in what I’d imagine is a lot of effort to make it playable on a lot of platforms! All that results in this project on Github. The easiest way to play on Linux is actually to use the Flatpak, which comes bundled with the original game resources from the Windows version. You can either install it with a GUI (e.g. KDE Discover) or install on the CLI:

flatpak install com.github.k4zmu2a.spacecadetpinball

That’s all you need to play & get a hit of nostalgia! I know there are browser-based versions available too, but I would rather have it installed on my computer directly.

High(er) Resolution With Full Tilt Data

Graphics technology has come a long way since then, and the graphics are a bit rough at 480p. But fear not: another version of the game existed, called Full Tilt! Pinball. Its game data is capable of displaying at the massive screen resolution 1024x768! You can find this game data on archive.org in a zip file.

Getting the flatpak version to use these data files is a bit tricky. The easiest way is:

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