If you have already played the classic for Wild Zone then you will pretty much understand what this machine is all about. If not, then there has never been a better time to discover it through emulation for the first time.
Wild Zone is a pinball themed machine, and the designers at Maygay really went to town with the implementation. As much of the experience of pinball as is possible in a fruit machine was implemented in this, from the straight-from-the-pin bumpers, to the up and down targets, to the score match for a repeat. We only wish that other machine designers are as thorough in trying to bring the full experience to the player. Certainly this machine did not do things by halves, unlike many other pinball themed machines that have been released which are basic to say the least. We can almost imagine the design meeting at Maygay, with the idea being put on the table and the head designer going "You want to do what? Put real pinball bumpers inside fruit machine glass? Are you mad???". Certainly though they really pulled this one off and the risk was worth it.
However, there is a but. It is incredibly rare to find a machine that has a fantastic design and fantastic gameplay, very, very few machines have ever managed to marry the two together. Wild Zone is unfortunately not in this rare group. That is not to say the gameplay is poor, it certainly isn't, but it doesn't set our world alight. There are a few oversights that just take the edge of what could be a truely amazing machine, from the lack of repeat chance on the three double bars, to the TILT being pretty much the only way to kill you off the board with no win (which means guess what, lots of tilts), to being killed on your first move of the board (an absolute coding no-no if ever there was one).
So in our opinion, this is a good machine, which with an ever so slight improvement to the code could have been fantastic. As it stands the TILT will be the biggest grater for you as the player, and will most certainly take the edge of your enjoyment.
MFME3.2 is required for this release, no other versions are supported. If you experience any problems at all, use MFME3.2. There are some known issues with the layout which are detailed in the enclosed readme file, or from "Notes" in the emulator itself.
For a while it looked like this layout may never make it out. Issues with some parts of the layout functionality in the available emulator meant that a release wasn't likely, however some extra recent effort has found some workarounds with MFME3.2, so the release is now very much back on. The decision by Maygay to use segmented lamps for Shoot to Win, plus mirror based targets, plus real pinball bumpers, meant that this layout was the most challenging yet to bring to the small screen. The opportunity has also been taken to move M1Adness on a step in the overall layout presentation, so there is a much more realistic Maygay Vision cabinet for a start, an overall darker look and many minor visual changes. Certainly from our point of view the new cabinet is a mile ahead of the old, and really improves the overall polish.
Download the layout here: http://www.fruit-emu...s&showfile=2381
The layout uses the same roms as the previous classic release. If you do not currently have these you can obtain them by clicking the download link above, the link to the roms is in the download description.
As ever we hope you enjoy this release, and hope you like the improvements to the overall look.
Attached Files
-
WildZoneDXReleasePic1a.jpg 197.1KB
558 downloads
