By no means a perfect pinball simulator but good at what it does
In the early 80's to late 90's pinball advanced far beyond the basic pop bumpers and drop targets in the 70's and developed very deep (sometime complex) rule sets and goals. Pinball making legends like Pat Lawlor and Steve Richie were thankfully up to the task to add immersion into pinball when their target audience was looking the other way wowed by video games like Mortal Kombat, Guantlet and Street Fighter.
Pinball Arcade is a pinball simulator of the tables of yesteryear. The collection has grown quite a bit since it's humble beginnings ranging from Steve Richie's classic 80's Black Knight to Pat Lawlor's ambitious Twilight Zone.
Farsight tries to get it right but often falls short of it's goal as some tables are glitchy in their presentation. For example, there are times on Cirqus Voltaire the ball will literally fly off of the simulated table into a nowhere void.
Real table simulations have been done for years with VpinMAME with a much greater success due to the fact those that author them are extremely passionate about pinball. Farsight does a fair job at bringing the tables to console and iPhone users at the expense of hard nosed quality.
However, I as a pinball fanatic I cannot discount what Farsight is trying to do and that is to bring old school classic pinball tables into the 21st century so future generations can become enamored by the silverball as much as I am.
There are better pinball games out there. Zen Pinball is one of them with their unique tables but there are few companies that are making actual visual representations of classic real world pinball machines for consoles and mobile devices.