Space Cadet Pinball on Linux

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.

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:

cd ~/.var/app/com.github.k4zmu2a.spacecadetpinball/data/SpaceCadetPinball
unzip ~/Downloads/CADET.ZIP

sudo rm -r $(flatpak info --show-location com.github.k4zmu2a.spacecadetpinball)/files/extra/Pinball

You may not need the sudo call if your installation was per-user. Mine got installed to /var/lib/flatpak so I needed root.

It’s possible you’d need to repeat step 3 if the game gets updated. However, the flatpak hasn’t seen an update in over two years. I doubt one will happen, and if it does, it won’t be frequent.

If you want, you can keep the original files and merge them together so that you have the full set of both the original (referred to as “3DPB” for 3D Pinball in the game) and the new (Full Tilt) data. Then, the game will let you toggle between them if you’d like.

The data files seem to have some impact on the game rules. For instance, in the original 3DPB version, the reentry lanes (and launch lanes) have lights which toggle as the ball passes over. In the Full Tilt version, the lights stay on (rather than toggling), making it easier to complete the set of lights and upgrade the associated set of bumpers. (Yes yes, I know I’m a nerd for noticing this.)

Apparently, there was a game called “Marble Blast” which came pre-installed on some Macs in a roughly similar time period, which I know people developed similar relationships to growing up. Unlike this pinball game, the Marble Blast series grew, and there are newer versions available to play today.

I think it’s great that this old game was beloved to enough people (and especially at least one very competent & motivated person) to do this work. Having (any) source code available makes this game portable to all sorts of platforms, which is really great. You can play this on Mac, Windows, Linux, and even Android & Nintendo Switch, apparently.

Personally, I would be happy to pay the original developers for their work on this game, and I understand that there’s some concern about the legality of downloading game data files, especially for the Full Tilt version of the game. After all, they are copyrighted art & data which was part of a commercial product. It seems like an unpopular opinion in today’s world, but I don’t advocate for piracy. Paying people for their work is important, even when it feels like you’re paying a faceless corporation. While I’d prefer things be created with a FOSS license, the world doesn’t always work that way. At the end of the day, I want people to be paid to create good things, because that’s how we get more good things!

On the other hand, I feel software preservation is an important goal too. Ideally, I’d like to see a world where proprietary software like this could be placed into some sort of source code escrow. As long as the original copyright holders are in the business of selling their product, their rights should be respected. But if they elect to stop selling it, I think that code should revert to a FOSS license that allows users to improve & maintain the software they use. This would help balance the rights of creators, users, and the goals of preservation.

I also played another pinball game called 3D Ultra Pinball, but that came on a CD presumably for purchase. I have no idea whether my parents went out and bought it, or if it came in a cereal box. (Yes, game CDs did show up in cereal boxes sometimes.)