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Doom Pinball is a virtual Pinball Spin-Off and adaptation of the 2016 reboot of Doom (2016) and is one of the three tables in the Bethesda Pinball collection, a premium add-on for Zen Studios' ''Zen Pinball 2'', ''Pinball FX 2'' and ''Pinball FX 3'', as well as a separate free-to-play app on mobile devices.

In this pinball game, you must tackle five missions, while slaughtering demon hordes along the way with not just a variety of weapons you can collect - but with the pinball itself as you bash it against up to three rows of sideways-moving demon targets. Once all five missions are completed, buckle up for an epic showdown against the dreaded Cyberdemon (instead of the Big Bad Olivia Pierce)! Win and you can score lots of points, then do the missions all over again and again...until your three balls are up.

Doom Pinball provides examples of the following tropes:

  • Always Accurate Attack: In the games, like in all First-Person Shooters, you can miss your shots. But in this pinball adaptation, you'll never have to worry about that. Every time you shoot a lit lane marked with the word "shoot", the Doom Slayer will unload one deadly shot from his brutal weaponry right on the demon leader that'll always hit the mark.
  • Anti-Frustration Feature:
    • Don't be fooled by the "Hurt Me Plenty" difficulty level. It might look like a medium difficulty (as is the case with the original games), but it promises more mercy than pain by offering a 30-second ball saver at the start of each ball, as well as opportunities to get extra ball savers, kickbacks or balls, all which the Nightmare difficulty sacrifices in exchange for a 50% score boost.
    • Typically, draining the ball would result in automatic failure of a mission in progress and/or the loss of any kickbacks you earned, but that's not the case here! Kickbacks stay on until they are used, and the only way to fail a mission is to lose all of your health to demon attacks, trigger the table's tilt alarm or run out of balls.
  • Attack Its Weak Point: To attack demon leaders and the Cyberdemon, you need to roll the ball through a valid target lane marked with the word "shoot". On Nightmare difficulty, there are fewer of such lanes during battles.
  • Berserk Button: If you hit a bumper over 30 times, and you're not working on the "Recharge" mission, you can make the Cyberdemon angry! Attack him for bonus points, before he shoots you!
  • BFG: The iconic one-hit kill weapon and Trope Namer is yours to find and claim if you're lucky or diligent enough. Once it's in your hands, you'll earn an extra ball and possess the power to annihilate an entire demon wave in a single shot!
  • Bloodless Carnage / Bowdlerize: For a franchise that's usually Rated M for Manly and loaded to the brim with blood and gore, you'd never thought it would even touch that Everyone 10+ Rating with a ten-foot pole. But since Zen Studios is a company that wants to keep its pinball games family-friendly, it's clear that the devs had to lose the franchise's bloodletting and Ludicrous Gibs in translation to keep things that way, giving us the first Doom game to not have any blood or gore at all and the first to have such a low rating. Kiddos, Doom finally has a game you can play now!
  • Bottomless Magazines: The pistol you'll start every session with has unlimited ammo.
  • Combos: Lots of them, and they can be made in any sequence, as long as possible, for big points.
    • Certain combo sequences are also available to reveal Secret Areas, which changes the texture of the spindisk. The ball also becomes more pixelated until the Secret Area shot is made at the spindisk, in which both return to normal table textures.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Samuel Hayden, Olivia Pierce and the UAC facility address all show signs of this as the three announcers of the table.
  • The End... Or Is It?: Defeating the Cyberdemon and cashing in on the jackpot would mean no more demons, right? Samuel Hayden doesn't think so.
    Hayden: The portal...is closed. Or is it?
  • Exploding Barrels: Roll the ball through the Barrels of Fun ramp enough times to bring these up, and then hit them with the ball for some explosive fun. To maximize their effectiveness, you just need to know when to hit them.
    • Some Rune Trials involve finding and hitting some of these.
  • Gatling Good: You can pick up the flesh-shredding chaingun to blow away demons in a shower of bullets.
  • He Knows About Timed Hits: When a kickback redeemer is ready to activate, Samuel Hayden breaks the fourth wall and directly instructs you on how to turn one on. It's a twist on a line from the game that Hayden says when he calls the Doom Slayer to the VEGA terminal to collect his first Argent Cell early on:
    Hayden: Shoot one of the lit redeemer lanes, and I'll give you what you need.
  • Heart Container: After finishing a mission, you can claim an Argent Cell upgrade that increases your maximum health, like in the game.
  • Hell Is That Noise: Any demon wave you encounter will give off some horrifying, noisy screams, just like in the game.
  • Herd-Hitting Attack: Some weapons, like the Plasma Rifle, deal area of effect damage to the drop targets, in addition to damaging the demon leader. And one shot from the almighty BFG can instantly annihilate an entire demon wave.
  • Kill Enemies to Open: Played straight after you've completed the first phase of "The Pit" mission. Here, you need to hit the spindisk to board an elevator to escape the Pit, but every time you use it, the spindisk seals and you need to complete a particular task to unlock it and move up to the next level of the Pit. The second level happens to be an area where demonic presence hits unsafe levels and triggers a lockdown, just like in the game. Only by defeating the demon wave that stands in your way will you be able to unlock the spindisk and advance to the third and final level of the Pit.
  • Lava Pit: Subverted in that the table has two of these, but the ball can't fall into them. One of them is on the left side of the table that is crossed by the Rune Trial ramp. The other forms on the bumper area when a reactor meltdown activates, but the ball can't be shot into that pool of lava from a ball saver, as a portal directly in front of it will teleport the ball back into the playfield. However, the ball can be heated by any lava pouring from that pool for added damage against drop targets.
  • Life Meter: You typically don't see this in a pinball game, but it's there to gauge the Doom Slayer's vitality while he tackles missions or special modes. Subverted in that letting it drop to zero doesn't result in an automatic ball drain...you just fail the mission or the mode you were on.
  • Lightning Gun: A weapon that was What Could Have Been in the game's single player mode and then became an infamously overpowered one in the multiplayer mode. But in this pinball adaptation, you get to pick one up and use it in a single-player setting, which unleashes a sweeping arc of purple energy that electrocutes anything in its path...including the ball.
  • Marathon Boss: We hope you've got nerves of steel to hold your own against the Cyberdemon...because he has four health bars.
  • Mini-Game: Two of them:
    • The upper-left corner of the table has a chamber representing Hell, in which you manipulate a hell stone with the flipper buttons to play a little game of Arkanoid with the ball and knock down fourteen demonic runes with two more hell stones floating sideways in between. One of the five main missions takes the ball here, or you can unlock it by hitting the Pit of Evil spindisk enough times, then bringing the ball into the skull.
    • You can also acquire a demonic rune as a power-up that allows you to take control of a Revenant and lay waste to enemies from a first-person perspective, just like in the multiplayer mode.
  • Multiple Life Bars: You can collect armor for the Doom Slayer to give him an extra layer of protection against his ruthless demonic adversaries...but we hope you've packed enough patience for the Cyberdemon takedown because he has four health bars!
  • Mythology Gag:
    • This pinball table is about the 2016 reboot, but it also pays homage to the classic 1993 title in a number of ways:
      • At the upper half of the table, you can hit five targets in order from left to right to spell out the famous Cheat Code "IDDQD", which granted the player invincibility in the 1993 classic, to activate a kickback redeemer.
      • The score display occasionally shows the face of the original Doomguy, which grins smugly.
      • When you hit the captive balls to progress towards gaining a new weapon, the display also shows the weapon reload animation in the original game. And when you access a secret area, it also shows what's it like to do so in the original game.
      • When the ball enters the bumper area, sprites of the original Cyberdemon appear on the display.
      • When the Doom Slayer is attacked, sprites of enemies from the original game firing at him flash on the display.
      • During the "Recharge" mission, the mission's objective is displayed against a background of two wall switches from the original game that are at the "off" position. When you finish the mission successfully, these switches flip on to indicate that generator power has been restored.
      • During the Deathmatch Multiball mode, the display sometimes shows sprites of two multiplayer opponents shooting at each other.
    • The table also contains a few Shout-Outs to the original game's sequels: the Barrels of Fun crossramp is named after the 23rd level of Doom II, the main mission "The Pit" is named after the ninth level of that game and the table's Wizard Mode has you taking on the Cyberdemon, who was the Final Boss of the main campaign of Doom³.
  • New Game Plus: After you've beaten the Cyberdemon, you'll have to play through all five missions again and fight another Cyberdemon in a never-ending cycle...but you get to keep your Argent Cell upgrades you've won.
  • No Fair Cheating:
    • If you're working on the Lazarus Labs mission and you start the Super Shotgun multiball mode, the portals will disappear temporarily while the multiball is active, meaning that you can't progress through it for a while.
    • You can only post your high scores to online leaderboards while playing the table on default factory settings.
  • One-Hit Kill: Got the Berserk power-up? For the next thirty seconds, you can instantly eradicate any demons at the center of the table with one touch of the ball.
    • Also, the good ol' BFG can annihilate demon leaders in a single blast once you've got your hands on it.
  • Pun: Remember the game's Deathmatch Multiplayer mode? In this pinball adaptation, it's a Deathmatch Multiball!
  • Quad Damage: One of the several power-ups you can acquire.
  • Red Alert / Red Filter of Doom: The table glows red when a wave of demons spawn either after 1) you fail the Hell minigame in the "To Hell and Back" mission, or 2) you start the "Hell on Mars" side mode. Either way, you're going to have to fight your way out of this one!
  • Ring Menu: Just like in the game, you can open the weapon wheel to change your currently equipped weapon. Doing so slows down the game, which you could surprisingly use to your advantage to try and predict the ball's movements...
  • Score Multiplier: Increase the multiplier by spelling out the game's title twice.
  • Sequential Boss: The Cyberdemon fight is split into four phases, and none of them are the same:
    • The first phase is a simple one-on-one fight with the Cyberdemon.
    • The second phase has him summoning demons at the center of the table to block the way so it's harder for you to reach attack lanes at the upper half of the table. If you kill all of them, another wave of them instantly arrive to take their place.
    • By the time you reach the third phase, portals appear throughout the table that might take the ball away from the attack lanes.
    • In the last phase, hell stones from Titan's Realm float across the bottom half of the table to serve as additional obstacles that might knock your ball into the outlanes, meaning you'll need careful aiming and timing to deliver the final blows against the Cyberdemon.
  • Skill Shot: At the start of each ball, you'll need to time your shot so that the Cyberdemon doesn't shoot it down. If you can get it past his arm cannon, you'll earn at least a million points.
  • Spelling Bonus:
    • Spell out the game's title twice at the rollovers to turn the score multiplier up a notch.
    • Spell out the legendary cheat code "IDDQD" at the upper part of the table by hitting five targets, one for each letter, in order, then shoot the miniloop to activate a kickback redeemer!
    • Spell out UAC to spawn a data log to collect for bonus points. Collecting six of them will award an extra ball.
  • Teleportation: The ball can teleport to different places on the table during certain events. Kickbacks, as well as blue portals also accomplish the same effect when they appear throughout the table during the "Lazarus Labs" mission, the "Hell on Mars" side mode and the third phase of the Cyberdemon battle.
  • That One Achievement: Good luck trying to earn the Hell Walker achievement by beating the game on Nightmare difficulty - because it's mercilessly difficult!
  • Three... Two... One...: When you activate Titan's Realm mode, the UAC facility address voices a three-second countdown before two hell stones spawn at the bottom half of the table, moving back and forth to interfere with the ball's trajectory.
    Facility address: Category IV dimensional event in 3...2...1...
  • Timed Mission: In three of the five missions, the Doom Slayer will encounter a horde of demons partway through (and also if you don't do well in "To Hell and Back"). Here, you have to take down the demons before they automatically attack the Doom Slayer periodically, chipping away at his health, making that the mission timer. If you take too long to clear them out, the Doom Slayer bites the dust and you'll have to restart the mission.
    • It's also stated in the in-game guide that just one full minute of uninterrupted demon attacks can make short work of the Slayer without any health upgrades.
    • Also, you only have a limited amount of time to beat a Rune Trial.
  • Wizard Mode: Finish all five missions to initiate a showdown with the Cyberdemon. Make sure you've got enough health, armor, ammunition and weapons, because it'll be a tough fight!


Samuel Hayden: Well...that's it then. There is nothing else to be done.

Alternative Title(s): Doom 2016

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