If you think a World War I setting makes for a fairly unconventional Battlfield game, it turns out DICE were actually close to making a pinball spinoff.
This strange revelation came up during a chat between producer Aleks Grandal and GameSpot about what kinds of pitches have been made over the years for new Battlefield games.
Spinoff games are the bread and butter of many a franchise – it seems like Mario and friends have starred in just about every kind of game you can imagine at this point, and while DICE never floated the idea of a go-karting or tennis game, pinball was nearly a reality.
Grandall said:
There was talk about a pinball game; a Battlefield pinball game back in the day. I seem to have some vague memories of that now that you mention it. I have to figure out what happened with that because that sounds kind of awesome.
Interestingly, DICE actually has a history of pinball games. The developer made Pinball Dreams, Pinball Fantasies, and Pinball Illusions in the 90s before taking the world by storm with Battlefield 1942 in 2002.
If you think the idea of a pinball spinoff for a classic videogame franchise is odd, Battlefield wouldn’t have been the first.
Mario had one (obviously) as did Sonic, with Sonic Spinball. But the best of the bunch without a doubt, was Pokemon Pinball for the Gameboy (and later Gameboy Advance).
DICE’s next title is a little project you might not have heard of called Battlefield 1. It’ll be out October 21 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.