Casio CG-250 Miracle Pinball

Pinball doesn’t always translate well to handheld devices (or electronics at all for that matter). No matter how good the physics and graphics get, it’s never going to be pinball.

And that’s never more true than on an LCD. There are only so many paths the ball can traverse so at best it’s a bit jerky and at worst, unplayable.

The Casio CG-250 Miracle Pinball (and it’s non-calculator version the CG-210) fall into the former category — Nintendo’s double-screen Game & Watch PB-59 Pinball is definitely the latter and, given how many PB-59s in very nice condition still exist today, plenty of people bought them and didn’t/couldn’t play them!

Like all Casio games, the Miracle Pinball is quite playable, although there is a certain amount of frustration when the flippers don’t fire at the precise moment they are pressed, causing the ball to drain.

I don’t have a manual for this, but am guessing there’s not a lot to it. Press the game button and go (just like normal pinball). There’s possibly a way to set the starting difficulty but to be honest even level 0 is not that easy due to the way electronic pinball works.

Rare and getting rarer, the membrane-key game calculators are an interesting look into Casio’s brief venture into the flip-top style. Small enough when folded to fit into a shirt pocket (you wouldn’t put it in a pants pocket, as it doesn’t seem structurally strong enough to stand being sat on many times) it’s conveniently portable and is a good example of how Casio tried to add some colour to their games without actually using a colour LCD.

The CG-250 appears on eBay about once a year so not impossible to find. Price range is between USD50-250.