3D Pinball: Space Cadet

3D Pinball: Space Cadet is actually a demo of one of three tables from Full Tilt! Pinball, published by Maxis. It was included with every 32-bit version of Windows starting from Windows NT 4.0, and it's most well-known for being included with Windows XP.

The primary gameplay difference is that, while Full Tilt! Pinball had multiball, this demo will award extra balls instead of locking the balls for the multiball.

Sub-Page#

Prototype Info

Debug Mode#

This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page. Specifically: Check for other parsed words in retail and proto versions, linked source mentions "QUOTES" and "CINEMATRONICS".

During the game, type in hidden test. You will now be able to control the ball using the mouse and gain access to the following functions by pressing the respective keys:

• Y: The title bar will change to "Pinball", and after a while will start displaying the current framerate in the title bar.
• M: A "Mem:" window will pop up showing the amount of memory used by the game.
• H: Ends the game with one billion points. However, the score will always be below the first legitimate score.
• R: Promotes you by one rank.
• B: Spawns an extra ball at the lower left corner of the play field.
• J: Turns off all the lights. left clicking turns them back on.

If all four debug functions are accessed, in any order, the game will start to turn all updated frames red.

Table Selection#

The menu contains an option called "Select table" which does not appear in the actual game, apparently left over from Full Tilt! Pinball. The message No other table found similarly goes unused. The option executes code that is presumably intended to enable players to select a table, but in this game displays the following error:

Edit Components#

There's a window called "Edit Pinball Components FOR TESTING ONLY" in the game's executable, which is also in Full Tilt! Pinball. It cannot be re-enabled in either game.

Plunger Graphic#

There's an invisible part of the plunger in the table background bitmap.

PINBALL2.MID#

The PINBALL2.MID file in the game's folder is not actually a MIDI song file. It contains a series of 95 glyphs corresponding to the printable ASCII characters, possibly intended as a bitmap font resource. Glyphs are stored uncompressed in an ASCII-art style using only the 'P', 'i', and null characters. They appear to be assumed 23 pixels tall with each glyph prefaced by a single width byte. When rendered as an image using the same colors as the font used in the game, they appear as above (with separator lines added between glyphs to identify blank entries and their widths). Identical A-Z glyphs are repeated, corresponding to the upper and lowercase letters. A few mistakes in the repeating dither pattern are present in several places such as the 0, B, and C glyphs. The dither pattern here uses fewer colors than the final font used for text in the game. Many of the characters are different when compared to the game's actual font.

To address users' complaints that the file couldn't be played as a music file, Microsoft released the Knowledge Base article Q138747 in June 1999, describing that it is not a MIDI file, is not used by the game, and may be safely deleted.

Version Differences#

The version bundled with Windows NT 4.0 included ordering information for Full Tilt! Pinball in the About screen. This was removed from later versions.

Icons#

The Windows XP version received an updated icon. The old icon is technically still in the Windows XP version, used as a fallback when Windows is running with low color depth.

Original version	Windows XP version

About Dialog#

The original version uses its own About dialog, whereas the Windows XP version uses the standard Windows About dialog.

Original version	Windows XP version

Unused About Dialog#

An About dialog box leftover from before the German Maelstrom prototype. The dialog appears in the resources, but does not appear in-game.