the game
One of my favorite video games from childhood was Pinball Science. It seems that it was mostly sold (in the US in any case) at Scholastic book fairs, to accompany the book The Way Things Work by David Macaulay. It's hard to find much about it online. The best source I have found is this youtube video, where someone in a similar situation to me managed to get it running in a virtual machine. I have had no luck running it on a virtual machine. This is not terribly surprising, since it never ran particularly well even when it was new -- the loading times were long, and it was prone to graphical glitches and crashes. The only way I have personally gotten it working in recent years was by installing Windows 98 on a contemporaneous laptop.
installation woes
If you want to run it, you may find yourself in a pickle due to a subtle problem. Pinball Science is compatible with Windows XP, but not every version is compatible. If you go looking online, you may find ISO copies of the disk. Out of all those I have checked, none will run on XP without additional configuration. This is because Pinball Science relied on behavior which changed in Windows XP Service Pack 1. The DK website (when it was still up) claimed that they did publish a version of the disk which is compatible with XP including later service packs, but I have never found a copy of that disk.
Do not despair: they published a patch which I have used before with success. It used to be available for download from their website, but their website went offline many years ago. Archive.org does have a backup of that website including a backup of that patch file. Just in case, I have also hosted that file here. For what it's worth, here is a link to another patch from that publisher, which claims to be compatible with service pack 2 and has a different file name; however, the files appear to be identical. I have also rehosted that patch here, just in case.
multiple versions
I have found at least two versions of the installation disk, and I believe there are more. These are the two versions I have in my possession. I have posted ISO copies of these disks on my Github.
Scholastic
This seems to be the earlier one; all the files on it have a modification date of 1998 or earlier. When loaded on Windows, the name of the disk reads as DKMMTWSW.
- Case:
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- Inside:
- Inside back:
Global Software Publishing
This one is more recent, as some of its files have a modification date of May 15 2002. Since XP Service Pack 1 would not be released until November of that year, it seems unlikely that this would have the service pack 1 patch. Notably, it appears to have dropped support for MacOS, presumably because OS X came out the previous year and would be incompatible with this game, which was written with System 7 in mind. When you load this in Windows, the name of the disk reads as Dkmmtwsw.
- Case:
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The New Way Things Work
There's not much online about Pinball Science, but there is even less about the companion disk The New Way things Work. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say Pinball Science was the companion disk. Here's how the parentage seems to go:
- There is a book The Way Things Work released in 1988
- There is a CD-ROM version released in 1994, which features animations and quizzes as well as text from the book. The idea seems to have been a children's digital encyclopedia, in the style of Encarta.
- In 1998 an updated version of the book is released, The New Way Things Work, featuring material about digital electronics. Separately, an updated version of the CD-ROM encyclopedia is sold, in a box set together with Pinball Science.
I remember having a copy of The New Way Things Work around when I was little, but I don't remember anything about its contents. It must not have been too much fun, at least in comparison with Pinball Science. In any case, I have also preserved an ISO of this disk along with the scans below. When loaded in Windows, the name of the disk reads as DKTNWTW.
- Case:
- Disk:
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- Inside:
- Inside back:
