Portal Pinball Conducting Tests On Zen Platforms This Month

Chell, P-Body, ATLAS and, of course, GLaDOS will soon teleport to a new home where they will find plenty of science in need of doing. Get ready for a Portal pinball table, coming soon to Zen Studios’ Pinball FX2 and Zen Pinball 2.

Don’t worry, it perfectly appropriate to squeal with joy when an announcement like this comes along, especially when it’s so unexpected. The video game industry is well known for being a ship full of information leaks, but the team at Zen Studios has somehow managed to keep this bad boy under wraps until, well, today.

According to the announcement over on the PlayStation Blog, the Portal pinball table will arrive on May 26, meaning you’ve only got a couple more weeks to wait before finding out if the cake is, indeed, a lie.

“Crafted in collaboration with Valve and Zen Studios, Aperture Laboratories is proud to reveal the ‘Aperture Science Heuristic Portal Pinball Decive,’ proving that persistent experimentation is not only the hallmark of good science for the benefit of mankind, but also incalculably fun,” said Zen Community Manager Bobby Loertscher.

While the PS Blog post specifically mentions the Portal table coming to the PS3, PS4 and Vita later this month, you can also expect to see the new table on other Zen platforms, including Xbox and Nintendo consoles, PC, Mac and mobile.

Early glimpses of the table look great, with plenty of windy lanes, blue and orange flippers, as well as some animated antics from Chell and the gang. Players will be in control of Chell and Wheatley (in a manner of speaking) on a quest to confront the killer experiment-loving AI known as GLaDOS. You’ll run into series staples on the new table, including portals, turrets, aerial faith plates and the like. ATLAS and P-Body will also be around (A round…Get it?) for multiballs, which makes a heck of a lot of sense seeing as how they were the controllable characters in Portal 2’s cooperative mode.

Loertscher confirms in the comments that dialogue was pulled directly from the game, so expect to hear some familiar voices as you flip, shoot and roll your way through this series of dangerous experiments.

Considering the nature of Portal, I’m really looking forward to seeing what kind of creative ideas have been plugged into the pinball version of the game.

Zen Studios sure has been on a roll lately. Along with their tables built off of original IPs, they continue to bring out more and more tables based on various licensed properties. A couple of original tables were launched earlier this year and, in the past month alone, a new table from the Marvel universe and one from Star Wars has made an appearance.

Here’s hoping the Portal table soars when it arrives on May 26, like a majestic eagle…piloting a blimp.

Ryan Winslett

Staff Writer for CinemaBlend.