Fans of Portal 2 have been waiting nearly 14 years now for another official entry in the beloved action-puzzle series. In the meantime, those fans have had to settle for DLC, fan mods, and odd, Aperture-Science-themed spinoffs that capture the look and feel of the Portal universe in a number of decidedly non-Portal games.
Now, it seems we can add a full-fledged physical pinball table to that list of spinoffs with the announcement of a full-size, fully licensed Portal-themed pinball table built on Multimorphic’s P3 pinball platform. Pinball News’ write-up has more details than the press release, noting that the table was developed in conjunction with the team at Valve “to ensure all the features are accurately represented and they had access to all the assets from the Portal and Portal 2 games.”
That means new stylized Aperture Science art on the side of the table and new “Test Chamber” animations on the large display that runs underneath the playfield. It also means Ellen McLain and Marc Silk reprising their iconic roles as GLaDOS and Wheatley, respectively, to record new spoken reactions to in-game events. Watching the promotional trailer and hearing a fully animated toy sculpt of Wheatley intone “I’m making a note here: huge success!” in his trademark British accent is sure to make even the most jaded Portal fan grin at least a little bit.
A bargain at twice the price
The extensive Portal theming on the table seems to extend to the gameplay as well. As you might expect, launching a ball into a lit portal on one side of the playfield can lead to it (or a ball that looks a lot like it) immediately launching from another portal elsewhere. The speed of the ball as it enters one portal and exits the other seems like it might matter to the gameplay, too: A description for an “aerial portal” table feature warns that players should “make sure to build enough momentum or else your ball will land in the pit!”
