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Recently, I saw a post on Reddit mentioning that a Xena pinball table would be added to Pinball FX. I was instantly excited! I had to try it out. I hadn’t played a lot of pinball before, but I had played Zenn Pinball 3D on my Nintendo 3DS a few years ago, and Microsoft Pinball Arcade way back in the nineties. Being a Xena fan, I was thrilled to see a Xena pinball game being made—and to be honest, any Xena game at all being made in this year and age.
As far as Xena games are concerned, I know of two old games: a Xena game for the PlayStation One and another for the Nintendo 64 (N64) called Xena: Talisman of Fate. I recently tried to install the N64 game on my newly installed RetroPie (A Raspberry Pi 3 running a retro gaming emulation OS called ‘RetroPie’). It ran sub-optimally; that’s to say, my Raspberry Pi 3 isn’t quite up to the task of running it smoothly, but I managed to get a few plays in and it looks like a decent game. The Playstation One game also seems to be well-made. I didn’t have a PS1 as a kid but I saw a few playthroughs of it. But those two games were both released in 1999. When I did some research, I found that there seems to be another game made in 2001 on the Game Boy Color, and I found another mention in 2006 of a Xena game that is referred to as “One of the worst games of the PS2 selection”
But now is 2024. As far as I know, there hasn’t been another game in the Xena brand since. And then suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, Xena Pinball pops up as one of the tables in “Universal Pinball: TV Classics” for Pinball FX. And then, behold: the Xena Funko pop, released a few years ago, will star in the upcoming video game “Funko Fusion” (https://www.funkofusion.com/), which will be released on September 13th of this year. Now may I dare to hope that maybe … there will be more Xena stuff being made in the near future? May I hope that a franchise that has been forgotten for more than a decade will be getting some renewed attention? In this day and age (and, to be honest, in every day and age), Xena and her message of redemption, friendship, and love are important. Strong female characters are important. And Xena was ahead of its time in many ways and also, one of its kind.
So now I’m playing Xena pinball, hoping for a score better than my current high score of some lazy 5,000,000 points, which earned me a place on the 401’th spot on the ranking of the table. I’m going to have fun exploring pinball again and getting better at this game. In the meantime, battle on Xena! Hopefully, new things are on the horizon for you.
Have you played any Xena games, or are you excited about this one? Maybe you're also excited about the Funko game coming in September? Share your insights and stories with me!
As far as Xena games are concerned, I know of two old games: a Xena game for the PlayStation One and another for the Nintendo 64 (N64) called Xena: Talisman of Fate. I recently tried to install the N64 game on my newly installed RetroPie (A Raspberry Pi 3 running a retro gaming emulation OS called ‘RetroPie’). It ran sub-optimally; that’s to say, my Raspberry Pi 3 isn’t quite up to the task of running it smoothly, but I managed to get a few plays in and it looks like a decent game. The Playstation One game also seems to be well-made. I didn’t have a PS1 as a kid but I saw a few playthroughs of it. But those two games were both released in 1999. When I did some research, I found that there seems to be another game made in 2001 on the Game Boy Color, and I found another mention in 2006 of a Xena game that is referred to as “One of the worst games of the PS2 selection”
But now is 2024. As far as I know, there hasn’t been another game in the Xena brand since. And then suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, Xena Pinball pops up as one of the tables in “Universal Pinball: TV Classics” for Pinball FX. And then, behold: the Xena Funko pop, released a few years ago, will star in the upcoming video game “Funko Fusion” (https://www.funkofusion.com/), which will be released on September 13th of this year. Now may I dare to hope that maybe … there will be more Xena stuff being made in the near future? May I hope that a franchise that has been forgotten for more than a decade will be getting some renewed attention? In this day and age (and, to be honest, in every day and age), Xena and her message of redemption, friendship, and love are important. Strong female characters are important. And Xena was ahead of its time in many ways and also, one of its kind.
So now I’m playing Xena pinball, hoping for a score better than my current high score of some lazy 5,000,000 points, which earned me a place on the 401’th spot on the ranking of the table. I’m going to have fun exploring pinball again and getting better at this game. In the meantime, battle on Xena! Hopefully, new things are on the horizon for you.
Have you played any Xena games, or are you excited about this one? Maybe you're also excited about the Funko game coming in September? Share your insights and stories with me!
