this post was submitted on 20 May 2025
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Play Store 3D Pinball Space Cadet Download

From the article:

If you grew up in the Windows XP era, than you probably spent hours playing its iconic free game, β€œ3D Pinball Space Cadet.” Now, β€œSpace Cadet” pinball has been ported to Android, and it’s completely free.

One of the many things that Windows XP will be remembered for is the pinball game that essentially everyone who ever used the operating system played at some point or another. The game has been immortalized many times, and now it’s available on Android.

Developer Kyle Sylvertre used a decompiled version of Space Cadet Pinball from k4zmu2a on GitHub to bring the game to the Google Play Store for Android users. The game is optimized for touchscreens with the left and right sides of the display acting as the triggers, and you can also tap the far right side to use the ball launcher. The game runs in portrait mode, supports 18 languages, integrates with Google Play Games for a leaderboard, and is less than 5MB in size.

And it’s all completely free too.

There are no ads or in-app purchases here, as the developer β€œjust wanted to see it on Android with a Google Play leaderboard.” On that note, cheats are disabled to keep the integrity of that leaderboard, but the developer hints that cheats might come back with an option to turn off the leaderboard.

In any case, it’s a nice hit of nostalgia. Drop your high score in the comments below.

top 32 comments
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Windows XP era? Excuse me? It goes all the way back to Windows 95. The original game by Maxis is even older.

[–] TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 6 points 5 hours ago

For Linux folks, it's also available on FlatHub.

I've installed it on my steam deck and mapped the triggers to the left and right... uh... flappy things?

It works really well, and whenever people see it they're like whoaaaaa I remember that!!

[–] ByteMe@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

I don't remember this game. I was pretty young back then tho

It was great to see that after all these years, and countless hours playing it, I still absolutely suck at it.

[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 5 points 11 hours ago

How can you do this to me?! I have a family, bro! Now nothing will get done!

[–] Speculater@lemmy.world 12 points 18 hours ago

Be warned, there's an ad supported version under a very similar name in the PlayStore. It's worse in every way and has some permissions that it shouldn't be asking for.

[–] smeg@feddit.uk 10 points 18 hours ago

Other platforms you can run it on:

  • Linux
  • Windows
  • MacOS
  • PS Vita
  • Nintendo Switch
  • webOS TV
  • Nintendo Wii
  • Nintendo 3DS
  • Nintendo DS
  • Nintendo Wii U
  • PlayStation 2
  • Sega Dreamcast
  • MorphOS
  • AmigaOS 4
[–] Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works 1 points 11 hours ago

Strange, I played this one a year ago on Android. I guess it was a port, but it was damn near the same thing. It's called "Space Pinball".

[–] jayandp@sh.itjust.works 19 points 23 hours ago (3 children)

The GitHub version still has the cheats intact.

[–] aeshna_cyanea@lemm.ee 4 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

What are cheats? Tilting the table?

[–] jayandp@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 minutes ago* (last edited 9 minutes ago)

Extra balls, multipliers, God mode(although that's mostly broken on Android)

They were in the original game as cheat codes you typed in. GitHub Android version just added buttons for them in the settings.

[–] dewittlebook@lemdro.id 3 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

It seems like the reason that cheats were removed is because of public leaderboards

[–] jayandp@sh.itjust.works 10 points 20 hours ago

Makes sense, but personally I don't care about leader boards, so I'd rather have the functionality in tact.

https://github.com/fexed/Pinball-on-Android

[–] NotSteve_@lemmy.ca 11 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I think that game was actually supposed to be a demo for a bigger pinball game right?

[–] coaxil@lemm.ee 2 points 10 hours ago

Nah, it was an old maxis game, part of full tilt pinball, Dave brought it over for all of us to enjoy

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ThxdvEajK8g&pp=ygUVRGF2ZSdzIGdhcmFnZSBwaW5iYWxs

He has done a decent amount of vids on the game if you look through his channel

[–] jinwk00@lemm.ee 9 points 23 hours ago

Iirc was a 3 pack pinball game

[–] SplashJackson@lemmy.ca 5 points 22 hours ago

Yo this is T I G H T

[–] tehmics@lemmy.world 4 points 23 hours ago (2 children)
[–] Zabinski@lemmy.ml 2 points 11 hours ago

The Fexed Github project has tilt controls (and better gravity sim if I'm not trippin', I know one of the projects had gravity issues and the play store version feels too floaty)

[–] absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz 0 points 18 hours ago
[–] grue@lemmy.world 3 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

It's not "completely free;" it's just pirated proprietary software that Microsoft hasn't bothered to take down yet.

The definition of Free Software (a.k.a. "open source") is having the legal right to read, modify, and redistribute the source code, not merely the technical capability.

[–] wetbeardhairs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Microsoft doesn't own it, they didn't program it. They paid a license fee to the developer to include it in Windows XP.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 8 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

Whatever -- whoever holds the copyright hasn't bothered to take it down yet. Point is, even if it's abandonware it's not legitimately "free."

(Also, I'm technically correct anyway: Microsoft owns GitHub, so it'd be the one acting on the copyright holder's DMCA request. πŸ˜›)

[–] Ganbat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

Also, I'm technically correct anyway: Microsoft owns GitHub, so it'd be the one acting on the copyright holder's DMCA request.

Despite what Take Two would like you to believe, reverse-engineering software isn't illegal unless it's for circumvention of security measures (oversimplified). Distributing copyrighted assets, on the other hand, is. Since the GitHub repo doesn't include the game assets, the only legal DMCA takedown that could be made here is against the Play Store app, in which case, Google would be handling it.

All that said, there doesn't even seem to be a repo for this. There's a different port done by someone else (fexed) last updated over two years ago, but this particular port seems to be closed source. Last update on Play Store was yesterday, but the last time any fork of the main repo was updated was last month.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 3 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

You do know the code is copyrighted too, right? Reverse engineering isn't the issue here; uploading the result to GitHub is.

[–] Ganbat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

Yes, the original code is copyrighted. A recreation of the code, however accurate, isn't. Do you really think Nintendo would let decomps of so many of their games fly if they thought they had legal grounds to remove them?

[–] grue@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

No, that's not how copyright works. Decompiling creates a derivative work, which is still copyrighted the same as the original. In order to have a proper clean reimplementation, you need to use a "Chinese wall" procedure whereby one person documents the behavior of the original program and then another person writes a new program from scratch using that description, without ever looking at the original program's source code.

I don't claim to know what Nintendo or its lawyers are thinking, but the law is pretty crystal clear that merely decompiling a proprietary program doesn't magically make it not proprietary anymore.

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 2 points 2 hours ago

This isn't a reimplementation though, it's a decompilation and recompilation of the exact binary and code.

[–] zod000@lemmy.ml 8 points 21 hours ago

EA (through Maxis) likely still owns this as it was part of their Full Tilt Pinball game. I can totally see EA pursuing this just because of their inner evil.

[–] Brunbrun6766@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Well that was an instant yes please