Big Ds Pinball – The best Pinball Build to date on Arcade Punks!

Punks, clear your weekend. Big D’s Pinball Build has landed and it is, hands down, the biggest and best pinball release Arcade Punks has ever put out. Months of building, tuning, testing and tweaking have gone into this one, and it shows the second you fire it up.

This is not a pile of tables thrown into a folder. It is a fully set up virtual pinball cabinet experience, running through PinUP Popper as the front end, with Visual Pinball and Future Pinball tables ready to go, pre-configured for a two-screen playfield and backglass setup straight out of the box.

Massive respect to Big D

Big D is a proud member of the Pinball Lunatics, one of the most passionate and knowledgeable pinball crews out there. The time, skill and sheer love for the silver ball poured into this build is unreal, and he has handed it to the community so everyone can enjoy it.

Drop him some love in the comments, share your high scores, and give a shout out to the whole Pinball Lunatics group. Builds like this only happen because of people like them.

What’s included

• PinUP Popper front end for slick, cabinet-style table browsing and launching
• Visual Pinball tables, including ROM-based recreations with full PinMAME support
• Future Pinball tables with switchable camera views and full sound control
• Two-screen setup ready to go: playfield on screen 1, backglass on screen 2
• Built-in layout installer to switch to a single desktop screen, three screens or four screens in minutes
• Quick reference controls for both engines, included below

Big D’s rig

Folks keep asking what this was built and tested on, so here it is. It is a two-screen setup on 1080p monitors, nothing exotic. You can almost certainly run it on a much lower spec PC, and Big D reckons Windows 11 might not be the ideal OS for this.

Playfield monitor	1080p, rotates horizontal and vertical, stand included (a cheaper monitor works fine)
Backglass monitor	Budget 1080p display
Processor	AMD Ryzen 7 5700G
Memory	16 GB RAM
Graphics	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060
Operating system	Windows 11 Pro, 64-bit

Big Ds Setup Guide

New to PinUP Popper?

Give this walkthrough a watch before you dive in. It covers installing and setting up PinUP Popper, which makes the rest of this build a doddle.

Changing your screen setup

Out of the box the build runs on two screens: screen 1 is the playfield and screen 2 is the backglass. Running a single desktop monitor, or going full cabinet with three or four screens? Follow these steps. It is the same as the initial PinUP Popper setup, just skipping straight to the screen layout part.

1. Open the Vpinball folder, then the installer folder.
2. Double click PinUPBallerInstaller.exe.
3. Go to the next page, where the A, B and C layout options are shown, and select your layout type.
4. Choose your playfield resolution (HD or 4K) and click Apply Layout.
5. Note the Windows screen numbering so you can arrange things to match your setup, then click next page.
6. Go to Step 3, Setup Display Positions, and click on the screen items to fit them to your monitor or monitors.
7. Click Save Settings, then Exit Setup.
8. Click Step 4, Apply Display Settings to All Apps, then exit. Job done.

Quick reference controls

Visual Pinball

Gameplay

• Insert coin: 5
• Start game: 1
• Launch ball / plunger: Enter
• Left flipper: Left Shift
• Right flipper: Right Shift
• Special / fire: A
• Left Magna Save: Left Ctrl
• Right Magna Save: Right Ctrl
• Exit game: Q or Esc

PinMAME options (tables with a ROM)

• F1: Game options menu
• F2: Keyboard settings
• F3: Reset table
• F4: Toggle display lock
• F5: Toggle display size
• F6: DIP switch / option menu
• B: Add / remove ball from table
• T: Bang back (triggers the mechanical tilt)
• End: Open / close coin door (open to change volume, close when done)
• 8 and 9: Adjust volume when the coin door is open

Adjusting tables (including non-ROM tables)

1. Open Visual Pinball directly, not through Popper.
2. Close the table selection window.
3. Go to File > Open and select the table you want to adjust. This opens it in editor mode.
4. Use the Preferences menu to change settings.
5. To edit the table script, click Toggle Script Editor on the left.

Future Pinball

Gameplay

• Insert coin: 5
• Start game: 1
• Launch ball / plunger: Enter
• Left flipper: Left Shift
• Right flipper: Right Shift
• Special / fire: A
• Left Magna Save: Left Ctrl
• Right Magna Save: Right Ctrl
• Exit game: Esc

Options

• F1 to F8: Change camera view
• F9: Display frame rate and stats
• Page Up / Page Down: Music volume up / down
• Home / End: Sound volume up / down
• Scroll Lock: Adjust second monitor position

Adjusting tables

1. Open Future Pinball directly, not through Popper.
2. Go to File > Open and select the table you want to adjust. This opens it in editor mode.
3. Use the Preferences menu to change settings.
4. To edit the table script, click the Script button on the left.

Don’t tilt. Just play.

Grab the build below, fire it up and show us what you’ve got. Thanks again to Big D and the Pinball Lunatics for an absolute monster of a release.