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 28 comments
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[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 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!!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 hours ago

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 hours ago

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 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".

[–] [email protected] 10 points 15 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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 15 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
[–] [email protected] 17 points 21 hours ago (3 children)

The GitHub version still has the cheats intact.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 hours ago

What are cheats? Tilting the table?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 9 points 18 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

[–] [email protected] 9 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 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

[–] [email protected] 9 points 20 hours ago

Iirc was a 3 pack pinball game

[–] [email protected] 6 points 20 hours ago

Yo this is T I G H T

[–] [email protected] 3 points 20 hours ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 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)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 16 hours ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 21 hours ago

Well that was an instant yes please

[–] [email protected] 2 points 21 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.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 20 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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 20 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˜›)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 6 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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 31 minutes ago

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?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 19 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.