Sure, putting pinball into a videogame is much like taking a tennis racket to soccer practice, but Capcom has managed to join the two divergent entertainment forms most adroitly.

Flipnic is more than just a pinball simulator for your PlayStation2--though just in that context, it's a little off the mark if you're a pinball purist or physics professor--it's actually a weirded-out take on a basic premise, a series of larger-than-life "tables" that happen to use steel balls as the main, uh, character (a destructive one at that) and flippers and bumpers as the means of propulsion.

On top of innumerable and adventurous, interconnect tables at the heart of Flipnic, some levels play like Breakout or Pong (there's even two-player head to head play for modes such as these), complete with retro graphics. Some offer foosball and hoops type play, all are drenched in varying degrees of surrealism and lush, flowing, fantasy landscapes, looking all organic or synthetic or both at the same time.

It's a solid alternative to modern videogame fare. Challenging if you want it to be (in fact, brutally unforgiving in its main, mission-based mode) or just easy-going eye-candy for pick-up-and-play play, solo or with a buddy.

Make no mistake, Flipnic is "value priced" because it's niche, not because it's cheap.