21st Century Entertainment was founded in 1991. Andrew Hewson, who ran the legendary software company Hewson before, was one of the founding members. This company was especially well known for their impressive pinball simulations.
The first game was released in 1992 and became an extremely successful title worldwide: Pinball Dreams. Developed by the swedish company Digital Illusions, it was the first pinball game ever, which had amazing realistc ball physics, excellent graphics and a brilliant soundtrack. All four tables were perfectly designed and featured great playability.
In the very same year they topped this success with the sequel Pinball Fantasies, which was even better.
1995 was the year, where Digital Illusions released their third pinball game under the 21st Century Entertainment label: Pinball Illusions. This was their first games which was made especially for AGA Amigas. Unfortunately only three tables were included, which weren't as perfectly designed as the tables from their first two games. Nevertheless it was another great release, because it was again better than all pinball games from competing companies.
Not only Digital Illusions programmed pinball games for this company. Spidersoft created Pinball Mania. This games was distributed together with the Amiga 1200 Magic package from Commodore, which consisted of a standard A1200 machine, a harddrive and a nice software package.
The last pinball game from 21st Century Entertainment which was released for Amiga was also their best title so far. Developed by Liquid Design from Sweden, Slam Tilt was highly appreciated by both, gamers and reviewers. There's no pinball simulation available for Amiga, which features better playability.
21st Century Entertainment published a few games for Amiga computers, which were different to their pinball series. Nebulus 2 for example, was the follow up of a real classic game which trained your skills. Deliverance was a great looking action game and the inofficial sequel to Stormlord. Marvin's Marvelous Adventures a cool jump'n run game while Rubicon was something for the action freaks. Rubicon programmer Stewart Gilray and his company are currently porting Pinball Dreams and Pinball Fantasies to Nintendos Gameboy Advance.
In 1996+97 21st Century Entertainment planned to change their line-up a bit. They stopped producing for Amiga after the release of Slam Tilt and focused on creating software for PC. They still released many different pinball games, but also a couple of other, not so successful titles like Flughafen Manager. The company was going through a very difficult time and ran into financial problems.
Today 21st Century Entertainment is completely out of business. Another great company bit the dust...
Nevertheless someone bought up their entire back catalogue. Jason Kingsley, CEO of Rebellion acquired the rights for all games which were published by 21st Century Entertainment and Andrew Hewsons former company View/Hewson.r. Mr. Kingsley is active in the games industry for a long decade. He programmed and designed dozens of games, including e.g. Blade Warrior, Better dead than alien or Captain Planet, which are all available for Amiga, too.
Thanks to him you can download the games from 21st Century Entertainment here from BTTR. Also we think it's possible that we might see some more of these old classics appearing on other systems in the near future like Nintendos new handheld console. | 
Pinball Dreams
Pinball Fantasies
Pinball Mania
Slam Tilt
Rubicon
Nebulus 2 |