3D Pinball Space Cadet Windows 95 running on Linux with Wine

Install Wine Emulator Package

Details on Wine in project Run Windows Program on Linux with Wine including configuration and troubleshooting information.

Run the following commands from a command terminal. There will be many prompts to agree.

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo apt update
sudo apt install q4wine
sudo apt install wine32

This is performed only the one time to install a Wine emulation environment. This compatibility layer will allow us to run some Windows programs on a Linux computer.

About this code

It's not a program. We are adding around 2Gigabytes of additional software to our computer operating system. It may be worth it to you to run Windows applications using Wine.

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386 adds a repository of old software

sudo apt update refresh lists of available software

sudo apt install q4wine install part of our Wine emulator

sudo apt install wine32 install Wine components

Windows Program

3D Pinball For Windows is compatible. The 7Z compressed folder is like a zip.

Use your Linux to unzip the program. The folder contains many little files and we need to find Pinball.exe right-click and Open With "Q4Wine". We will open it this way every time. You can create a shortcut.

This is a good sign with the Wine emulator. Accept Wine defaults.

3D Pinball Space Cadet

Get familiar with your controls. 1995 was a different era for computers. Look on your computer keyboard for the function keys [F2], [F3], [F4], [F8] along the top.

Look on bottom for a key labelled [Fn], you may have to press [Fn] at the same time as the numbered [F#] key like a shift or control key. [esc] will get us out of full screen.

Menu->Options->Player Controls [F8].

Player Controls

Not many controls. Take a moment to locate the Z key and the / key next to the shift keys. These control our left and right paddles. We resume play by clicking OK then [F3] to Resume Play.

Awaiting Deployment

Now that we have Resumed Play the screen shows Awaiting Deployment. A silver ball will pop out in the bottom right corner above the silver plunger.

This is a good time to locate your paddle keys Z and / to practice.

Hold down the space bar on the computer keyboard and watch the silver plunger below the silver ball. Let go and watch the shiny ball move across the simulated pinball surface.