Users can build and play their own virtual pinball machine by dropping bumpers, flippers, spinners, and other parts onto a table.

As part of the development process he purchased and disassembled an old Gottlieb Target Alpha pinball machine, so his new project could accurately depict its components.

[4] Computer Gaming World in 1983 considered the software toy revolutionary, and easy to understand because of its representative icons and drag-and-drop method of constructing a table; the magazine stated that "there's something almost magical about the way this product works.

The nine-page manual was considered "overkill", since Pinball Construction Set required no programming knowledge; an eight-year-old had no problems creating his own tables.

[3] The Addison-Wesley Book of Atari Software 1984 gave the "pinball wizard's dream" an overall A+ rating, praising the user interface as "exceptionally human engineered".

[14] In 1984 Pinball Construction Set received a Certificate of Merit in the category of "1984 Most Innovative Video Game/Computer Game" at the 5th annual Arkie Awards.

[19] In 2008, Pinball Construction Set was honored at the 59th Annual Technology and Engineering Emmy Awards for "User Generated Content/Game Modification".

[20] A version for the Coleco Adam combined with Hard Hat Mack under the title The Best of Electronic Arts was completed but not released.

[22] In 2013, Budge released the source code to the Atari 8-bit family version of Pinball Construction Set to the public on GitHub under the MIT license.