I always loved this as a kid. The idea just makes absolute sense as a spin off. Sonic as a pinball? Sure why not.

Sonic Spinball has four levels in total. Each level involves exploring trying to find the emeralds required to access the boss at the top of the level. Though the game plays mechanically like a pinball table it is not built like a pinball table but more open ended exploration that has multiple pinball flippers throughout. The issue I've always had is I could never get past the second level growing up. Some of these levels are quite hard if you miss a flip Sonic can die pretty easily and there are no save points, passwords or level select to carry on your progress. Add to that that you have no idea where the emeralds are or how many you even need on each level makes it more trial and error to explore to progress. Thanks to modern options (I played this on Sega Mega Drive Classics on PS4) allowing ways to progress through some of these more artificial barriers presented and replaying it to the end again does remind me that the game gets weaker as it goes on.

Toxic Caves - The opening level is just fantastic setting the scene with fairly grungy music and great aesthetics of green moss ridden rocks and radioactive sludge.

Lava Powerhouse - The level I normally stopped playing at. A semi industrious level with cannons and steam. I like it.

The Machine - This level sucks. It's like a giant purple metal factory but finding and getting to the emeralds is no fun. One took me like 20 minutes because I couldn't get the shot angle right and constantly ended up somewhere else on the map. Ugh.

Showdown - The final level. Whist better than The Machine it still isn't super interesting to play compared with the first two levels. It feels kind of thrown together just to finish the game.

In between each of the main levels are some pretty cool bonus levels that have sonic playing on a more traditional pinball table himself. ( I always liked the reflection of him in the windows on either side and the detail of his gloved hand.) These are actually really fun with a small variety of objectives from freeing animals to smashing Robotnik / Dr. Eggman's teeth in.

Though visually the game is generally pretty nice with it's own artistic style Sonic himself just feels...off. Sonic's graphics specifically are a stepdown. My girlfriend saw me playing and thought it looked worse than Sonic 1 I played recently. His jump and movement inputs on the occasions he isn't spinning around are just laggy to hell though the game itself also has some framerate issues to boot.

Despite quite a lot of this review being negative I do enjoy the game it's just it could have been something better than it is. I'd like to see Sega give another shot to this idea but I'm not sure current Sega have that in them anymore.

+ Great idea.
+ First two levels are awesome.
+ Some good music.

- Sonic handles badly.
- No save points or passwords to progress.
- Performance is choppy.

I rented Sonic Spinball a lot as a kid, and even back then I recognized it as being kinda awful. It was sheer stubbornness that kept me playing, attempting weekend after weekend to make it past the third level... Suddenly I'm going from collecting three chaos emeralds to five!? Fuck off!

I've been able to beat Spinball in the years since via emulation, but I've still had this nagging feeling that somehow this game - which is neither a good Sonic game nor a good pinball game - had beaten me. I decided to fix this recently and slapped down 20 bucks on a remarkably well kept CIB copy for the Genesis. It's almost like someone played this once, said "nope!" and then kept it in storage for the following 29 years. Weird. But at least now I can finally say I've beaten Sonic Spinball on actual hardware.

The 2.5 stars is almost entirely because I harbor some sick fondness for this game, like the victim of a crime who keeps visiting their assailant in jail. Sonic's weight and momentum feel like a betrayal of who he is as a character, heavy and clumsy - it's not even a good approximation of pinball physics. I've never played a virtual pinball game where it was harder to line up my shots. I'm sure they exist, but I put quite a bit of time into other pinball games of this era and Sonic Spinball remains one of the worst.

I do really like how the minigames feature characters from both the Saturday morning cartoon and The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, though. There's one where you knock Dr.Robotnik's god damn teeth out one by one, and that always stuck with me. These minigames are also dreadful to play, the ball is so squirrely that it'll likely hit a bumper immediately after being launched and go careening past your flippers and into the mile long gutter between them. It is nevertheless novel to see the 90s cartoon characters actually show up in a game.

There's also the soudntrack, which is... interesting. It's very grungy, even abrasive, yet it has its own unique charm. I bought the vinyl of it recently, so add that in with the 20 dollars I spent on the game itself and I'm out about 50 on Spinball related paraphernalia. Disgusting.

Sometimes I can't help but wonder how differently I might've turned out if I got really obsessed with Mario in the 90s instead of Sonic. Probably have a wife and kids and a good job. My life is a mess.

Sega Technical Institute has always piqued my interest, with their short but memorable library of games. Amusingly, despite Sonic 2 and S3&K being possibly the least divisive, most unanimously acclaimed titles in the Sonic series to this day, the rest of STI's lineup is pretty damn flawed despite its character and doesn't stack up nearly as well as those two games. That is, if you ask anyone else. I like Sonic Spinball. I'm the only one of my friends who does.

I've never really understood the amount of scorn here. The core idea is executed about as well as it could have been, minus the framerate which is pretty easy to adapt to in just a couple minutes. The levels are all pretty fun for the most part, save for a couple particular moments like the final boss and Lava Powerhouse's weird steam chambers. The soundtrack kicks ass, save for the infamous options theme. Essentially, despite the occasional hiccups, I really do think Spinball comes together quite nicely.

It's definitely a bit tough to get acquainted with, though, and I think that may be why a lot of people don't really give it a chance. Rarely have I seen any friends poke at this any further than the first level. I guess I can't blame them, but I will say it's probably not best to go in expecting a typical pinball game nor a typical Sonic game. It's like a weird hybrid of both, like a fucked up but misunderstood little experiment.

Sometimes I wonder what kind of things STI would get into in later years, had Yuji Naka not thrown a shit fit and killed both Sonic X-Treme and the whole company. Not much of their output was very good, but there's a strange charm to it. Even the disaster known as The Ooze has a pretty interesting idea at its core. Spinball, though? Spinball is just good. Maybe this'll be the take people fling shit at me for, but I will die on this hill.

The cover art is the best part of the game. Sonic Spinball is a poor attempt to work a franchise into the theme of pinball (which is weirdly common, if you ask me). The idea of being a ball that can manipulate its trajectory in a pinball game is a good idea . . . if the physics were accurate, but it's so finicky and inconsistent. Also the tables aren't that interesting either, causing frustration pretty often when you're merely looking to find the paths to clear them.

I found some satisfaction in actually taking the time to sit down and play it from beginning to end, but it's so obvious why it isn't revered as a classic, but rather a strange early point of Sonic. I imagine it wouldn't even be remembered all that well if Sega didn't constantly port it and include it in all collections regarding Sonic/Genesis games.

Quite an oddball Sonic entry here. Definitely my preferred of the Sonic spin-offs for the Genesis, and honestly quite the perfect idea for a spin-off for this guy, especially coming off of the Casino Night stages from Sonic 2. "Since Sonic has this whole thing about curling into a ball, why don't we make a whole pinball oriented game with him?" Big props to whatever employee over at Sega had that stroke of genius. How the Sonic pinball game plays however is more divisive from what I've seen. I generally found it to be pretty cool but I can understand where some people come from with how the overall pinball format can make general progression pretty annoying at times. Plus, its hard. Like, really fucking hard. Quite easily the hardest Sonic game on the system, and possibly the hardest game on the system I've played so far even. With how much of a struggle progression can be it's fairly easy to get yourself killed in the many kinds of death traps, especially so on the game's final stage, The Showdown. Thankfully the collection I played this on has a rewind feature and savestates so I'd recommend using them if you're playing on one that lets you do so. (Ah, the joys of modern accessibility options) Also, I really wanna mention just how completely unhinged this game's style is. All of the setpieces and entities in Robotnik's volcano base feel really alien-like for the series, and that soundtrack is just crispy as all hell. And honestly... I kinda dig it? (Let's be honest, you'd all agree that the options menu theme is a banger if those damn tesla coils didn't feel the need to assert their dominance) It definitely likes to show off with how it's the black sheep of the Sonic entries on the Genesis.

"SMELL MY SOCKS !!"

Sonic Spinball is one of those games that you play the first level of and then you're just like "yup, that's enough game for me."

For the longest time, that was more or less how I felt about the game whenever it showed up in some Sonic or Genesis compilation title. I just played the first stage, and then quit as soon as level 2 started, except for the one time I used cheat codes to see the ending of the Game Gear version (thanks, Sonic Gems Collection).
But this time I persisted past the first stage, and after Toxic Caves is the perfect argument for why emulators should have save states and rewind functionality.
The ultimate downfall of Spinball is the fact that the physics are wonky as hell. If you're going to make a pinball game of any kind, you're going to want to have good physics, and Spinball just feels stiff to play, meaning you're going to be fighting with the controls trying to get Sonic where you want him to go.
At least it looks nice and the music is mostly pretty good, which is the only reason why it's not just a one star.

First off, I have to say: whoever came up with the idea of this deserves a prize. I grew up in an era when every successful or semi-successful show got a pinball game based on it, but Sonic is probably the one IP that actually makes sense as a pinball game. After all, it's all about rolling into a ball and bouncing around really fast right? Seems like a match made in heaven, and honestly it's not bad, but it suffered from poor execution.

The levels are sprawling, with multiple 'pinball table' setups per level, connected by a network of tunnels. The player needs to meet certain requirements (hitting targets, destroying obstacles, etc.), spread across all the tables, in order to unlock the boss area. It sounds like a good idea, but this is a case in which messing with the traditional pinball structure isn't a good thing: the fun in pinball is trying to build up a high score on a table which is chock-full of different ways to score points. By adding linear objectives and requirements and spreading them out over a very large and sparsely-populated area, the game takes away these two crucial elements of a good pinball game. Beyond the mandatory objectives, there really isn't anything to do on the tables - they're very bland. My experience of the game was roughly 10% meeting the objectives, then 90% trying to hit that one last objective, accidentally going to a different (boring) part of the map, finally returning to the right (boring) place, trying to hit the target, falling into another (boring) part of the map, etc.

The tedium might have been alleviated somewhat if I were able to play the game in small doses, but there isn't even any password or save system which means I had to slog through the entire thing in one sitting well beyond the novelty of the idea (and my patience) had worn thin.

Looking at my other negative reviews I realize most of them were frustrating or cheap in some way. This game wasn't really either, but it was extremely uninteractive and boring which is the last thing you want either a Sonic or a pinball game to be.

As any fan of the series knows, Sonic the Hedgehog has had plenty of mainline and side games, even by the end of 1993, where it not only had two platformers for the Sega Genesis, but also two other platformers for the Sega Master System, one for the Sega CD, and some other weird things that I am kinda afraid of looking at or talking about. Of course though, ignoring those weird things, Sonic wouldn’t just be known for just sticking to the run ‘n jump gameplay, as he would also dive head first into the wonderful and weird world of spin-off territory. There have been plenty of Sonic spin-offs made over the years, and as with any major video game franchise, a good number of these spin-offs could be seen as pretty good, while a lot of others can be seen as pretty bad. And then we have those that fall right in the middle in terms of quality, such as with the first proper Sonic spin-off game ever made, Sonic the Hedgehog: Spinball, or just Sonic Spinball for short.

I have previously mentioned this before in my Kirby’s Pinball Land review, but it bears repeating here, I am not a fan of pinball, so for the longest time, I had no desire to really dive into Sonic Spinball to see what it was all about. It looked good from what I had seen and briefly played of it before, but it wasn’t enough to truly convince me it was something that I absolutely needed to check out. But, seeing as Sega loves to re-release this title over and over again (even though most people don’t care), I decided one day to eventually give it a shot, and it was just as fun and frustrating as I could’ve expected. As a whole, this game encapsulates everything I love about Classic Sonic games, but also everything that I hate about pinball, leading to what I could only consider to be an ok game and nothing more.

The story is the same as every other Sonic game so far: Dr. Robotnik is being a dick, and Sonic has to go stop him, which is as basic as can be, but then again, if you are playing a pinball game for a story, then why are you playing a pinball game, the graphics are pretty good, having plenty of detailed environments and enemy sprites for the tables and enemies that you will be blasting through in the game, the music is half-’n-half in terms of quality, where half of the music is pretty awesome, and great to listen to while going through these tables, and the other half is MY EARS ARE BLEEDING, the control is mostly what you would expect from a pinball game, but there are moments where you can control Sonic normally, and it is… fucking awful, but we will get there, and the gameplay is also mostly what you would expect, but with a little extra in there to not make it too simple or boring.

The game is primarily a pinball game, where you take “control” of Sonic, of course, go through a set of four pinball levels, which makes it sound like the game is lacking in content, but trust me, it is ENOUGH, propel Sonic around in various sections of the pinball table to defeat enemies and gather plenty of points to boost your high score, activate plenty of switches and mechanisms to progress further in the tables and gather Chaos Emeralds, take on plenty of different bosses created by Robotnik that will most likely give you nightmares, and go through several different bonus stages to gain more points while also continuing to question what the fuck you are looking at currently. It is a pinball game at its core, with not too much else to offer in terms of content, but it does manage to keep the hectic and fast pinball gameplay you would expect from a table intact… which may be a good or a bad thing depending on who you ask.

Like with Kirby’s Pinball Land, this game isn’t just simply a pinball game that just so happens to have Sonic in it, as it has plenty of different objectives and puzzle elements to be seen. Through each of the four tables, there will be plenty of puzzles that you will need to solve by controlling where Sonic goes and what he hits in the pinball table, which all primarily leads you to collecting the Chaos Emeralds of each stage (which are all blue, for some reason) to take on the boss waiting for you at the end. This does make the game a little more exciting to go through, and there are even several moments where you have to do a little bit of platforming to get to where you need to be… and by a little bit, I mean a LITTLE bit, as these sections generally don’t last long at all. Once again, this all leads to the bosses, which are about as fun to fight as you would think they are, and while plenty of them have different strategies to beat them, a lot of the time, you are at the pinball table’s mercy, which determines whether or not you actually succeed.

Which can pretty much summarize my main concerns when talking about this game. Like with any pinball game, a lot of how you do and where you go in this game all boils down to luck, and sometimes, you can have incredible luck in the tables and get pretty far, but in many other cases, you won’t be so lucky. Granted, this factor isn’t too offensive in this case, considering you have a lot more control over where Sonic goes rather than any other kind of pinball game, but there are still plenty of bullshit moments and parts that can stop that from happening. This is especially annoying when you get to some certain bosses, who have certain attacks and patterns that can have you sent back alllllllllll the way to the start of the table, even after you had spent so long trying to get up there in the first place. Also, on a brief side note, controlling Sonic in the platforming segments also feels horrible, as he has dogshit movement speed, and feels incredibly heavy when jumping. Then again, this isn’t that much of an issue considering that it focuses on the pinball mechanics more than the platforming ones.

Overall, despite its general appeal, creative gameplay for the genre, and some banging tunes here or there, I can’t necessarily say that I got into Sonic Spinball all that much. It is mostly because it is a pinball game, so that is to be expected from me, but I will admit, it does have a lot of admirable qualities that do make it one of the stand-out spin-offs from Sonic’s history, one that I’m sure any fan of his would enjoy all the same. I would recommend it for those who are big fans of pinball games, for those who are big Sonic games, or both, because this game has enough here to satisfy all of those crowds while not overstaying its welcome. One last thing I will say though is that, even though I don’t like the game itself, I do love the little bar that is constantly at the top of the screen giving you a lot of 90s-ass messages. That should be in every Sonic game, pinball or otherwise.

Game #464

Veredito: O melhor 1º spinoff.

Nunca entendi a treta que os fãs têm com Spinball. "Não é um plataforma de velocidade". Mario Kart e Mario Party também não são jogos de plataforma, ué. E assim como eles foram a "marioficação" dos jogos de corrida e tabuleiro, Spinball é a "sonicficação" de um novo gênero. É um spinoff, cacete.

Não vou mentir que é perfeito. Tu consegue ver bem menos na vertical do que deveria, e o último chefe foi feito especialmente pra te emputecer, fora outros pequenos detalhes de polimento que incomodam.

Mas cara, é Sonic. Tem músicas e direção visual dignas de Sonic, fases bônus escondidas pra quem jogar bem, e uma jogabilidade baseada em exploração, reflexos e domínio da excelente física do jogo, o que combina muito bem com pinball. Por sinal, as mecânicas de pinball são muito bem pensadas e criativas, e o espírito de arcade é uma delicinha.

Pena que ele seja tão odiado. Adoraria ver continuações mais ambiciosas com a tecnologia de hoje. Já pensou se todo fã de Mario tivesse reclamado de Super Mario Kart no SNES? Pois é.

[Played as part of a Sonic Games Binge via the Mega Collection on PS2]

Fuck yes, dude.

It's pinball with a story.
I'd have played this for longer if I could but I want to do other things.
Maybe I'll put it back on tonight and play it while I'm not doing anything.

It's just pinball, but more forgiving and with actual strategy.

Eu juro que tentei, mas eu simplesmente não consigo me interessar por esse jogo. Resumidamente é o jogo do Sonic com a jogabilidade de um "Pinball".

Eu simplesmente não consigo avançar nesse jogo, achei os comandos meio "travados", é muito difícil mirar certinho, além de que nos poucos trechos que você joga com o Sonic normal (andando, pulando), o personagem é muito ruim de se controlar. Aquilo que foi o destaque de Sonic 1 e Sonic 2, é o vilão deste jogo.

Talvez por eu só curtir jogos de "Pinball" em máquinas próprias, o game não me agradou tanto. Mas é inegável que a ideia desse jogo é bem ousada.

As an adult in the 2020s. I tried Sonic Spinball on the Switch NSO and it was like

Ha ha who decided to give spinball a story mode with Sonic in it.

But, then

I just imagined what it would be like to be a kid growing up with this game.

I'm really sorry for you if you did because this is just painful. It's also likely the first sign that Sonic's career as a video game icon wasn't going to be smooth sailing. But we didn't listen.

May god have mercy on my soul

























Also SPINBALL SATURDAY BROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO #SpinballSweep