A Sonic pinball game, on paper, makes sense. Casino Night Zone is often cited by fans as one of the most memorable levels in Sonic 2 and that had plenty of flippers and bumpers that were a joy to navigate. Surely Sonic Spinball will be just as laid back and fun as Casino Night Zone, right? Well....not quite. Sonic Spinball is like a less friendly, gloves-off approach to the pinball genre that is punishingly hard, easily the hardest Sonic game I've played.

What I admire about the game is it's ambition. The level's are designed to be more interesting than your run-of-the-mill licensed pinball game, sprawling in scope with visuals more akin to a platformer game than a flashy pinball game. The first level, Toxic Caves, is really fun and satisfying to vertically scale...but the difficulty starts getting ridiculous in Lava Powerhouse with some very finickity jumps and some brutal bottomless pits. I've never completed the game without the help of modern save and rewind features, the final level always defeated me as a kid.

More than anything else though I have a soft spot for Sonic Spinball because of it's design is informed by an American perspective and it's the only game in the series to incorporate elements of the SatAM cartoon series (Princess Sally and co make cameo appearances) which is pretty rad. Honestly, the soundtrack slaps hard as well. That distinctly grimy, industrial sound the Mega Drive sound chip was known for works perfectly work and compliments the slightly grittier style of the game's graphics.

Cleared on March 3rd, 2024 (SEGA Genesis Challenge: 46/160)

Sonic Spinball is a curious game that I've known about since I got the Sonic Mega Collection for Gamecube. It was a game that I really wanted to try to finish, but I could never get past the first level. Now that I've had more experience as a gamer, I find that getting past the first level is still difficult, but with the help of the rewind feature, I am able to see everything that the game has to offer, and it's... decent.

I don't know how regarded Sonic the Hedgehog Spinball is. I know it's far from the worst Sonic game, but to me, it's really no different than what you'd expect out of a pinball game as the physics do handle itself well. The problem is that if you've ever played the pinball level from Sonic Heroes, you kinda know how pinball and getting from point A to point B does not really go hand in hand. Except its much worse here because you have to do very specific tasks that demand precision in order to actually proceed which explains why I and several other people could not get past the first level at the time and even if you manage to get past that, good luck figuring out how to get past the others without a guide.

The game does look nice and some of the music is fine. Of course, we can't forget the legendary Options music, truly one of the songs of all time. And if you thought you can escape the incomprehensible majesty by not pressing the Options button, just clear the game and you'll hear it as the credits theme of the game.

Something to note regarding the graphics is that the sprite actually uses Sonic's "American" design that you may be familiar with from the 90s Sonic Cartoons which is the one where he has a mohawk. On that note, as far as I'm aware, this is the only game where the SatAM characters Sally, Bunnie, and Rotor ever make an appearance in any Sonic game, but they only appear as friends you can save in the bonus game.

There are four levels in the game which include the Toxic Caves, Lava Powerhouse, The Machine, and Showdown. Each of which have tasks you need to carry out to collect emeralds which are then used to take on each of the bosses in the area. The bosses are about what you'd expect from a pinball game. Just fling Sonic onto their direction enough times and you win. The final boss, however, is aggravating to face off against. In order to defeat him, you have to push the button below him enough times to make his attachments disappear, but the problem is that the target is precise and you can get grabbed and pulled to the sides which can be annoying to recover since the space is so tight which makes it hard to spindash out of there. He also has windsocks which can fling you into a window and if it happens 3 times on a particular side, you get flung out of the arena entirely and unless you somehow have enough momentum and luck to get back in there, you're going to have to get all the way back up there. Also, you need to hit the cockpit 10 times and while you can repeatedly hit him with enough luck and good timing, actually getting his attachments down is a pain in the ass and the game doesn't tell you if they are down unless its telling you "Not much time left!" which is shortly followed with Robotnik telling you to smell his socks. Come to think of it, he might actually be bad enough to make my Top 10 Worst Sega Genesis bosses.

But that aside, it's not that bad of a game. It does require a fuckton of patience, but at the end of the day, it's about what you'd expect a pinball game to operate.

Played it

Stage 1 was okay
stage 2 went terrible got lost and kept dying and then i gave up

Great Game holds up well. Music is great too the now the one boss fight i did partake in it was pretty fun ngl

This game has a decent concept - a Sonic themed and goal oriented pinball game where the player has some control over the movement and direction of the ball. The latter half of this concept is the only thing really distinctive about this game - I don’t think I’ve seen any other pinball games use this mechanic although there probably are some out there: it’s not a particularly creative idea to cook up after all.

The game is fine on paper. The levels are big and it can be enjoyable to explore them and find the emeralds necessary to take on the boss. Other than that it’s a pretty standard pinball experience.

The biggest problem and why I’m giving this game a low rating instead of a middling one is the physics of the ball - or Sonic I guess. It’s insanely slow and sluggish and floaty and just doesn’t feel right for pinball. The levels in mainline Sonic games that contain paddles and bumpers actually do a better job at replicating a real pinball machine than this does. Getting the physics of the ball wrong is honestly unacceptable for a pinball game. You can have the most standard and simple virtual pinball machine in the world and the game will at least be decent if feels good to play. Spinball ends up having some interesting and creative pinball machines but ones that all feel terrible to play. Really no reason to play this one. Not even particularly interesting as a curiosity. Would only recommend playing it for 10-15 mins to get a feel for the game if you’re interested in it from a historical standpoint, which I can understand with it being the first Sonic spinoff game and one of the most popular pinball games out there.

As a pinball game Sonic Spinball isn't very good, not allowing you to see the full table and giving you control of Sonic and influence over the "ball" while it's in motion, requiring that influence to get where you need to go. As a Sonic game Sonic Spinball also isn't very good, Sonic being heavy and unresponsive in the rare instances he isn't wildly bouncing around the level. Spinball is a mess of odd controls, glitchy physics and confusing (often tedious) level design. In spite of all this it's often still a lot of fun, but it's just as often plain frustrating.

Another oddball entry in the series, Sonic Spinball for consoles is a pretty unique game that I do like, but is absolutely not something I go back to a whole lot.

Dr Robotnick has built a trap tower built with the power of Chaos Emeralds, and it’s up to Sonic to collect them and stop him. Not much there but I do think the aesthetic and vibe of this one is very different to what you would expect. The sound effects for one, are super crunchy and piercing, the enemies are pretty vicious looking and the overall energy is a lot more dank compared to the classics.

The game is pinball with a twist, you play pinball as you would anywhere else, but your aim is to not just get a high score, it’s to collect the chaos emeralds in every stage. You have influence over Sonic’s movement and when not on the pinball table you can control Sonic on the ground Spindash and all. But despite this you are gonna go flying all over the place trying to find your way around. Doesn’t help that the game is pretty glitchy and sometimes death can just happen.

There’s only 4 stages but it gets pretty brutal towards the end of the game. Boss fights can go either way, you can get lucky or often get ejected from the boss arena. The amount of precision required in some parts is rediculous, so like I said, it’s a fun game when it works, but it’s a hard sell to come back to.

I like the music and the vibe the game gives off, but definitely approach this one with caution.

The only reason this doesn't have a higher score is because controls can get weird sometimes, and the difficulty is unbalanced. Other than that, it's a pretty cool, though dated, pinball game.

As it is with most Sonic games, it looks nice and has good music, but it's no excuse, there are better pinball games out there. Maybe a new Sonic pinball game could be a banger, but we'll have to hope for that.

SCORE: 5.5/10