[RAW] Sonic Spinball (Mega Drive/Genesis) ALL RINGS
It's time for something spooky on this day of All Hallows Eve... PINBALL!! What's scarier than the thought of collecting EVERY SINGLE RING in Sonic Spinball!? Jack all.
So yeah, this is a weird one. As the name suggests, this game sees our protagonist, Sonic the Hedgehog, bouncing around inside a colourful Pinball machine. The idea came about when the research team noted how Casino Night Zone was a popular level in the then newly released Sonic the Hedgehog 2, so the team decided to build a game around that. Because it was developed in the US, the characters and their designs are from the Archie Sonic comic. The game was pushed out for a Christmas release (and it only shows in a few places) as Sonic Team were busy with Sonic 3. I think there's some cool table designs in this game, I love some of the pixel art, specifically in Level 1, the green glow on everything is so 90s. The music ranges from excellent to "OH DEAR GOD WHY"... However, I feel the biggest offender is the gameplay… Pinball is a tiresome pastime that enthusiasts like to claim is a game of skill, whether that’s true or not is down to opinions, however the facts are Casino Night Zone was so beloved because it was a fresh level design gimmick. It worked because the pinball sections were broken up by platforming, it wasn’t JUST pinball. The sparse platforming that breaks up Spinball is really off, Sonic controls like a 10-ton truck, but thankfully you’re not required to do too much platforming, but there lies the problem.
In all, the team set out to make a Sonic Pinball game, so I guess in a lot of respects they succeeded. They did a fine job under the time constraints that was sprung upon them. But for Pinball, that’s a hard sell for a lot of people, for real, if we wanted to watch balls bounce around on our screens, We’d just... never mind…
(Save-states were used for this playthrough)