Pinball Palooza: Disney’s The Little Mermaid II: Pinball Frenzy (Game Boy Color)

Left Field Productions baffled me in the past with their decision to adapt Disney’s Beauty and the Beast into a digital board game, but at least their The Little Mermaid II pinball game seems a bit more reasonable of an idea. Plenty of franchises have been adapted into pinball tables, and while choosing the less popular direct-to-video sequel to The Little Mermaid seems odd at first, playing the game reveals they chose to adapt both films and simply picked the more recent of the two to headline the title.

Disney’s The Little Mermaid II: Pinball Frenzy immediately feels a little familiar, with its rumble feature, two table options, and collection of minigames making it hard not to compare to Pokémon Pinball which had released just a year before this game. The Little Mermaid game certainly doesn’t carry over the capture and evolution mechanics its fellow Game Boy Color pinball game had, but it is a fairly competent pinball game when it comes to the physics. The ball can seem a little floaty at times, possibly an attempt to make the tables feel like they’re underwater, but the ball moves as you’d hope it to, can gather quite a bit of speed, and can be properly aimed with the flippers to hit areas of interest. The degree to which the ball is responsive can be said to be tied to the two speed options, the Snail representing slower play and the Dolphin giving you more typical and realistic ball physics. This, along with the option to choose either 3 or 5 balls per play session, certainly exist to make play easier for younger audiences and feels like a good way of doing so without robbing the game of any potential challenge. However, people coming to The Little Mermaid II: Pinball Frenzy to try and set high scores will probably be put off by its point generosity, it being quite easy to surpass a billion points even if you’re just trying to complete the table goals.

Both of the tables here can technically be played however you wish, but they both have a strong end goal to shoot for in the confrontations with the sea witch sisters. The board based on the first film features Ursula while the second film’s table has you face off with her younger sister Morgana, but the battles are essentially interchangeable in design. This isn’t too much of a mark against them, these similar climaxes being appropriately tough and taking quite a bit of work to get to. Both tables have their own unique set of minigames you need to play first before the appropriate sea witch will appear, and to get these to appear, you need to complete little table games first. Usually the table games will apply some theme to simple pinball activities, such as hitting the ball up certain ramps as part of a treasure hunt, bouncing your ball off of bumpers to find Scuttle the seagull or Morgana’s sting ray assistants, or you’ll need to spin a spinner enough times to help Flounder escape a shark. These are all just the game adding a narrative to typical pinball play, the two tables themselves trying to keep a foot in reality in their designs even if their bumpers take on the shapes of seahorses and puffer fishes. Needing to hit the right objects or ramps during these table games or just getting them to trigger feels like a proper way to guide regular pinball play as you’ll always have a goal to work towards, but the minigames are where The Little Mermaid II: Pinball Frenzy starts to stretch its legs.

The minigames in this pinball video game take advantage of its digital nature to create situations a real table couldn’t create. Besides the battles with Ursula and Morgana that feature actual characters you need to hit with your pinball, there are other little games that are meant to be quick and easy moments of unusual but interesting play. One game, for example, has you knocking sailors off a sinking ship to then rescue them from the water, another involves hitting the fish circling Ariel and Prince Eric in their boat to create the scene from the film’s Kiss the Girl segment, and one involves slipping your ball past a patrolling polar bear to free the penguins trapped behind the ice he’s guarding. Some are very simple in concept like one where you need to shatter the ice Melody is trapped in with repeated hits and others like the battle with Ursula’s eels are just smaller versions of the eventual fight with the big boss, but these are an interesting break to play in a more fantastical version of pinball that are only really let down by how quickly they can end. Because they have stranger mechanics like lightning bolts that send your ball flying around the play area, these minigames can come to an abrupt conclusion, wrapping up immediately the moment your ball falls between the central flippers. You can replay any minigame you’ve unlocked at the main menu to try and properly beat them, and having them count towards the progress to facing the table boss no matter how well you did eases some of the disappointment experienced from a quick loss, but it is still pretty underwhelming to work towards a bonus game and be tossed back out by an abnormal variable the moment you just started interacting with it.

It can be equally disheartening to work your way towards the bosses only to lose to a similar unlucky bounce, and the climb back to facing them after a regular table loss will take some time even if you’ve come to know the two tables well. Thankfully, Disney’s The Little Mermaid II: Pinball Frenzy has some decent boards on offer that both provide plenty of excellent references to their source material and serve as two distinct play areas. The table based on the original The Little Mermaid is probably the better of the two. On top of the traditional lower flippers, it has two on the left hand side, one meant to save your ball from heading towards the left side drain and the other allowing interaction with the upper area where pufferfish bumpers, a spinner, and some drop targets can be consistently engaged with. In the lower area there are a few spots to hit your ball into to trigger special bonuses or activate board or bonus games, as well as Ariel’s fishy friend Flounder looking absolutely silly with his mouth agape. Not every sprite looks the best in this game, but some like Ursula and her eels lurking near the top as part of the board geometry look excellent. If you look past the aquatic life that constitutes typical board features like bumpers though, its design is serviceable albeit unambitious, a decent play area where you can work towards any areas you need to get your ball in but proper aim is still required to do so consistently and quickly.

The table for The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea both features a greater embrace of having actual characters stand in for board parts while also making it harder to navigate. Morgana and Melody both make up the top arch and Flounder and the walrus Dash help funnel the ball towards your flippers, but the greater emphasis on the board visuals seem to come with plainer and yet more difficult loops. This is mostly due to the only additional flipper you have outside the bottom two being one positioned on the right where it can’t really hit the ball anywhere useful, the top part of the board filled with three different loops it can’t really angle the pinball towards. The different loops have a few features to make them feel somewhat different, such as the middle one having its clam bumpers and a spot where you need to drop your ball to trigger certain events. Nudging the table will likely get more play here, and despite doing it constantly to test it I never triggered any tilt punishments so it seems like a legitimate tactic to get the ball to move around this upper area. There is a ramp and some drop targets in the lower area, but the focus on the upper loops makes this the less interesting table, especially since the margin for which one you hit your ball into can feel very small, thus making table goals a bit more tedious to complete. The first table might have felt a little safe with its design, but this one feels a bit more directionless, serving its role well enough but not constructed in a way that feels too conducive to the quest to face off with its boss.

THE VERDICT: Perfectly serviceable and fairly competent, Disney’s The Little Mermaid II: Pinball Frenzy applies the Disney coat of paint well, its two tables carrying plenty of fan service for fans of the two Little Mermaid movies. While Ariel’s table ends up a better play area than the loop dependent one her daughter got, both are decent hosts for the quest to complete table goals and minigames as part of reaching the boss battle climaxes. You have everything you’d expect from pinball like multiball modes although the point system is perhaps too generous, and you have video game specific features like the moving characters of the minigames, so The Little Mermaid II: Pinball Frenzy does have enough to it to be a passable portable pinball game.

And so, I give Disney’s The Little Mermaid II: Pinball Frenzy for Game Boy Color…

An OKAY rating. The Little Mermaid II’s board having a less than thrilling design and the quick ends to some minigames do somewhat strain this rather small pinball package, but the goal oriented gameplay and variation in objectives and bonus games keep it from growing stale. Handing out points so freely does undermine attempts to go for a high score by making it seem less substantial, but the end goal of unlocking the minigames and getting to the battle with the films’ antagonists are good motivators that help these simple board designs last longer than the sum of their parts. The underwater visuals give the game a nice bright look and the recognizable music from the movies is adapted well to the Game Boy Color. It’s a game with good direction for the play assisted by the brand’s impact on the graphics, but the table design could use some shoring up and the minigames are all too quick to toss you out for what is pretty much portrayed as both your goal and reward for good play.

Left Field Productions definitely had a greater degree of success with its pinball game than its digital board game. There are some smart decisions made here and a clear direction for how the player should progress, and it’s very likely to please it targets audience. A few things like the design of The Little Mermaid II’s table and the points system would need to be reworked to help it appeal to more players, but it’s still doing a fine enough job of hitting the notes it needs to to work as both a Little Mermaid game and a pinball title.