Pinball Palooza: Sonic Spinball (Genesis/Mega Drive)

The Sonic the Hedgehog series is a perfect fit for a pinball game spinoff, and not just because its protagonist curls up into a ball quite often. In his first two platform game adventures, there were already levels that featured pinball bumpers and other elements as obstacles, so having him actually take the leap into a full-on pinball title was not only a natural fit, but one that likely inspired the developers to make the game more than just straightforward point-scoring pinball. I chose Sonic Spinball to cap off the Pinball Palooza review series not only because it was my first encounter what I now call the pinball adventure genre, but it was the first pinball video game I ever played period. Right out of the gate I was shown the potential video games had to add depth and greater interactivity to the pinball experience, and while Sonic Spinball certainly isn’t the metric I judge every pinball game by now, it certainly inspired me to seek out other games in the same style in the hopes they’d continue to evolve the formula.

Sonic Spinball, sometimes referred to with the clunkier title Sonic the Hedgehog Spinball, involves Sega’s speedy blue hedgehog heading to the new volcano lair of Doctor Robotnik, the roboticist having built up an island fortress that Sonic must scale with the help of conveniently placed pinball flippers. When he’s shot out of the sky on his flight over, Sonic is forced to start from the sewers at the bottom, each of the game’s four pinball tables designed to be a different pivotal part of the villain’s island base. Each area is powered by a set of Chaos Emeralds Sonic needs to collect, the game going beyond the series’s usual seven as each level is designed around the idea of navigating your ball to their locations so you can open up a boss battle with a mustachioed machine made in Robotnik’s image.

Your ball in Sonic Spinball is Sonic himself, but he doesn’t spend all his time curled up. Right off the bat you need to walk him towards the pinball areas, and while he doesn’t spend too much time on his own two feet, it is part of the game’s greater emphasis on you having control outside of just hitting him about with flippers. When Sonic is airborne, you can move him around slightly, allowing you to correct shots, move him towards targets, or keep him out of danger’s way. This is far more impactful than the simple nudging feature found in most pinball titles and keeps you involved in the action even as Sonic finds himself a fair distance from your flippers.

The tables are styled like video game levels too, right down to having enemies, clear routes for progress, and collectibles. Across the four tables you always enter with the goal of getting the necessary Emeralds to face the boss, and how these are hidden around changes based on the stage. For example, The Toxic Caves you start in begin with you in a lower area needing to drain slime to reveal an Emerald, after which you can then access two pinball areas higher up. These both have different access routes to their own Emeralds, with the player needing to flip switches, destroy toxic barrels, and smash the enemies in the area to make their way to them. A lot of areas will use robotic creatures in the same way most pinball games use bumpers, the player earning a score by hitting environmental objects but able to also use mobile enemies to get yourself to new spots or, alternatively, the player has to bust through them to make a place accessible. Enemies can’t actually hurt Sonic though, your ball still drained in the traditional way by being lost if it falls below the pinball flippers, but the tall level design and extra control make it easier to avoid such a fate since only the very bottom is lethal. You do have limited lives though, but with only four tables to conquer, it doesn’t hurt too badly to have to retry them if you fail.

Each pinball table feels distinct both in visual design and in the concepts you engage with. The Lava Powerhouse involves you activating steam vents to carry Sonic upwards and in The Machine you need to activate different smaller machines to make travel easier to pull off. A large central area in The Machine serves as an animal jail you can bust open by bouncing around an abundance of bumpers, while the Toxic Caves features a robotic serpent lingering near the bottom ready to snap you up if you loiter too much outside of the pinball table. In fact, the serpent is a small mercy, since the game isn’t punishing you by falling down towards the area but instead giving you a moment to hop back into action as you get accustomed to the game world. The bosses are all distinct as well, like a giant metal scorpion whose tail you want to get under so you can bounce off it and hit the body repeatedly or the furnace where you need to toss yourself into it to hit the heads within. The selection of boss battles may be small, but despite all drawing from the medium of pinball, they manage to stand out from each other well enough.

However, while there is some diversity in the small selection of tables, there are also a few dud ideas. The Machine contains two shafts that seem almost egregiously difficult unless you discover that you need to cradle the ball with your flipper and it will rise up as you do so. The final boss also will throw you back out of his battle area and force you to climb back up quite a ways to reach him, and while most of the bosses do rely on removing you from their arena instead of directly hurting you, the last table is a hard climb that threatens to grow stale if you keep falling for his trick. Luckily, the pinball physics are a good fit for action you have some control over and aiming is only as hard as it naturally should be, but the shafts in The Machine should have more clearly drawn attention to their conveyor belt flippers to avoid any unnecessary suffering. Most of the dud moments are thankfully of the kind you can push past to get to the areas with short-term diverse goals, meaning most of the adventure is about Sonic progressing to pinball challenges that keep toying with both regular pinball elements and things unique to the pinball adventure formula such as the greater freedom of movement and interacting with enemies.

Between the stages there are also bonus games, these existing purely for the secondary goal of getting a high score. Interestingly enough, these feature characters who were otherwise exclusive to the Sonic cartoons of the time, meaning Sally Acorn and Scratch actually made the jump from cartoon only status for at least this one title. They’re pretty simple in concept, one involving hitting stationary capsules that Robotnik tries to block and another about smashing out the teeth of a robotic Robotnik face, but they are a decently enjoyable diversion despite being small in scope and playing more like regular pinball with all the movement benefits stripped out. They’re a pretty good cool down amusement between the stages focused on clearly defined goals in large levels. They also feature an interesting art direction where Sonic himself seems to be playing the table in a city at night, his hands visible at the side and his reflection on the glass walls. In fact, the entire game has a pretty memorable aesthetic, the color tones and enemy designs really matching each location save for the somewhat weaker Showdown table at the end. The music can also be quite energetic and memorable at parts too, meaning that even though the overall game is somewhat short, it feels like the areas featured are mostly well-realized and leave a positive and lasting impression on the player.

THE VERDICT: The platform game elements Sonic the Hedgehog brings with him to Sonic Spinball really help its four tables become more than just places to earn points. The Emerald collection, boss fights, and vertical climbs all give you something clear to work towards while the areas you pass through to do it feel distinct and blend pinball obstacles with platforming staples well. Not every idea is well-realized, but the extra control given to how Sonic moves allows for more control over how you interact with the action, the game able to achieve bot the satisfaction of progression while giving you the immediate thrills of successfully hitting a ball into valuable targets. For one of the first games to make pinball into an adventure, Sonic Spinball did a lot right and did it with style.

And so, I give Sonic Spinball for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive…

A GOOD rating. A few less solid areas can’t keep Sonic Spinball down. Most of your adventure involves taking Sonic to a new area and combining your skill in aiming well with the benefits of manipulating his movement after, the different enemy layouts, barriers, and gimmicks that crop up making it so that the formula continues to explore new places as you get ever closer to the confrontation with Robotnik himself. Bonus games help inject quick energetic play in between levels that help undo some of the damage things like The Machine’s slow boss battle inflict, and the game compartmentalizes objectives pretty well so that you know what you should be doing in an area and if it is time to take Sonic to a new part of the table in search of Emeralds. If viewed as a platformer it is perhaps not as thrilling as constant jumping challenges and the risk to your life isn’t as great when you only need to worry about dropping out the bottom of a stage, but as a pinball game it benefits a lot from the expansions to its design. You’re not just hitting things for points here after all, you’re taking down unique machine bosses, manipulating the level’s design, and sussing out how to get where you need to go. Sometimes it can be a little finicky to hit the right things, meaning you’ll spend a little too long in an area as you work it out, but save for a few moments like electric cages that can toss you to a quick death if you’re unlucky, the time put in to overcome these little hurdles isn’t that bad and far less dominant than the more exciting moments of pinball action.

Sonic Spinball is fairly well realized for an early example of a pinball adventure and certainly holds up despite some of its weaker ideas. It nails the appeal of the then nascent genre, the pinball areas being about progression and explicit goals rather than just being a collection of things to hit for points, and by giving a player a greater sense of control, the board designs can be more unusual and focus on gimmicks that ask more from the player than just good flipper timing. Sonic Spinball is certainly one of the more memorable pinball games just because of its genre blend, branding, and aesthetic, so while it may not be the best at nailing the ideas it explored, it is certainly a game worth playing for those interested in virtual pinball and a fitting way to end this review series that explores the many creative ways pinball has been adapted into video game form.