Homestyle Flashback: Sonic Spinball

It’s been a while since I’ve sat down to review something, but this time I’ve brought you something really short and sweet. By short, I mean there’s not much to say about this particular game, and by sweet, I mean that it’s bad for your health. If you grew up in the age of blast processing, you know all about Sonic the Hedgehog’s speed, but Sega did what all game companies try to do – branch out. The game most guilty of this branching is Sonic Spinball, released for the Sega Genesis.

It’s a pretty obvious concept and one that’s worked its way into most Sonic games since, and even other franchises like Pokemon, Metroid, Kirby, and even Mario. Take 1 round character and insert him/her/it into ball-focused games. Soccer’s no fun because someone’s gotta kick him, and baseball won’t work because he’d have to get pummeled with a bat. So Sega went with the game that involves loops, spins, and fast action – pinball. Again, this all sounds good on paper, but that’s where it should have stayed.

The first problem with Sonic Spinball is that Sonic isn’t very fast. Sure, you might be able to hit the blue ball and have him go fast on the screen, but when he’s on foot, he’s sluggish. Once you eliminate the speed from Sonic, you’ve got a pretty generic game. He’s about speed. He’s a blue mammal with sneakers on – let the boy run. That also goes for the framerate of this game. There are frequently a ton of things going on at the same time so the game slows down more often than one would like, which you think would be counterintuitive for a Sonic game, but nope, not this one.

My second gripe with this game, and this doesn’t apply specifically to this game, is that I felt like I was just going through the motions of flipping the flippers without really knowing what I was doing half the time. This criticism rides squarely on the back of most video pinball games where you’re not shown the entire screen, so it’s hard to get a sense for what’s going on since you don’t really have a grasp on your surroundings. For a good 10 minutes, I was going around the same loops because I didn’t know what else I was supposed to be doing when, just like in real pinball, I managed to trigger something that made the game flip out and allow me to proceed based solely on luck. I felt no sense of satisfaction from this because, like I said, it was based solely on luck and I triggered whatever I triggered by accident.

My third gripe is WHAT THE HELL IS SONIC DOING TRAPPED IN A PINBALL MACHINE?! Seriously, this is the most ridiculous plan Robotnik has ever had, and this is a man who’s created a flying machine with a wrecking ball on the end of it and whose nemesis is a rodent with Nikes. So let me get this straight. Dr. Robotnik has collected Chaos Emeralds, built a giant pinball machine, scattered these emeralds in easy to find but inconvenient to get to areas within his giant pinball machine, and then lured his enemy into it? What’s worse is that Sonic fell for it. So much for the brave protagonist.

I also don’t get what your role as the player is. You control Sonic, but you also control the flippers. Is Sonic controlling the flippers? Are you someone else helping Sonic? It’s a weird dynamic that only makes itself visible when you’re obsessive about details and overdose on Mountain Dew, which is why I caught that.

Also, I just want to point out that after each level, Sonic plays a pinball minigame. I don’t understand why, but it’s clearly him playing it because you can see his reflection. That’s the equivalent of going out hunting, killing a deer, tying it up to your truck, driving to the local WalMart and dropping some change into a good game of Deer Hunter. Sonic, don’t you have more important things to do right now? Like fight this giant scorpion?

There’s not much more to say about this game. It’s pinball. It has Sonic in it. It’s a marketing ploy at its worst. If you need proof that this game didn’t need to exist as a solo title, let me point out that just about every game since Sonic 2 has had a flipper, bumper, or pinball themed area, evidence that this type of mashup doesn’t need its own game. I’ll always remember going to a friend’s house and seeing this game sitting in his collection and getting excited because I always thought it’d be entertaining but was constantly let down. Maybe it’s because I enjoyed Sonic games and just kept having to give it the benefit of the doubt, maybe it was early onset Alzheimer’s. I don’t know. But what I do know is that this game does not live up to the Sonic name. Sadly, given the current state of Sonic, that’s not saying much.

Technorati Tags: Genesis, Robotnik, Sega, Sonic, Spinball

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