Sonics stuck in Robotniks pinball machines... (Sonic Spinball)

Member Name: iamasadlittleboy

Product:	Sonic Spinball
Date:	22/09/09 (15 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Its Sonic

Disadvantages: But sadly not as we know him. Limited.

When talking about early Sonic games one often seems easily overlooked and forgotten, even in the Mega Drives heyday it was seen as the black sheep of the family, Sonic Spinball. Released after the success of Sonic 2 the previous year, this saw the continuation of the spring based Sonic levels like Spring Yard Zone just taken a few steps further.

The story revolved around Robotnik using the Chaos Emeralds to create a giant machine to turn the fluffy animals into Badniks. The liar was a series of pinball style levels that Sonic had to destroy from the inside out, with the help of pinball styled controllable flippers and springs. Each of the levels was larger than that featured in the previous game but there was only 4 of them making the actual length relatively short, despite a high level of difficulty and complex levels.

The opening level makes a massive change to that of which all the other Sonic platforming games did in that it wasn't a level of greenery (the previous 2 and the following 2 each started on a green tropical level). Instead it was an industrial themed toxic waste type level.

In fact all of them seemed rather industrial themed and grimey not as eye catching as the many of the other games in the series, also the game has no "out side" its all built in to these table designs.

So as a game it still, now looks like the odd one out when compared to the much superior games in the series, the idea to turn Sonic in to a controllable pinball was a relative failure. Though the bonus levels (which were "true" pinball games) were a nice addition that could have been re-used since. But the problem is just that it didn't seem to work properly, it was almost like the game was used as a cash in and it seemed to be a decent idea badly done, having a proper Sonic Pinball game could have been really fun.

Overall it feels like a Spin-off (excuse the pun) that was doomed to fail as you'd confined the speed demon hedgehog to a series of levels where you had to be slow and careful to get through the mazes. It seemed to take the popular Sonic Casino and make a game of it and that wasn't what Sonic was about, it was only a small part of the blue speedsters legacy.

Summary: The black sheep of the Sonic mega drive games