Not Just For Pokemon Fans (Pokemon Pinball (GB))

Member Name: wampyrii

Product:	Pokemon Pinball (GB)
Date:	16/09/01 (38 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: see review

Disadvantages: see review

Well I guess htis is one craze which is kind of dying down a little now(and not before time) but there are still some rather excellent games out there as a result of it. Pokemon, love it or hate it, did result in some rather good(if cutesy) Gameboy games which followed in the Zelda style RPG vein. Maybe they weren't really for us adults and yes, I did get bored stiff after a few hours of doing much of the same, but kids loved them and well, you rarely see a review which rates them below 9/10. Of course, there were the spin- offs from these games and Pokemon Pinball is one of them. Perhaps more surprisingly is that despite how games developers usually try to cash in on a licence with rather rushed and weak games, that could never have been said about the Pokemon licence - they just kept brining out great games. Pokemon Pinball is one of these.

Personally, I have never much seen the attraction of pinball. You get a ball, fire it into a machine and then watch it ricochet about the place before eventually it comes to one of your flippers and gets sent back to ricochet about the place. Before too long it comes back at you at just the right angle to fly directly between your flippers and disappear - game over. The fun is...oh well each to their own. Pokemon pinball is the sameas this but with some Pokemon type additions. The ball you use is a Pokeball, the red and white thing you throw to catch Pokemon for the unitialised. Pokemon are pocket monsters, little Japanese style animated critters for the really unitialised. Still confused? Well tough - you don't need to know here anyway - just think of the pinball as being red and white and having some other significance. Anyway, you fire this out, it ricochets around, and the idea is to once again 'catch' Pokemon by hitting certain parts of the pinball machine. A Pokemon character will become progressively more revealed in the middle of the table and eventually you'll catch it - and get points. Tha
ts the game - typical pinball with an additional Pokemon slant.

The physics of the thing is well average, the pokeball looks a little too large to be part of a pinball game, but thats easy to ignore. The graphics are pretty much what you would expect a little blocky, brightly coloured but strangely the table is quite blank when you compare it to a real pinball table. There is a lot of white space and not much in the way of flashing lights and the kind of thing which you may have otherwise expected. Sound effects are the average pinball style thing but you also get a sample "Pika" or "Pickachu" popping up occassionally which adds to the appeal for children. Add the presence of a rumble pak and you have another additional dimension to be toyed with although the rumble reaches earthquake proportions at some stages - fortunately this can be toned down under the options menu.

As pinball games go, this is one of the more interesting of its type even perhaps to a non-Pokemon fan. You'll want to catch them little critters even if you on't really know why, and when compared to other games where the objective is solely to get points you can see the advantages this has over them. I found it strangely addictive - hence the 4/5 rating.

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