Sonic the Hedgehog held quite the appeal back in the early 90's with the success of his various platformers on the Genesis - all were fairly popular (Sonic 2 in particular) and enjoyed good sales. Where they differed greatly from Nintendo's Mario games was in the speed - Sonic was fast. At times it took him a while to get up to speed, but once he got moving and tucked himself into a ball, he could race down slopes and tear up loops with ease. It was that ball form that perhaps sparked the idea of Sonic Spinball in the first place. After all, if your mascot can roll into a ball, why not make a pinball game out of it? Okay, so not many people may have thought of it, but someone at Sega thought it was a good idea. They just couldn't quite pull off the execution to make it truly worthy of the Sonic name. Sonic himself controls kind of strangely, especially during the odd spot where he is free to run around and jump - it's somewhat sluggish and completely unlike the nimble Sonic we know and love otherwise. When bouncing around as a ball, being knocked by flippers and bumpers and the like, it's a little more manageable. Think of it as standard pinball, but with a slight ability to move the ball around on your own. So if you need to carefully aim Sonic and flip him up at a switch, you have a small bit of leeway to correct an otherwise missed shot. The levels themselves are quite interesting and fun to play through. Unfortunately, they are usually composed of a number of tiers, with just as many ways to fall back down to the beginning. Once you figure out how to perfect your shots it's not too bad, but it can get annoying nonetheless as you struggle to get back to your previous location. Each level has you collect a number of chaos emeralds, which you usually have to unlock by hitting a sequence of switches and heading into the right passage. After you've collected them all, you fight the level's boss (none are terribly hard) and are rewarded with a bonus round: a small isometric pinball table that is arguably more fun than the game of Spinball you just played for most of the level. Oh well. Sound and music are hardly worth mention, as the catchy tunes of Sonic platformers are nowhere to be heard, instead replaced by a series of grating techno'ish songs that you'll wish you could shut off. The sound effects themselves probably top out around a dozen various swishes and bleeps and pings. Sonic Spinball isn't a terrible game - even as a flawed diversion in the Sonic series it's worth a play-through. So long as you can put up with somewhat sluggish controls, a bit of frustration, and sub-par audio, you'll come through okay.
Sonic had some awesome games back in the 90's and even though this game probably isn't as good as Sonic 1, 2, or 3, it's still a pretty good game. In fact, it's one of the most underrated Sonic games of all time. The... Read Full Review
I remember playing Sonic Spinball way back in the day, and really enjoying it. Granted I was young, I only played it briefly, and I didn't even get past the first level (I don't even think I understood what the goal was,... Read Full Review
