To start, a link to my other Sonic R/LTTPs:
Shadow the Hedgehog
Sonic Heroes
Sonic 06
Sonic and the Black Knight
Sonic the Hedgehog Game Gear
Sonic 2 Game Gear
Sonic Chaos
Sonic Blast
Sonic Labyrinth
Tails Adventure
Tails' Sky Patrol
Sonic Spinball Game Gear
Sonic 3D Blast
Oh god this game. Like Sonic 3D Blast, I owned this one since childhood (along with the Genesis platformers of course, so it wasn't all bad), but this one... this one I don't have fond memories of. Hell, I hardly have memories of it at all, as I could never even make it past the first level (all I remembered was the sea monster head from the first level).
But yeah, in playing through this game, I've found it largely better than the Game Gear version, thanks to improved visuals/physics and some nice little things like the messages being able to scroll during gameplay. On the other hand, unlike the Game Gear version... this game is a jerk. It just expects WAY too much from the player. I'm sure part of it is that I don't have a long history with pinball videogames (the only ones I've put much time into are the first Pokemon Pinball and Metroid Prime Pinball), but it's just FRUSTRATING that you pretty much have to make perfect shots into spaces the size of the ball to do ANYTHING. The thing that makes this super annoying is that it applies to board traversal as well, meaning I spent a LOT of time accidentally launching myself into the wrong part of the board in trying to hit a target and then having to painfully make my way back. And yet, the usual pinball difficulty of keeping your ball alive is hardly here. I mean, slamming both flippers will almost always save your ball, even if it's going between them. Once I figured that out, my only deaths pretty much came from some sort of glitch in I think the last level where you can go between the flipper and the solid area next to it and fall to your death.
Special mention needs to go out to the final boss, which is actually the one time I legit abused save states (in the Mega Collection Plus) a little. Not because it was "hard" in any logical way, just that if you fall poorly out of the ship it can take FOREVER to get back up. But the biggest frustration came from not being able to tell if he had his damn defenses up. I'm sure it follows SOME sort of pattern, but the text you get when hitting the button sure isn't an indicator, that's for sure! Ugh. Took probably an hour just beating this stupid boss.
So yeah, I never, ever want to play this game again. MAYBE if you were great at pinball it'd be fun (but aspects like the slow lifts on stage 3 make me question even that). But for me, it was just a mass of slow frustration.
As a bonus, I decided to give Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine a try since I already had the collection on. And yeah, it's just vanilla Puyo Pop, so I just tried a match in the "campaign" before deciding that I really don't need to play through the game.
Shadow the Hedgehog
Sonic Heroes
Sonic 06
Sonic and the Black Knight
Sonic the Hedgehog Game Gear
Sonic 2 Game Gear
Sonic Chaos
Sonic Blast
Sonic Labyrinth
Tails Adventure
Tails' Sky Patrol
Sonic Spinball Game Gear
Sonic 3D Blast
Oh god this game. Like Sonic 3D Blast, I owned this one since childhood (along with the Genesis platformers of course, so it wasn't all bad), but this one... this one I don't have fond memories of. Hell, I hardly have memories of it at all, as I could never even make it past the first level (all I remembered was the sea monster head from the first level).
But yeah, in playing through this game, I've found it largely better than the Game Gear version, thanks to improved visuals/physics and some nice little things like the messages being able to scroll during gameplay. On the other hand, unlike the Game Gear version... this game is a jerk. It just expects WAY too much from the player. I'm sure part of it is that I don't have a long history with pinball videogames (the only ones I've put much time into are the first Pokemon Pinball and Metroid Prime Pinball), but it's just FRUSTRATING that you pretty much have to make perfect shots into spaces the size of the ball to do ANYTHING. The thing that makes this super annoying is that it applies to board traversal as well, meaning I spent a LOT of time accidentally launching myself into the wrong part of the board in trying to hit a target and then having to painfully make my way back. And yet, the usual pinball difficulty of keeping your ball alive is hardly here. I mean, slamming both flippers will almost always save your ball, even if it's going between them. Once I figured that out, my only deaths pretty much came from some sort of glitch in I think the last level where you can go between the flipper and the solid area next to it and fall to your death.
Special mention needs to go out to the final boss, which is actually the one time I legit abused save states (in the Mega Collection Plus) a little. Not because it was "hard" in any logical way, just that if you fall poorly out of the ship it can take FOREVER to get back up. But the biggest frustration came from not being able to tell if he had his damn defenses up. I'm sure it follows SOME sort of pattern, but the text you get when hitting the button sure isn't an indicator, that's for sure! Ugh. Took probably an hour just beating this stupid boss.
So yeah, I never, ever want to play this game again. MAYBE if you were great at pinball it'd be fun (but aspects like the slow lifts on stage 3 make me question even that). But for me, it was just a mass of slow frustration.
As a bonus, I decided to give Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine a try since I already had the collection on. And yeah, it's just vanilla Puyo Pop, so I just tried a match in the "campaign" before deciding that I really don't need to play through the game.
