Next up on the Sonic Retrospective is this game in the Classic series; Sonic Spinball! This came out in 1993, right between Sonic 2/CD and 3&K.
NeoGaffer Man God explained in the Sonic 3&K thread that a Sonic game had to release on the Sega Genesis/Megadrive for the holidays and a little concept for a game where Sonic is a pinball for the entire time popped up. Sega said "You have six months" and left.....with only concepts being on the table. Sonic 3 would of been the holiday 1993 game but it needed more time, so they had to rush this out for holidays.
So, Sega developers worked hard on getting this out for the holidays and one must think "Oh, this is a rushed mess then, right?"
Nope
. This is a fun but very challenging Pinball Adventure for Sonic and we are going to spin our way through this one .
Looks like someone isn't in the mood for jokes!
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Okay, lets get right to the action then. This game is a pinball game staring the blue blur, with his goal being shutting down Robotnik's base on a mission from the Freedom Fighters.
Remember Satam? The show with the amazing theme song? And Robotnik was voiced by the same VA of Whinne the Pooh?
They get their first (and only) game appearance in a Sega-developed Sonic game here (with Mean Bean Machine having elements from AoStH).
They appear in-game within specials stages after clearing all three rounds within one of the games three/four levels:
This is a fun little ester egg and as someone who really liked both Satam and the early comics (read up to issue......55 a year or so ago; the comic is at issue 250+ at this point XD!), so hope you enjoyed the nod to this side of Sonic.
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Moving on to the gameplay, its a pinball game with Sonic bouncing all over the place, with the mission in each of the games three/four zones being to collect three Chaos Emeralds, then fighting Robotnik's machine's ending with a fight against the vilian himself at 'Showdown' zone.
The game structure is split up into a few parts, as this isn't your simple pinball game.
Sonic has to play with the pinball levels to find ways to collect the Emeralds, so the above picture is an example of this; you hit a switch to drain the sewage, then you go to the over tables left/right and find a hidden minecart:
You go left/right based on which side you pop out from then you can get the Emerald!
Every table is set up like this, with a lot of interactive elements outside of just bouncing Sonic like a pinball. You collect rings, destroy badniks, and interact with the table to get more points.
Sonic can even move left/right, jump and spindash like he could in Sonic 2, though control is more gimped (as its a pinball game, not a platformer).
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What makes Spinball so much fun, and hard, is that Sonic controls like Sonic. You function like a pinball when bouncing around, but you have a lot of air control and due to Sonic controlling like a platformer character when on the ground, it gives more agency compared to other pinball games.
But the game has two control options for Sonic, normal and fast.
Normal feels very sluggish and sloppy with Sonic controlling stiffer, but fast makes Sonic's movement in the air a lot smoother and more controllable.
They should been more clear about this when booting up the game but you have options for how Sonic controls. You can go into the options menu when booting up the game and it gives you the option to switch between 'Normal' and 'Fast' speeds.
It is a natural step-up from the pinball tables in Casino Night more or less, and I feel that is really impressive
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And what is a Sonic game, without an awesome soundtrack
! Don't bring up Sonic Chronicles.....please
Toxic Caves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZDrOSDskis&index=1&list=PL7FA982431C25B53C
The Showdown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJoTiMSf7vw&list=PL7FA982431C25B53C&index=3
The Machine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o_oowitXZo&index=4&list=PL7FA982431C25B53C
Lava Powerhouse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqtQLQ7v7iI&index=6&list=PL7FA982431C25B53C
Boss: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoHc1Cepo_s&list=PL7FA982431C25B53C&index=8
Bonus Round: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIPrTUh3t74&list=PL7FA982431C25B53C&index=9
The music here is really great, with my personal favorites being Lava Powerhouse and Toxic Caves. Fun fact about the musical score is that the game has two title themes! Most versions come with this title screen, but some very early versions of the game (that came on specific carts of the game during first retail runs) have this theme, sounding very similar to the Sonic 1/2 Themes
.The reason for this is because Sega doesn't own the musical scores to Sonic 1 and 2, a JP musical group called Dreams Come True composed the scores for both games and own full rights to them. Sega likely backed out from re-using the Sonic 1/2 theme for licensing reasons.
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This game is quite challenging, as hunting for all the Chaos Emeralds is very tricky with the pinball system and interactive tables in place.....but its rewarding to push through. Beating a level with a high score feels so rewarding
! Remember beating the game not long after getting the Mega Collection Disk with my GC back in 2002/2003; felt really rewarding . Overall, I consider this to be a good game and the fact that this was made in SIX months.....is really impressive. Content complete, fells stable, runs great and its quite a spinball
.
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My next game for this retrospective is Sonic the Fighters! You guys voted for it on my Twitter poll for two days and I hope you all enjoy this one
! Sonic is going to rumble with the best of them and maybe we will see a few friends we meet over the course of this retrospective . 
