LogFAQs > #950648360

#22. Sonic Spinball (Genesis, 1993)
Way more than just a pinball game, this plays like you might expect a pinball + Sonic, or at least a platformer, game would, where a level is nothing more than a board where you need to find what to do to collect all the Emeralds in each stage, proceedup to the boss at the top, and knock yourself into him a dozen times until it dies.

Each level is laid out as several pinball boards, not just a single screen pinball machine, or even like 3 separate but connected boards like in something like Kirbys Pinball Land. Instead, its set up so you can progress more naturally from one pinball style area to another, after sort of solving what to do in each area, and not just directly vertically but also horizontally. Its a bit difficult to describe, but you basically need to do things in each area to either open up a new area, get an emerald or open a path to an emerald. For example you might need to shoot Sonic into a cannon that busts open a cork 3 times, which then allows you access to air blow yourself up a tube where the Emerald is at the top. But this might be in the mid-left or mid-right board you access only after you clear the starting area board by shooting down a robot hockey player and hitting open the door 3 times and then airblowing yourself to either the left or right side (CLUCKS ARE COMING!!). Then once yopu get that emerald on the left and right side, the way upto the next upper areas opens up, which allows you access to the boss which are a bunch of floating Robotnik heads in a pressurized fish tank.



This game has only 4 levels, but they are nice and meaty with variety, since theres a lot of areas in each level, getting bigger as it goes along. It can feel really tense too as it plays this awful sound if you die (WEEEEEOOOOO, WOOo woo woowooooooooooooooooo) and the game is very fast-paced , so losing a life really feels like a bummer. In most of the levels, theres usually some failsafes to protect you from dying, but this still remains one of those blood-pumping kind of games between its speed and difficulty. It remains iconic to me when you have to drop yourself below the flippers into a metal bucket on a sea of slime and row yourself over to the Emerald in a giant slime vat, but only after youve drained the slime. Of course this game is probably most famous for its Chain of Death, where if you fall down out of the boss room in Stage 2, Lava Powerhouse, you fall Aaaaallllllllllll the way down to a separate area where its just Sonic hanging on a chain above a pool of lava, and you have to know to swing back and forth and get a nice big jump off to the side.





The music in this game is phenomenal, and one of the Genesis very best. And I mean that in the sense that this music is the most Genesis music you will ever hear. The tracks are different ranges of incredibly bassy with this very rough electric intense thrash metal guitar playing over it with a bassy and percussive verse section and a boopin breakdown section that pretty much describes all the tracks, but theyre all very different, yet all have this sweaty electric deep pulsing bumping beat to all of them. The boss music is a little different yet, but even more intense and is one of my favorite video game tracks ever for its non-stop intensity. This isn't a boss here, but I just love this guy, who tries to eat you if you fall down below the flippers on the bottom of Stage 1.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=921mrsdbGuU Lava Powerhouse

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMDqhIUboS4 Boss Theme

Finally, I have to talk about my favorite thing about this game, the goddamn score bar. Trying to feel like a pinball machine as much as it can, this bar shouts various things at you like what to do, words of encouragement, exclamations the boss might have, and just all different kinds of feelings. It never fails to make me laugh in a way I cant explain- its just so wacky and feels like its taking itself so ridiculously, I cant help but laugh. When you shoot up a pipe that has some barrels in it you need to go up 3 times to clear a path, it yells BARREL BUSTIN! at you, or when you fall down the aforementioned pipe it yells OH, NOOO O O then !!! CHAIN UNSTABLE !!! , QUICK, GET OFF, followed by a countdown and if you escape then you get a scrolling message of WHOA! THAT WAS CLOSE, DUDE Its liberal use of ellispes, Robotnik faces, and extra spaces inserted into random spots man its just my sense of humor but it gets me every time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPRd32OOrWM - Falling down the chain.

And my favorite:



I LOVE YOU SO MUCH EXTRA SPACE BETWEEN THE H'S

Next up: A game where you can play as a Piranha Plant.


---

~Wigs~ 3-Time Consecutive Fantasy B8 Baseball Champion
2015 NATIONAL LEAGUE CHAMPION NEW YORK METS