Sonic Spinball is a spin-off of Sonic the Hedgehog games that combines Sonic gameplay with pinball genre. Actually, the most full name of the game that I found was Sonic The Hedgehog Spinball: Robotnik's Pinball Revenge, haha. It was developed by Sega Techincal Institute, division of Sega of America I believe, that also outsourced most of game's programming to Polygames. It was made as something to fill space between the second and the third Sonic main games. Came out in the end of 1993 as part of the event “Sonic Mania”, which also had Sonic Chaos and Sonic CD coming out at the same time. 8 Megabit ROM.
Also, while the up to “4 player” selection in options may make you think it's a multiplayer game, it's actually an old-school “taking turns” one where everybody has their own game session.
The game had unique port to 8-bit Sega consoles but it's not good. Different layouts of stages and bosses but bad physics.
The game that you have here is nothing more than emulation of Sega Genesis version. Common US revision. After they changed some music tracks due to not owning Sonic 1 music.
Now, technical part about Sega's emulation here:
The Sega Classic games that you purchase on Steam count as DLCs for "Sega Mega Drive & Genesis Classics" game that should appear in your library.
It has Bedroom HUB which is the one with many features yet lags for many and Simply Launcher which lacks Workshop and Online but at least it works just fine for everybody.
However, Simple Launcher has it's fair share of glitches as well. It can crash. And it does the second time you go to main menu, so always quit after saving there so it doesn't crash when you want to save next time!
Emulation itself, mostly sound, isn't that good but it does it's job. Also, yes, emulator supports quick saves.
As alternative, you can use external emulator to run games that you purchased. Sega kindly placed in all games that you purchased in "uncompressed ROMs" folder that program itself doesn't use, just change file extension to ".bin" or so. The file for this one being "SONICSPI_U.68K".
I also demand you to read digital manual of this game first. You can find it here on store page or go to "manuals" folder of game root and open "SS_PC_MG_EFIGS_US_150ppi.pdf".
There is no online function for "multiplayer" of this game. This hotseat isn't working as online always forces second controller on someone while it requires the first controller for both players. Can still do local.
Also, yea, you may notice that Level 3 music has some strange loud noise at the times. Sega's emulator doesn't handle overflow for one of the GEMS sound driver instruments.
Dr. Robotnik has built Veg-O-Fortress on top of volcano, using lava to power robotizing machine that you get to see live in the game so it's pretty awesome. Aside from wondering why the birds have cat skeletons in X-Ray. Sonic's job is to overcome the Pinball Defence System of all 4 levels and destroy the fortress by grabbing all Chaos Emeralds, that there are more then 7 total and all are blue, before being allowed into the boss room in each level.
So the game you get there is a curious combination of pinball and Sonic gameplay. Most of your time will be spend on the pinball table section where you send the Sonic into direction by flipping the flippers. You can flip each of the two flippers separately or both at same time. There is actually no point in controlling each separately, the physics aren't really good in this one. They are very bumpy, all over the place. If it was a pure pinball game it would have been considered bad. However, there is a small fun thing: the ball is a controllable Sonic. In this case that means that you can somewhat control him with D-Pad. You can, for example, avoid falling into side holes. It's actually one of the things that make this game fun and unique.
Protip: Hold Down to make Sonic fall down faster. Useful.
Well, though I still have to say that collision detection part sucks. And so is framerate, yes. More exactly, not only it's somewhat slightly random but some magic may sometime happen. Like going through doors. You can even sometimes save falling Sonic by spamming flipper movements even when he is under them.
Protip for non-pinball players: Whether ball gets shot forward or back when falling toward flipper depends by how flipper hits it when turning. Also, if you keep holding flipper up then you will catch the ball this way behind it so you can get a more careful shot.
So, we have found out that it's not the best pinball game. However there is something else that makes it my favourite pinball game. And this is: adventure-style progression. You have to find a chaos emeralds in each level. Thus you have to explore, at times you have to do side-objectives to get them. There are even few rare on-foot sections. Albeit the controls and physics in such sections is worse than even in Sonic 4 E1. At least you just have to spindash away, that you do by holding down and pressing any button. And then the immersion. It feels like you are in an actual adventure, like in non-pinball games. I know that some pinball games attempted RPG/adventure feels, but more often the pinball action is more like abstraction. While Sonic Spinball is, how to say, “real”. Half-Life 2 and System Shock of pinball games. Ha! Thus it's my favourite game as non-pinball player. Well, along with Pinball Arcade.
Then again, the difficulty in the game keeps on increaseing exponentionally. I can beat the first three stages without losing a life now but the last one can eat all of my lives if it feels so. Also, you get extra ball for every 20 million points. And the rings don't do anything aside from score. And if you collect them all then the ring gates will appear into multi-ball bonus game. Not worth it.
Oh yea, and you get bonus game between each level. Just a single pinball table with a non-Sonic ball in a 3/4 psuedo-3D view where you do some simple task. It's actually surprising at how much better the physics in this mode is, in return to have no direct control over the ball. In this one it's actually beneficial to control each flipped separately, the ball may slide from one to another.
Protip: Press A, B and C in same time to shake the table. You will need it, there is quite a space between flippers. But don't do it too much, you may “tilt” the table, disabling flipper control.
And yea, the game has darker style to it. Or more like oppressive. The graphics are clearly western, with Sonic looking somewhat ugly cartoonish self. The Robotnik seems to be somewhat more villiany, strange at times. The music is all pretty and feels heavy at times. Less melodical yet so awesome. Unlike other Sonic games there are no levels in which you would like to live in.
Yep, the Japanese box of the game even had written “Sonic Spinball from U.S.A.” on the back. So the Japanese kids will not be surprised at all the American Funky Action that is a scoprion boss with face of Dr. Robotnik that makes metallic screeches of pain.
As for Options, there are usual controls. You can choose up to 4 players for “taking turns” multiplayer. You can disable music, if that fancy you, albeit you will still hear music jingles. But most importantly there is speed option where you can select either normal or fast. It doesn't change the speed itself instead 'fast' increases the maximum speed that the ball may gain. Event timing and collision detection can't quite handle it however.
And yep, “taking turns” multiplayer. In this case you swap between different game sessions on death. Sadly, you don't swap if you complete the level and each round can take a bit too long. So oh well.
Overall, great idea for spinoff, not the best execution yet remains quite unique. A game you either love or hate. I am in the former.
