Sonic Pinball Party

"Why exactly IS this a Sonic game?"

Introduction

I heard a lot of stuff about the game on the message boards and felt I had to check it out to see what it was like, so when I happened to see it in a store I bought it. That was almost two years ago, and my copy of this game has not been used very much at all. Yes, I hate to say this but this isn't one of my favourite Sonic titles, and this review will explain why.

Gameplay - 5/10

It's a pinball game, kind of like Sonic Spinball. You can control the flippers easily, and there are three board styles, with various bonuses which are actually quite interesting, though they often require loads of patience, such as firing your ball through the same area several times in a row. Effects will include Dr. Eggman appearing on screen for you to fight, and several rings popping up, and that's just on the Sonic boards. There are also the Nights and Amigo Boards, which provide some variety (although the latter does seem incredibly hard to last more than about five minutes on).

There is an arcade mode and a story mode. The former is good fun, as it allows for free play - you keep playing until you lose all three of your balls (if a certain light is lit up, it will save your ball if it falls through the flippers), but the latter can be incredibly annoying. Almost straight away, the goals may take you a long time to complete - such as having to rack up a rather high score on level two for example, within a tight time limit. However, the biggest disappointment of all is that after a while you may be wondering exactly WHY this is even a Sonic game. Sure, there's Eggman, there are Chao, and there are pictures of Sonic, but all you're really doing is flipping a pinball around the screen. This isn't like Sonic Spinball, Sonic's not acting as the pinball.

Despite all the interesting features, you may find yourself getting bored quickly, especially as all of the Sonic boards appear to have the same layout - if you beat Eggman on one board, you'll be able to go onto another one, which is designed the same, except with a completely different background. Also, it takes a lot of practise to actually be able to get a decent score on this game.

Story - 3/10

The story is pretty poor, and doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. So, Sonic has to defeat various enemies by playing pinball against them - sounds a bit like the plot of Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, with pinball replacing the tetris-esque format. The "enemies" Sonic faces turn out to include Tails and Amy, who have been brainwashed, causing them to side with Eggman and, worse still, spout incredibly bad dialogue. However, the biggest problems for me are that not only does Sonic seem to like saying: "................................" a lot when he loses a game (a big annoyance for me in any game), but the first enemy is Knuckles - who isn't even brainwashed. It seems that somebody forgot that Knuckles is actually on Sonic's side.

Anyhow, this is undoubtedly one of the worst stories I've come across in a Sonic game.

Graphics - 7/10

Very nice graphics. The storyboards use nice two-dimensional pictures of the characters. The evil look in the faces of the brainwashed Tails and Amy are very nice, though for some reason Sonic smiles when you get game over. Is he on drugs or something?

The pinball tables look very nice, and you can almost forgive the game makers for the fact that a lot of the tables are effectively the same one just designed differently. One bad point, though, is that the game is designed so that the entire tables are displayed within the screen of your GBA, which means that everything is rather small - so you may find yourself squinting at the screen a little.

Sound - 7/10

The good news is that most of it is nice. The bad news is that practically all of it is recycled from old Sonic games, including the themes from Sonic Advance, which were used since a lot of Sonic's tables are based on zones from that game. There is another appearance of that rather inferior version of the Star Light Zone theme (from the original Sonic), but there is a nice remix of the theme to Spring Yard Zone (also from the original). The new tunes are very nice, though - I especially like the Mexican-style music on Amigo's pinball table.

Play Time/Replay Value - 3/10

Another thing that lets this game down. You do very little other than play pinball in this game, aside from a few distractions such as the Tiny Chao Garden and the "Casinopolis" section where you can gamble your rings. I found myself losing interest, and getting annoyed at the game very quickly.

Final Recommendation

I wouldn't recommend forking out a lot of money for this game, since if you want a good Sonic game on the GBA you should try Sonic Advance or Sonic Advance 3. If you want to try out this game, rent it first.

And in all honesty, this game would play much the same if you took Sonic and his friends out of it altogether, which makes me wonder if someone got the idea to add them into the game about halfway through production, in a desperate attempt to attract people into buying this game.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 10/31/05