How Sonic Spinball perfectly sums up the hatefulness of pinball
Sonic the Hedgehog Spinball (1993)
Sonic the Hedgehog Spinball (1993)
I have come to the conclusion that I hate pinball. Saying such a thing would have been considered sacrilege in the 90s, or 80s, or basically any other decade without smartphones and widespread internet access, when good entertainment was pretty tough to come by.
Now, don’t jump down my throat just yet. The idea of a pinball table is great... in theory. As a form of entertainment found in the arcade, it leans much more heavily towards a mechanical rather than a computer operation. This is good, at least, because it means the whole thing will never become non-functional thanks to some stupid glitch or file error.
No, it’s far more likely that the skeletons’s head is stuck in the closed position, or the ball plunger needs to be oiled. It's a double-edged flipper though, because pinball technicians are in even shorter supply than stained glass designers for Notre Dame cathedral, so those faults ain’t ever getting fixed.
Even if you find a pinball table in perfect working order though, it’ll give you the worst three minutes of your life. You’ll want to stick a whole dollar or Euro into the machine these days - 25 cent will no longer cut it - and that’ll get you three ball bearings, a trio of steelies.
You might have reckoned yourself a real Pinball Wizard at the classic 3D Space Cadet Pinball on the older Windows machines. I know you have, because that’s exactly what I did. But when you step up to the Metallica table, or the Addams Family or even the GoldenEye machine, you’ll find that the novelty of real-world pinball is exceedingly short-lived.
Actually it barely matters what table you rock up to, because you won’t be able to hear a thing - those tables get mighty loud, and you’re most likely surrounded by many other gabbing onlookers. But you’ll also be so focused on protecting your ball, your baby, your metallic pride and joy, that you won’t even get the opportunity to look up and decipher what the unique screentext is shouting at you.
“BALL ON!” “ROCK AND ROLL!” “TOTAL WIPEOUT!” “TARGET ACQUIRED!” All of that is happening, and everything is flashing and targets are bouncing and the ball is going this way and that and it’s a total sensory overload, and you’re almost out of breath just trying to keep up with it all.
But here’s the problem: even if you’re giving it maximum concentration, with no mistakes, you will still lose. Gravity, or perhaps some rogue magnets applied under the gulleys, will drag your ball down into an unrecoverable situation. And there ain’t a goddamn thing you can do about it.
It is so unbelievably aggravating when this happens that it’ll take all of your self-control not to plant a punch on the machine itself, or rip the plunger right out, or something equally depraved. It’s at this point that I’m often tempted to try physically tilting the table, like you can do in pinball video games. Anything to get your retaliation in on this dreadful, primitive machine that has bested you.
But personally I’ve got such a deep-rooted fear of authority (the usual result of a strict upbringing), not to mention an immense aversion to being cast in shameful spotlight, that I make sure to leave the machine well alone, just in case. After all, can you imagine if I tilted the bugger, and an alarm went off somewhere? Prompting a gang of arcade security squaddies to come after me?
So I always think it better to swallow my pride and leave the machine well alone. That pride does stick in my craw, and I can shoulder the burden of losing 33 cents, but that’s not the point. No, the point is that you nearly always come away from the pinball table feeling cheated.
I’m telling you, if pinball tables haven’t gone completely extinct near you, then pop down and have a go for yourself. It’s worse than going to a casino - in less than three minutes, your balls will be gone, your money will be gone, and all you get is a bewildering sensation where you're left wondering what just happened.
I will concede that the multiball feature is tremendous fun when it does occur, that’ll leave you with a beaming style on your face. The only problem of course is that, even if you manage to interpret the esoteric nature of the table, progressing far enough to actually unlock multiball is vanishingly rare. It really is a case of trying to put up with 99% disappointment for a 1% chance at joy. But then, isn’t that life in a nutshell?
For the above reasons, I may have to hold Sonic Spinball up as the greatest, or at least the most realistic, pinball simulation of all time. In 1993, Sonic the Hedgehog merchandise was in overdrive. Sega would have put out Sonic-themed jockstraps and they still would have made millions.
But there emerged an unfortunate gap in the Sega Mega Drive’s Sonic library, as Sonic 3 wouldn’t moonwalk onto our shelves for another year, and Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine wasn’t a strong enough title to keep the coffers filled.
Hence a Sonic pinball game, which probably only came into existence as a clever name that they then decided to construct a whole game around. While the platformers did their own thing, and Mean Bean Machine took cues from the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon, Sonic Spinball leans towards the Saturday AM Sonic cartoon, the one where Dr. Robotnik was genuinely sinister.
And bloody hell, everything is sinister in this game. I mentioned before how your senses can quickly become fully overwhelmed by a real-life pinball table. Well, in Sonic Spinball, no sooner have you started the game than some awfully shrill, nightmare-inducing sound effects start screaming at you.
Before the pinball game starts, you control Sonic in what looks like a standard platformer for a brief few seconds, perhaps to fool you into thinking that this is a standard Sonic game. Once you’ve launched into the table itself though, it’s anyone's guess what to do from there.
You have a bit of control over little Sonic Spinball, but not much. I suppose it’s still a notch up from being at gravity’s mercy in real life. You can (in theory) progress higher and higher up the four different tables and beat them like levels, but chances are that 99% of players won’t have any idea what to do, especially kids who will have run out of the room, screaming in terror.
This is definitely one of those games that’s dark, sinister and foreboding enough to terrify children. A lot of the music and sound effects are the worst things I’ve ever heard in my whole life - imagine sitting on a ferret that’s chewing on tin foil, while you're watching the entire Eton student body running their nails down a chalkboard and giving you their views on politics.
It is some of the most alarmingly violent, offensive sound direction I’ve ever heard in a game, eliciting an almost primal response that makes you beg for it to stop. I believe humans are hard-wired to cringe and be repulsed by the sound of the crying baby, well the guys at Sega have replicated that instinctual discomfort here. I went into the Options Menu and I thought someone was pouring mercury through my ears and static down my throat. It was instant regret.
But then, 'instant regret' perfectly sums up pinball in general. You never have to wait long for the game to disappoint you greatly. Chalk up another point for Sonic Spinball then - it encapsulates that feeling beautifully, in 16 drab bits of morose graphics and frightful sound. If you have the luxury of using save states and rewinds, as the seven million Mega Drive collections out there usually give you, then you might extend your play with this game from ten seconds to ten minutes.
It still won’t be long before Sonic Spinball has you just like a pinball steely, or like Sonic himself - bouncing around helplessly between flashing beams of disappointment, regret and discomfort. Far from feeling shortchanged at this table, you’ll be glad as hell when your luck and balls eventually run out.
15 August 2025