Sonic Spinball for Genesis

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Review #4525

Sonic Spinball

Sonic slowdown

Genesis 1993 Sega Arcade Arcade › Pinball
Sonic Spinball screenshot for Genesis
Screenshot used for review/reference purposes.
2 / 5

Gameplay

Feels like it's running at half speed.
Controls are laggy
You have control over the ball (Sonic) which makes it both easy and frustrating.
Organized a bit like an adventure with different areas but I can't figure out where I'm trying to get to.
Poor control over aiming a shot.

2 / 5

Level Design

Boring and painfully repetitive boards.
Each segment of the overall map is quite small so you see the same interactions over and over until you can finally escape to a new area.

2 / 5

Theme

It's Sonic, but in a green sewer. Gross. I'm half expecting to see the Ninja Turtles in the green goo that fills this sewer

2 / 5

Art Style

The sprites don't look quite right. Sonic looks fat and animates very poorly.
Again you're in a sewer so it's not a pretty setting.
Technical performance is abysmal. The entire game feels like the slowdown in Gradius III.

2 / 5

Audio

Not my cup of tea. Sound effects are the Genesis fart noise played over and over.
Music is similarly unattractive, but not horribly composed. Doesn't hold a candle to other Sonic music tho

Comments

  1. Mike SOctober 30, 2025 at 2:09 PM

    Even my deepest childhood memories of this game that I could never beat (I got to the last level), I cannot remember anything but interesting ideas sprinkled with jank. Sonic the Hedgehog games, especially genesis ones created with the engineering skills of Yuji Naka, are known for high frame rates, smooth gameplay, and excellent physics. This game, on the other hand, retains none of those characteristics of the other genesis Sonic games other than a highly deformed Sonic sprite doing a cheap imitation of what the original Sonic does.

    The art direction in this game also takes a few questionable turns. The first boss which is against a scorpion-like robot with a Robotnik face was early childhood nightmare fuel. It made an awful sound (amongst many awful sounds the genesis sound driver was capable of).

    If memory serves me correctly, the actual highlight of this game was the bonus levels which are surprisingly higher quality than the rest of the game.

    ReplyDelete

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