Pokemon Pinball: Ruby & Sapphire is a pinball game featuring the Pokemon from Ruby and Sapphire. That's about it. There are two different boards to play on, arbitrarily named Ruby and Sapphire. The main gameplay is to interact with various elements on the board to reveal Pokemon to catch, evolve, or hatch. The only real goal outside of playing pinball is to catch every single Pokemon, but I think you'd really have to enjoy playing pinball to ever want to approach tackling that. There aren't any other modes aside from that. That isn't to say it's a bad game. The graphics are nice, the physics seem well done, but at the end of the day I simply don't really like pinball all that much, and I like completing the Pokedex even less. If either of those things appeal to you, then I say give this game a look, but I found it tiresome pretty quickly.

Now, I’m no pinball expert or anything, in fact I’m pretty bad at pinball, but Pokemon transfers shockingly well into a pinball game. I kinda see why there’s three Pokemon Pinball games (the Pokemon Mini had a rendition of Pokemon Pinball), the formula genuinely works.

Pokemon Pinball’s mechanics are easy to figure out, so it's easy to get into if you’re not familiar with pinball (I wish mechanics were explained in-game, but that’s a trend I’ve noticed with pinball games anyway). Pokedex completion feels genuinely achievable as well, with the RNG components being a little more controllable by the player (which feels like a godsend after playing Pokemon Shock Tetris). You can control what pool of encounters you can find, you can control if you want to catch, evolve, or hatch a Pokemon, and if you’re struggling to find a certain Pokemon you can trigger the mode to catch/hatch/evolve another Pokemon so long as you can aim your shots. And the sprites in this game are really adorable and dynamic (albeit slightly awkward at times, the immediate examples I think of are Zubat being colored incorrectly and Plusle’s pose just looking off for some reason).

I think the maps are… fine? Again, I’m no pinball expert, and I’m pretty bad at it, but the maps don’t feel incredible or anything. Ruby’s bumper mechanic is so genuinely annoying, and Sapphire’s shop is INCREDIBLY awkward to reach (the shop buttons are so small, it sucks). The Kecleon minigame isn’t really my thing, the Spheal minigame is just annoying with how you can accidentally trigger it and get stuck doing it when you don’t want to, and Dusclops... Dusclops is easy but fine enough. Groudon I also like because it feels like there’s ways to get around its attacks, but Kyogre is annoying, especially due to there not being any counterplay to Sheer Cold (I never got to Rayquaza’s minigame).

I don’t personally think Pokemon Pinball is anything special, but I think it’s fun. It’s worth trying out if you’re a Pokemon fan or a pinball fan.