A pinball game that has a story. After Dr Robotnik’s last defeat, he’s set up a pinball tournament. As Sonic, you take part in the tournament. The tournament has 16 players, but you’ll only encounter Knuckles, Tails, Amy and Metal Sonic (the other ones are just to tease you). After you win the tournament, it turns out it’s all a trick and you have to face Dr Robotnik (in a pinball match).
First up you’ll have to face Knuckles on the Neo Green Hill Zone machine and get 10,000,000 points. Progress will be very slow until you follow the arrows, three loops and hitting into the right hole will get Dr Robotnik to spawn, then hitting the ball into a hole will destroy him and get you the 10,000,000 points.
Then Tails, who calls Sonic a moron, and has glowing red eyes because its brainwashed (I like how Knuckles has been fooled to fight Sonic so many times that they didn’t even bother brainwashing him). This time you need 15,000,000 points in 5 minutes on the Casino Paradise Zone machine. This is when you’ll find out that all the Sonic tables are exactly the same, just with different colours. So you’ll be doing exactly the same thing to get Dr Robotnik to appear and defeat him, potentially twice, as it’s by far the best way to get points.
Next up is a brainwashed Amy, and you get to play a completely different table, based on NiGHTS. Points aren’t important here, you just follow the instructions until you win. The final stage of the “tournament” is against Metal Sonic, where you have to beat all seven stages of the Sonic table. To defeat a stage, you do the same thing I mentioned above to defeat Dr Robotnik. So you need to do this same pattern seven times.
Then Dr Robotnik will challenge you, you have 5 minutes to score 30,000,000 points, so three more goes through the same thing. Throughout the story, you’ll have repeated the same exact actions around 13 times. It’s incredibly tedious and boring.
Completing this will get you a Samba De Amigo machine. The three tables have hidden minigames and features like multiball to discover, but ultimately following the instructions will net you by far the most points. It’s just a pretty bad game.
By far the best mode of Sonic Pinball Party is the options. Here is a sound test with the music, which features renditions of Songs based on the classic games, Sonic Advance and some extra tracks like midi versions of Super Sonic Racing and Live & Learn, all using the GBA’s capabilities quite well. On reflection, it makes the music in the GBA Sonic port even worse as Sonic Pinball Party had some pretty good versions of some of the music.
First up you’ll have to face Knuckles on the Neo Green Hill Zone machine and get 10,000,000 points. Progress will be very slow until you follow the arrows, three loops and hitting into the right hole will get Dr Robotnik to spawn, then hitting the ball into a hole will destroy him and get you the 10,000,000 points.
Then Tails, who calls Sonic a moron, and has glowing red eyes because its brainwashed (I like how Knuckles has been fooled to fight Sonic so many times that they didn’t even bother brainwashing him). This time you need 15,000,000 points in 5 minutes on the Casino Paradise Zone machine. This is when you’ll find out that all the Sonic tables are exactly the same, just with different colours. So you’ll be doing exactly the same thing to get Dr Robotnik to appear and defeat him, potentially twice, as it’s by far the best way to get points.
Next up is a brainwashed Amy, and you get to play a completely different table, based on NiGHTS. Points aren’t important here, you just follow the instructions until you win. The final stage of the “tournament” is against Metal Sonic, where you have to beat all seven stages of the Sonic table. To defeat a stage, you do the same thing I mentioned above to defeat Dr Robotnik. So you need to do this same pattern seven times.
Then Dr Robotnik will challenge you, you have 5 minutes to score 30,000,000 points, so three more goes through the same thing. Throughout the story, you’ll have repeated the same exact actions around 13 times. It’s incredibly tedious and boring.
Completing this will get you a Samba De Amigo machine. The three tables have hidden minigames and features like multiball to discover, but ultimately following the instructions will net you by far the most points. It’s just a pretty bad game.
By far the best mode of Sonic Pinball Party is the options. Here is a sound test with the music, which features renditions of Songs based on the classic games, Sonic Advance and some extra tracks like midi versions of Super Sonic Racing and Live & Learn, all using the GBA’s capabilities quite well. On reflection, it makes the music in the GBA Sonic port even worse as Sonic Pinball Party had some pretty good versions of some of the music.