Stardust Speedway 023 - Game Post Mortum Report (Sonic Spinball)

Platform: Playstation 3
Completion Time: 2 Hours 47 Minutes
Total Score from Playthrough: 36,500,725
Chaos Emerelds Gained: Seven

Initial Thoughts Of Sonic Spinball

Even though I have played a lot of Sonic titles during my years as a gamer; This was one that eluded me; but is is a good title in its own ways. The basics of the story is that Sonic is trying to defeating Dr Robotnik who has taken over Mt. Möbius and is using its lava to house his new version of the Robotasizor; the machine which turns animals of the forest into his badniks. But he has to battle his way through Robotnik's Pinball defence system to stop his rivals plans.

But this is nothing like any Sonic game been played previously and breaks a lot of the common rules that are normally featured within Sonic Games. So I am expecting a lot of changes to accomidate the pinball theme of this game.

Interesting Points Discovered

1. All about the points - This game is all about point gathering and nothing else; it is a typical pinball game and plays like a very accurate one as well. Points can be gathered from doing the littlest tasks such as gathering rings (12,500 points each)and collecting Chaos Emeralds (500,000 a piece).

2. Bulletproof Gameplay - Sonic is basically indestructable in this game; the only way he can be killed is if he falls beyond the flippers at the bottom of the table or hit some toxic waste/lava depending on which level you are at (Toxic Caves or Lava Powerhouse). Enemies cannot defeat him; he can just automatically jump off them as it is a pinball table and boss characters just move him further down the table and not actually stop him from coming back up.

3. Breaking The DNA - Before this research started; I stated what I thought made up a traditional Sonic Game and called these three points; The Sonic Series DNA. Now one of the points that I stated was collecting items such as Golden Rings and Chaos Emeralds which is still in this game; but instead of protecting Sonic during his battles against Robotnik; they just add to the score at the end of the level which breaks this rule.

4. Robotnik's Secret Stash - One common theme within the Sonic games is that within each level there is a bonus item which can be collected such as the Chaos Emeralds and in Sonic CD The Time Stones; these are spread out over the space of the title and are not usually out together so closely before.

5. The Seven Chaos Emeralds + 11 more in this one

There are three on the first level alone; with an additional three on the next and five on the last; these are suppose to be the stabilisers for Robotnik's complex and keep the site up and running without anything going wrong; but that makes 11 in total and in any other Sonic game there are Seven (Eight including the Master Emerald) but why haven't these emeralds been talked of before and who created them. But also if these emeralds are not counted from the original Seven, then there would be 18 emeralds so where have these come from also?

Concluding Thoughts

This is a very weird title for Sonic to be in as it just feels as Sonic has been plastered on top of this title; but this was created by Sega technical institute and Sonic Team themselves so it has their seal of approval on it as it was created by them. Also this game is all about point scoring which is one element of the other games but there was some sort of challenge in the other Sonic games but I feel there is no challenge in this title; it feels a bit to easy to rack up all these points and beat Robotnik.

It is a good title in my opinion though and a good comparison to other Sonic titles as a flipside/counter argument; but it is not of much of a challenge as Sonic 2 or Sonic CD* is.

(*Especially Stardust Speedway which is one of the hardest zones in any Sonic game I have encountered)

Stardust Speedway 009 - Researching On The Move and Power-Ups

During my free periods from my Teacher Training at the moment; I have been using my Google G1 Phone and some newly downloaded apps to carry out some more research for the project while I am free from lessons.

I have downloaded a Mega Drive Emulator for my G1 phone called Gensoid which allows me to play Sonic 1, Sonic 2 and Sonic Spinball and write down some notes during gameplay. So I will be still researching these titles during the break from uni work.

Just Keeping you updated with everything; but still can't find my dreamcast so Sonic Adventure will be delayed until my room is clear.

Stardust Speedway 007 - Jumping Into The Next Gen (A Bit Too Late)

Now; the selection of titles I have chosen for this research have only been from one generation of consoles and inparticular one console which is the Sega Mega Drive (and its add on; The Sega CD) now this could be down to the fact that I am a Mega Drive fan boy at heart; but also is that because all of the titles that I want to use for this project are all older titles.

So for this reason I am adding two more additional titles to the research; this late addition for the research list will let me view the series within a different light and also see if the series has advanced.

The first title is (SUPRISE) another Mega Drive title; but I think that it is an important title when I did some more research; the title that I am refering to is Sonic Spinball. This Mega Drive title puts Sonic into a gaint pinball machine and allows players to play a game of pinball; which dumbed down is all about point scoring and item collection (like extra balls) but this game does break the Sonic DNA slighly which I will discuss in the games post mortom report I will do in a future post.

The Second title is Sonic Adventure for The Dreamcast; now I initially didn't think of including any of the more modern titles within the Sonic Series as I think that they break the Sonic DNA for the series too much with the inclusion of more characters and weird tie ins with fairy tales like in the more modern titles; but this title is the only one that I though of that did not change the original formula of a Sonic Game that I am trying to research in depth; so I am going to include this title as well.

This will give me five games to draw points from and to research further; this should give me a broader vision of what the Soinc series is trying to achieve and I think that this list includes the best Sonic titles for the job without having to look at Sonic and The Black Knight.