Is this the DARKEST, CREEPIEST Sonic Game?! A Sonic Spinball Review and Retrospective

FUNKY ACTION! Thank you for watching this video! Any likes, comments, shares, subs etc. greatly appreciated! What are your thoughts on Sonic Spinball? What Sonic games would you like to see me cover next? I'm thinking of making my way through all the non-mainline ones. 3D Blast might be next! Thanks again for watching!

I like to think this game is in its own, Weird, creepy, and strangely cool little continuity, due to the fact that Robotnik seemingly just dies at the End of the game, note that same DEMONIC scream Scorpius also makes.

This game has always been extremely uncanny, mostly because it has that Western 'toxic grunge' aesthetic that a bunch of games had like Comix Zone and McDonalds Global Gladiators. Really dark shading, tons of luminous greens and intense sprite detail. It's clear that a lot of Western developers were inspired by Amiga games of the time. What also really unnerved me (and many others I'd imagine) is the music done but Howard Drossin. Howard is an incredible composer and the music's shrill nature is less to do with him and more to do with the fact that it was made on the GEMS sound driver. Which is essentially the 'Fruity Loops' of MD sound drivers. Howard worked on Sonic 3's soundtrack, which is one of the most polished MD ost's ever. But even if you put the crunchy samples to the side, the music is still absolutely unnerving. It's use of grungy deep bass and metallic chords just give a strange vibe that sticks with you as a kid. And finally, I think the most uncanny part of this game is the fact you don't feel like you are playing Sonic. It almost feels like you are helping him. He feels more powerless than usual and by extension, you do as well.

So here's a bit of a weird headcanon. The Veg-o-Fortress isn't just a Badnik factory, but also a prison. For a brief period before Sonic 1, Eggman dabbled in genetic engineering (inspired by his granddad no doubt) trying to clone himself. However, Eggman quickly learned that his talents in robotics far exceeded his skill in genetics, and after creating a number of hideous biomechanical abominations (including Scorpius, the boiler heads and the big-teeth thing from the bonus stage) he dumped them in the fortress to rot and decided to concentrate on robots. The giant Robotnik in the final boss fight was Eggman's genetics program's single almost-success: an Eggman clone with gigantism who proved competent enough for the real Eggman to put it in charge of the fortress to oversee the roboticiser and act as a jailer for the rest of the freakshow. Also, in my headcanon, Tails' new plane is called the Mistral. No particular reason beyond that it sounds cool and fits the storm/wind naming conventions of his mecha.

"CLUCK ALERT" always cracked me up. Oh no, not the flying chicken.

"Are they machine or flesh" They're called Robo-heads lol

The egg broiler used to terrify me as a kid lol. The way that they used to vomit magma...😬

The 16 Chaos Emeralds are in the game, because SEGA implied the idea of multiple sets of Chaos Emeralds existing pre-Adventure. Sonic 3s Japanese manual states Knuckles is after Sonic's SET of Chaos Emeralds ( I think Sonic The Comic said this as well in their Sonic 3 adaption). It's why their change shape in between games and amount ( Sonic 1 having 6 for example )

Man, every time I see the SatAM characters in this game, makes me think of that cancelled SatAM megadrive game they were working on. Would of loved to seen that back in the day! Always love giving this game a blast still to this day! Love the work man as usual!

Dont forget that Robotnik programmed Scorpius TO FEEL PAIN

I'm surprised you never mentioned this game's notorious options music track.

That transparent reflection effect is actually super nice for a genesis game

3:23 that's actually pretty simple. It's a different set of Chaos Emeralds. Adventure retconned it to one set, but the 2D Sonic canon in both the US and Japan was actually that every region of the world had its own different set of emeralds. It's why Sonic 1 has 6 emeralds, and why Knuckles attacks Sonic for his Chaos Emeralds at the start of 3. The JP manual says he mistook the 7 West Side Island emeralds from 2 for the 7 Angel Island emeralds and thought Sonic had stolen them.

The howl the bosses made when you hit them along with that evil sounding music. 😨

As a kid this game terrified me a bit with the opening scene and the bosses, but man it felt so good defeating them and winning at the levels. There’s just something very satisfying about hearing the screen outright being demolished and you emerge victorious as you fly off the screen. I’m 35 years old and I still enjoy this game, even if the final boss is extremely cheap against you, those damn socks

With the music there's also the game starting music, the game over music, both creepy...the boss music, scary and sad...and the options music, that one is something else!

I'm not surprised that you missed out on it, but there's actually a fourth pinball table. It's called "Clucker's Defense" and it only appears when you collect all of the rings in any stage. Doesn't matter which, every stage all-ring bonus goes to Clucker's Defense. Once you get all of the rings, a sparkle ring will show up somewhere in the level (the last flippers towards the boss in Toxic Caves, directly under the boss drain in Lava Powerhouse, on the drop-floor in front of the boss entrance chute in The Machine, and in the middle of the green balloons before you start climbing to the rocket ship in Showdown) that you can jump into in order to enter the multiball level. The pinball cabinet itself is just two Cluckers (from Sonic 2's Wing Fortress) lined up in front of a Crawl (the crab with a bumper shield from Sonic 2's Casino Night) and the objective is to just hit them until the Crawl explodes. All of them have ridiculous amounts of health: the Crawl requires 40 hits from behind to avoid the shield, at which point it will drop the shield and then the next hit will kill it completing the stage. Winning awards you at least 1 million points per completion. As many times as I've beaten the game, I've only ever collected all the rings in Toxic Caves, as every other level was much too large and treacherous for younger me to bother with, especially since it's always the same bonus level.

i always liked the way sonic looked in this game...even though we rarely see him out of the ball sprite. kinda wish we had a proper game using it.

Every time sonic died I hear a scratchy distorted laugh. It was creepy nothingness

This was a game genie game for me as a kid. That 4th level was super hard