Sonic Spinball GENESIS

Sonic Spinball is a pinball game developed by the American staff of Sega Technical Institute working with Polygames, released for the Genesis in November 1993. It exists because Sonic the Hedgehog 3’s Japanese development team couldn’t finish that game in time for the 1993 holiday season, prompting Sega to commission this pinball spin-off in a hasty nine-month turnaround.

Rather than flat pinball tables, Sonic and his flipper-controlled ball roll across four large, vertically-scrolling zones filled with Sonic-series enemies, bumpers, and ramps, blending platformer exploration with pinball physics. Its rushed development shows in places, but its ambitious four-screen pinball zones and genuinely Sonic-flavored obstacle design have kept it a frequently-revisited curiosity in the series’ history.