Pokemon Pinball - Review

Pokemon and Pinball: A Match Made in Heaven?
Setting Off the Tilt.

In the late 1990's and early 2000's, putting the name Pokemon on a game was almost a guaranteed sales strategy for Nintendo. Despite the marketing gold that they had on their hands, the Big “N” did a fairly good job of resisting the urge to flood the marketplace with shovel-fulls of below-average games. That' not to say that they limited their output; no, throughout the later part of the millennium, there was a steady stream of Pokemon titles, but the vast majority of those games were of the quality we would expect from a company as preeminent as Nintendo. You can't win them all, though, and after churning out the high quality RPGs that form the main portion of the game, sometimes the spin-offs suffered from unfortunate issues. Pokemon Pinball is, unfortunately, one of those games.

That's not to say that Pokemon Pinball is a bad game: it's not. The game does what it can with the hardware of the Gameboy Color, and it was certainly one of the better pinball games on a portable system. When it was released in 1997, critics received it positively, but a lot of things have happened in the years that followed. The level of advancement in portable gaming in the last thirteen years has left Pokemon Pinball in the dust. Whereas games like Pokemon Red and Blue are still enjoyable years after the technology they used was outdated, Pokemon Pinball hasn't aged well.

Pinball is a fun game; the design and gameplay of the game we know as pinball have been honed for over a hundred years, and Pokemon Pinball doesn't do much to change that formula. There's a reason why we like these games, though, and while everything may look right on paper and in theory, it's not perfect in the end. Pinball relies on proper, or at least consistent, physics, but that's not exactly what you'll find if you play this game. The ball rarely does what you expect it to: speed, direction, and deflection seem to be fairly plastic, and you'll often the game running in a way that you can immediately recognize as unrealistic and impossible. This is especially prevalent on the Blue board.

Evolution in Action.

And there inlies my other complaint with the game: the boards. While there's nothing specifically wrong with either board, no matter which way you count them, there are still only two boards. The two boards, might keep you occupied for a while, but it's hard to play the game for any length of time because of this lack of variety. There are occasional mini-boards that will provide objective-based challenges, but these are few and far between. The game will tell you that you're moving from location to location in the Pokemon world, but these changes do nothing to effect the way the game plays. The issue is further compounded by the fact that, due to the previously mentioned physics issues that crop up heavily in the Blue board, you'll have to play on the red board if you want to play anything close to an actual game of pinball. This can be problematic, though, because it's much easier to catch and evolve Pokemon on the blue board.

Another possible downside to the game is the attached rumble pack, which I found more annoying than helpful. Maybe it was cool thirteen years ago, but with rumble built into most controllers nowadays, there's nothing special about this feature.

I love old games, but I can't review this game based on how it fits into historical context. Based solely on how fun this game is to play right now, I've got to recommend against picking up an old copy of Pokemon Pinball. It's not bad if you just want to play for a few minutes and catch a couple of Pokemon, but ultimately, time hasn't been kind to this game. However, if you are a Pokemon fanatic who requires Pokemon Pinball to complete your Pokemon collection, this game will only set you back a couple of dollars. Just don't expect the same level of quality that you find in the main series.

--Tom