Pokémon Pinball

The Good
Feeding money to pinball machines while waiting at the local snackbar is a very fond memory of mine. I have always really enjoyed the machines, aside from offering a very fun game to play, they also had very flashy and excessive presentations which were very fascinating when I was younger. Something I also liked as a youngster was Pokemon for obvious reasons. Matching these two had to be the work of the same brilliant people who cast movie-legend Robbin Williams for the Ocarina of Time 3D trailer. It takes two things that made our youth awesome and professionally assemble them together. This leaves us with one awesome commercial and one game I am going to review today.

The pinball-aspect of this game works very well, you got yourself a pair of flippers that cover up a hole, your task is to keep the ball from somehow reaching the bottom of the field. By hitting certain parts of the field you increase your score and begin certain events. The controls are also pretty responsive and the ball realistically reacts to the flippers hitting it from many different angles and at various speeds. Through a very clever system, the top half of the screen is not visible by default and the screen shifts between the bottom and the top whenever the ball goes to either one of them. This makes it harder to predict where the ball is going to end up when it is still at the top of the field, just like with a real machine.

Every time you start the game, you are given a total of three balls. This alone if a big plus for me, because I can recall plenty of machines that only give you one ball and quite often had the field designed in a way that it almost immediately goes between the flippers. Three balls is a good and fair number, you can rack up a decent score with it and if you're new to the game you are given enough chances to get a bit more used to it before been send back to the Start Menu.

Another cool extra is the "saver". If you meet certain criteria, a blue light will go on at the bottom of the screen, signalling that if your ball is to drop to the bottom, it will not be registered as a lost ball and you can try again. In a game designed to punish you for every single mistake you make, this is a pretty clever move to cater to a younger audience.

So where does the Pokemon element come in, you ask? Well the idea is that by hitting a certain part of the field, the image of a Pokemon appears on a screen at the bottom. You then have to hit the bumpers on the top of the screen and after six hits, the image will be completely colored and the Pokemon appears. After that you have to hit the Pokemon with the ball a few times and then it's officially caught. A more cleverly hidden part of the screen allows you to do a harder variation on this in order to evolve your Pokemon as well.

Just like the arcade-classic, Pokemon Pinball is a great way to boast with high-scores. Nothing is more satisfying than borrowing a friend's copy of this game and getting one hell of a high-score on it, so that he will NEVER beat it. Though not as satisfying as doing this sort of thing in a snackbar, it's still fun among a circle of friends and family.

The Bad
For a game this simple, it does reek of a rather rushed-out title when you only include two levels. Though both of these levels are cleverly designed and there is plenty of replay-value to be found in them, I still consider it to be lazy when you are working on a spin-off for one of your most popular franchises. You could have thrown Pokemon diapers at your fan-base and still get a guaranteed return of investments, so a little extra work couldn't possibly have hurt. Don't tell me this is because of Hardware limitations either, this system can run Pokemon Gold which is a lot larger game.

This game is fun when you get to catch Pokemon and train them, but there is a very random factor that determines whether or not you get to catch one. In the blue stage for example, there is an arrow that determines which way the ball goes at one point. Most of the time it is aimed straight up or straight down, while the two fields you need to hit are left and right. The arrow however turns at random, there is no real logic behind it. This means that most of the time you are just playing regular pinball, but without the captivating presentation surrounding it.

That arrow is also slightly unfair in my opinion and it has caused me quite a lot of frustration as a kid. The thing is that the arrow is located in a narrow path straight above the gap between the flippers, so when it's pointing down and the ball falls without too much of an angle, it will be launched straight into the gap. This is however a minor complaint.

The Bottom Line
When I went to Amsterdam a few days ago, I didn't expect to walk out of the capital with a pink Gameboy and a classic game in my hands. I am really enjoying this handheld from my youth and this game is pretty swell too. Like I said in the opening of this review, Pokemon and Pinball are like Robbin Williams and Ocarina of Time, like bread and jam, or whatever analogy you can think up. As long as it functions well and neither element overshadows the other, it is a guaranteed success. There are certainly some problems with this game, but overall it is still an enjoyable, albeit a bit simple, title.

The game is quite obviously directed towards the Pokemon fanbase, a group that is, to put it mildly, quite numerous and profitable. An outsider like myself can still get a certain enjoyment out of this though, as the game of pinball is still genuinely enjoyable. I even found that my little sister who doesn't care about the franchise either, was quite enjoyed by this. If you see this game lying around somewhere and you got a Gameboy Color anyway, then I can recommend adding this title to your collection. It is unlikely that you would regret it.