Prerelease:Sonic the Hedgehog Spinball (Genesis)

This page details prerelease information and/or media for Sonic the Hedgehog Spinball (Genesis).

To do: More material at Sonic Retro. More comparison images with the final game.

"Sonic Pinball"

Spinball made its debut at the 1993 Consumer Electronics Show as a concept video created by Sega Technical Institute using Amiga hardware. Other upcoming Sega games were previewed at the show using this style, including Comix Zone and an unreleased game based on the ABC Sonic cartoon.

Lasting for over a minute, the video shows a very early Toxic Caves with a yellow-green hue and different layout. The music played in this video is "Sauron", composed by Fleshbrain.

Summer CES 1993

Prerelease	Final

The title screen has no "TM", and "The Hedgehog" is written on a gold flipper-like object, which is positioned where the TM is in the final game.

A different balancing animation for Sonic, resemblng the "windmill arms" animation seen in Sonic 2 and Sonic 3. The level's color scheme and the launcher object at the top-right indicate this is an early Lava Powerhouse.

The "Robo Smile" bonus stage has a rather different appearance:

• Robotnik's head is at the top of the playfield, where the targets normally are.
• Instead of showing points (or snarky comments), the board at the top of the screen shows animations depicting what's going on.
• Tracks can be seen on the playfield's surface.

The introduction cutscene takes place during the day, and the mountain is asymmetrical.

A shot of a between-level map screen taking place in Robotnik's station, similar to those seen in SegaSonic the Hedgehog. A similar-looking screen, albeit without Robotnik, appears in the 8-bit versions of the game and serves the same purpose.

A shot from early in Toxic Caves. The platform doesn't exist in the final game, and all the lights are missing.

¡Atencion! Mezcla Explosiva: Especial Eternal Champions

To do: Footage has more differences from final.

A promotional VHS released with the December 1993 issue (No. 27) of Spanish game magazine Hobby Consolas (Spinball footage starts at 5:59 in the video at right).

A very different explosion effect for when the Robo Smile bonus stage is beaten. The stage seems to look the same as in the Summer '93 image above.

Curiously, Robotnik's ship from the end of The Showdown is missing... Robotnik. Sonic instead just bounces around aimlessly, not even making cracks in the glass.

VHS Footage

A Spanish VHS tape from 1994, showcasing a build of Sonic Spinball starting at 0:24.

• At the beginning, you can see footage of the scrapped level intermissions!