Hey everyone, I've been following this site for years. I downloaded tons of fan games back around 2002 when I got my first PC.
But I never made a Sonic fan game... until now.
I was talking to one of my friends who enjoys pinball machines like I do, and we got to discussing how weird it is that during the classic 8-bit and 16-bit era of video games, Mario got not ONE, but TWO physical pinball machines built: the yellow model and blue model, both by Gottlieb.
Of course, I don't have to explain to this forum how all of the flagship Genesis tiles had at least one zone with Pinball influence, not to mention Sonic Spinball. Further, Sega made Sonic Pinball Party as well as a pinball mini-game in Sonic Generations.
Even stranger, Sega also produced physical pinball machines during the era, such as this Baywatch machine.
It would be a lie to say there was never a physical pinball built. I'm sure some of you have seen Skit-B's attempt, but this was clearly based on the latter sonic titles, with Robotnik drawn in the Dreamcast era style, as well as including Shadow the Hedgehog.
I got to thinking how it might have been if Sega made a real life, 90's era pinball machine based around the classic Genesis gameplay.
I present to you: Sonic Pinball Panic.
You can download a playable build from the website: www.sonicpinballpanic.com, as well as check out more renders. Also on the site I have a "Making Of" video explaining how I incorporated classic Sonic gameplay into the pin, as well as some narrated footage of the game in action if you don't want to download it.
Originally I was only planning on making a few Blender renders of my table, but since I'm familiar with Unity I decided to check if there were any Pinball assets. I found this Pinball Creator asset for $50. I decided to grab it and do my best to make the pinball table I imagined actually playable.
Over all, my machine is kind of a beast (i7 w/ gtx-1080 and 32gb ram) so it's hard to know what the minimum requirements are. I've heard some people say it runs slow on their non-gaming oriented machines (e.g. laptops, integrated GFX, etc.)
My apologies if it runs slow for you, but I don't have any more time budget to keep optimizing. I hope it does run well for you! If not, you can check the game play footage noted above to see how it works.
While this is a video game, think of it more as a simulator of a physical table. I tried to build this as a machine that could be physically built in the 90's. I limited my self to era tech, such as a dot-matrix-display (DMD), instead of a Full-Motion-Video (FMV) display that are more common today.
I also made sure that all the mechanisms would be physically plausible, so that's why you don't see any "video game magic" like animated characters or other things that wouldn't be possible in real life.
Let me know what you think, and Enjoy!
But I never made a Sonic fan game... until now.
I was talking to one of my friends who enjoys pinball machines like I do, and we got to discussing how weird it is that during the classic 8-bit and 16-bit era of video games, Mario got not ONE, but TWO physical pinball machines built: the yellow model and blue model, both by Gottlieb.
Of course, I don't have to explain to this forum how all of the flagship Genesis tiles had at least one zone with Pinball influence, not to mention Sonic Spinball. Further, Sega made Sonic Pinball Party as well as a pinball mini-game in Sonic Generations.
Even stranger, Sega also produced physical pinball machines during the era, such as this Baywatch machine.
It would be a lie to say there was never a physical pinball built. I'm sure some of you have seen Skit-B's attempt, but this was clearly based on the latter sonic titles, with Robotnik drawn in the Dreamcast era style, as well as including Shadow the Hedgehog.
I got to thinking how it might have been if Sega made a real life, 90's era pinball machine based around the classic Genesis gameplay.
I present to you: Sonic Pinball Panic.
You can download a playable build from the website: www.sonicpinballpanic.com, as well as check out more renders. Also on the site I have a "Making Of" video explaining how I incorporated classic Sonic gameplay into the pin, as well as some narrated footage of the game in action if you don't want to download it.
Originally I was only planning on making a few Blender renders of my table, but since I'm familiar with Unity I decided to check if there were any Pinball assets. I found this Pinball Creator asset for $50. I decided to grab it and do my best to make the pinball table I imagined actually playable.
Over all, my machine is kind of a beast (i7 w/ gtx-1080 and 32gb ram) so it's hard to know what the minimum requirements are. I've heard some people say it runs slow on their non-gaming oriented machines (e.g. laptops, integrated GFX, etc.)
My apologies if it runs slow for you, but I don't have any more time budget to keep optimizing. I hope it does run well for you! If not, you can check the game play footage noted above to see how it works.
While this is a video game, think of it more as a simulator of a physical table. I tried to build this as a machine that could be physically built in the 90's. I limited my self to era tech, such as a dot-matrix-display (DMD), instead of a Full-Motion-Video (FMV) display that are more common today.
I also made sure that all the mechanisms would be physically plausible, so that's why you don't see any "video game magic" like animated characters or other things that wouldn't be possible in real life.
Let me know what you think, and Enjoy!
