Why no Sonic pinball?

[johnwhitfield]

Just been playing some old Megadrive games with my daughter and it got me wondering. Why on earth didn't SEGA ever make a real sonic pinball? Given they own the licence and it involves a small round thing zooming around it would seem like natural theme for them to have used. Surely more interest in that than say SST or Godzilla and no external parties would have needed to be paid.

Any insights as to why this didn't happen? Was it just slightly too late by the time they started to make pins? Or was it considered and rejected?

 

[Fintan Stack]

I can't answer the why. But I have thought about this before too. It seems like such a perfect theme for pinball. Not to mention that they did make Sonic Pinball video games.

I don't think it was too late though. I think Sonic still had his fans in the late 90's.

 

[Monkeyboypaul]

JPM made a reasonable Sonic Fruit machine:

http://www.sonicgear.org/ArcadeMachines/ArcadeSonic.html

IMHO the Sonic brand would not have worked in a pinball unless it had loop-the-loops. Then again, even without those it would've probably been better than the Mario games.

 

[Sgt GrizZ]

He does make an appearance in DMD attract mode on the 'Large' screen Sega games. Basically was the Sega mascot.

 

[replicas]

He does make an appearance in DMD attract mode on the 'Large' screen Sega games. Basically was the Sega mascot.

I was trying to think where I had seen Sonic on a pinball machine.

 

[Carl Spiby]

Skit-B made this from leftover parts from Predator.

 

[lukewells]

I want a Sonic pinball now!!!!! lol