------------------------------
Table of Contents
------------------------------

1. Intro [INT]
2. Legal [LEG]
3. Controls [BTN]
4. Scoring [PTS]
5. Walkthrough
5.1 Toxic Caves [WK1]
5.2 Lava Powerhouse [WK2]
5.3 The Machine [WK3]
5.4 The Showdown [WK4]
5.5 Bonus Levels [BNS]
6. Tips and Tricks [TRK]
7. Thanks [THX]


------------------------------
1. Intro [INT]
------------------------------

Hello again, sonikku here with another guide. This one is an attempt to
document everything I know about Sonic Spinball, from beating the game to
getting the highest possible score (and yes it does cap). Hopefully I'm able to
help, because this game tends to be one of the harder Genesis Sonic games out
there (and its Game Gear counterpart, which this guide will not be covering, is
no walk in the park either).


------------------------------
2. Legal [LEG]
------------------------------

This guide may be printed out or saved for personal use. It may not be
reproduced, claimed as your own, sold for profit, or otherwise used in a matter
not deemed for personal use. This guide may not be modified or altered (except
at the discrection of vizzed.com moderators to fit site guidelines) and may not
be reposted anywhere else. If this guide is found on any site other than
vizzed.com, send me a private message on Vizzed so that I may track them down
and beat them with a sack of oranges.


------------------------------
3. Controls [BTN]
------------------------------

Normally I don't do this because the controls should be intuitive enough to use
immediately, but there are some things the options menu doesn't show. Do note
that the flipper designations are all what the controls default to.

Note: Ball form controls do not apply to the multiball bonus stage.

A button: Controls left flipper. When on foot, makes Sonic jump.
B button: Controls right flipper. When on foot, makes Sonic jump.
C button: Controls both flippers. When on foot, makes Sonic jump.
D-pad Up: No ball control. When on foot, makes Sonic look up, and scrolls the
screen up.
D-pad Down: Causes Sonic to descend faster in ball form. When on foot, makes
Sonic crouch, causing the screen to scroll down.
D-pad Down + A, B, or C: Charge a Spin Dash (on foot). Release down to activate.
D-pad Left: Guides Sonic toward the left in ball form. When on foot, run left.
D-pad Right: Guides Sonic to the right in ball form. When on foot, run right.
A + B + C buttons: Shake the table (bonus stage only).
Start button: Pause the game.


------------------------------
4. Scoring [SCR]
------------------------------

I was originally going to make this a complete list of every possible way to
score points in this game and how much everything is worth, but the DMD
interferes with seeing the score display so much, combined with several point
values happening in succession, that it makes it difficult to track everything.
So instead, I'm going to list only the major bonuses available, such as
completing certain tasks in one life like 3 worm loops in the Toxic Caves.

General
emerald : 500,000 points
All Emeralds Bonus: 1,000,000 points
Time Bonus: 10,000,000 point maximum at end of level, based on time taken. Only
applies if the level is cleared in one ball.
Ring Bonus: 12,500 points/ring at end of ball/table.

Toxic Caves:

Safety Lid bonus: 75,000 points (50,000 if safety lids are already open)
Draining the fluids from the center emerald: 500,000 points
Loop de Force bonus: 200,000 points.
Raising the bridge: 200,000 points
Barrel Bustin' bonus: 100,000 points
Worm Loop (3): 50,000 points.
Switch Loop Bonus: 200,000 points

End of Ball/Table Bonuses:
Switch Loops: 200,000 each
Worm Loops: 100,000 each


Lava Powerhouse

Light the Gates (Top region of lower tables): +1x multiplier each.

End of Ball/Table Bonuses:
Pressure Loops: 200,000 each
Cool Loops: 100,000 each


The Machine

Total Mega Loop: +1x multiplier each time until you leave and return to the
main table.
Busting open a cell: 100,000 points
Busting open all cells: 500,000 points

End of Ball/Table Bonuses:
Piston Lights: 200,000 each
Power Chambers: 100,000 each


Showdown

Rock-it Launch: 50,000 points
Light up the chambers: +1x multiplier
Trigger bonus: 50,000 points if no blocks to destroy.
Eruption bonus: 25,000 per second remaining.
Robotnik bonus: 100,000 points per hit, multiplied by Robotnik multiplier.
Note: Multiplier for this specific bonus starts at 0.

End of Ball/Table Bonuses:

Chimney Ramps: 200,000 each
Rumbling Loops: 100,000 each

End of Game Bonuses:
Jackpot: 10,000,000 points per bonus cleared.
Ball: 5,000,000 points per ball. (Underflowed lives? 0 points.)


Bonus levels:

Multiball Bonus:
Cluck: 3,000 points
Crab: 10,000 points
Crab destroyed: 300,000 points

Trapped Alive bonus:
Robotnik hit: 3,000 points
Case hit: 1,000 points
Case open: 10,000 points

Robo Smile bonus:
Tooth shot: 2,000 points.
Head shot: 1,000 points.
Target: 1,000 points
Tooth destroyed: 5,000 points
All targets hit: 2,000 points
Slammin' Shot: 100,000 points (!)
Robotnic wrecked: 200,000 points

The March
Cluck damage: 1,000 points
Cluck destroyed: 20,000 points
Cage damage: 3,000 points
Cage destroyed: ~300,000 points
Some items may earn varying amounts of points for reasons unknown.

All bonus tables add a seemingly random amount of points when you end the
table, either in victory or defeat, and I don't know what affects this.


------------------------------
Walkthrough
Toxic Caves [WK1]
------------------------------

You start the game off in a safe area, and can only move right to start things
off. Once you enter the little plunger thing, it will shoot you off into the
table. Don't get too used to Sonic's controls on foot, as you will rarely have
a chance to use them. In this first area, you'll notice a couple blocked pipes
that, no matter how much you hit them, don't seem to break. A bit higher up is
what looks to be an emerald trapped in a bunch of goo along with two drop
targets. Going up there will trigger a bunch of worm heads to appear that can
help (or hinder) you in reaching the target on that side. You can also use the
loops at the bottom to bounce off a worm that appears in the center to get up
if you can't hit straight up in the area. This area also has a bit of safety;
if you land on the platform where the drain is, you can jump right back up, but
if you take too long in doing so, Mecha-Nessie will grab you and you have to
mash the A, B, and C buttons to get out of his grip. You do get a small bonus
for escaping the jaws of defeat, but it's not worth going for at all.

Once you knock out both drop targets, the liquid covering the emerald will
drain away and the hatches blocking the sewer pipes to the middle of the level
will disappear. Doesn't matter which you take, you'll have to go up both pipes
anyway. When you reach the middle section, you'll notice a switch on the inside
part of the table (toward the middle) and a pipe with barrels in it on the
outside of the table. There's also a worm loop you can go around that triggers
worms when you pass through the top of it, and going through this 3 times or
busting all the barrels will grant you access to a path to the top part of the
level. Before going up there, hit the switch on the inside of the table to
raise up a bridge, then go up to the top.

You of course don't have the emeralds to enter the top area, so you drain down
onto a mine cart. Once here, you'll want to press the direction opposite of
where you came from (left if right side, right if left side), and you'll ride
the cart down to one of the emeralds. Move to the outside of the table once you
have control again, and you'll wind up on the other side of the table. Repeat
what you did on the other side here to open access to the emerald on the other
side of the tracks. Once you have this, go back to the middle section again and
drain into the barrel floating in the acid. Move toward the center of the board
and jump into the vat that used to hold the goo at the start of the table for
the last emerald of the level -- the boss room should now be open.

Once you have all the emeralds, make your way to the top of the table once
more. The rock that was originally blocking your way should be gone. Your first
objective should be to hit the targets at the bottom here to open the safety
plugs. This doesn't actually open the plugs on the outlane, but rather provides
one save against getting drained; somehow that vat refilled itself, so if you
drain from here, you're going to die. Once you have enough plugs to feel safe,
or if you feel daring and want to ignore my advice, get to the top of this
section of the table to meet the boss, Scorpius. Just walk in when his tail's
open (and if it's closed, jump across it to reopen it) and let the multihitting
commence. After enough hits, his tail will fly off, and from there it's just a
matter of bouncing on him 4 more times to wipe that ugly face off the table. Be
wary of the sewer above Scorpius, as it will take you down to the bottom half
of the top of the table. Those targets, if all trigger, will trigger an
avalanche that will damage Scorpius, but unless you manage to pull this off
after his tail is blown off, there is no real point to trying this stunt.


------------------------------
Lava Powerhouse [WK2]
------------------------------

This level is decently short if you know what you're doing, but has the worst
boss recovery in the game. You start off in the lower left of the table, and
your aim is to get to the middle section as quickly as possible. For whatever
reason, all of the drain plugs are open, so you can fall into either outlane
and not die. You can use this to your advantage and ignore the bottom section
entirely by falling in the right outlane, which will take you to the lower
Steam Arena. You don't have to do anything else in the bottom of the level. At
all.

The Steam Arena sections spam a bunch of Clucks that are worth absolutely
nothing. Bounce off them to get up through the center hole, which pushes you
into the first emerald. From here, you can spin dash up either side, which
takes you up to another Steam Arena. You'll have to visit both sides no matter
what you do, so pick a side and go with it. Find a way down, and you'll notice
one of those launcher things has a cork in the way. Your task here is to break
the cork by hitting it 3 times. If you drain here, you just get sent back to
the lower level, but getting back up may be harder as the drain plugs may have
closed again.

After the cork breaks, you get send into a steam chamber where you have to
repeatedly mash the flipper buttons to blow hot air on Sonic and push him up
the chamber towards an emerald. Grab it, then go left, back down into the lower
Steam Arena. Push back up and repeat the process for the opposite side to open
the boss room. Once in, draining is the last thing you want to do, as you fall
down to the bottom and hang from a chain. You can recover from it by swinging
left and right, then jumping off when you're far to one side before the chain
breaks. I think you only get one or two of these saves before the chain is gone
and you just fall and die.

Aside from the draining bit, this boss is relatively easy. Fly up the sides,
possibly wind up landing on the platform you pushed up through because of the
steam jets that occasionally block the entrance before jumping inside, and
watch as Sonic tears up the enemies inside the Roboiler. Once you destroy one
of the heads in the boiler, you're forced to leave it before the heads will
come back. Repeat this 3 more times and the Roboiler is destroyed, finishing
the level.


------------------------------
The Machine [WK3]
------------------------------

You start in the bottom middle of this level and get warped almost immediately
to the right side. You'll see an emerald show up as you fall down to the
flippers, stuck in a wheel thing where the entrance rotates around. You can
stop the wheel from turning and force it open permanently by hitting the power
line thing above the drain 3 times (and doing it 3 more times reverses it), but
it's possible to time a shot so that it goes inside, and doing so will have the
same effect as stopping it by power lines if you wind up back here again. Doing
this will get you the first emerald and send you to the right half-table. Be
careful about draining here, though; the drain plugs are horribly ineffective,
and there's nothing stopping you from grinding Sonic among the gears below. On
the bright side, this is the ONLY region where you can actually die.

In this section, you'll need to catch the ball with the flipper (the game calls
this a flipper catch) and wait for the flipper to rise to the top. Once it
does, try to hit the ball to the top of the chamber, ride the platform to the
left side, and go down the shaft on the far left for the second emerald. This
will take you to the Animal Prison, where yet another emerald awaits. The
emerald here is locked away in the middle cell, though if you're pure of heart,
you'll want to open up all of the cells to free the animals trapped inside.
(It's also worth a nice 500,000 points for opening them all.) Pick up the
emerald once it's free, then try to leave from the left side for yet another
emerald. (Yes, they're that close together.)

4 emeralds down, and you've hardly broken a sweat. This last one is probably
the trickest to get just because of how annoying it is to shoot Sonic in the
right shaft. You'll need to do the flipper catch and ride this thing up, but
stop short a little short of the top; you'll want to shoot him through the top
gap before reaching the top of the shaft (it's blocked by a rather annoying
Buster enemy) for the last emerald here, which frees up the boss room. You're
also back in the Animal Prison.

Exit through either side and climb your way all the way to the top of the shaft
until you get to a couple enemies that seem to be holding up a bridge. The one
you destroy will drop his half of the bridge; you want to kill the one on the
side that shoots you up into the boss room which takes you into the
Veg-O-Machine, the vile thing turning all the animals into Robotnik's minions.
There is no drain here; if you fall, you just wind up in the Animal Prison
again.

You can't actually hit this boss initially; some invisible force pushes you out
of the machine and will continue to do so until you destroy the pipes leading
into it. Not a problem, as there are electric lines under each pipe that you
can bounce off of repeatedly to slam into the pipes until they both break; you
almost don't have to press anything once you get the rhythm started, Sonic will
do all the work for you. Once the pipes are down, all you have to do is shoot
inside the Veg-O-Machine and overheat it by wrecking into the interior
repeatedly until it's destroyed. If you're lucky, you only need to shoot inside
once. If you're not, it could take multiple tries before you stay in. Either
way, this boss really isn't a threat.


------------------------------
Showdown [WK4]
------------------------------


The Veg-O-Fortress is crumbling, and Robotnik has the nerve to think he can get
away on his space ship. You're stuck on the crumbling half of the fortress and
need to get the remaining emeralds to board his spaceship and stop him for
good. Unfortunately for you, this is the most difficult level in the game, so I
hope the last level was a nice, relaxing breather for you. Start by aiming
yourself at the center of the bottom table. There's an emerald protected by 4
bars of steel up there, and there are triggers to either side of it that will
break the bars. Get this emerald first, as it is the most annoying one to grab
out of all of them in the game, and if you die, the bars reset.

Once you have cleared out the bars, the enemies blocking the middle of the
table are gone, making it easier to reach the outer edges of the table. If at
all possible, I suggest trying to go left first, as the flow to reaching the
boss is better if you get the last emerald on the right side instead of on the
left. If you go left, keep reading. If you go right, skip the next paragraphs
and come back to it.

For the left side of the table, you'll want to find a way to get to the extreme
left of the table. Unless you died right after getting the center emerald, you
should be on the top half of the left side. Shoot all the way up through the
shaft on the left side, hit the invisible roof of the level, and hold left. You
should eventually drop through a small shaft that puts you on a platform with a
hook. Grab this hook to extend a flipper, then aim your shot and try to get
into the hole where the next emerald is. Usually, if you miss, you'll bounce
back toward the flipper, so you can try again, but sometimes you'll just be
forced into the side table, so you'll have to come back later. Just don't die.

Once in the left table, you'll have to bust more blocks. There's an enemy
blocking the trigger, but there's only 3 blocks to destroy, so you still have
to go through the section to the trigger 4 times. Once you get this shaft open,
shoot through it to wind up in one of Robotnik's socks (no, seriously), which
will shoot you into an emerald down the shaft you would've entered if the
blocks in the center weren't busted. This will either take you back to the main
table or to the side table you were just on, depending on how you go down the
shaft (right goes left, left goes right). Once you have both emeralds here,
move back to the main table and go to the right side.

For the right side of this table, you'll want to do the same thing you did
initially for the left, except going right instead of left. Hit the top of the
level, drop along the right edge, land on the platform, grab the hook, land on
the flipper, and aim for the hole containing the next emerald. Again, you'll
usually bounce back if you miss, but sometimes you just wind up going into the
side table instead and will have to come back to this later.

The last emerald to get (if you went here second) isn't actually all that
terrible to grab, just slightly difficult to aim through, but you only have to
do it twice; once to kill an enemy, and again to grab a hook to open a shaft,
through which you can spin dash to grab the last emerald. Try not to wind up in
the sock on this half of the level, as there's no point in going through the
shaft, but if you do wind up there, try to start it on the left side so you can
get back into the side table.

Once you have all the emeralds, your next task is to find a way into the boss
room. This one has three entrances; you can either go through the dead center
of the table and bounce off a bunch of things over and over again until you
grab a hook that will push you into the boss room through the drain, you can
grab a hook from underneath the wings which opens a hatch, and you can spindash
from there to get in from the side, or you can land on top of the wing and
spindash into the windows three times to smash through to the boss room. Do
whatever happens to be easiest for you.

The boss itself is a little more complex than the earlier ones. There's a
trigger underneath Robotnik that will enable or disable his weapons. Contrary
to what you might think, this is NOT random. When you first begin the boss, he
has both of his claws and his socks out. The claws are practically harmless and
just send you down the outlane toward the hatch you may have crawled in
through. Long as you don't press anything, you'll never really drain out of the
level and can easily recover. The socks are a bigger threat; if you wind up in
one of those, you'll get flung into the upper window of the ship, damaging it.
Three strikes, and you fly through the window and most likely to where you
grabbed a hook to open a flipper to get an emerald. It's a LONG way back up
from there, so don't try to attack when he has his socks out only.

So how do you know what weapons he has out? That's easy. From the starting
point (all weapons out), hitting the trigger will disable one of his claws. Hit
it again, and it will disable the other claw, and one more will disable his
socks, leaving the fat man open to attack. It takes 10 hits to defeat him, but
you are on a timer once the socks are removed. If you take too long, or if you
hit the trigger while he has no weapons up, you'll get a "Smell My Socks"
message in the DMD and his socks will be back up. You'll need to hit the
trigger five more times to get him to be vulnerable again; one brings out one
claw, two brings out the other, three removes one claw, four removes the other,
and the fifth removes the socks and makes him vulnerable again. This is the
full pattern for the trigger, and for how his weapons work. His health does not
reset unless you die, so if you can't get it all in one, don't worry too much.
Once the last blow is delivered, you get a rather long death sequence (longer
than the other 3 anyway), and the game is over. Tails somehow comes to your
rescue (considering he got trapped twice in the bonus levels, I'm surprised he
found time to fix the Tornado through it all) while Robotnik falls into the
crumbling Veg-O-Fortress, never to be seen again. (Well, until next game.)


------------------------------
Bonus Levels [BNS]
------------------------------

Bonus: Trapped Alive (after level 1)
The bonus here is relatively simple: Free your friends from their individual
cages, then knock Robotnik out of his chair. You can hit Robotnik all you want,
but you can't actually kill him off until everyone is free. The bonus tables...
are a little awkward to control the ball, and sometimes you'll just get cheated
out of the bonus level entirely. There's no real strategy I can offer, outside
of avoid tilting the table because it doesn't help and will cost you the ball
if you do it too much.


Bonus: Robo Smile (after level 2)
The bonus here is easy. Ignore the targets in the background, your goal is to
remove Robotnik's teeth by smashing into them with the pinball. (That's gotta
be painful. Really, Sonic?) Each tooth takes a few hits before it's destroyed,
and that leaves a gap you can send the ball through. It's worth quite a bit of
points if you shoot the ball through it, but the ball will shoot out at a
rather high speed, so do so at your own risk. Once you knock out all four
teeth, the stage ends. The targets do nothing, they're just worth a very small
amount of points.


Bonus: The March (after level 3)
So called because a bunch of the chicken guy from AoStH circles the cage, your
job is to break through the line and destroy the cage in the middle to free
your friends. Notably, this is the only one line DMD in bonus levels because of
the size of the cage. This is honestly the simplest level to clear just because
you can get the ball somewhat stuck in the back and deal a ton of damage to the
cage and the clucks if your aim is true. If nothing else, this should be the
one bonus level you beat, so long as the game doesn't cheat you out of balls.


Bonus: Multiball (collect all rings in a level, then enter bonus gate)
The multiball bonus level is a bit tricky. You get 3 balls as before, but you
start with all three of them launched. Your goal is to kill the crab in the
back, and once you lose all three balls, you're done. The ball can get trapped
between the crab and the wall to deal a TON of damage, and this is the only
bonus level where you can earn extra balls (specifically for the bonus level)
in the middle. You can only have 3 at a time; if you've earned another, it will
fire immediately on losing a ball. Fairly easy if you can get the ball trapped,
otherwise this one could get a bit tricky.


------------------------------
Tips and Tricks [TRK]
------------------------------


- There is a life underflow glitch in the Toxic Caves. If you die enough times
to drop down to your last life, take the barrel on the middle right section of
the level all the way to the right, jump out, and die while facing right, Sonic
will for whatever reason die and fling to the right side, then reset to the
middle of the screen, somehow dying twice in the process. The game will tell
you Game Over, but then respawn you with an extra ball. You now are playing
with zero lives. Die a few more times for safety; if you get an extra ball
while at 0 lives and die again, it WILL be Game Over.

- Keep in mind you have a little bit of control over Sonic as he flies about in
ball form. It's not much, but that little nudge can get you where you need to
go.

- The only time it's really worth it to go for the multiball bonus levels,
which open by collecting every ring on the table in a single life, is in Toxic
Caves. The Machine is also viable, but also a bit more risky since you'll most
likely wind up making several visits to the bottom center of the table.

- The multiball bonus levels are easy; just get one or two balls caught between
the crab and the table wall. Deals a ton of damage with minimal risk, and if
you get this two or three times, it's enough to kill.

- The Total Mega Loop in the bottom center of The Machine makes that level the
easiest to grind points off of; you can sit Sonic on the top center of the loop
and wind up spamming multipliers for days, or at least until the game breaks it
and it stops awarding anything. This multiplier seems to be the only one that
isn't permanent; it can go away without you losing a ball, and I don't
understand the trigger for that. Combined with the life underflow glitch and a
lot of safety deaths earlier on, you can max out the score here.

- You get an extra ball every 20,000,000 points. It's possible, if you're
skilled enough, to grind on the Toxic Caves or The Machine until you have a few
extra lives and don't want to underflow them, but you're better off trying to
speed through them and get the 10,000,000 maximum time bonus from these easier
levels.

- Showdown is hard. Even if you show up with 5 lives, even if you're a pinball
wizard, expect to lose more than a few balls here and possibly even game over.
The difficulty spike on this level is really, really bad.

- Falling out of boss rooms gets ironically less deadly the further into the
game you go. Don't get frustrated just because you got flung out of the final
boss.

- You don't actually have to raise both bridges in Toxic Caves. With enough
skill, you can use the flippers in the mine cart area to change tracks. Once
you understand how it works, you'll only need 1 side of the level to clear it.
Just be wary if you wind up on the other side anyway, you'll still have to
clear it out at that point, and you won't get all the rings in the level.


------------------------------
Thanks [THX]
------------------------------

Thanks to Davideo7 for hosting the site.

See a problem with this guide, or have something you'd like to add? Post in the
topic, and you may see your name here if I use it.

sonikku :

Nice job, you really pay attention to stuff sonikku.
I like how you put down everything nice and neat, and even went as far as to list point values. This is why I value you so much inn our RP back in the day and the PC game.

I remember playing this game a lot back in the day, when all I had was a sega genesis. my 30 minute game time limit was always up by the time I got to lava powerhouse.

A pretty good game that will challenge you a bit. A walkthrough is a good idea for it since it can have it's tricky parts, and sometimes your left not knowing what to do.

Wow this is fantastic! Good job Sonikku, you really pay attention to detail. I look forward to future stuff.