Back in the 90s, Sonic was the first character to feature its own pinball game. Years later, Nintendo tried the same with the first Pokemon Pinball. In the 21st century, Nintendo closed the cycle with the new Pokemon Pinball and Mario Pinball Land, each featuring two of the most famous franchises of Nintendo. Although more franchises also released a pinball game of their own, like Metroid, the pinball craze has decreased a little bit, maybe sacrificed for the sake of online playing or for better and more action.

The first Pokemon Pinball offered two boards to play in, referencing the fact of releasing two games (followed by a third one) for the same generation of Pokemon. Each board had its own design, and even completely different ways of enabling the Pokemon catch or evolution and also ways to travel between locations. It also included special minigames that were available once three Pokemon were caught (evolving counted as two). In addition to get the highest possible score, there was a hidden objective known by everyone: catch all the available Pokemon, the whole Generation I. The new Pokemon Pinball inherited this traits, changing the available Pokemon to the whole Generation III. It added the Egg Mode, which will hatch a baby Pokemon from an egg, and that Pokemon will roam the whole board for a while before going away instead of standing still in the board. The minigame concept was also retained from the original game, including some available in the stage to be playable at any time instead of collecting a certain amount of Pokemon.

Graphics: The boards are highly inspired in the previous game, where Pokemon occupied the place of many pinball accessories, like some of the bumpers or the locations where you have to direct the ball. Even then, the graphics are much more accurate, and obviously, much more defined due to the capabilities of the new console. Where Nintendo nailed it was in the animations, which were much more dynamic in this new game, specially in the minigames. Graphics earns a 9.

Sound: The soundtrack isn't wide, but I think it has the correct number of songs, no more, no less. The intro, the menu, the boards, the minigames and the mode you're playing (Catch, Evo, Egg, Travel). The sound is also very good in terms of adapting to the situation: faster music for Catch Mode, relaxing music for the boards, for example. I also like how some of these sounds are also extracted from the main games Ruby and Sapphire. For example, when an egg is about to hatch, the music from the Trick House is played. Sound earns an 8.

Addictiveness: Pokemon by itself is an addictive franchise, because it offers a wide selection of Pokemon in every game. This game isn't an exception, with all of the Generation III Pokemon available to catch. Also, we have to add the pinball game, which makes it more difficult than to catch a Pokemon in the main games. The most annoying thing, in my opinion, is the location, because it's very random and you can't even choose to go back and forth (the requirements to do so are a bit complicated to achieve). The randomness of the Pokemon that you can catch in each area, determining in which area you play and the Pokemon that will hatch from the eggs make this game last very long. And don't forget you're playing pinball, so there's a highscore table for each board waiting for your name to be written on. In my opinion, addictiveness earns a much justified 10.

Story: Nothing at all. There aren't any characters whatsoever in this game, and there aren't any missions or predetermined steps you have to follow to achieve a goal. Completing the Pokedex while scoring the highest possible amount of points is your only objective.

Depth: Completing the Pokedex does take some time, doesn't matter the game. Furthermore, the added difficulty to find the exact location of the Pokemon you're still missing can be arduous. Catching the Legendary Pokemon isn't easy in any game, but specially here, due to how you must first weaken it for its capture, and how hard it is to upgrade the Pokeball to a better ball. Out of all the Pokemon games, I think that this one, besides the old Pokemon Pinball, are the longest to have ever existed. For that, depth earns a 9.

Difficulty: Learning the controls isn't hard, it's just a pinball game with two flippers to control, that's all. The difficulty comes from the fact of evolving your Pokemon, since you must explore the whole board to find where the items are located each time. Directing the ball to wherever you want to isn't easy, and much less when having to catch a roaming Pokemon hatched from an egg. The minigames aren't that much of a threat, but, as always, the Legendary Pokemon are quite troublesome to catch. Completing their minigame is already a challenge, and being able to capture them requires many times playing the minigame, and getting up to the minigame is also quite difficult, having to catch up to six Pokemon per challenge. For all this reasons, difficulty gets an 8.

Overall: A quite challenging game, either for the fact of completing the Pokedex or for getting the highest score. In my opinion, this is a game which can play the whole family, even if you're not used to Pokemon games, simply because of the pinball rules it follows. Don't expect your father or grandfather to complete the Pokedex for you, but be careful with their highscores, they are more used to pinball machines than you for sure. Nowadays, is really hard to see a game that can draw so close to three generations, mainly because of the controls of modern games having so many buttons. Nintendo realized this, and that's why the Wii and the DS were born, to make all the family play a game which had easy controls and didn't require complex combos, just swinging the controller or writing/drawing in the screen. I think that games like this Pokemon Pinball, as well as its predecessor, and other games with easy controls aside from classic games are what Nintendo took inspiration from to raise up to the top without the need of powerful graphics as their rivals.

EX Palen : nice job on the review i really liked this game even though it was just pinball 

Well nice job on this review. You put lots of detail in this review and you broke it down into different categories. So anyway have a nice day.