LogFAQs > #974273569

Pokemon Pinball (GBC)

Man, here's a game from my childhood that doesn't hold up. This game is wonky. The hit detection is super broken so sometimes the ball and your flippers phase into or through each other. The ball can also phase through other objects on the board sometimes. It feels like in-game events triggered by hitting certain board elements are meant to happen in a specific order, and therefore your ball is magnetized towards/away from them no matter how you shoot it depending on if you're following the order or not -- I can't really prove that but it's what it feels like.

There are only two boards and the Red board is insanely harder in every way than the Blue board, but you have to play both to catch every Pokemon. The mechanics for catching rare Pokemon or moving to advanced locations aren't explained or obvious. It's kinda just a mess! On the bright side, the sprite work for the Pokemon's portraits goes unbelievably hard.

Getting 151 Pokemon is an insane grind so eventually I just started using save states. On top of the grind, this game is fucking impossible, so I'm not sure I'd have ever finished it otherwise. The victory does feel pretty hollow as a result, but whatever. This game's been in my backlog for like two fuckin decades, time to call it good enough and put it to rest.