Pros: Incredibly addictive, surprisingly fun
Cons: Only two tables, terrible sound
The bottom line: $7.99 on Half.com for years of entertainment? I'd say it's a good buy. If you're into pinball and don't have an aversion to Pokemon, it's absolutely fantastic.
I didn't mean to get sucked into the Pokemon craze of a couple years ago, I really didn't. Every ounce of my being said !MARKETING! and !FAD!, but somehow, Pokemon appealed to the little man in my head. You know the little man I'm talking about, right? Mr. Addictive Personality? Yep, that's me, I get addicted to things. Luckily, they're (mostly) harmless things--sports cards, comic books, video games, and my current longest-running addiction, CDs. For a short time, I am a teensy bit ashamed to admit, Pokemon was part of that list.

The thing is, when the whole craze started, Pokemon had some great quality products show up on the market. Pokemon Red and Pokemon Blue were fantastic, Dragon Warrior-style games that incorporated a quest with the collection principles of Pokemon. The card game was kinda fun for a while, but once again, collecting the cards and obtaining new Pokemon was much more interesting than actually playing the game. The N64 had Pokemon Snap and Pokemon Stadium, both games that were far more entertaining than Pokemon games had any right to be, even if Snap took all of, oh, a day to "beat". The best thing to come out of the Pokemon craze, however, is the game I'm reviewing for you right now: Pokemon Pinball. This game roped me in so thoroughly that I still play it on a semi-regular basis, trying desperately to complete my Pokedex (for those out of the loop, the Pokedex is a book of Pokemon that gets assembled as Pokemon are caught).

The gory details:

Graphics

The graphics for Pokemon Pinball are pretty standard Game Boy Color fare, with lots of bright colors and relatively simple drawings. The graphics are never distractingly bad, but they're not out of this world, either--each Pokemon is recognizable, but there are only two frames of animation per Pokemon. One nice feature is the pictures of each Pokemon that get put together as they get caught, evolve, or appear in the Pokedex--these pictures are detailed, and give a good representation of exactly what the Pokemon looks like. The artists for these pictures used the capabilities of the Game Boy Color very nicely. The tables themselves, labeled the "Red" and "Blue" table, definitely represent their names accurately, as the "Red" table is very red and "Blue" is likewise extremely blue. All things considered, these are some pretty solid Game Boy Color graphics.

Sound

Crap. One of these days, I'm actually going to review a game that has good sound, but this isn't it. The most hilarious part about the sound is how they try to give each Pokemon a unique "call", which is invariably made up of static pops and random bleeps (sounds I like in some of my musical choices, but not in my video games). The music is surprisingly annoying, and there is very little variation in sound effects on the table. All in all, turn the sound down and pump up your favorite CD. Heck, if you really want to get in the mood (and you're insane), pump up the soundtrack to the first Pokemon Movie. It'd still be better than listening to these sound effects.

Gameplay

Erm, it's pinball. Two flippers, and a couple of "nudge" buttons to nudge the table in different directions. The table won't tilt, so nudge as much as you want.

Each table has the usual bumpers, bonuses, and secret passages you have likely come to expect from video game pinball. There are also three bonus levels per level, although the third bonus level is the same in each. The bonus levels are where you'll pick up the majority of your points--in the Mewtwo bonus level, the third bonus level on both tables, you'll pick up 50 million points just for hitting Mewtwo! When you take into consideration that normally, it takes around five minutes of solid gameplay to approach 50 million, you can see the discrepancy in point accumulation. In places other than bonus levels, points can be very difficult to come by.

Chances are, however, that you won't spend most of your time playing this game trying to rack up high scores--the real meat of this game comes in, what else, capturing Pokemon! This game managed to stuff all 151 Pokemon (at the time, that's all there were) into this one little game, all to be captured by the determined Pokemon Pinball Player. Many of the Pokemon also need to be "evolved", to turn them into their more advanced Pokemon counterparts. There are multiple ways to enter "capture" and "evolve" mode, but once you do, actually making the capture or evolving your pokemon can be tricky, as it involves a number of bumper hits and guiding your ball all over the table. Luckily, the game gives you a minute's worth of time where you can't lose a ball while capturing or evolving your Pokemon. For capturing, the minute is often more than enough. For evolving, however, the minute goes by all too quickly, and things get very difficult and hectic once you can lose your ball. You can also travel to different places in the Pokemon world via a "map move", which is important because certain Pokemon are unique to their particular land.

Final Thoughts

I've been playing this game on and off for years now, and I've managed to collect over 100 Pokemon. The fact that I've not grown tired of this game is a testament to its monumental staying power. Back in college, my brother and my girlfriend (now my wife) made a drinking game out of it. Now those were some good times....

But I digress. I know, the Pokemon fad is all but over, replaced by Yu-Gi-Oh or whatever the thing of the moment might be--just over one year a parent, and already I'm out of touch. All that said, Pokemon Pinball is the one game that, for me, escaped the fad and became an everpresent source of lasting entertainment. I've never been so entertained by a game on a portable system, save perhaps the incredibly entertaining Final Fantasy Legend II on the original Game Boy. Something about this game just draws me to it, saying "come on, you can catch one more, can't you?", and suddenly I'm playing it for hours.

Hi, my name is Mike, and I'm an addict. You should be too.