Pinball Graffiti (Saturn) review "Fevered"

It's July 1996 in Los Angeles, California; you look outside a window, gaze upon the clear blue skies, and decide you want to take a stroll through the friendly streets of the city. Minutes into your walk, a distressed woman comes running towards you. Once approached, she tells you that men are chasing after her and, within seconds, three muscled thugs quickly appear, with one wielding a bat. Things are not looking good. But suddenly, a patrol officer appears, arrests the thugs, and all seems well... except the cop thinks you were part of the gang and detains you too. The next scene literally has you in a jail cell, where you're given the choice of staying the next few days or paying bail.

What does any of this have to do pinball? Unbelievably, Pinball Graffiti's main mode is a plot-driven graphic adventure. Once you enter the protagonist's name, the story begins in usual pinball fashion... with basketball. Your character was a rising basketball player in college and had the talent for greatness! Sadly, in an incident where he saved a kid from being hit by a speeding car, he got hurt in the process. No longer able to play at his full potential, he falls into depression and drops out of college. But this all changes when he stumbles upon a pinball table, plays a session, and feels a new spark. Afterwards, he sets out on a new dream: to become the world champion of pinball!

From here, the journey begins in Los Angeles and you are presented with a typical adventure menu interface. Some you will immediately deduce, such as the current location, date, amount of money on hand, and even an HP gauge. HP, maxing out at 100, drains through the use of any action, not to mention a whole day will pass. Performing actions are done through selecting icons, such as staying at a hotel to regain health, going to a bar to play pinball, or even taking a stroll outside, with the latter sometimes triggering the aforementioned damsel-in-distress encounter. There's even an abysmal one-on-one basketball minigame that controls terribly.

Selecting the trophy icon will enter you into a tournament, but not really. "Thanks" to the game's in-game calendar design, you are forced to enter a tournament on certain dates, some of which could be five months away. Surely the devs weren't so masochistic to make you pass time for that long, right? Thankfully, once you purchase a plane ticket or buy a used car, you have the ability to travel the contiguous United States to such places like Reno, Houston, Atlanta, and Bangor. Basically, different places have different tournament dates and, better yet, you'll come across people with knowledge about upcoming dates.

You then finally enter a tournament on the date it begins, but not really; turns out you need to be a certain "grade" to participate in specific tournaments. Feeling defeated, you drive off towards another state, but your car breaks down, you lose a day, and you automatically lose $500 in car repairs. Subsequently, you arrive in Florida, where your HP is about to run out. You pay $80 for a hotel stay and have a dream. A dream where you are a ball in a pinball table. Funny little joke, right? The screen then fades to black, and when it fades back in... you're literally the ball inside a pinball table.

Now, as zany as all that sounds, don't get the idea that stuff like this happens every two seconds in story mode; actually playing through this "adventure" is nothing but a drab, meandering experience. Even after you have a grasp on what to do, story mode is designed to make you run around in circles to get anything accomplished. More times than not, you're forced to perform needless actions just to make days go by and lose money, all so you can try to play pinball. An aside about that: if you play a really, really great session of pinball in a bar, where you win a million and a half more points than the offscreen AI opponent, you will be thrown in jail under accusation of cheating. Story mode's "structure" is so stupid.

Good news: there's a separate mode where you can just play pinball.

It should be noted that Pinball Graffiti is one of the first instances of a pinball video game having real-time 3D graphics for its tables; the majority of prior pinball titles were usually made with either 2D sprites or pre-rendered visuals. Having said that, if you're used to seeing those other two, the 3D graphical style here takes some getting used to. As with most other pinball video games, there's the typical two perspectives: an overhead view that follows the ball, and a view of the overall table, as if you were standing in front of it. While the latter makes the table look a bit grainy with its slanted angle, it's not straining to the eyes; just a bit off-putting. You also have additional angles to chose, such as a bizarre perspective where the camera is extremely close to the ball and tracking it. Weirdly, the ball speed intentionally slows to a crawl in this angle, making for an agonizing experience.



Since the tables are in 3D, the development team wanted to show off with the use of a "dramatic angles" gimmick. Good intentions, bad execution. As your ball is traveling through the table, there are moments when the camera will zoom in on the ball with "cinematic" angles. Sounds cool, but it's often more a nuisance when you're trying to do something important. For instance, one of the machines has a ball lock mechanic in the upper left corner, placed right above a flipper that can be used to knock the ball into a ramp. The problem with this is that the camera will zoom in on the ball when it's temporarily locked, then zoom out a moment after the ball pops out; it really screws with the momentum and timing. Thankfully, you can turn off these angles in the options menu.

In terms of controls and the overall feel, Pinball Graffiti is perhaps one of the more lenient pinball titles on the Sega Saturn. The physics and the way your ball travels around the playfield is forgiving in that you're less likely to have the ball drop down the middle gutter through no fault of your own. Of course, the chances increase when, say, multiball with three to four balls are currently in play. Another aspect that helps is the fact that the ball navigates at a somewhat lax speed, though this is probably because of the game being in 3D and, in turn, is tied down to the framerate. If you were to play this for an hour and then immediately switch over to something like Hyper 3D Pinball, it would be like going from Street Fighter II to Street Fighter II Turbo.

Interestingly, with how much abstract effort was placed into story mode, the visuals, and the camera angles, you would think they would also go in hard on the pinball tables. But oddly, there's only a grand total of three simple-constructed pinball machines. Of the set, you'll likely spend the bulk of your time with Basket Ball Legend and Card Master. Basket Ball Legends is the most traditional in the "modern" sense of how people commonly interpret pinball; there's two ramps placed in the upper portion, bumpers situated between them, two ball lock holes nearby, and other typical features that are mixed and matched when certain objectives are in play, such as multiball and scoring millions of points. The field isn't too crowded to the point of being claustrophobic, leaving just enough fair movement for the ball.



Card Master is similarly-designed, but most of its features are pushed into the corners, thus making for an open playfield. The reason for this is due to it being the most multiball-friendly of the bunch; it's possible to get up to five balls at once on the table. With its easy accessibility, Card Master is suitable for beginners or those wanting something leisurely. The final table, Circus Fantasia, is the most gimmick-based and suffers for it. It has two separate "fields" with their own set of flippers, with the upper section being inaccessible at first. This leaves you with little room to navigate from the start and with very little to work with. Once you reach the upper playfield, there's not much to do as it's designed to quickly knock you back to the bottom field with its arch design. It has the most multiball variants of the three tables, but the cramped design makes it more of an annoyance rather than a fun challenge.

To say that Pinball Graffiti is all over the place would be quite the understatement. Story mode is a unique idea in writing, but is ruined by its trivial insistence on wasting the player's time with a "fetch quest" structure and random punishments. Literally the only thing that's saving the game from being terrible is the actual pinball play itself, which graciously has its own mode. Though, you're somewhat at a disadvantage as two of the three tables are worth playing; even then, they will satisfy only your basic pinball needs as those two don't offer much to begin with. Pinball Graffiti is such a strange curiosity of a product, but one that should be placed on the backburner if you're in search of a genuinely fun pinball title for the Sega Saturn.

Note: this review is based on the Japanese version of the game.

Community review by dementedhut (September 21, 2023) Now if only I had the foresight to submit this OutRun review a day earlier...