Sonic Spinball Spotted for Mobile Phones
Tristan Oliver | November 25, 2009
It’s Who’s Publishing that’s Surprising
Spotted today in the Sonic Retro forums was something a bit overlooked, particularly for the British crowd. It appears a mobile edition of Sonic Spinball has surfaced for sale.
The item can be grabbed for £5, and the game appears faithful to the original Genesis title, compatible with a wide variety of phones. But it’s who may be pushing it out for sale that could have your head scratching. Clearly noted at the top of the sale page is the site “Last Level”–which is a subsidiary of EA Mobile Games. Yes, Electronic Arts has somehow nabbed the rights to a Sonic title.
This has seemingly come out of the blue, without any advance notice by Sega, EA, or anyone in between. It’s especially strange given that Sega has published some of their games themselves on platforms such as the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch, and has plans to do so for the next few years.
For the moment, it may be best not to read too much into it, and at the very least, it’s good news for Sonic fans who have a few bucks to spend, and want to bring another Sonic title with them on the go.
Filed Under Sonic Scene
EA?? what the eck :S , still good for Sonic in some way
EA?!?! I thought they were enemies w/SEGA?
DOES NOT COMPUTE!
I don’t have or want a mobile phone, but this would still be pretty cool.
EA publishing a Sonic title?
Okay. That confirms it. Sonic Chronicles sequal is still to go. Prepare for an RPG with a SatAM tone and hopefully some Freedom Fighters.
Hahaha! Sweet. Now I have no doubts that SC2 will happen. Just make sure to really polish it up this time, alright Bioware? Thanks.
This is even wierder than Nintendo publishing SRA in Korea, at least there wasn’t a Sega branch there so it made sense.
Great! I hope Sonic Chronicles 2 doesn’t blow.
Funny parallel here. Sonic Spinball was the only game released to have SatAM characters in it, and Sonic Chronicles seems to borrow aspects from the SatAM show/Archie comics. Might mean someone at EA loves SatAM/Archie, or it might mean absolutely nothing.
What was the name of that SatAM game that STI was working on all those years ago?
@Treleus: That would be Sonic Mars.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pnsn0_w6K9Q
And oh man, did it have the look of a great game. Might not be traditional Sonic Genesis gameplay but it did look pretty exciting. As it was, there were a whole lot of cancelled Sonic Projects among that that could’ve been awesome.
It’s not that unusual, as they ported Sonic 1 onto my phone. But coming from their port of Sonic 1, I expect this to play horribly. But maybe it’s because my phone can’t handle the BLAST PROCESSING. =P
EA has been publishing a lot of SEGA games. Look at what is on Blackberry (Crazy Taxi and others). You can see the lists on gamefaqs, I think.