Battle Pinball (SNES)

It's time for yet another review that starts with a boring nostalgic ancedote. This game was one of the first games I ever emulated, way back when I was still at school, had no computer and my only resource for playing weird old Japanese games was the dreamcast's SNES emulator, DreamSNES.
Obviously, it's a pinball game, and less obviously, it's a spin-off from the prolific Great Battle series of games, which feature SD versions of Ultraman, Gundam and Kamen Rider all going about being super best friends and beating up SD versions of their enemies. This game features pinball tables themed around those characters, along with a table themed around Fighter Roa, who I'm told is a character from the Super Robot Wars OG series of games.
The game is similar to Naxat Soft's famous Crush series, with the tables having enemy monsters roaming about as well as various other gimmicks that can't be done on real pinball tables. Each table is four screens high, with the top screen being slightly seperated from the other three, and containing a boss. Once the table's boss is defeated, you get a ton of points, plus that table is finished and you get to pick another. I don't know what happens if you complete a table in a single sitting, I've never managed more than two.
The game is very generous with giving you extra balls. You get one for every half-million points you gain, plus there are secret methods of getting them on each table. The extra balls for points are especially ridiculous, since there are times when you lose a ball, and end up getting two more from the end of ball bonus you've built up. This can result in very long games: as I stated earlier, I've only managed to get half way through completing all the tables, and I've had single credits that go on for nearly two hours. The end of the game seems even further away when you consider that this game doesn't have passwords like the Crush games.
Despite it's flaws, though, Battle Pinball is still a pretty great game, especially if you're a fan of any of the TV shows represented in it. It's far from being a classic on the level of the Crush series or the incredible Digital Pinball games on Saturn, though.