Over the last 26 years, the Pokemon franchise has seen a huge number of spin-off games, and some of those spin-offs have even been popular enough to receive their own sequels. Such was the case for Pokemon Pinball, which debuted on Game Boy Color in 1999. The game received a sequel in the form of 2004’s Pokemon Pinball: Ruby and Sapphire, and a third game was planned to coincide with Pokemon Diamond and Pearl in 2006. Word on the Nintendo DS game leaked back in 2021, but now new information has been revealed thanks to an interview with artist Matthew Nightingale, conducted by Did You Know Gaming.
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Unlike the previous two Pokemon Pinball games, the third entry in the series nearly came from Fuse Games, the studio responsible for Mario Pinball Land and Metroid Prime Pinball. As revealed in the interview, the third Pokemon Pinball would have greatly expanded on the concept from the first two games. While those games combined traditional pinball gameplay with catching and evolving Pokemon, the third game would have also featured Pokemon battles. Players would actually form teams of captured Pokemon, using them to battle against opponents such as Gym Leaders!
Following Fuse’s success with Metroid Prime Pinball, the team was asked to make a pitch demo for a new Pokemon Pinball. The demo featured three different tables: Travel (Countryside), City/Town, and Gym. Essentially, players would travel between these three locations, starting on a route, arriving in a location, and eventually facing off with the Gym Leader. Type match-ups would have been factored in, so players would want to use Water-types to battle Roark, Fire-types against Gardenia, and so on. The game would have also taken advantage of the DS system’s two screens, with the full table stretching across them both.
While Nightingale says Nintendo and The Pokemon Company were greatly impressed with Fuse’s work, the game never progressed past the demo stage. The company closed its doors in 2009, and it’s unclear what happened with the demo after. Sadly, Pokemon Pinball has been left forgotten ever since! The original game made the list of ComicBook.com’s favorite Pokemon spin-offs, and it maintains a passionate following. Given how long it took for Pokemon Snap to finally get a sequel, it’s possible we could still the series revisited at some point, but for now fans will just have to settle for the two current games!
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