It was already old by that time, but I remember that we were taking turns, just a few of us, but trying to beat it. In between my turns, I would go into the computer room where the teenage older brother ALSO got a game for Christmas for his Mac: Marathon. I had seen Doom before so I knew the genre but this was the first time I watched a guy play an FPS for any long period of time. I loved that he could go into coolant, and dual wield guns. I just thought it was the coolest thing in the world.

That stuck in my head for so long, when I was old enough I made sure to play the Marathon games on his old computer all the time when I could. But the first time I saw it, it was during a Sonic spinball break.

Sweet—today's random featured article on Wikipedia is Sonic Spinball, the classic forced off-brand half game that ended up making twice the impact! Spinball was super fun, but (to me) extremely difficult--especially The Machine and Showdown. So much so that I was never able to finish the game legitimately—I had to use savestates in Sonic's UGC to finally get it.

Fun fact: Because the STI was given less than a year to develop and program this game between CD and 3K, Dreams Come True--the J-POP band that owned the Sonic music had pulled the rights of the music from the STI, out of low expectations. So most of the music in the game was composed on the fly from Drossin. Definitely a foot shot, after Toxic Caves(and the other tunes) became some of the most popular Sonic jams in its history!

Now let's all headbang until our ears melt clean off.

Man, I still remember seeing that game in my stocking on Christmas morning one year and thinking, "Either one of these other boxes has a Sega Genesis inside it, or I'm going to have to have "the talk" with my parents about the difference between Sega and Nintendo." They were slightly offended that I thought they might not know there was a difference :p

-Disciple

Funny, I played through that just the other day. The genesis version is great, but the master system / gg version is beyond horrible.

Sweet—today's random featured article on Wikipedia is Sonic Spinball, the classic forced off-brand half game that ended up making twice the impact! Spinball was super fun, but (to me) extremely difficult--especially The Machine and Showdown. So much so that I was never able to finish the game legitimately—I had to use savestates in Sonic's UGC to finally get it.

The hardest part of showdown is the emerald right at the start. The buttons are ever so slightly off vertical. I usually end up getting it last.

I think I'll record a run-through just for you to see what it's like legit.

I'm a bit rusty… I had a bit of trouble on levels 2 and 3, but I managed to get the max time bonus on all four stages and complete it without dying. You mentioned the use of savestates. I'm guessing you probably had such a hard time because of emulator latency. On a real genesis, it's responsive to your controls for tight shots.