Feel the Speeeeed!

Jersey Jack’s Sonic the Hedgehog
“Built for Flow” by Steve Ritchie & Team

By Matt Harding

It’s been more than 35 years since Sega brought Sonic the Hedgehog to life – first briefly in their arcade game Rad Mobile and then with his star turn in the Sega Genesis game named after him, Sonic the Hedgehog.

This year, Sega wasn’t the only company celebrating Sonic’s 35th birthday on June 23. So too was the team at Jersey Jack Pinball, which formally announced their highly anticipated Sonic the Hedgehog on that day.

It’s been a long time coming.

Jack Guarnieri, the pinball company’s founder, said the idea had been percolating in his head since the late 1990s when he was with Mondial Distributing. “Sega had video games and pinball machines – they made all kinds of games,” he recalled. “Every time I looked at a Sega box, the character that was printed on the box was Sonic. They made every game that you could imagine, and every time, I said, ‘How come they don’t make a Sonic pinball ?’

“Now I know why they didn’t make it – it was waiting for me. It was fate that I get this license.”

Guarnieri and team first started working on it in 2022. Once they came to an agreement, it was two-and-a-half years of “phone calls, approvals, rejections and updates.” With 6,000 speech calls from the original voice actors, there was much work to be done. That’s not to mention the 2,000 LEDs and other physical aspects of the pinball cabinet, plus the video elements.

“Working with the people at Sega was really a pleasure,” he said. “It’s quite the effort. I’m very proud of the team and what we created. It was a lot of fun.”

That team included game designer Steve Ritchie, lead programmer Bill Grupp and software engineer Taylor Snyder, who also worked together on 2023’s Elton John.

RePlay was in Chicagoland at the Jersey Jack Pinball factory in June ahead of the Sonic release and spoke with the trio about their work on the iconic IP.

Ritchie has nearly a half-century of pinball experience behind him, starting with the Atari widebody machine Airborne Avenger (1977).

“I had not played Sonic in a long time – since my children were young,” he explained. “But there were lots of young people here who had and the more I got into it, the more I saw just how popular Sonic is.”

One of those younger people, and “the biggest Sonic fan on the team,” was Snyder, who graduated from the University of Michigan in 2023 and went straight to work for Jersey Jack Pinball, coming from a video game background.

“I really started to understand that ‘world under glass’ you get with the depth of the rules in some of these pin games. It is its own video game in and of itself. I thought that was really cool.”

For Sonic, Snyder wrote the code and rules, among other engineering tasks. “Sonic games were such an important part of my life growing up. The first Sonic game I played was Sonic Adventure 2: Battle on the Nintendo GameCube. It’s been such a huge passion of mine, so getting to work on this pinball was an honor.”

For his part, Grupp said his work as the lead programmer is to make all the software that “tells the game what to do.” Mostly, he added, “My job is to make the game fun.” Grupp started at Williams Electronics in 1992, found his way into engineering and has been making pinball and coin-op games ever since.

“These two are incredible,” Ritchie said of Grupp and Snyder. “I watched them work together. Bill’s the maestro and taught a tremendous amount of stuff. Taylor came in green and ended up becoming a very good pinball player after just a short while.”

Each of their skills – and those of the entire team – were well-suited to build a game that players of all generations can enjoy.

Ritchie said the Magnetic Accelera-tor Loop Ramp is what he’s most looking forward to people playing. “It speeds up the ball and makes it go into a loop – we had to have a loop, it’s Sonic.”

Just below the 27” LCD screen playing the video elements, there’s the upper playfield with nine shots on it, which Ritchie said is his favorite part, adding, “It’ll probably be everyone’s favorite part once they experience it. It’s fun to keep the ball up there and it’s not always easy.”

Important to that loop ramp is the Spin Dash mechanism that stops the ball and then accelerates it through the loop. “It was a total accident as we were developing that,” Grupp said. “We figured out we could actually catch the ball on the magnet.”

He noted that, like Sonic himself, the game is fast. “With Sonic the Hedgehog, you’ve got to do things fast. I think that’s what we best captured about the game. Everything you see in the game makes you feel like you’re Sonic the Hedgehog.”

Grupp mentioned that many of the people who came by the factory to preview the new game also happened to be Sonic fans. “Just the look on their faces when they would come in and see the game. I pushed them to talk about their expectations for a Sonic game, and that’s been the thing for me – all of the things you think of for Sonic the Hedgehog are things we’ve tried to get into the game. We really worked hard to meet those expectations.”

The game features art and animation from Sonic Generations, and comes in three editions – Arcade, Special and Collector’s. The pricier two games feature special cabinet artwork, haptic feedback, non-reflective “Invisiglass” and more.

“Jersey Jack” Guarnieri said he expects the $9,999 Arcade Edition to be the company’s most widely accepted pinball machine to date. “Sonic is everywhere – on basketball games, air hockey tables, racing games and everything.”

While the home market continues to be the driving force behind today’s successful pinball industry, arcade bars and other such gathering locations are usually where the hobbyist is introduced to new games – and where new players are altogether introduced to the hobby.

“The other models have a lot of cool stuff – a shaker motor, topper and lots of other stuff,” Ritchie explained. “But the Arcade Edition has exactly the same playfield and the same rules and the same play and the same video in the back. It’s the same game at a lower price. It just has a little less complication and a little less bling.”

He’s also said that Sonic the Hedgehog is “the fastest game I’ve ever made.” Coming from the “King of Flow” himself, that’s saying something.

Catch up with Sonic and the whole cast of characters – Tails, Dr. Eggman, Shadow the Hedgehog, Amy Rose, Big the Cat and Froggy – and learn more about the new game at www. jerseyjackpinball.com.