Sega Pinball's Twister

FEEL THE POWER OF THE WIND!!! No..wait. That's another game! Well anyway from 1996 designed by John Borg based off the Bill Paxton classic here's a look at Sega's Twister! The game of course takes a lot of elements from the Williams' classic Whirlwind. It's got a fan on top of the backbox that will turn on whenever the spinning disk is active on the playfield. This is the first game that John Borg had this in. It's the exact same as a game he'd make a few years later, Lost in Space where the balls will stack on top of the magnet on the spinning disk and spin like crazy to start off the multiball. It was later brought back in the X-Men Limited Edition games.

It's been a VERY long time since I've played a good working Twister. The first time I found the game was in one of the arcades at Universal Orlando and even when the game was brand new the techs there didn't take good care of the games so it never played well, the same goes for the rest of their pinballs. Since Sega had in with Universal Studios you could play most of their games at Universal theme parks. Now they stopped offering pinball all together. (The two Shrek's might still be there, but after that pinball's dead at Universal..)

One of the things I hated about Lost in Space was how easy it is to get the multiball. You get one just for plunging the ball into the pop bumpers. In Twister the main multiball is easy to get. You can either hit the drop target that opens up the scoop shot or yes, even bouncing enough times in the pops will open the shot for you. The Chase Multiball and Cow MultiBull have to be earned by shooting enough times up the main ramp or through the orbits to build up speed.

Sadly the game suffers from what every Sega machine suffers from. They use too many of the same sound samples. So if you play this game get used to, "EVERYBODY UNDERGROUND NOW!!" "IT'S COMING!!" and "CHECK IT OUT!". It's annoying but not as bad as Independence Day which has Will Smith constantly shouting "WOO!! ELVIS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING!!"

I'd put Twister up at the top for my favorite Sega games. I still like ID4 even though the lines repeat way too much and I love the third mini flipper on Starship Troopers. With Mary Shelly's Frankenstein I've never played a fully working unit so I can't really comment on it but according to IPDB it has the highest score of all of the Sega made games. But if you ever do see a good working Twister or if you head over to Wunderland make sure you give it a play!