Episode 63: Sonic vs. Transformers Pinball Review + The Wildest Year in Modern Pinball?!

Sonic Pinball vs. Transformers Pinball - if you could only bring one home, which would it be? In this episode of The Flip Side Pinball Podcast, I review and compare Sonic Pinball by Jersey Jack Pinball and Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye by Stern Pinball. These are two completely different machines, but both deliver great theme integration, approachable rules and plenty of reasons to hit the start button again. I’m not necessarily trying to crown one definitive winner. Instead, I break down what each game does well, where each one could improve and which machine may be the better fit for your game room. In this episode: • My impressions of Jersey Jack’s Sonic Pinball • Sonic’s zones, checkpoints, rings and Chaos Emerald Multiball • The upper playfield, Bash Dash and upcoming feature modes • My biggest praise and criticism of the current Sonic code • Stern’s Transformers Pinball after extended play • The shots, rules, multiballs and “One Shall Fall” mode • The Optimus Prime controversy and the mod I’d like to see • Transformers Pro vs. Premium vs. LE • Which game may be better for newer pinball players • My updated pinball lineup and new podcast studio • The incredible number of new pinball machines arriving in 2026 Sonic offers a fast, approachable fan layout with rules that are easy to understand but still provide depth. Transformers delivers a more unusual and challenging layout packed with G1 nostalgia, creative shots and some fantastic moments. They scratch completely different itches and that makes choosing between them extremely difficult. Which one would you bring home: Sonic or Transformers? Are you buying one of these machines, or are you saving your game-room space for another upcoming release? Drop a comment and let me know! ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ LOOKING FOR A NEW OR USED PINBALL MACHINE? Check out Flip N’ Out Pinball: https://www.flipnoutpinball.com/ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ LEAVE ME A VOICEMAIL Your message might be played on a future episode: https://www.speakpipe.com/RetroRalphVM ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WATCH THE FLIP SIDE PINBALL PODCAST https://www.youtube.com/@TheFlipsideRetroRalph LISTEN ON SPOTIFY https://open.spotify.com/show/62ZF6rZGos5tFI77MaznZY LISTEN ON APPLE PODCASTS https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-flipside-pinball-podcast/id1753621594 SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST https://rb.gy/uqi2an ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ RETRO RALPH MERCHANDISE https://bit.ly/2YS5ukX FOLLOW RETRO RALPH X/Twitter: https://bit.ly/39mdqzy Instagram: https://bit.ly/3fU1Dew For product reviews and other business inquiries: [email protected] #SonicPinball #TransformersPinball #Pinball