Sonic Is Finally Getting A Real Pinball Machine, And A Legend Designed It

• Lee Murray
• Jun 23, 2026
• 3 min read
• News

Sonic is 35 this year, and somehow, after all this time, he has never had a proper pinball machine. Not a real one, anyway. That changes now, and the debut is no cheap cash-in. Jersey Jack Pinball, working with SEGA, has fully revealed Sonic the Hedgehog Pinball, and they got a genuine legend to design it.

That legend is Steve Ritchie, 76 years old and nicknamed the "King of Flow", a man with more than 40 years in the trade and credits including Firepower, Black Knight and Terminator 2. He describes this one as "the fastest game I've ever made" and "a very chaotic pinball machine", and rates the interplay between its upper and lower playfields among his best work. When someone with that CV says a table is fast, you believe them.

Green Hill Zone in glass and steel

The playfield is a proper spectacle: a four-flipper layout with an upper deck, magnetised ramps that fling the ball along, a floating Dr Eggman target, a golden-ring shooter, and Sonic and Eggman figures that collide above the backglass. There is a 27-inch screen, a high-score "player camera", and Chaos Emeralds to collect, with a cast that runs from Sonic and Tails to Shadow, Amy, Big the Cat and Froggy. It is packed with over 6,000 lines of dialogue from the official voice cast, and the nine-song soundtrack is reported to feature Slash on guitar, which is a wonderfully daft flourish.

The collector's ache

Here is where I have to be honest with myself, because this is the bit that stings. It is a genuinely beautiful, properly made physical object, built by a master at the end of a long career. And it costs a fortune. The three editions are priced in dollars: the Arcade Edition at $9,999, the Special Edition at $12,000, and the Collector's Edition at $15,000. That is before it has even crossed the Atlantic.

There is no official UK price yet. Over here, Pinball Heaven is Jersey Jack's exclusive distributor, and by the time VAT and import land on top, it will be dearer still. Pre-orders are open now, with the Special Edition asking a $1,000 non-refundable deposit, and there is no firm ship date announced.

You can see it on the Jersey Jack announcement, and Pinball Heaven is the UK route.

So I will sit in the gap between wanting it badly and knowing the shed will never hold it. But give Steve Ritchie his due, because a table like this, made with this much love, is exactly the kind of thing that outlives the download. Sonic waited 35 years for it. It looks like it was worth the wait.

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