Original Release: EA, 1992, Genesis
An odd license leads to a surprisingly decent pinball game.
Crue Ball (Genesis, EA, 1992)
Where to Buy: eBay
How to Emulate: coming soon!
Crue Ball is the only game sponsored by Motley Crue that I am aware of, and certainly the only pinball game. ’80s bands are getting to be a little too old to keep track of for today’s generation of gamers so, as a brief recap, this is the hair band that sang Dr. Feelgood and is best know for drummer Tommy Lee’s videotaped sexcapades with Pamela Anderson/Lee/Whatever back when she was super-hot Baywatch babe and didn’t have the rode-hard-and-put-away-wet “speed freak” look she sports today.
Where was I?
Oh yeah, Crue Ball. Amazingly, this isn’t just some crud slapped together because the Crue needed coke and booze money, but actually a rather decent pinball sim with digitized renditions of Crue hits Dr. Feelgood, Home Sweet Home and Live Wire. There’s even some ongoing story where you follow the trials and travails of some mullethead as he annoys all his neighbors blasting Crue at 1 A.M. and then has to go on some epic journey for nachos or something.
Tables are multi-layered, there are a variety of ’em and there even seems to be some randomized elements that change between plays. Most tables have a “boss”, which is usually just a head that kinda floats around on the very top layer of the board, and the goal is to crank X amount of hits into him to end the table and move on to the next (and also get the next cut scene of your mullethead avatar living out his great Hessian adventure.)
I thought the game overall was surprisingly decent, the pinball physics seemed pretty solid, and the table designs and aesthetics were Awwright. The only thing I took issue with was that it seemed a little too easy to bump into stuff that sends the ball on a hard plunge right down the middle into oblivion. I’d need a pinball expert to really evaluate the relative merits of the Crue tables here to give you the best opinion, but for me, I find the layouts a little too frustrating to come back to. If you like metal and pinball you might dig it, though.
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