SpinBall

Not to be confused with the official Sega title Sonic Spinball.

Fast Facts on SpinBall
Version: 2.6.0 Last Release: February 26, 1998 Credits: Eric Carr

SpinBall is a DOS fan game created in QBasic. With no relation to Sonic Spinball the game has Sonic running through dungeons collecting coins. It was a 2D platformer just like the Genesis titles, and was ahead of it's time as a fangame. Some of it's files even date back as far as last modified on 25th April 1996.

Although this is a Sonic fangame, the creator made it his own (and avoided copyright issues) by renaming Sonic to "SpinBall" and Dr. Robotnik to "Dr. Spoz".

Controls

Action	Key
Move Left	Right Alt
Move Right	Right Ctrl
Jump	Left Shift / Right Shift
Help Screen	F1
Quit to Menu	Esc

Levels

There are 7 levels playable and a cutscene in the game. The game cuts out after the cutscene which is named level 8.

#	Level	WARP Code
1	Escape 1/3	---NONE---
2	Escape 2/3	---NONE---
3	Escape 3/3 (battle vs. steely)	HAGAR
4	Crystal Waters	SWORDFISH
5	Rescue 1/3	WIRE STRIP
6	Rescue 2/3	IN TROUBLE
7	Rescue 3/3	WHEW
8	The Rescue (Cutscene)	E1M1C1

Cheats

Type these in at any point:

Cheat	Code
Extra Life	ERICRULES
Get 90 coins	POOR
Win the current level	GETMEOUT
Temporary Zombie Mode (Invincibility)	ZOMBIE
Super Zombie Mode (Invincibility)	ERICISCOOL
Jump much, much higher	JUMPJUMPJUMPJUMPJUMPJUMPJUMPJUMPJUMPJUMP
SpinBall bleeds as he runs	BLEED
"No way! You are NOT god!" dialog	GOD
"This may of helped in DOOM, but NOT HERE!" dialog	IDDQD
"There MUST be another way to do this!" dialog	COIN

Source Code and Editing Rights

The source code is included in the zip file below. The creator Eric Carr has said "You may look at the source to see how I did anything, and use it for your liking as LONG as you give me credit and send me the program you make! If you have ANY ideas about a level, or would like the program to unPAK my level files to view them (in edit), please let me know. Also included are the .DAT level files. These are text files that can be EDITed and rePAKed to play in the game. Feel free to look at and edit these DAT files."

His email address can be found in the included README.

Level Editing

The level files are raw text files saved as .DATs. These files are full of symbols laid out in the same way as the level, making them relatively easy to edit in software such as Notepad (Windows) or gedit (Linux). Here are my observations from viewing the playable levels in Notepad:

Object	Symbol
Ground Type 1	G
Ground Type 2	B
Background (Wall)	°
Background (No Wall)	l or SPACE
Blank (with shadow)	E
Coin	O
Spikes (Harmful)	+
Falling Lava (Not Harmful)	H
Breakable Ground	X
Surface of Lava (Harmful)	T
Lower Lava (Not Harmful)	L
Door (End of Level)	=
Hanging ball on wall	b
Window	W

Compiling Custom Levels

Eric Carr also explained how you would use your own custom levels: "Say you edited LEVEL1.DAT. Go to dos and type CODEIT and press enter. Type in LEVEL1 and press enter again. Codeit will create a PAK file, which you should then copy it to main directory. Then run spinball and go to level 1, voila!"