Super Sushi Pinball (found build of cancelled US localization of Famicom pinball game; 1989)

Title screen

Status: Found

Date found: 25 Dec 2023

Found by: Video Game History Foundation

Super Sushi Pinball is a NES pinball game developed by Soft Machine and planned to be published by CSG Imagesoft Inc. It is also the US localization of Super Pinball released in Japan by Coconuts Japan.

Overview

The game was one of the first CSG Imagesoft's NES games to be announced, along with Super Dodge Ball and Super Rescue, and was unveiled at Winter CES 1989 in Las Vegas. It passed a lot check by Nintendo in May of the same year and was shown again at Summer CES, but from then on it was only announced in magazine ads until 1990, when it was finally never released. Also, as the title suggests, this game is a sushi-themed pinball game, but the original game released in Japan was based on a mahjong theme.

Availability

In 2021, Frank Cifaldi of the Video Game History Foundation was invited to the home of Edward J. Semrad, former editor-in-chief of Electronic Gaming Monthly, he found a huge collection of game prototypes in his basement. And among them was Super Sushi Pinball. Semrad allowed to digitize the game and it was released at the Hidden Palace on Christmas Day 2023.^[1]

Region Deferrence

The localized version of the game featured some odd additions related to sushi. The opening cut showed the Statue of Liberty making sushi, followed by a text crawl explaining the history of sushi and Japanese sushi terminology. The ending featured an inserted explanation of how to use chopsticks.