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Alex plays (almost) every Sonic the Hedgehog game - #7: Sonic Spinball (SEGA Mega Drive, Master System & Game Gear, 1993)


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I suppose it’d be best to start with introductions, as it seems to me that the Venn diagram of active members of the SF boards and active members of the SF Discord server is almost two separate circles. I’m AlexArtsHere, frequenter and moderator of said Discord server. I’m also something of an artist, so maybe you’ll have seen my work in other circles, maybe you haven’t. That’s not what we’re here for though. No, we’re here today because I have something to prove.

Some time ago (a year minus 19 days, in fact), alleged Ohian, Ike “Integrity” Forest, began a quest of 100%ing the achievements of every game in his Steam library. At some point (the very next month), he dipped his toes into the world of Sonic, starting with Sonic Generations, a game which will prove to be Ike’s undoing when he’s cursed to eternal damnation for his wrong opinions regarding it. Again, though, that’s not what we’re here for.

After Generations, Ike played Sonic Lost World, one of the more critically maligned games as far as the Sonic community is concerned. For what it’s worth, Ike had a good time with it, and I’m happy that he did, but it caused a realisation to dawn on me: I’ve never finished Sonic Lost World. Hell, I barely qualify for having played it at all, given that the totality of my experience with the game is contained within the demos for the Wii U and 3DS versions of the game, played back in 2015/16. Frankly, this cannot stand. My identity is staked on being a Sonic fan. Without it, what am I? British, that’s what. And frankly, to only be able to call oneself British is a fate I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemies. So, here’s what I’m going to do about it: Not only am I going to play all the Sonic games available on Steam, not only am I going to play more Sonic games than Ike to once again become secure in my status as Serenes’ premier Sonic weirdo, I’m going to play every Sonic game that I can, and perhaps then some.

I imagine I’ll be taking these roughly in release order, but I’m also fickle and inconsistent, so who knows? Hell, maybe this whole thing will just die on the vine after this inaugural instalment. I’ve never been great with commitment. At any rate, it’s also worth noting that, while I’ll do my level best to touch on every Sonic release worth talking about, there are some that I just don’t have a good way to access right now. The HD version of Sonic Unleashed is probably the best example of this, given that it was released on PS3 and Xbox 360, I don’t have an Xbox SeX for backwards compatibility, emulation for the original consoles is (as far as I’m aware) not in the same kind of place as emulation for consoles of prior generations is, and there is currently no Project 06 style remake in the works by dedicated fans. Alas, problems for later.

Today, we start with something simple and entirely expected.

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The original Sonic the Hedgehog is a game I’m comfortably familiar with, as is most any Sonic fan worth their salt. I imagine it’s few people’s most replayed entry, given the rapid innovations the sequels brought, but it’s familiar and comforting and easy to digest, like warm tomato soup. The downside to this is that there’s probably not much interesting for me to say about it. The game is so familiar to me that talking about it makes me feel like I’m just being a bit boring, as opposed to how things might be for someone playing it for the first time. Nevertheless, we move.

The big thing about the first Sonic game is that, back in 1991 when it first released, there was absolutely nothing like it. Generally, I struggle to appreciate games that revolutionised the landscape during their heyday but struggle to hold up today, but Sonic really was just something else, and even now there aren’t really any other games that have found huge success in doing what the original Sonic games did, unlike other spiritual successors or send-ups to retro classics such as Shovel Knight. No, Sonic has pretty much been one of a kind for 32 years and counting. And the debut game really does hold up in my eyes. Between 1991 and 1994, very little changed about Sonic’s core movement, and this still holds true for Classic Sonic games released in the past few years (well right now it’s just Mania, but Superstars is just around the corner and, by all appearances, that game too seems to be very faithful to the original trilogy. Compare and contrast with characters like Super Mario and Crash Bandicoot, whose character controllers didn’t quite come out fully formed.

That’s not to say that Sonic didn’t change and build upon what he started out with in following entries – Sonic 1 is perhaps a little infamous for lacking the now iconic Spindash – but, the changes to the way the character actually handles are pretty obscure and technical to the casual player. To wit, the biggest changes to Sonic’s control are the successive increases to his ground and air speed caps after the first game and the sometimes removal of the roll jump lock (to explain briefly, this is a quirk of the original games where, if the player jumps while Sonic is rolling along the ground, Sonic isn’t able to manoeuvre in midair, committing him to whatever his current trajectory is – it’s pretty much universally scorned by those who know about it and the best received rereleases of the game disable it to allow for better control). Roll jump lock aside, you don’t generally notice such changes during gameplay, unlike the lack of a P Speed system in the first few Marios, or the very stiff and committal jump arc of the original Crash Bandicoot. For the most part, Sonic the Hedgehog pretty much just worked right from the beginning.

However, this isn’t something I can quite extend to the level design of Sonic 1. When people think of Sonic 1, the vast majority of those thoughts are likely to be of Green Hill Zone. Of course, this is understandable – the most iconic locale of any action game is more or less guaranteed to be its first. But beyond this, Green Hill is also one of only two Zones in the first game that are truly representative of what the Sonic series would actually become. Playing through the game as I write, I’ve just breezed through the first two acts of Green Hill Zone with clear times in the low to mid 40 seconds, with Act 3 taking me over the minute threshold due to that act’s boss. For reference, the world record for GHZ Act 1 is 00:17.98, so I’m hardly achieving peak performance, but my point is that I can blast through these first levels pretty quickly without much thought or even an attempt at optimisation, compared to a newbie who’ll likely clock in somewhere in the range of one and a half to two minutes for just the first level (a slightly more efforted attempt places me at just under 28 seconds by 
the way).

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After this jaunt, however, the game’s level design changes drastically for the next three zones. To wit, at a similar level of execution to my casual playthrough of GHZ Act 1, Marble Zone Act 1 was finished at 01:44 (granted I took a few sloppy hits but even without those I’d probably have clocked in around 01:30). Zones 2-4, as well as Zone 6, almost completely forego the gentle slopes, loops and quarter pipes of Green Hill in favour of much blockier, labyrinthine levels that one would expect to find it more traditional platformers (hell, the fourth zone is straight up called Labyrinth Zone and, spoilers, it's the worst one in the game). Don’t get me wrong, these levels aren’t particularly bad in a vacuum (except Labyrinth Zone, fuck you), but they’re pretty antithetical to what we now know Sonic to be: stop-start affairs that place more focus on the player’s ability to time their jumps and precisely manoeuvre around hazards as opposed to their knowledge of the level design, ability to quickly react to that level design and their intuition for when to roll and when to run. Still, I can forgive Sonic Team for this in their first outing – as I said earlier, this style of platforming had never been done before so it's completely understandable that not every level fits like a glove and instead tries to execute something more familiar to the landscape of the time (I won’t forgive the cheap hits I took through Spring Yard Zone onwards, however). At any rate, the level design picks up again for a brief reprieve in Zone 5, Star Light Zone, with the return of those pleasing slopes and loops and quarter pipes that turn Sonic into a human (hedgehog?) catapult when he rolls up them with enough speed.

One thing that Sonic 1’s level design never loses sight of, however, is a sense of exploration. This, like every foundational aspect of Sonic’s game design, would become expanded upon and deepened in the series over time (a bit schizophrenically so in the case of exploration, but we’ll put a pin in that for another time), but it’s absolutely on display in Sonic Team’s maiden voyage. Of course, we have the mulitple paths that have become one of the series’ defining elements. These, combined with the time attack nature inherent to gameplay such as this, are what make these games so damn replayable. If you’ve even a little familiarity with Sonic, you know how this song and dances goes – in most scenarios, the uppermost path is the quickest and least hazardous, but requires the most skill to reach and stay on, demanding twitch reflexes and a fairly intimate knowledge of the level design in order to maintain the speed needed to benefit from it, as it has little surface area and involves precise bandik bounces that must look like leaps of faith to the unitiated. Conversely, the lowermost path is the slowest, filled with spikes and badniks that the player must navigate around if they want to hold onto their rings. Meanwhile, everything in between has varying shades of difficulty and speed to the point that, even if you’re not playing for the best time, you can still have fun charting your own route through each zone, with no two casual playthroughs being quite the same, so long as you’re willing to not just do the same thing you did the last time you played. It’s a brilliant system that makes levels endlessly dissectable in analysis and functions very organically in practice, effectively boiling down to a player’s speed hinging on how well they can defy gravity.

Exploration doesn’t just lead to new routes, but also bonuses. In Zones 2 through 4 in particular, a little exploration can lead to coves and cubby holes and hidden walls that hold rings, shields and 1-ups, giving the player a helping hand on their journey. It’s this feature of level design in particular that would be expanded upon and refined in pretty much every Sonic game after this, perhaps most notably in Sonic 3 & Knuckles and Sonic Mania as entrances to those games’ special stages. However, Sonic 1 does special stages rather differently.

For those unaware, special stages are where the series staple Chaos Emeralds can be found. In Sonic 1, the Emeralds are pretty much plot coupons to give flavour to the conflict (Doctor Ivo “Eggman” Robotnik has set up shop on South Island to search for the Chaos Emeralds so that he may use them to power his mechanical machinations, and it’s for this purpose that he’s taken to trapping the island’s resident critters into badniks, creating an emerald hunting workforce that’s completely obedient, requires no sleep or sustenance and, most importantly, doesn’t have any labour rights – it’s everything Elon Musk wishes he had) and, when all are collected, unlock a slightly different ending with more flowers.

In Sonic 1, the special stages…kind of blow chunks, and so will you if you’re less fortunate than myself. Accessed by making it to the end of any stage (except Act 3s and any stage in Scrap Brain Zone) with 50 rings and jumping in the large warp ring that appears at the goal post, these stages drop a permanently curled-up Sonic into a rotating maze that must be navigated by jumping in order to find the Chaos Emerald at the end, encased in diamonds that must be cleared before the Emerald can be accessed. These mazes are obstacle courses of not only bumpers and falsely mislabelled “GOAL” orbs that boot you out of the stage on contact, but also “R” orbs which reverse the stages rotation and “UP” and “DOWN” orbs that speed up or slow down that rotation. Oh, and while all this is happening, the background morphs every 20 seconds between birds flying rightwards through the sky and fish swimming leftwards in the ocean. Are you beginning to see why these stages are pretty rough?

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Even without the visual puke, the stages themselves are just kind of jank. They’re tricky, but less due to any skill requirement and more because it’s a bit of a crapshoot getting Sonic to go where you want him to, and you’ll often end up hitting a button you didn’t want to or flinging yourself into the failorbs. And, because everything looks the same and is constantly rotating, it’s pretty easy to lose your bearings in these stages, even for a veteran like me. Still, that the only reward for getting them is cosmetic means you can safely skip these without fear of missing anything meaningful.

I’ve not got a clever segue here so let’s talk about bosses. This will bear out more over time as I review more and more of these games, but Sonic’s relationship with bosses is…delicate. For many fans, the platonic ideal of a boss is that it’s always vulnerable and how quickly it’s defeated is entirely dependent on how deftly the player can manoeuvre between hazards to get those hits in. However, the rings system of the Sonic series means that, in a lot of cases, the player can cheese through damage by just recollecting the same ring every time they’re hit and put down the boss before it even has time to do much of anything. Not particularly climactic. The other end of this spectrum consists of bosses that, either through invincibility frames or keeping out of Sonic’s reach, forces you to wait out its attacks until a weak point is revealed. Not particularly fun.

With all of that said, the bosses in Sonic 1 are a decent enough bunch, with examples of both of these things. Green Hill’s boss, that iconic ball and chain swinging from the Egg Mobile, would actually be pretty threatening for newcomers…if the devs hadn’t tucked an invincibility monitor in a tree right before the boss. As such, you can tear through it like paper, with the only issue being that you have to keep up with it moving to each end of the arena. Meanwhile, the Spring Yard boss, an Egg Mobile with a spike on the bottom that only opens itself up to damage when dropping down to destroy your footing, is a bit of a pacebreaker. However, there are a couple of bosses that hit the sweetspot, those being the Marble and Star Light Zone bosses, which give you a lot of opportunity to hit them without being punching bags. The remaining two bosses, however, can go to hell. Labyrinth has you chasing an unarmed Eggman up a flooding shaft that’s fileld with traps and is more of an endurance against more of that Zone’s cheap level design than a real boss, while the final boss of Scrap Brain stiffs you with zero rings to act as a safety net and pretty much turns it into a coin flip as to whether you’ll even get the opportunity to damage the boss, as you’re forced to commit to one side of the arena or another as Eggman tries to crush you in one of four tubes. So a bit hit and miss, but none of Sonic 1’s bosses are going to be making lists of the best or worst of all time.

With all the gameplay elements out of the way, allow me to spend a paragraph or two gushing about Sonic 1’s presentation values, because it’s a solid looking game that has definitely withstood the test of time. The character designs, crafted by “Sonic’s dad”, Naoto Ohshima, are a wonderful blend of cool, cute and a little goofy, with Sonic and Eggman being instant classics, while the environments also pop and are all wonderfully distinct, refusing to settle for stock video game locations such as grasslands, volcanoes and ice worlds. Green Hill is a lush lakeside paradise, Labyrinth is an ancient waterlogged temple and Scrap Brain is a moody, dystopic industrial complex, belching smoke and soot into a bleak, brown sky. Of particular note is Green Hill’s palm trees, with their leaves looking almost pre-rendered, being a wonderful epitome of Sonic 1’s vibrant, geometric surrealist look that’s oh-so 90s.

All of this is, of course, enhanced by Masato Nakamura’s unforgettable soundtrack. Nakamura’s approach to scoring Sonic was the same as how he’d approach a movie soundtrack – compose music while watching the action unfold in front of him, and this clearly worked as every track fits the scenario in which it plays perfectly, each of them being instantly hummable. Sound effect design complements the music well too, with all the boops and pops and wooshes of Sonic’s movement and the breaking of badniks ringing out clearly alongside the game’s music without being disruptive.

So that’s Sonic the Hedgehog for the SEGA Mega Drive. It might not be the best entry in the series, and it’s admittedly very basic and lacking in features that would come to be taken as standard in the sequels, but it holds up regardless and is absolutely worth playing for anyone who wants to get into the franchise. Even going for a 100% run, it can be beaten in an afternoon (hell, I’ve managed to beat it and write a 3000+ word review on it, all within the span of roughly six hours), so you’ve really got nothing to lose if you just want to try it to see if you can get into the series.

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Addendum: Forever and a Day

Spoiler

Now, those familiar with the official rereleases of Sonic 1 may ask themselves “Which version is this?”, and they may ask themselves “Where is that medals counter?”, and they may tell themselves “This is not Sonic 1 on Mega Drive!”, and they may tell themselves “This is not the Sonic Origins collection!”.

And they’d be right, this is not Sonic Origins. Unfortunately, Sonic Origins is a pretty pisspoor package that was one hell of a monkey’s paw in terms of how it brought the 2010s “TaxStealth” mobile remakes (so-called due to their lead developers being longtime stars of the Sonic fangame/hacking community, Christian “Taxman” Whitehead and Simon “Stealth” Thomley) to PC and consoles, something fans had been asking SEGA to do for years. Billed at the MSRP of a new release, the collection bundled together those remakes of Sonic 1, Sonic 2 and Sonic CD together with a newly commissioned remake of Sonic 3 & Knuckles headed up by Stealth and his since founded Headcannon team.

To cut a long story short, Origins turned out a bit of a mess. SEGA handled the job of porting Sonic 1, 2 and CD themselves, breaking a bunch of things in the process and bloating the whole package by putting it into a wrapper within their propietary Hedgehog Engine 2, just for the sake of some fancy 3D menus. This even had an impact on the S3&K remake and, despite Headcannon’s requests to SEGA that they be allowed to make fixes to all the games in the collection, Origins was rushed to market. Insult was added to injury by audacious digital deluxe and preorder practices, not to mention disappointed expectations bordering on false advertising, as Sonic CD wasn’t updated to include Knuckles as a playable character to bring that game in line with the other remakes, despite Origins’ trailers advertising “new playable characters”.

So yeah, what should’ve been the easiest slam dunk in the history of Sonic games was botched through a combination of greed and incompetence and, with Origins’ “Plus” expansion being further mishandled and the game seemingly having ended post-launch support, I can unfortunately never recommend this as the definitive way to play the original trilogy of Sonic games and Sonic CD (and of course SEGA had to go and screw everyone over by delisting the existing ROM versions of Sonic 1, 2 and 3&K as well as the standalone remaster of Sonic CD from digital storefronts).

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Which brings us to how I’ve chosen to play Sonic 1 for this review. Sonic Forever is a fan project that exists thanks to work made in decompiling the original mobile remake of the game. It features all the content of that same remake, with more besides. First of all, look at that menu – it’s a real looker, no? All the new content in this release is authentic in both its technicals and presentation, fully displaying the passion and eye for detail to be expected of the very best fan projects.

But what new content is here? Aside from the additions of the TaxStealth remake (smooth sprite rotation, save files, Knuckles, a seventh Chaos Emerald and dick-kickingly hard special stage to go with it, etc.), there’s a new character, several new modes and a bevvy of options to customise your experience down to even the most minute details.

First of all, let’s talk about the additional character – Amy Rose Hedgehog. Sorry to say it, but I’m not a fan of how she plays here. To give a bit of context, Amy has always suffered a bit in that she’s never really been able to find a solid playstyle without dividing players. In her playable 2D debut, Sonic Advance, Amy couldn’t curl up into a ball or properly spindash, instead relying on her hammer to do damage and protect herself, but this had to be activated manually and can really screw with traditional Sonic muscle memory. In Advance 2, she was changed into being more or less a carbon copy of Sonic, which is how she’s handled in Origins and the upcoming Superstars, albeit with the addition of a double jump and the ability to throw hammers in her super form.

Sonic Forever attempts to please both crowds with two options for Amy’s abilities. The first, “Forever”, is pretty much just Knuckles with some tweaked parameters, retaining the regular jump height (Knuckles historically jumps lower than his buddies in these games) at the cost of a worse glide that doesn’t seem to pick up speed the longer it goes on the way Knuckles’ does. It’s perfectly serviceable, but ultimately boring and disappointing to me. The second option, “Advancesque”, is an approximation of her debut playstyle, in that Amy’s unable to jump or spindash, and her hammer must be activated manually, with her jump action now being a dash forward while swinging her hammer instead of a fully-fledged glide. Unfortunately, this playstyle doesn’t really get what made playing Amy worthwhile in Advance. In that game, Amy’s hammer was mapped to a separate button and could also be pulled out on the ground to attack while moving forwards. Here, if Amy wants to do some damage or needs some protection, she’s forced to jump. Furthermore, this playstyle doesn’t carry over Amy’s biggest strength from her Advance iteration, that being the ability to time her hammer strikes in such a manner that she could get immense air time from badnik bounces and springs, allowing her to vault massive distances. All of this is to say that, no matter which camp you’re in when it comes to Amy’s mechanics, you’re probably going to be disappointed. Regardless, I commend the devs for going to such effort to include another character for this release.

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The additional game modes, I’m much keener on. Of course, the expected staples of time trials and boss rush are here, but there’s also arcade mode, which gives the player a single life and tasks them with finishing their playthrough with as many points as possible, whether that means finishing the game or dying on the way there. It’s a simple yet entertaining idea that you don’t really see in many Sonic games, certainly not in this format. If you’re feeling particularly masochistic, you can take on the Emerald Gauntlet, a boss rush for special stages, or, if sadism is your persuasion, you can make your own special stages instead. Regrettably, this tool is pretty limited, since it seems as though you can only save a single stage, with no options to share it with others. The final additional mode is Golf Forever, which tasks players with clearing nine holes placed across the first three acts of Green Hill Zone, stitched together into one map. Each character has different distributions of their power, control and accuracy stats. It’s exactly as bonkers as it sounds and, while the content is limited, I can see it being an appealing score attack mode for those into golf games (my own run had me finish in 50 shots, which I imagine isn’t particularly impressive).

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Rounding out the game’s new features are 14 achievements (get on it, Ike!), a “Ring Chain” tracker that keeps a tally of how many rings you’ve currently racked up through all modes without taking damage, and various options, allowing for customisation of the amount of Chaos Emeralds available to collect (six or seven), what abilities and animations each character has, toggles for the speed caps and roll jump lock and even choices for entirely inconsequential minutiae such as what format the timer displays in (I’m personally partial to 0’00”00) and whether or not Tails’ nickname is swapped out for his actual first name of Miles, as it is in the Japanese versions of the Mega Drive games.

Honestly, Sonic Forever is the definitive edition of Sonic 1 that Origins wishes it had, going above and beyond in terms of content and tying it all together with some beautiful original presentation. It’s free to download and easy to install, simply requiring you to drag and drop the mobile remaster’s APK file (easy to find in places I can’t mention but also thankfully still accessible on the Google Play Store) onto a setup.bat file. If you’re ever going to play a version of the original Sonic the Hedgehog, make it this one. Grab it here if I’ve sold you on it.

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Next instalment: Sonic the Hedgehog (SEGA Master System and Game Gear, 1991)

Edited by AlexArtsHere
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  • AlexArtsHere changed the title to Alex plays (almost) every Sonic the Hedgehog game - #1: Sonic the Hedgehog (SEGA Mega Drive, 1991)
7 minutes ago, AlexArtsHere said:

The character designs, crafted by “Sonic’s dad”, Naoto Ohshima,

common misconception! sonic's dad is actually thomas wachowski, as famously portrayed by generationally seminal actor jamie marsden in the documentary-film of mr. hedgehog's life

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"Sonic Generations is like warm tomato soup" isn't the simile I was expecting to read today but it's somehow also completely correct, I love it lmao.

Quote

And the debut game really does hold up in my eyes. Between 1991 and 1994, very little changed about Sonic’s core movement, and this still holds true for Classic Sonic games released in the past few years (well right now it’s just Mania, but Superstars is just around the corner and, by all appearances, that game too seems to be very faithful to the original trilogy.

Do you consider the classic segment of Sonic Generations to be one of those "Classic Sonic games", even if it's only half the game? I can't think of much difference between how it handles and how Sonic in Sonic 2 handles, but it's been a while since I've played either of them.

 

You raise a good point bringing up the level design and how it drastically changes after Green Hill Zone. I'm not actually sure I agree. When I was much younger (I think there's even an old post on SF about it) I really really hated Marble Zone and wasn't too fond of Sonic 1 - I think what I didn't realize at the time was that Sonic 1 is very much a pure platforming game, where 2/3K/Mania are more "speed platformers" (I'm making up new terms on the fly here), you can take your time if you want but there are encouraged ways to go quickly. I think Green Hill Zone being able to be cleared quickly and speedily is more a function of "it's easy and it's the first level" than "it was designed that way". When I played Sonic 1 with enhancements to the game that add spin dash, it just kind of doesn't fit in at all. Looking at Sonic 1 as a platformer closer to the Mario series rather than something like... every other Sonic game makes me like the level design a lot more, including Labyrinth Zone. And it's not like the Sonic series had foresight before Sonic 1 to know what the rest of the series would be like at the time.

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6 hours ago, Darros said:

"Sonic Generations is like warm tomato soup" isn't the simile I was expecting to read today but it's somehow also completely correct, I love it lmao.

Do you consider the classic segment of Sonic Generations to be one of those "Classic Sonic games", even if it's only half the game? I can't think of much difference between how it handles and how Sonic in Sonic 2 handles, but it's been a while since I've played either of them.

 

You raise a good point bringing up the level design and how it drastically changes after Green Hill Zone. I'm not actually sure I agree. When I was much younger (I think there's even an old post on SF about it) I really really hated Marble Zone and wasn't too fond of Sonic 1 - I think what I didn't realize at the time was that Sonic 1 is very much a pure platforming game, where 2/3K/Mania are more "speed platformers" (I'm making up new terms on the fly here), you can take your time if you want but there are encouraged ways to go quickly. I think Green Hill Zone being able to be cleared quickly and speedily is more a function of "it's easy and it's the first level" than "it was designed that way". When I played Sonic 1 with enhancements to the game that add spin dash, it just kind of doesn't fit in at all. Looking at Sonic 1 as a platformer closer to the Mario series rather than something like... every other Sonic game makes me like the level design a lot more, including Labyrinth Zone. And it's not like the Sonic series had foresight before Sonic 1 to know what the rest of the series would be like at the time.

I was saying Sonic 1 is soup, but Generations is cosy too. I don't count Classic Sonic in Generations as a classic game on its own because there are actually a lot of differences between that and the Mega Drive games and Generations is more of a (laudable) approximation of the idea of that gameplay, but if you like to then that's your prorogative.

With regards to the difference in level design after GHZ, I think it's best seen when you look at the levels through the lens of how they let Sonic build momentum. Green Hill and Star Light have lots of hills and loops that Sonic can roll through to reach some high speeds and get massive air time when he launches off of ramps. Marble Zone has a few slopes in its outdoor sections, but no loops and generally doesn't let Sonic reach that same speed, especially once things go in doors and everything is much more jump-centric. Spring Yard has a little bit more of an opportunity for speed with its half pipes, but also asks the play to do a lot of jumping. Finally, Scrap Brain but especially Labyrinth Zone both have next to know ability to build momentum. Scrap Brain has a few scant set pieces that let you build up speed, but the terrain of Labyrinth is composed almost entirely of squares and just isn't conducive to building momentum.

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16 hours ago, Darros said:

"Sonic Generations is like warm tomato soup" isn't the simile I was expecting to read today but it's somehow also completely correct, I love it lmao.

Do you consider the classic segment of Sonic Generations to be one of those "Classic Sonic games", even if it's only half the game? I can't think of much difference between how it handles and how Sonic in Sonic 2 handles, but it's been a while since I've played either of them.

 

You raise a good point bringing up the level design and how it drastically changes after Green Hill Zone. I'm not actually sure I agree. When I was much younger (I think there's even an old post on SF about it) I really really hated Marble Zone and wasn't too fond of Sonic 1 - I think what I didn't realize at the time was that Sonic 1 is very much a pure platforming game, where 2/3K/Mania are more "speed platformers" (I'm making up new terms on the fly here), you can take your time if you want but there are encouraged ways to go quickly. I think Green Hill Zone being able to be cleared quickly and speedily is more a function of "it's easy and it's the first level" than "it was designed that way". When I played Sonic 1 with enhancements to the game that add spin dash, it just kind of doesn't fit in at all. Looking at Sonic 1 as a platformer closer to the Mario series rather than something like... every other Sonic game makes me like the level design a lot more, including Labyrinth Zone. And it's not like the Sonic series had foresight before Sonic 1 to know what the rest of the series would be like at the time.

Hmmmm, You managed to pinpoint exactly why I prefer Sonic 2/3K/Mania over Sonic 1, I think I had never realized exactly why but now that it was mentioned... It really was a lot less of a "speed plataformer" than the rest of the 2D sonic games (like the ones already mentioned and Sonic Advance and Sonic CD). There was one of the Master System/Game Gear games that was like Sonic 1 too (I don't remember if it was Sonic 1 or 2 for Master System/Game Gear, or if it was Sonic Chaos, or even if it were 2 of these or all of them... I mix these 3 games up A LOT because I played them on the mini games section of Sonic Adventure and unconveniently ignored the titles), there were a lot of parts where you had to stop or lost momentum and the Chaos Esmeralds were actually hidden INSIDE of the levels which made you have to backtrack and enter a bunch of passages to search for them, which is something that would never happen on the more "speedy" sonic games (which the exception of some the giant rings that take you to the special zones in Sonic 3K and Mania, but you should be able to find enough of them in Sonic 3K to get all of the esmeralds even without backtracking (and of course, most secret passages make you go forward anyway so you're usually not backtracking or losing time when you go after them), and in Mania it's also the same case plus they only work to give you extra content anyway so it's even less necessary to chase after the giant rings). While I don't think Sonic 1 is a bad game, I do sorta dislike playing it (specially by the time you reach Labyrinth Zone)

 I mean, compare the "boss chase" (I'm making up the term on the fly too) in Labyrinth zone vs the ones in future games (like the one in Mushroom Hill Zone act 2, the one in after defeating the Death Egg Robot where you chase Eggman while he carries the master emerald, the battle against metal Sonic, the one in Studiopolis Zone act 2, the bosses in Sonic Advance,...) and see how on Sonic 1 the point of having a boss run was to make it harder or frustrating for you (making the fact that you had to run be an inconvenience, it made the battle have a "timer" feeling that was hard to follow) vs how on the later games they implemented the speed on the boss battle instead of using it as a way to make it harder (even on the ones where a lack of speed can kill you, too like the Death Egg Zone and the battle against Metal Sonic, still make it feel less... of a slog or obstacle, there's less of a "timer" feeling). It surely proves that the later games were more focused on implementing speed on the levels instead of making the game be just a plataform where your character is fast.  

 Sorry if I ranted too much, I just started to think how your point made sense and went on writing about why as I thought.

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14 hours ago, AlexArtsHere said:

I was saying Sonic 1 is soup, but Generations is cosy too.

Whoops, I knew I was going to talk about Sonic Generations so I put Generations in when I meant 1. Now my mistake is immortalized on the internet forever! 😧

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With regards to the difference in level design after GHZ, I think it's best seen when you look at the levels through the lens of how they let Sonic build momentum. Green Hill and Star Light have lots of hills and loops that Sonic can roll through to reach some high speeds and get massive air time when he launches off of ramps. Marble Zone has a few slopes in its outdoor sections, but no loops and generally doesn't let Sonic reach that same speed, especially once things go in doors and everything is much more jump-centric. Spring Yard has a little bit more of an opportunity for speed with its half pipes, but also asks the play to do a lot of jumping. Finally, Scrap Brain but especially Labyrinth Zone both have next to know ability to build momentum. Scrap Brain has a few scant set pieces that let you build up speed, but the terrain of Labyrinth is composed almost entirely of squares and just isn't conducive to building momentum.

That's an interesting way of thinking about it. I see what you're saying but I still think Star Light Zone is notably slower than Green Hill Zone, in a stop-go type of way whenever you have you use the seesaws to build yourself higher. To be honest I think Star Light Zone is a bit misplaced in the order altogether but they probably didn't want to put Labyrinth Zone right before Scrap Brain Zone (especially when SBZ3 is basically LZ4..) - if they were even that cognizant of game design at the time anyway. It's not like much precedent existed in 1991. Momentum is interesting too especially when you think of Spring Yard Zone because some of those springs launch you pretty quickly when you touch them, giving you a pretty instant boost.

4 hours ago, ARMADS!!! said:

I mean, compare the "boss chase" (I'm making up the term on the fly too) in Labyrinth zone vs the ones in future games (like the one in Mushroom Hill Zone act 2, the one in after defeating the Death Egg Robot where you chase Eggman while he carries the master emerald, the battle against metal Sonic, the one in Studiopolis Zone act 2, the bosses in Sonic Advance,...) and see how on Sonic 1 the point of having a boss run was to make it harder or frustrating for you (making the fact that you had to run be an inconvenience, it made the battle have a "timer" feeling that was hard to follow) vs how on the later games they implemented the speed on the boss battle instead of using it as a way to make it harder (even on the ones where a lack of speed can kill you, too like the Death Egg Zone and the battle against Metal Sonic, still make it feel less... of a slog or obstacle, there's less of a "timer" feeling). It surely proves that the later games were more focused on implementing speed on the levels instead of making the game be just a plataform where your character is fast.  

Yeah I'm inclined to agree. It's also compounded by the fact that the Labyrinth Zone boss is. Hardly even a boss. Eggman just runs off. You can hit him a couple of times but nothing happens of it.

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13 minutes ago, Darros said:

Whoops, I knew I was going to talk about Sonic Generations so I put Generations in when I meant 1. Now my mistake is immortalized on the internet forever! 😧

i could edit both your and his posts and delete this one, thereby forever removing your mistake

 

makes u think

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22 hours ago, Integrity said:

i could edit both your and his posts and delete this one, thereby forever removing your mistake

 

makes u think

I'm the reason you ended up playing Sonic Forces. There are other bad Sonic games I could buy on Steam for you.

 

Makes you think. 🔪

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  • 2 weeks later...

Interesting read on Sonic 1! Looking forward to future installments.

I got memories of playing 1, 2, 3, & K on Wii Virtual Console. I used to get up early in the morning to play them before leaving with my father to practice driving (I got my license in 2009; man, has the time flown). After playing those games, I finally "got" Sonic. I'd played SA2B, SADX, Heroes, and Shadow before then, and way back when I tried Sonic 2 and Triple Trouble on Game Gear (and later would get to try Sonic Chaos through SADX), but it was when I tried the Genesis classics that it clicked for me.

I didn't know SF has a Discord; I might check it out sometime in the near future.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Previous instalment: Sonic the Hedgehog (SEGA Mega Drive, 1991)

Kept you waiting, huh? Honestly, I could’ve had this game done and written up even faster than the previous one (especially since I’m playing the no-frills original release rather than a gussied-up version of a remake’s decompilation) but, cards on the table, I was putting this one off. Yes, only the second game in this journey and I’m already having second thoughts. Don’t get me wrong, this is far from the worst game in the pantheon of fast hedgehog sims – we’re going to go some dark places on this trip, but…well, it’d probably be better for me to introduce and explain today’s game first.

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This time, we’re looking at Sonic the Hedgehog. No, not the one I played last time. This is Sonic the Hedgehog on the SEGA Master System, colloquially known as 8-bit Sonic 1. For the uninitiated, the SEGA Master System is to SEGA what the NES is to Nintendo – an 8-bit home console that was home to its publisher’s library through the 80s into the early 90s. It’s a bit more complex than that, what with various models of “SG-x000” models being produced in Japan, each with their own idiosyncrasies, but that’s outside the scope of these write-ups (though if you are interested in learning more, I’d recommend Jeremy Parish’s SEGAiden series on YouTube). The pitch here is that this version of Sonic 1 was developed to bring SEGA’s killer new mascot to those who hadn’t yet jumped on the Mega Drive hype train. This version of the game hits a lot of the same beats as its 16-bit counterpart, but makes substitutions where needed and even brings its own flavour just for kicks. In effect, it’s Sonic 1 At Home.

Regrettably, such a remark applies to 8-bit Sonic 1 much more deeply than at surface level. Concessions in graphics and sound are of course to be expected, but this game doesn’t feel like Sonic 1 on Mega Drive, either. This isn’t particularly surprising. Sonic was originally conceived as SEGA’s mascot to compete with Mario in a way that his predecessor Alex Kidd was never able to, and his debut game was not only a showcase of the Mega Drive’s capabilities (read: Blast Processing), but a statement of intent by SEGA to provide 90s gamers with the kind of experiences that weren’t possible with the competition. The Master System just isn’t up to this task, being unable to compute the complex physics that make 16-bit Sonic tick.

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Ultimately, this is why I was procrastinating on playing this one. Despite its best efforts, 8-bit Sonic 1 plays as a fairly pedestrian, albeit pokey, platformer. Sonic moves at a decent clip (unless you're in water, where he controls like lead molasses), but the ability to exploit nuances in terrain for the sake of building and maintaining speed is pretty much limited to pressing down on the d-pad to roll down gratuitously large slopes for big air, which is impressive for an 8-bit console when it happens, but offers little in the way of gameplay engagement.

8-bit Sonic 1 also feels very conventional in the broader sense of its level designs. Last time, I spoke about the inconsistency in 16-bit Sonic 1’s level design philosophy, with some zones making better use of Sonic’s speed and physics than others. On the Master System, those more speed-centric level designs are pretty much entirely eschewed in favour of, again, much more standard platformer fare, with emphasis placed on well-executed jumps across pits rather than for the sake of keeping Sonic moving. This version of Sonic 1 does at least encourage exploration in the form of the Chaos Emeralds. Rather than being in Special Stages, this time they’re placed throughout the levels, with one per Zone, just lying out in the open for the taking. The rub here is that you’ve no idea where they are until you come across them, both within levels and between them. They can be picked up in either Act 1 or Act 2 of a given Zone and are pretty inoffensive in the early game, simply requiring the player to explore each fork in the road, but later levels ask the player to make baffling leaps of faith down shafts in a game peppered with bottomless pits. That said, they’re only slightly more consequential than in the Mega Drive version, awarding 20 000 points each and removing the pollution from South Island during the game’s final score tally. I ended up grabbing only half of them, but I honestly see no reason to do a second playthrough just to rectify this.

On leaps of faith, these are something that become more prevalent as the game progresses, with later levels requiring you make those leaps just to progress rather than for high-score MacGuffins. I don’t think it ever really gets endemic and, even as a first-time player, I was able to stockpile ten lives and four continues going into the boss of the third Zone, but it’s still not great game design. This harshness also seeps into the bosses, which are very easy to die in, at first from the lack of rings in the boss stages and later from the hostile level design, with Labyrinth’s boss being the point at which I began to get rather liberal with my use of savestates, having only used them as a traditional save in between Zones up to that point. Again, the game does try to mitigate this, providing a 1-Up monitor in every boss stage bar the last one and allowing you to carry shields between levels (something that I don’t think ever even became a feature in the mainline games), but it doesn’t make the bosses themselves any more fun to fight.

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One area that’s absolutely an improvement over the 16-bit game is the special stages. As mentioned, the Chaos Emeralds are now found in the levels themselves, so these stages instead allow to you rack up rings for extra lives, with each stage having a monitor granting a continue and later stages having 1-Up monitors too. Instead of queasy rotating mazes with morphing fish-birds, 8-bit Sonic 1 has something a bit more straightforward (quelle surprise!), but that better fits not only with the rest of this game, but with the philosophy of Sonic in general. Here, you have to navigate a corridor of springs and bumpers to get to the signpost at the end before time runs out. It can still get pretty hectic, with there being several different varieties of spring that catapult Sonic with varying amounts of force, but it’s a much better exploration of Sonic’s core movement than the 16-bit special stages and not nearly as frustrating, either.

And that about sums up the gameplay. Perfectly serviceable, with a more consistent difficulty curve than its big brother that starts higher but ends lower than that game, but ultimately just can’t hold a candle to the real thing. What about the presentation values, though? Well, they’re pretty good, considering. I expect the aim here was to translate the Mega Drive graphics to 8-bit as faithfully as possible, and I’d say they more or less achieved that. All the characters look recognisable to their 16-bit sprites and, while environments are of course much simpler, with none of that lovely parallax scrolling that Mega Drive Sonic so deftly takes advantage of, the game is still absolutely a looker in its own right, with my only complaint being that the use of sprite flickering makes capturing screenshots a pain in the ass, though I appreciate that this was done in service of producing a game that looks better in motion.

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In particular, the Zones original to this game are very well realised. While Sonic 1 on the Master System retains half of the Mega Drive’s locales (Green Hill, Labyrinth and Scrap Brain), the other half are swapped out for Bridge Zone, Jungle Zone and Sky Base Zone (though unused music suggests that Marble Zone was at least considered for appearing in this version of the game). Being created specifically for the Master System, these levels are able to shine better than those using aesthetics taken from a version of the game that runs on a system able to create far more detailed images. Of these three, I think Jungle Zone comes off the best, with sprites being layered on top of a solid green backdrop to effectively sell the effect of a dense canopy of foliage, while freeing up space and colours for finer details in the foreground and near background. Overall, a truly impressive number of colours are on display in this area of the game and it quite frankly blows anything I’ve seen on NES out of the water.

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The game’s soundtrack is a similar success story. Several of Masato Nakamura’s compositions are lovingly adapted here, with new tracks handled by Yuzo Koshiro fitting seamlessly alongside them. Of course, Bridge, Jungle and Sky Base have their own bespoke themes, but Labyrinth and Scrap Brain have also been given new tracks to better fit the pace and aesthetics of their Master System depictions. Honestly, it’s difficult for me to choose favourites between the two options for each of these Zones – Koshiro’s compositions really do compete with the more elaborate tracks of the Mega Drive version.

And that’s Sonic the Hedgehog for SEGA Master System! A quaint curiosity, albeit an evidently well-crafted one, I really can’t say you’re missing out on much by not playing this – listen to its soundtrack if you’re so inclined and you’ll basically have gotten the best this game can offer in far less time than if you were to actually sit down and play it. That said, it’s even shorter than the Mega Drive version and can probably be finished in 45 minutes or less at a casual pace, so it’s hard to lament the time I’ve lost to it. There is also a Game Gear version of this release, with graphics and level design adjusted to fit that system’s smaller screen but there’s nothing else to talk about with regards to that version, so yeah – it exists. This isn’t the last we’ll see of 8-bit Sonic, however. The little blue bastard actually enjoyed a relatively full career in this realm, despite being a mascot of the fourth generation of gaming. All that’s to come, though…

See you next game!

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Next instalment: Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (SEGA Mega Drive, 1992)

Edited by AlexArtsHere
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  • AlexArtsHere changed the title to Alex plays (almost) every Sonic the Hedgehog game - #2: Sonic the Hedgehog (SEGA Master System, 1991)

i had no idea there was even an 8-bit sonic game. fascinating writeup dude

 

e: 

9 minutes ago, AlexArtsHere said:

There is also a Game Gear version of this release,

WAIT I'VE PLAYED THAT the neighbor boy four to my left had a game gear and i got to play it one time and i'm remembering sonic on that fucking duke now

Edited by Integrity
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Oh, I'm going to show you many strange and wonderful things you had no idea existed over the course of these writeups. At least some of them will involve Sonic.

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Previous instalment: Sonic the Hedgehog (SEGA Master System and Game Gear, 1991)

As I begin to write this, it’s been… *checks previous post* five hours since I published my writeup on Sonic 1 for the Master System. There, I spoke about how I’d spent almost an entire month putting that game off because its inability to replicate the Mega Drive original’s physics, dooming that game to inadequacy for the crime of being released on an older system. Since that post, I’ve marinaded on 8-bit Sonic 1 a little more, been to the gym (never skip leg day, kids!), had my dinner and played the first two Zones of Sonic the Hedgehog 2.

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First released on Tuesday 21st November 1992 in a for-the-time ambitious simultaneous global release branded as “Sonic 2sday”, just shy of 17 months after the initial release of Sonic the Hedgehog on the Mega Drive, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is the product of a storied and fairly tumultuous development cycle, involving names such as Yuji Naka, Mark Cerny and Masato Nakamura, and is hailed by many as the best game in the Sonic franchise and one of the best video games ever created. Quite a weighty legacy, eh? To be frank, I’ve never had much reverence for the supposed great classics of the video game medium. That is to say, as I write out my thoughts on Sonic 2, I don’t owe this game anything and won’t say anything about it that I don’t mean.

The first thing that hits you when you boot up Sonic 2 is the phenomenal level of polish. Despite its commendable presentation values, Sonic 1 still had elements of visual design that felt archaic even on a first playthrough and wasn’t quite in perfect harmony with what would become the aesthetic of the Sonic brand. In Sonic 2, the iconic SEGA splash screen is followed by pitch black, with text pronouncing “SONIC THE HEDGEHOG AND MILES “TAILS” PROWER IN” before a few disparate sparkles flash here and there, culminating in Sonic rising into the iconic title emblem, initially with his back to the viewer before he turns around and slides coolly into place, throwing a thumbs up over his shoulder. Barely a moment behind is newcomer Tails, earnestly squeezing into view in the space left by Sonic, all while the background flashes white to reveal a panoramic view of the game’s Westside Island setting as the series’ theme blasts out, capped off by a whimsical twinkle as a subtle shooting star falls from the top right to the bottom left of the screen in the background. As somebody who wouldn’t be born until six years after this game first released, only picking up my first Sonic game around eight years after that, it’s an intro that, while I’ve always appreciated its cool factor, I can only now see just what an emphatic sequence it is as I turn a critical eye to it, fresh off the heels of two Sonic 1s.

And this sleekness permeates the rest of the game. The fairly dated font from the last game’s title cards, Century Expanded, is swapped out for the art-deco-esque, sans serif Gaslight, with the game’s HUD text having been slimmed down compared to its predecessor and italicised like even it is about to take off in a burst of speed. The Zones’ tri-colour, jagged-edged title cards are there just long enough to wow the player before individually sliding off-screen to reveal the gameplay hiding behind them. I realise I’m really front-loading this writeup with a laborious description of the tiniest fraction of the game’s visuals, but I think these opening moments are really emblematic of what Sonic 2 sets out to be. Not just “Sonic 1, but better”, nor settling to just be a dark horse hit like that game was, SEGA’s sequel is here to make Sonic into a true classic icon and a household name for gamers everywhere.

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But there’ll be time to talk about the graphics later. As with any good game, we’re tackling the gameplay first and worrying about the presentation after that. Technically speaking, Sonic 2 handles almost identically to Sonic 1. Save for increased speed caps, Sonic handles exactly the same, and the mechanics codified by the first game all return, save for the removal of a bug that caused Sonic to die instantly when landing on spikes after taking a hit, invincibility frames be damned. The most obvious additions to the engine in Sonic 2 are the spindash ability and Tails.

While a solidly designed game, Sonic 1 can sometimes run into an issue when Sonic’s trying to ascend a steep slope, but just doesn’t have the momentum to make it, resulting in him stalling in place and perhaps backsliding after that. It’s a problem more commonly experienced by newbies who don’t yet have a familiar grasp on the game’s level design or physics, but is nevertheless one worthy of resolving and presents a wonderful opportunity for innovation, namely in how to best give the player access to on-demand speed to minimise dead air without this new tool becoming a crutch that less skilled players can use to blow through levels without having to truly understand them or Sonic.

The answer is as follows: By coming to a complete stop and crouching in place, the player can then press the jump button to enter into the spindash state. Additional timely presses of the jump button “rev” the spindash, with Sonic shooting off upon release of the down button at a speed corresponding to the amount of revs the player had inputted while charging (up to a maximum of six). It’s a wonderfully tactile mechanic that doesn’t just solve a game design conundrum, but solves it in style and in a manner that synergises with the very character of Sonic, the act of charging a spindash effectively simulating the revving of an engine. Ironic, then, that this technique was canonically pioneered by Tails (or used to be, anyway – there’s been a lot of retcons in the 31 years since).

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Designed by Yasushi Yamaguchi (credited in the game under the pseudonym Judy Toyota), Miles “Tails” Prower was the winner of an internally held competition at SEGA to come up with a sidekick for Sonic, much like how Sonic himself won a competition to become SEGA’s mascot a couple of years earlier, and it’s not hard to see how. Much like Sonic himself, Tails’ design is a classic, contrasting Sonic’s balanced mix of cute and cool with a far more adorable appearance and personality, having an even squatter frame than the blue blur and much more rounded an innocent eyes, complimented by the curly tufts of fur on his head, muzzle and tails, the last of those being the kid’s namesake and defining feature. Although Tails wouldn’t properly fly during gameplay until the following year, in the original release of Sonic 2, this trait is exhibited as a way of contextualising Tails’ ability to respawn either upon taking a hit or falling behind as Sonic speeds through the levels.

The lack of real functionality to those tails doesn’t make the kid useless, however. Of course, with a sidekick for Sonic comes the possibility for two-player co-op, allowing for a younger sibling or less experienced player to help you out on your journey without being able to hinder you in any meaningful way. Not only that, Tails pulls his weight in single player too as a CPU controlled companion, being able to land extra hits on bosses or on occasion save Sonic from the attacks of an otherwise unattended enemy. It’s nothing particularly earth-shattering, but it’s a fine addition to the sequel and, if nothing else, makes the adventure feel that bit less lonely (or perhaps more so, given you can’t take him with you into the endgame when playing as Sonic, given he goes down with Sonic’s plane, the Tornado, after tanking a laser from Wing Fortress, only returning at the end of the Zone to help him catch up to Eggman’s escape shuttle).

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The real meat of what’s new in Sonic 2 isn’t so readily marketable to 90s kids who only see cool fast hedgehog and not the mechanical underneath the surface, but is ultimately much more fundamental than the addition of a new move or character: the level design. In my Sonic 1 writeup, I had a bit to say about how Sonic Team’s level design philosophy hadn’t quite solidified, and that ultimately represented the biggest area for improvement in a game that nailed so much else on its first go. Clearly, level designer Hirokazu Yasuhara (alias Carol Yas) thought so too. It’s not as if every level in Sonic 2 is more like the accommodating slopes of Green Hill from the previous game, either. Sonic 2 trims a lot of the fat found in Sonic 1’s more vertically-oriented level design. Compare and contrast Green Hill Act 1 with Emerald Hill Act 1. Where Green Hill has just one path for the first third of the level before splitting off into ever higher fractals of terrain, Emerald Hill has far less altitude, maintaining clear paths from more or less the beginning of the level, with anything more simply being an option to save a few seconds or grab an item before returning to one of these paths. Where Green Hill’s terrain at times existed to be overcome, with inclines and blocky steps slowing Sonic’s forward movement, Emerald Hill’s slopes exist to carry Sonic forward and help build his speed, with steps only seen going down rather than up. Even in later Zones that ask the player to work harder to maintain their speed, slowing down is rarely jarring. When the game wants you to slow down, it doesn’t just put a wall in your way or, worse, let you crash into an obstacle – it’ll do things far more organically, often by placing a quarter pipe that not only resets the pace for any given part of a level, but rewards those who do approach with some speed by flinging them high into the air, often towards faster and easier paths or otherwise inaccessible item monitors. While Marble Zone asked the player to reattain all their speed when changing direction to follow the level design, Chemical Plant instead keeps things snappy by having springs accommodate this instead, meaning that there’s almost never a break in the gameplay due to this.

That’s not to say the levels play themselves, however. That core philosophy of needing a quick finger and good awareness to stay on the fastest and most rewarding path is still here, it’s just executed much more elegantly. Unlike Sonic 1, where you often found yourself on a lower path by running into a pit, the level design just keeps going. It’s less failing to take the optimal path and more happening to take a different path. Even the explorative nature of Sonic 1 is still accounted for, with goodies stashed every which way you might think to poke around. Ring monitors, 1-Ups, shields and, most importantly, Star Posts.

As well as fulfilling the checkpoint function of the previous game’s lamp posts, the Star Posts are this game’s gateway to the Special Zone, building on how this was handled in Sonic 1. What’s stayed the same is that you need to be in possession of 50 rings to get into a special stage. However, now it can be done at any checkpoint. When you first pass a Star Post with 50 rings, a ring of stars will erupt from the top of it. Jumping into this ring before it disappears will warp Sonic and Tails to the special stage. The pros of this approach are that it affords many more chances to nab the Chaos Emeralds, given that there are generally 3-5 checkpoints in any given level, compared to the all-or-nothing big ring at the end of Sonic 1’s levels. Further, it’s more in line with that core tenet of exploration, as several of these Star Posts are squirreled away in areas that truly test not only level knowledge, but mastery of Sonic’s skills, particularly the new spindash. Spindash jumping off slopes is basically a must to access some of the checkpoints, but the abundance of checkpoints throughout the game means not being able to pull this off doesn’t mean you won’t get the emeralds, just that they’ll come more slowly than they would otherwise. Heck, if you’re diligent enough in your exploration, you can get all seven before seeing the first boss (though this requires some game knowledge and forethought, as it’s possible to screw yourself out of a checkpoint and thus a special stage if you trigger them in the wrong order, due to a quirk in how the game registers checkpoints). The downside to this system is that it’s all too easy to blast past a checkpoint, with the special stage entrance being gone by the time you can get back there. This could happen with the special stage entrances in Sonic 1 too, but this was mitigated by them being right at the end of the level, so you knew they were coming given how the end of a level is generally telegraphed, and you don’t have the ability to overshoot quite as far as you can here. But on balance, I’d say this system’s an upgrade.

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But what about the special stages themselves? Well, and this’ll be a theme going forward, they’ve been completely switched up. Gone are the janky, disorienting mazes of the previous game and in its place is the tubular product of a radical new era – the pre-rendered half-pipe. Here’s the skinny: Instead of going directly after the Chaos Emeralds, this time you need to earn them by accumulating a prescribed number of rings as you travel through the half-pipe, all while avoiding spiked bombs. Conceptually (and in execution, for the most part), it’s far preferable to what Sonic 1 offered, but there’s a few snags. The first of these is that, with these pipes being composed of colour-limited, low fidelity sprites animating at a relatively low framerate, the depth perception in these stages is absolute piss. Even the 2013 TaxStealth remake, despite at least doubling the resolution of these stages, suffers from this issue, so God alone knows how I ever got through them in their original form.

The second issue is Tails. When not under the control of a second player, Tails’ AI mimics everything Sonic does, just a split second later. It’s cute and can be a little helpful in the early going, since it allows Tails to collect some rings that Sonic might miss, but once hazards are introduced, it effectively makes the timing for avoiding them even tighter, giving you two characters to worry about. Thankfully Tails’ ring count is independent of Sonic’s in the special stages and, given that you should be collecting the bulk of rings yourself, he can only lose so many, but I’m sure many a Sonic fan knows the frustration of barely making it through a special stage, only for Tails to faceplant into a bomb at the end, costing you enough rings to take you below the quota and preventing you from getting the Chaos Emerald.

This isn’t even the biggest problem with these stages, though. No, the biggest sin of Sonic 2’s special stages is that they will trial-and-error you hard, starting as early as the third stage. Even as a seasoned Sonic vet with a reasonable idea of what I was heading into, I got blindsided by several of these layouts, and I reckon it’d be almost impossible to succeed in most of these stages first time without any prior knowledge. Some freaks like that, but I honestly think it’s just pretty poor game design, taken as a whole. The good news is that this concept will be revisited a few times down the line and does get done much better later on, but we’ll get to that in due course.

What makes it all worth it, however, is the reward for completing the special stages this time around. While Sonic 1 just gave you the best ending with some giant flowers and left it at that, Sonic 2 recognises your efforts with something far more tangible: The Legendary Super Sonic. Pure of heart and awakened by rage, or something like that, transforming into Super Sonic requires you collect 50 rings but, if you can do that, rewards you with invincibility and a speed boost that last as long as you have the rings to sustain the transformation. On paper, it’s not much, but Super Sonic just radiates coolness with his design and unique animations and saving up 50 rings to transform into the golden wonder absolutely provides some catharsis in the later, more difficult levels. I think there are arguments to be made that on-demand invincibility breaks the game in two and, yeah, there’s certainly a valid point there, but I’d say that casual players probably won’t be getting all seven Chaos Emeralds until the mid to late part of the game and anyone who’s invested enough time into this game to get them during the early innings probably doesn’t need Super Sonic as a crutch to begin with and I imagine is just as likely to forego collecting the emeralds to give themselves a challenge anyway.

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Furthermore, transforming isn’t a freebie. As already mentioned, it’s a 50-ring barrier to entry, which requires a lot of skill in not getting hit during the late game, but there’s also the caveat that you can’t tap out of the super form until the ring counter hits 0 again, which gives some risk to the act of transforming. If you’re not good about keeping up your reserve of rings, this can leave you very vulnerable in a particularly nasty part of a level, or even a boss. As such, if you’re not confident in your knowledge of the level and where to rack up rings, opting not to transform may be the smarter play…is what I would say, if the original Mega Drive release didn’t force Sonic to transform as soon as he jumps after collecting 50 rings, but this issue is rectified in almost every subsequent release and it’s ultimately a minor blemish on the debut of series staple powerup.

Unfortunately, this is the part of the writeup where I start talking about the bad parts of Sonic 2, because trial-and-error isn’t just contained to the special stages. To its credit, Sonic 2 generally has a pretty organic difficulty curve, but things do get a bit jumpy towards the end of the game. The seventh Zone, Oil Ocean, is where I’d say the natural arc of the game’s difficulty curve ends. It’s generally a slower paced area than everything before it, with few slopes for gaining big speed and air and a lot of hazards around, with enemies in particular firing noticeably faster and more accurately than anything prior to this point, but it’s still plenty doable to get through this place without taking a single death, so long as you keep your wits about you and don’t try and rush through with reckless abandon. Zone number eight, Metropolis, is where things go off the rails. Scrap Brain from Sonic 1 was pretty rough, but I honestly think this is worse – at least in that game the top path remained pretty safe throughout so long as you could stay on it. Here, you’re in for a bad time no matter which way you go.

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Straight up, you can place this almost entirely on the enemy design and placement. Metropolis Zone features the three most deplorable reprobates we’ve yet seen in this series, now notorious within the Sonic community for how absolutely frickin’ cheap they are. First, we have Slicer. This pernicious preying mantis will launch his razor-sharp blades at you in a wide arc almost as soon as he comes into view. He gets me about as often as not, but the silver lining is that he’s a one hit wonder – nothing left once he fires off his first shot, much like Integrity. Easily taken out once you’re clear of his attack, unlike our next subject, Shellcracker. Remember Crabmeat from the first game, that goofy little fella found in Green Hill and Spring Yard who did a little dance from side to side before firing a feeble shot to each side that fell off the screen almost instantly? Well, this is that dude after hard time. I don’t know what he’s been doing with his right claw but…it’s a big, spikey son of a bitch that he’ll throw out as soon as he sees you, much like Slicer. Difference here is that it comes back fairly quickly, and gives Shellcracker a hurt box above his head, making the act of jumping on top of him a very risky proposition. Finally, I’ve said the most depraved badnik for last. Based on what I can only presume to be Yasuhara and co.’s most intense hatred for starfish, Asteron lurks on walls and actually has a longer response time than its compatriots’, but don’t let this fool you into thinking it’s anything but deadly. Once you pass by Asteron (and you will pass by Asteron), it springs to life and starts following you, self-destructing not longer after. But Asteron dies on its own terms, and those terms involve it launching its five spiked tips out away from it upon its death and, given that this badnik can’t be defeated normally or otherwise have its action prevented, you either have to hope Sonic can pass by these guys fast enough for them to be far away by the time they self-destruct, or else act fast and do a dance of deadly dodges so as not to get punctured.

In a vacuum, these little shits are bad enough, but combined with their sadistic placements, getting through Metropolis Zone without taking a hit is a trial I’d only wish upon the most terrible of people. Slicers are often placed right in your path with no warning, or at the end of corridors where their blades can fly behind them and hit you even once you’re past them (there even seems to be a homing element to them); Shellcrackers await you at the top of shafts where you won’t see them until it’s too late, with the only counterplay being to just know the level (which is less helpful when they’re placed under walls to minimise their already specific area of vulnerability; and Asterons are probably going to hit you the most – these guys are everywhere, and their points fly off at awkward angles when they explode, with the upper two points on either side flying at an angle which causes them to get higher the further they fly, making it often difficult to discern whether it’s best to jump over or duck under them. This compounds with the projectiles being quite persistent, making it entirely possible to get hit by an Asteron several seconds after it’s exploded, usually knocking you off a platform to a lower route or into another hazard. And even once all this is out the way, the boss at the end of Metropolis is its own beast, with a requirement that you time your hits in a way that accounts for the faux-3D movement of its hit boxes…in a 2D sprite-based game. It can be fairly easily cheesed by hitting it from below with a quick tempo, but that just means the boss only gives you the options of fighting the frustration of jank hit boxes or not engaging with the design of the boss by playing lame in stead. In summary: BORN TO DIE, METROPOLIS IS A FUCK, KILL EM ALL 1992, I am trash hog, 410 757 864 350 dead Asterons.

Metropolis is the absolute trough of Sonic 2’s quality at least, but the game’s peak already came and went by the time you’ve reached it, so what comes after isn’t exactly superb either. Sky Chase Zone features Sonic and Tails making their way towards Eggman’s flying fortress on Sonic’s plane, the tornado, with whoever you’re playing as standing on the plane’s wings to fight badniks while their buddy takes care of the flying. It’s a pretty easy-going level, which is absolutely appreciated following Metropolis, and its serene music does calm the nerves well enough, but the bite here is that it’s an auto-scroller, which I frankly think has no place in a Sonic game. It’s slow and boring, doesn’t really test the skills you’ve spent the rest of the game developing and can’t be sped up as your proficiency at executing it grows.

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Finally, after the overly long and linear Wing Fortress, another stage that doesn’t really provide much for experienced players to do, we reach the Death Egg – the mad doctor’s final line of defence and a lawsuit just waiting to happen. Rather than being a full Zone (as it once was during development), this single level hosts just two bosses – Mecha Sonic (Mk. I, formerly and still sometimes unofficially referred to as Silver Sonic) and the iconic Death Egg Robot. It’s…a little difficult for me to place my opinions on these two bosses, to be honest. Part of me wants to say they’re the best bosses in the game, but I also struggle to fully commit to that statement.

The rub with both of these is that they’re actually pretty straightforward bosses, particularly the final one, who can actually be pretty easily manipulated. On the other hand, once you enter the Death Egg, you’re a one hit wonder. No rings, no margin for error, no cheesing the bosses by picking up the same ring every time you get hit. Mecha Sonic and the Death Egg Robot are going to severely trial-and-error first time players and, in the original release with no saves and limited lives and continues, have the capacity to kill entire runs. That’s not good game design in my eyes – it’s needlessly frustrating and the only way the player can meaningfully learn about how best to tackle these bosses is by dying to them and potentially having to restart from the beginning of the game as a result. At the same time, they’re technically always vulnerable, you just need to be precise in how you hit them.

I can take down Mecha Sonic within just 12 seconds of starting the level, before he can even commit to his second attack, and I can almost two cycle the Death Egg Robot, a boss that can take less experienced players several minutes for just one successful attempt, let alone the strings of deaths and game overs needed to grind the experience to make that successful attempt happen. I can finish the entire final level in less than 90 seconds, and it feels like I’ve earned that completely, so I struggle to entirely reconcile my perception of this final level being bad within the scope of my philosophy on game design with the fact that these are kind of the platonic ideal of Sonic bosses, perfectly balanced in the fact that the window to damage them scales with the technical skill in a way that doesn’t allow them to be cheesed through sheer aggression, and all without relying on invincibility frames or filler animations that kill the pace. At any rate, I think a robot doppelganger of Sonic and the biggest boss yet seen in the series, made in the image of its main antagonist, is a fittingly climactic end to Sonic 2, even if that’s predicated on vibes more than anything else.

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Crivens, I thought this writeup would be shorter than Sonic 1’s, yet I’ve spent more words than that just talking about the gameplay. Let’s wrap up with the presentation. To start with, the art is gorgeous. I’ve already spoken about how polished aspects of it are, but Sonic 2 somehow improves so much on what was already an outstanding foundation in Sonic 1. Sonic 2 is actually the product of Sonic Team moving development to America in a move practically unheard of at that time and that arguably still doesn’t really happen today. While future Sony golden boy Mark Cerny assisted with the programming and production side of things, members of Sega of America’s newly-formed Sega Technical Institute (save your giggles), Craig Stitt, Tom Payne and Brenda Ross, assisted Yasushi Yamaguchi with the art. Honestly, it’s difficult for me to tell where the seams lie in light of this fact, at least as far as the final product goes, but that may be a result of Yamaguchi allegedly redrawing significant amounts of the assets due to his own dissatisfaction with them. In retrospect, this does add up when looking at assets for cut content such as levels and enemies, which are noticeably rough and at odds with aesthetic of the final game, but this could just as easily be chalked up to such assets being most certainly unfinished.

Sonic 2 trades in some of the first game’s surrealist style for a slightly more grounded aesthetic, and I think it’s fair to argue something was lost in that transition but, on a technical level, the art of Sonic 2 is a remarkable upgrade to its predecessor in every way. Softer palettes and shading give objects noticeably more depth, and the environments look incredibly elaborate and lifelike for a Mega Drive game, compared to Sonic 1’s more cartoonish locales. Sonic himself has been tweaked to look less…pissed and the additional cartridge space has been put to great use, not just in providing more levels, but more animations through which Sonic and Tails can express their personalities, with Tails in particular having a fairly lengthy yet adorable idle animation of looking inquisitively at the player before letting out a yawn. That statement of intent made by the title screen at the very beginning of the game is sustained throughout Sonic 2’s visual presentation: bigger, bolder and brighter, capitalising on what the last game did so well and raising the bar even higher.

And that goes double for the music. Unfortunately, Masato Nakamura’s second Sonic soundtrack is also his last, but my god does he ever give it his all. As with the visuals, the music of Sonic 2 is more elaborate in its melodic composition while also broadening the scope of instrumentation. Sonic 1’s music is probably best characterised by its strong and memorable slap bass and snare samples, but here Nakamura uses them to supplement convincing approximations of trumpets, flutes and electric guitars. My favourites from this soundtrack are Emerald Hill, Casino Night, Metropolis and the special stage theme, but there honestly isn’t a single track here I dislike or can’t whistle from memory. Truly, Nakamura’s deep and layered compositions and Masaru Sestumaru’s complete mastery of translating those compositions to the Mega Drive’s Yamaha YM2612 sound chip result in the soundtrack of Sonic 2 matching pound for pound every contemporary release not only on the Mega Drive, but also the technically superior SNES, and surpassing many of them to stand as one of the best soundtracks of not only its era, but in gaming history.

And that’s Sonic 2, one of the greatest sequels of all time. Granted, it’s by no means a perfect game (nor has it ever been my favourite in the series), suffering from frustrating level design and enemy placement in its final stretch, along with other questionable decisions in other areas of the game, but it makes these missteps while massively improving on what was already a revolutionary first outing. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 for SEGA Mega Drive isn’t just a sequel, it’s what proved the original wasn’t just a fluke and I think it’s fair to credit it with cementing Sonic the Hedgehog as a video game series that would last through the next 30+ years and beyond. In other words, this is the game to blame for the fact we’re still stuck with the blue rat to this day. See you next time, folks.

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Addendum: Absolute Territory

Spoiler

As with Sonic 1, my playthrough of Sonic 2 for this writeup was done with a mod made on the back of the decompilation efforts of Taxman and Stealth’s 2013 mobile remake of the game. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Absolute is once again brought to us by Team Forever and provides a lot of the same quality of life features of Sonic the Hedgehog Forever, plus a few more to boot. In addition to widescreen, visual and difficulty customisation options and the carrying over of achievements from the mobile release, one big upgrade this version of Sonic 2 adds is per Act saving, meaning that you can put down the game at the end of any level and pick up with the next one when you come back, as opposed to the series standard of being forced to replay the Zone from the beginning if you quit before finishing Act 2.

Otherwise, the release is a little barebones. While time attack and arcade mode are intact, there’s no boss gauntlet in Sonic 2 Absolute, nor any original novelties like Golf Forever, though a “Nick Arcade” mode does exist, tasking players with collecting as many rings as they can within 25 seconds in a prototype version of Emerald Hill Act 1, as was seen in the gaming show for which the mode is named. The achievements list is shorter this time around (I think Forever added some of its own original achievements in addition to those found in the mobile remake) and the only characters you can play as are Sonic, Tails and Knuckles, which is a shame in spite of my apathy towards Amy in Sonic 1 Forever. Ultimately, Absolute is unfinished in its current state, but I believe it’s still being developed and I really hope it comes to fruition, given how brilliant Team Forever’s work with Sonic 1’s decompilation is. The biggest blemish on Absolute, however, is how the devs chose to implement Hidden Palace Zone, which requires me to get in the weeds a bit here regarding Sonic 2 development lore.

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In the main writeup, I alluded to Sonic 2 having levels cut during its development. Originally, the game was to be even more ambitious, with a time travel mechanic that radically changed Westside Island and gave each era its own set of levels. One of the levels cut from the game was Hidden Palace Zone. From what we’ve learned, this was to be a level that would only be accessible once Sonic collected all the Chaos Emeralds, which would introduce Super Sonic in some unspecified way. The first (later intended to be the only) Act of Hidden Palace was playable in several of Sonic 2’s prototypes and mockups of it and a few other cut Zones actually showed up in the gaming press during the game’s marketing cycle. Hidden Palace even had some unused music associated with it and, given the apparent lore significance of the location, there’s been a lot of intrigue surrounding the level since before Sonic 2 even released, especially as it’s the only cut level to still remain on the shipped cartridge, albeit in a corrupted and effectively unplayable state.

So, when uberfans Christian “Taxman” Whitehead and Simon “Stealth” Thomley were contracted to remake Sonic 2 for mobile devices in 2013 with their Retro Engine, what do you think they did? Well, they only went and made Hidden Palace into a fully realised, single-Act Zone, the absolute mad lads. While it didn’t serve the same function as the original iteration was intended to, Hidden Palace was now accessible in Sonic 2 by dropping into a previously bottomless pit in Mystic Cave Act 2 after having gathered all seven Chaos Emeralds. The level itself is largely fine, honestly. I think the level design is fairly confused and inelegant, lacking the flow and tight refinement of most of Sonic 2’s other levels, and the level’s entirely original boss is of the boring variety that can generally only be hit when the game tells you that you can hit it, but still! Hidden Palace, finally brought to life after 20+ years of mystery! Not only was this historically significant in that it realised a long since abandoned level, but it also served as a precursor of things to come (as always, a story for another time).

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And what did Team Forever do with this level? Well, nothing. Less than nothing, actually. Three times I threw myself down that pit in Mystic Cave. At first, I thought I’d just got the wrong place, then I figured maybe my memory was iffy and I needed to go down there with 50 rings. After some reading, I learned that Team Forever simply opted not to make Hidden Palace available in the currently available release of Sonic 2 Absolute, allegedly having their own plans for it. If that’s true, then that’s interesting and could absolutely end up being a selling point for this version of the game, assuming such plans come to fruition, but I really think they should’ve just left the original version of Hidden Palace intact, with their take on it becoming an option once ready. I’m sure the developers had the best of intentions with this decision, but in a way, I feel like it’s not their call to make. That aside, the practical effect of this decision is that I can’t really recommend Sonic 2 Absolute as the definitive version of Sonic 2 as I could with Forever as the definitive version of Sonic 1 because it’s simply missing content.

Which leaves me in the regrettable position of having to admit that Sonic Origins is currently the best way to play Sonic 2. I mean, yeah, you technically could hunt down the decompilation for Sonic 2’s mobile remake and set that up to get all of the mobile remake’s content on PC for a much lower price than what Origins is asking for, but it’s not nearly as straightforward a process as dragging the .apk file onto a .bat file as with Sonic 1 Forever and Sonic 2 Absolute, and I think it’s an unreasonably high barrier to entry for people looking to legally play the best version of Sonic 2, especially for iPhone owners, given that extracting this version basically requires tampering with your phone. To be clear, I lay the blame for this entirely at SEGA’s feet, given their handling of Origins as a package, not to mention keeping the remakes locked to mobile for nine years in addition to delisting the original ROM versions of the Mega Drive games on Steam and other digital storefronts, but I can’t deny that this is a situation that Team Forever could’ve handled better. At any rate, I suppose this is as good a demonstration as any of the foibles of capitalism.

But don’t let all this send the wrong message. Sonic 2 Absolute is still a brilliant way to play Sonic 2’s content as it originally existed, with the quality of life enhancements and a few extras on top, it just unfortunately isn’t the home run that Sonic 1 Forever is in terms of replicating the mobile remake it’s based on. In short, if you want a better gameplay experience that won’t break the bank, check out Sonic 2 Absolute. If you instead want to see all the content of the TaxStealth remake, either pay a fiver for the mobile version and endure touch controls or buy Origins (ugh).

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Next instalment: Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (SEGA Master System and Game Gear, 1992)

Edited by AlexArtsHere
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  • AlexArtsHere changed the title to Alex plays (almost) every Sonic the Hedgehog game - #3: Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (SEGA Mega Drive, 1992)
56 minutes ago, AlexArtsHere said:

in addition to delisting the original ROM versions of the Mega Drive games on Steam and other digital storefronts, but

they've actually continued to fuck with the mega drive classics thing since then too - very recently, they removed the bundle of (non-sonic) classic games from the mega drive store page, like it just literally lists nothing, and now the only way to get any of the mega drive classics is to look them up individually, on single-game pages that make no reference to one another, nor to the mega drive classics collection that they're technically DLC for

 

it's frankly bizarre what a good job sega do as a publisher of pc games for just about everything except for classic sega fare, where they suck the rawest of ass

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Honestly it’s a huge shame because the Mega Drive Classics kind of represented the best of SEGA back in the day. Not necessarily in all the games available for it, but it was a great and accessible way to experience so much gaming history, and the ability for fans and amateur devs to make money from their ROM hacks is something that no other major developer has done in such a capacity to my mind (I believe this is still going but I’ve not checked in with the scene in a while). Truly a shame how far SEGA have fallen with respect to the treatment of their classic library.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Previous instalment: Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (SEGA Mega Drive, 1992)

Last time, I gave Sonic the Hedgehog 2 a pretty glowing writeup, and I think I made it pretty apparent that it stands head and shoulders above the previous titles as the best game I’ve played so far for this thread, which doesn’t sound as impressive when considering that it’s only the third game I’ve reviewed so far, but I digress. This time, I’m here to tell you about why Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is the worst game I’ve played so far for this thread. That’s right, folks, it’s 8-bit Sonic 2.

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Releasing day and date with Mega Drive Sonic 2 in Japan and a few days before in the US and Europe, 8-bit Sonic 2 for the Master System and Game Gear strives to be more than just a cut down version of the home console original as 8-bit Sonic 1 was. Instead, it stands as an entirely unique Sonic outing with its own story (Eggman has kidnapped Sonic’s new buddy Tails – go save him!), levels, enemies, music, the works. Information on the development of 8-bit Sonic 2 is scarce, so it’s difficult to tell why this came about in the way it did as opposed to a version more faithful to its 16-bit counterpart, but I do think the added originality is at least a point in the favour of this game. Contrary to appearances, what with it using a lot of assets from 8-bit Sonic 1, 8-bit Sonic 2 was actually developed by an entirely different team than the first game, with this game being given to Aspect as opposed to Ancient (the latter going on to become famed fighting game developer Arc System Works). This could be at least part of the reason for this game’s more unique identity and I wholeheartedly believe it’s why the game is so poor.

To start with, I do want to talk about the gameplay positives. First, Sonic feels a lot better to control than he did in the first Master System/Game Gear entry. He’s still a far cry from his Mega Drive self, but he feels much less stiff, accelerates noticeably faster and even seems to carry momentum better than in 8-bit Sonic 1. Further to this, the aforementioned originality really does make this game a lot more memorable. I’ll cover the presentation-centric results of this later but, being its own adventure and a year removed from the series’ inception, I feel like Sonic 2 on the Master System is able to do a lot more Sonic-y stuff with its level concepts, compared to the fairly stock platformer set pieces of its predecessor. Whereas Sonic 1 on Master System focused a lot more on standard precision platforming, with momentum being relegated to segments of the level so devoid of real interaction that they may as well have been automated, this game bakes that momentum into its level gimmicks in a much more satisfying manner. Hang gliders in the second Zone ask players to manipulate their momentum in order to achieve effective use (though in reality these can be cheesed by just mashing the back button relative to the direction you’re facing to keep ascending with only a penalty of speed), while another level lets Sonic skim across the surface of bodies of water if he approaches them with enough speed, rewarding the player by skipping over difficult portions of level design. You’ll even see a few of the series-staple loops in this game, following their absence in 8-bit Sonic 1. To an extent, 8-bit Sonic 2 feels like it much better understands what Sonic as a vehicle of gameplay is than the first Master System game, but unfortunately this understanding doesn’t go very far.

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For those unacquainted, 8-bit Sonic 2 actually has a bit of a reputation within the community as “the difficult one”, a reputation which I think is entirely justified. First of all, bonus stages are gone, and continues with them…almost. You can score a continue if the end-of-level signpost flips to a portrait of Tails’ but this will only happen if you finish the level with precisely 77 rings, no more or less, as well as the same number of lives as when you first started the level. Needless to say, these requirements are so arbitrary and specific that getting a continue feels less like a reward for good performance and more like a roulette prize, and I didn’t get a single one through the entire game. In the same vein, checkpoints and shields are entirely absent, with the latter having the biggest impact. In the first game, the saving grace of the frustrating bosses was that you could take a shield into them from previous levels if you were careful, allowing a single mistake, which could often be necessary in learning how each boss worked. Not so in 8-bit Sonic 2. There are still no rings in the boss levels, so taking even a single hit means a restart here, an issue compounded by the platforming segment prior to each boss feeling considerably longer than last time.

On top of all this, and like the worst parts of its Mega Drive big brother, this Sonic 2 is packed with trial-and-error gameplay, both in its levels and its bosses. Enemies are often placed such that Sonic will run into them without warning and respawn when defeated, which becomes particularly frustrating during a section of Aqua Lake Act 2 where Sonic must ascend a large shaft inside a fragile air bubble that renders him defenceless and pops on contact with just about anything, all while dodging enemies and arrows fire from the walls of the shaft. After exiting the bubble prematurely, I thought I’d at least be able to bop some badniks on my way back to the source of the bubbles so as to make my next trip up easier, but this proved not to be the case.

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Another pain point that deepens the frustrations which arise from trial-and-error gameplay is that what the game wants you to do isn’t very well communicated, even in failure. Again, this extends to both level and boss design. In Sky High Zone Act 2, the Chaos Emerald lies on the uppermost path (yes, you collect these things within the levels again, but they’re mercifully only ever in the second Act of each Zone and are even individually coloured now!). This requires Sonic to traverse some clouds that are solid until they’re not, with no visual indication telling you which areas are safe to land in and which areas of cloud will just send you plummeting down onto the lower path, locking you out of getting the Emerald unless you take a death and restart. The third boss doesn’t do a great job of communicating that it’s immune to direct attacks and you’re meant to burst the ball it uses to attack Sonic, but only while said ball is being inflated – contact with it at any point once it’s thrown kills him. The first Act of the fifth Zone places the end of the level directly below the starting point and after a corridor of spikes, meaning that you not only have to be moving to the left of screen to progress, an unintuitive action on its own, but also that you need to have invincibility active and hope you don’t get lost as you head to the end of the level, lest the invincibility expire and force you to take a death for another chance.

All of this together adds up to a game that has very little respect for the player’s time. My ego isn’t too precious for me to admit that I played with save states and a guide for the Chaos Emerald locations (you can’t even access the final Zone this time without collecting all of them!), but, having had some prior experience with the first seven Actss of the game on its Wii Virtual Console release many years ago, I can say with confidence that the experience is not improved when playing by the game’s rules and torturing yourself with what’s effectively a grind to having perfect knowledge of the game.

However, it’s not all bad news. 8-bit Sonic 2 at least continues the solid performance this series has had regarding presentation values up to now. Hisato Fukumoto (credited as Jly King), Nobuhiko Honda (Noburin) and the pseudonymous Tez and U.D.K. (8-bit Sonic 2’s credits are very vague on who precisely did what and, as said before, development information is scant) have crafted some pretty impressive visuals here. The Zone aesthetics are all appropriately Sonic-esque with interesting terrain and decorations (though I would argue the backgrounds are a step down from the previous entry) and some even switch up their visuals in between Acts, a first for the series that even Mega Drive Sonic 2 doesn’t offer. Although the designs of this game’s enemies are merely serviceable in my eyes, I do love 8-bit Sonic 2’s take on Mecha Sonic. He’s a cheeky little chappy and that’s all I’ll hear on the matter.

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As far as music goes, it’s a slight let-down here. Taking over from Yuzo Koshiro is Masafumi Ogata (Gatao), Naofumi Hataya (Nao Chan) and possibly Tomonori Sawasa (Dawasa), though the last one may have just handled sound effects. By and large, the sound track is pretty solid, with several tracks being appropriately catchy (the music for Underground, Sky High and Green Hills are all standouts), but I’d say the compositions don’t once reach the dizzying heights of Masato Nakamura’s work, nor do they consistently match Koshiro’s original contributions to 8-bit Sonic 1. At the end of the day, even at its worst, the music of 8-bit Sonic 2 makes for pleasant listening, even if it’s not a soundtrack I see myself queuing up at all often in the future when I want to listen to some Sonic tunes.

And that’s about as much as I have to say about 8-bit Sonic 2. While a more original adventure than the previous Master System/Game Gear instalment, it’s not a particularly fun one, filled with padding and cheap design, seemingly out of a fear that players would otherwise blow through it in an hour, despite that sounding like a more amenable proposition, particularly with the Game Gear’s battery life. Speaking of, if you’re set on playing this, definitely do it via the Master System version. Best I can tell, the edits to the Game Gear version are minimal, and screen crunch is a big problem particularly with the game’s bosses. As with 8-bit Sonic 1, however, I’d again suggest that the most effective ratio of time invested to pleasure derived would be to just listen to the OST and be done with it, maybe watch a longplay if you don’t need your eyes for anything else. If nothing else, I’m sure it only gets better from here.

Right?

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Next instalment: Sonic CD (SEGA Mega CD, 1993)

Edited by AlexArtsHere
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  • AlexArtsHere changed the title to Alex plays (almost) every Sonic the Hedgehog game - #4: Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (SEGA Master System, 1992)
1 hour ago, AlexArtsHere said:

If nothing else, I’m sure it only gets better from here.

Right?

i've learned one thing about this thread and it's that i know so goddamn little about the chronology of sonic games that i have no earthly idea if this is foreshadowing much later sonics that i know to be bad, or is foreshadowing the very next game you're going to post

 

i'm integrity serenesforest and this is my favorite thread on the citadel

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  • AlexArtsHere changed the title to Alex plays (almost) every Sonic the Hedgehog game - #5: Sonic the Hedgehog CD (SEGA Mega CD, 1993)

 Previous instalment: Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (SEGA Master System, 1992)

Divergent evolution is a funny old thing. It’s not unsurprising that it happens as far as design is concerned, but it’s interesting to see what exists in the space between an idea being birthed and the definitive iteration of that idea seeing mass adoption, superseding the original and becoming the new default. Two parties can work independently to improve the same base, only for the results to be altogether distinct from each other. Such was the case with Sonic the Hedgehog during its primordial phase in the early 90s. As I touched on in my writeup of the first game, while a lot of the fundamentals of classic Sonic gameplay didn’t change much from the inception of the franchise in 1991 through to Sonic 3 & Knuckles in 1994, things didn’t come out fully formed the first time, and those two years in between can be looked back upon as a time when the cement hadn’t quite finished drying and the ideas of the series were a little more malleable. I’ve already written about Yuji Naka and co.’s accomplished sequel that really solidified the template of what Sonic was to be, and still is for many, all these years later. This time, I’m writing about a very different sequel that resulted from the vision of the other essential figure in the Sonic creation myth, Naoto Ohshima.

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Released in Autumn 1993, Sonic CD was positioned as the killer app for the SEGA Mega Drive’s Mega CD add-on. While Naka et al upped sticks to California to work on Sonic 2 at the behest of Mark Cerny and SEGA of America, Ohshima remained in Japan and formed his own team to bring about his own Sonic sequel that would take advantage of the Mega CD’s unique features in an attempt to make the peripheral a success, per the direction of SEGA. Ohshima is generally deflective towards the idea of Sonic CD being a true sequel to the original (even suggesting that his team had more fun working without the pressure that the American team was under to deliver the sequel to one of the early 90s’ seminal hits), and I’m inclined to agree with him, but the parallels between these two games really can’t be overstated.

Where Sonic 2 zigs, Sonic CD zags - this is by design, as Ohshima deliberately maintained communication with Naka as the two worked on their respective projects so the former could ensure that CD would stand independently of 2, rather than just being an enhanced version of it. While Sonic 2 delivered one of the most iconic sidekicks in all of media with Miles “Tails” Prower, Sonic CD instead chose to give Sonic a(n unrequited) love interest in the form of Amy Rose Hedgehog and his first true rival in Metal Sonic, a robotic dark mirror of our hero that himself contrasts the bulky and industrial design of Sonic 2’s Mecha Sonic Mk. I with a much sleeker, cobalt blue frame that more accurately mimicks the real Sonic. As Sonic 2 introduced the spindash, providing speed and protection through a revving action, Sonic CD instead breaks this concept down into two moves, the Super Peelout and its own version of the spindash – both of these performed by continuously holding either up or down respectively and the jump button, with the former providing a huge burst of speed while the latter offered a slightly slower but safer manoeuvre (though the Sonic 2 styled spindash would be officially introduced to Sonic CD with the game’s 2011 remake by Christian “Taxman” Whitehead and has since supplanted the CD-original version as the default option in subsequent rereleases of said remake).

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The most fundamental of these contrasts, however, is time travel. As I briefly outlined in the addendum of Sonic 2’s writeup, that game was at one point going to feature time travel as a major point of focus. As best as can be gleaned from the publicly available concept art, I believe this would’ve mostly been a presentational element rather than a fully-fledged game mechanic, with Sonic and Tails chasing Eggman on a journey through time in a set, linear order. Meanwhile, not only did Sonic CD’s take on time travel make it into the final game, I personally think it was executed in a much more interesting way than what seems to have been proposed by the Sonic 2 team.

The mechanics of time travel in Sonic CD are as follows: by making contact with time warp plates placed throughout each level before reaching and maintaining a certain speed for a few seconds (approximately five in the 2011 remake, a little shorter in the 1993 original), Sonic will then warp to the past, present or future, depending on what time period he’s in when initiating the warp. But what’s the point to all this? Well, if you only ever stayed in the present and blasted through this game as though it were any other Sonic title, Sonic CD would end up a brief experience, and ultimately no progress would truly be made in stopping Doctor Eggman, who has abused/is abusing/will abuse the mercurial space-time laws of Little Planet, the game’s setting, to transform it into a synthetic wonderland in his own image. While Sonic may be able to travel between past, present and future, that future is not set in stone and can be good or bad depending on actions taken over the course of each level and the game as a whole. As such, the true goal of Sonic CD’s gameplay loop is to save the planet and conquer time by shutting down Eggman’s robot generators in the past or grabbing the seven Time Stones (Ersatz Chaos Emeralds, honestly) to keep them out of the bad doctor’s clutches.

In effect, this allows for Sonic CD to played in two ways (assuming you want to save Little Planet and see the game’s good ending). The first of these (and the approach I would hazard is Ohshima’s preferred way for us to play the game) is to focus on the generators in the past, while the second is to play with a mindset of getting to the goal, taking time travel as it comes rather than seeking it out and trying to harness it. To best understand how these two gameplay experiences differ, we first need to discuss the level design of the game. Frankly, it’s rather messy. Off the bat, the basic geometry of the level design is generally pretty blocky and places a big emphasis on verticality, which makes it more difficult to maintain speed in the same way as when playing Sonic 1 or 2. Those games focused on organic slopes for the level designs of its natural locales, allowing players to reach new paths with the use of Sonic’s speed rather than asking them to sacrifice it. Meanwhile, level design in Sonic CD frequently forces Sonic to stop or severely slow down to maintain forward progress, making it unnecessarily difficult and tedious to maintain the speed needed to time travel. This kind of design is at its worst in the fifth zone, Wacky Workbench, which has an intermittently bouncy floor on its bottommost layer and a lot of walls in the upper areas, making the viable real estate for time travel practically nil. On the other side of the coin, Sonic CD absolutely loves to just throw Sonic onto all sorts of wild rides with springs and bumpers. This is bad enough in a vacuum in that it stalls forward progress in a different way, but becomes even worse with time travel thrown into the mix, as these segments of level design can provide the speed needed for time travel but in a way that isn’t practically reliable to use as a strategy for time travel and can often be unwanted. This kind of design isn’t particularly frequent but is no less egregious than the first flaw.

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In practical terms, this makes going for the good ending via destroying all generators pretty awkward. First of all, there’s one in every first and second act of each zone, and missing even a single one means you can no longer get the good ending that way, already setting an exacting standard for success. Unfortunately, it only gets worse when you bring the flaws of the game’s level design into the mix. Since travelling into the past ends up being rather a task a lot of the time, particularly in the game’s later levels, it’s not great that you have to do it in two thirds of the game’s levels and then scour those levels on top of that to find the generators. Unintentional time travel is so much more frustrating here, though. Given that all your objectives are in the past, travelling to the future becomes nothing but detrimental in a generators-focused run of the game, yet that’s how most unintentional time travel happens, since future time warp plates are considerably more common than those leading to the past. This ended up happening to me a considerable amount in one of my playthroughs and the consequence of this happening is having to then find two more past warp plates to get back to the present and then go to the past to actually start looking for the generator. The saving grace of this is that you can find the (now defunct) generators in the present of each level, so you don’t necessarily need to get to the past as soon as possible just to find the generator, but this doesn’t do much to reduce the tedium of the whole thing.

On the other hand, going for the Time Stones is a much less aggravating experience. As in Sonic 1, special stages are accessed by collecting 50 rings jumping into the large warp ring that appears at the end of the level. This generally isn’t as much of a hassle as in that game, since the biggest challenge of Sonic CD being navigation of the environment itself means that there’s not actually a whole lot that’s going to take away your rings (which themselves are plentiful). But the real improvement here is in the special stages themselves - once again, it’s all change. This time, Sonic is dropped into a Mode-7 styled racetrack-like area and is tasked with destroying all of the UFOs flying around the area before time runs out. Most of these UFOs give rings, but some give Sonic a temporary speed boost that can be used to navigate the map more quickly. Making contact with the water around the stage costs ten seconds each time it happens, but a special UFO spawns every time the clock drops below 20 seconds, with its destruction granting an additional 20 seconds to work with.

This may be my favourite special stage format in the classic quadrilogy, honestly. The UFOs can seem fairly erratic, but they follow set patterns every time you play, and clearing each one of these on the first attempt is entirely feasible, unlike the special stages of Sonic 2. You can’t halt Sonic’s movement once the stage starts, so you always need to have your next manoeuvre in mind, but Sonic can be slowed down as long as you’re holding backwards on the d-pad. The freedom of control for Sonic, combined with non-linear nature of these stages, results in obstacle courses that don’t require internalised knowledge of their cycles, but do become massively rewarding with this as you begin to be able to route your runs on repeat playthroughs to clear them in very little time and look cool while doing it. There’s a nice flow state that can be achieved here and it makes a huge difference that these stages can be hastened with experience and good performance, unlike the auto-scrollers of Sonic 2 and…whatever the hell Sonic 1’s special stages are. They’re not without flaw, however. The letdown here is in the low graphical fidelity of the stages, which can make it difficult to tell where smaller bodies of water lie and generally screws over depth perception, which can become frustrating in the later special stages as you miss hits on the more slippery UFOs that by all accounts should have landed. Even so, I far prefer these special stages to the two attempts prior.

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In terms of actually playing the game this way, however…it’s a bit boring. By ditching the impetus to explore and instead making things more or less a straight shot to the goal, Sonic CD’s levels become fairly bland in their construction and very short, and there isn’t a lot of engagement to be had, not helped by the fact that there’s no real reason to time travel other than for sightseeing. To be utilitarian about it, the point of going to the past is to destroy generators. The point of going to the good future accessible upon destroying the generators or collecting all the Time Stones is for an easier ride, since there are no enemies there (though this game is already so easy that this isn’t a particularly compelling sell – if you’re going to struggle, it won’t be due to the enemies). The bad futures, which you’ll be seeing until Quartz Quadrant Act 2 at the very earliest if you’re only going for Time Stones, have the same level design as the good futures, but with enemies added into the mix, simply offering a different flavour from the present and having no utility of their own. The layouts themselves are just about different enough between eras to give consequence to time travel, but don’t do much to invoke the desire to time travel. This becomes even more baffling in the 2011 remake, which adds Metal Sonic holograms in every first and second act that can be destroyed for an achievement…in the past…where the generators already provide an incentive for exploration. All of this is to say that going for the Time Stones instead of the generators, while a less tedious and frustrating experience, is still one that leads to you ignoring the crux of what the game’s about.

In keeping with the theme of tedium is Sonic CD’s boss fights, which have a deliberated pace compared to Sonic 1 and 2 – unfortunately, that’s not a compliment. In theory, most of Sonic CD’s bosses operate in the same way as the prior two games, being vulnerable at all times, but requiring you to reach them to land hits. The trouble is, the game very much dictates when you’re allowed to reach the bosses, which are otherwise protected from damage. Dishonourable mentions here include the final boss in Metallic Madness, which is protected by its spinning blades and is very stingy with its vulnerability windows, and Quartz Quadrant’s, which is functionally invincible and must be ground into submission by running on a conveyor belt in the boss arena while avoiding attacks, effectively turning the boss into an autoscroller. The worst offender, however, has to be the second boss, found in Collision Chaos. This is even less of a boss fight than Quartz Quadrant’s, instead taking the form of a pinball table that Sonic must reached the top of in order to smash Eggman, who all the while is firing small explosives downwards towards Sonic, pushing him backwards on contact but only being able to hurt him by forcing him into spike traps, which rarely happens. It’s a truly miserable experience and succeeding is largely down to luck of being able to avoid the explosives while bouncing from flipper to flipper. In short, pretty much all of CD’s bosses can be boiled down to gameplay experiences that aren’t difficult, but simply monotonous.

In my opinion, even the fan favourite Metal Sonic race that serves as Stardust Speedway’s boss doesn’t escape this curse, though it does have the saving grace of being cleared more quickly with skilful play. This pretty much just plays out as a third stage for the zone, with the gimmick being that you have to beat Metal Sonic to the end of the level while Eggman chases you with a laser that kills instantly on contact. Metal Sonic himself has two attacks that occur entirely based on his position to you when triggered. If he’s lagging behind, he’ll burst forward in an energised tackle, the V. Maximum Overdrive Attack. When leading, he’ll slow right down while electrifying his entire body in the hopes that Sonic’ll just run into him. You never directly engage with Metal Sonic and, once again, your main obstacle is the environment itself, being littered with spike traps and constructed in such a way that can kill momentum if you don’t react and jump in time to avoid the numerous quarter pipes on your path. Overall, Metal Sonic’s debut face-off is about as rote as the rest of the game’s bosses. Instead, it’s memorable for being a change in format to every other boss in the series up to this point and on the strength of Metal’s character design and presence itself, which is just as well, given this is the second of his paltry two appearances within gameplay, the first being to show up and kidnap Amy Rose at the start of Collision Chaos (you get to free her after besting Metal Sonic) – a bit baffling, given how he’s front and centre in all of the game’s promotional materials and on its box art.

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It's in Metal Sonic’s race, however, that we find the explanation for why Sonic CD has gone on to become rather a cult classic within the Sonic zeitgeist, which reminds us of why Naoto Ohshima is so important within the creation of Sonic in the first place. In the conception of Sonic, Yuji Naka was the engineer who coded and calculated the physics of momentum and acceleration that made Sonic the Hedgehog, the game, a landmark title in the gameplay department. Meanwhile, I believe the credit that belongs entirely to Ohshima is that of creating Sonic the Hedgehog, the hedgehog, and this really bears out in the presentation of Sonic CD.

When starting a new playthrough, Sonic CD swings for the fences pretty much immediately in terms of making an impression, with a series first for Sonic: a 90-second-long animated intro, courtesy of Studio Junio (subcontracted by Toei Animation, credited as the animation’s producer) and spearheaded by chief animator Hisashi Eguchi, who has also worked on the likes of Lupin III, Evangelion Neon Genesis and Naruto. You can read more about the history behind the intro and Eguchi’s work here, because a lot of it is way outside of the scope of what I’m writing about in this post, but what’s important for our purposes is that this intro’s really just rather fantastic. Showing Sonic’s journey to Never Lake (above which Eggman has chained Little Planet to a mountain bearing his own image, Rushmore style), the whole piece just oozes style, effortlessly demonstrating Sonic’s cool personality in both design and movement in a manner that’s codified how Sonic should be portrayed more than anything that has come before. All of this is happening while elevated by a vocal arrangement of 8-bit Sonic 2’s Green Hills Zone music titled “Sonic – You Can Do Anything”, produced by Masafumi Ogata, Casey Rankin and Keiko Utoku. “Nothing can survive the will to stay alive” is one of the hardest lyrics of all time and it comes from a goddamn Sonic game.

And this energy keeps up all the way through the game. Where Sonic 2’s zig was to refine the art style of Sonic 1 into something softer and slightly more grounded, Sonic CD’s zag instead sprints headlong in the other direction to embrace those 90s eccentricities that would later go on to influence vapourwave aesthetics. Each and every environment to be found on Little Planet is bursting with eclectic style, from Palmtree Panic’s polygonal palm leaves and terrain patterns to the upside-down rivers and canopies found in Collision Chaos and yet beyond to the titanic and incomprehensible machinery that looms large in the distance of Metallic Madness. But Sonic CD’s environmental design (brought to vibrant life by Hiroyuki Kawaguchi, Takumi Miyake, Masahiro Sanpei, Masato Nishimura and Hideaki Kurata) runs far deeper than the surface level in its brilliance – it takes the game’s time travel aspect and uses it as a stage upon which it blows up Sonic 1’s fairly subtle environmentalist themes to epic proportions.

In that first game, an understated narrative played out as Sonic’s adventure took him from the serene Green Hill Zone, untouched by human hands, to the corrosive and smothering Scrap Brain Zone, a dystopic industrial complex belching fiery smog into the skies above, passing through increasingly urbanised locales on the way. Granted, the theming was slightly compromised by the mid-development decision to change Labyrinth Zone from the second level of the game to its fourth (a decision that was absolutely a no-brainer from a difficulty design perspective), but it’s undeniably there. Sonic CD doesn’t just continue this theming, but elevates it by intertwining it with the game’s mechanics to brilliant effect in the art design of each stage’s past, present and future variants. The present can be considered to be the default and, for the most part, riffs on the stage tropes seen in Sonic 1 – lakesides, cities, water-logged ruins, etc. Meanwhile, travelling to the past will show these stages in a less developed light – Palmtree Panic and Collision Chaos take on a somewhat pre-historic aesthetic, while Stardust Speedway’s bustling city reverts to a deep green waterfront that’s a little more Greco-Roman in its aesthetic, and industrialised stages such as Wacky Workbench can be seen still under construction.

The two futures, however, are where things are at their most interesting with relation to the nature vs technology theming. In the bad futures, Eggman’s corrosive influence has twisted the landscape into something almost unrecognisable – natural areas are inhospitable, with dead plant life and waters that run a sickly purple with oil and waste. Even Eggman’s own constructions aren’t spared ruination, as the likes of the Quartz Quadrant mining facility have fallen to rust and disrepair. On the other side of the coin, the good futures present something far closer to a utopia in which nature and technology don’t just coexist, but harmonise and excel in symbiosis. Where Tidal Tempest transitioned from a Labyrinth Zone-esque temple in the present to what appears to be a long-abandoned sewage treatment plant in the bad future, the good future’s transformation is far more benign and arguably more radical, completely overhauling the area into some kind of futuristic aquarium crossed with botanical gardens. The water is the clearest out of any of the time zones, and plants are preserved in pristine condition within glass tubes throughout the background. Even Eggman’s final base of operations, Metallic Madness, has changed for the better, with sky visible once again over a fantastical city in the background, while birds and butterflies soar freely in the playable area, itself lush with potted plants.

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To me, the strength of this theming lies in its nuance. Lesser interpretations of such a narrative, even those within other areas of the Sonic franchise, such as the 1993 SatAM cartoon series, certainly present the adverse effects of unchecked industrialisation upon nature, but the machines themselves are always presented as sterile, cold and unaffected. Meanwhile, even current depictions of eco-modernism aesthetics focus squarely on the natural side of things, showing apartment blocks and highways covered in vegetation in a manner not too dissimilar to apocalyptic settings like The Last of Us or otherwise post-population settings such as Kirby and the Forgotten Land, where humanity has either been forced to cede its structures back to nature, or has simply abandoned them for new pastures. Either way, there’s little conception of the role technology plays in such hypotheticals. By contrast, Sonic CD’s answers that technology can be as ruinous to itself as to everything else, but that it can also be used to cultivate and enhance nature in ways that wouldn’t be possible otherwise, feel to me to be genuinely more-considered, profound and ahead of the game’s time. It almost feels a little silly to get so philosophical concerning a 1993 platformer about a fast hedgehog, but it’s this kind of vision that allows Sonic CD to stand tall as one of the best games in the Sonic pantheon as far as visual design goes.

As far as the more technical elements go, the game remains strong here too. Things largely follow the foundation laid by Sonic 1 (with Sonic even using a sprite set very similar to the one in that game), bolstered by the Mega CD’s colour capabilities facilitating softer shading and more diverse palettes. Kazuyuki Hoshino and Takumi Miyake bring us an even more animal-centric cast of badniks to bash than the previous two games, largely made up of insectoid and crustacean-inspired enemies. Even Yasushi Yamaguchi, last seen in the 16-bit Sonic 2 as the central graphical designer and creator of Tails, finds time to pitch in with the design of the special stages. Compared to Sonic 1 and 2, characters are a fair bit cutesier here, with a bigger emphasis on rounded shapes, but that absolutely fits the whimsical and trippy world that Sonic CD presents.

I’m pleased to confirm that Sonic CD’s immaculate sense of style also extends to its phenomenal soundtrack, brought to us courtesy of Naofumi Hataya and the previously-mentioned Masafumi Ogata, both returning from 8-bit Sonic 2. There’s an oft-cited adage within the Sonic community that, regardless of gameplay quality, you can always expect to find a good soundtrack in a Sonic game, and I think that CD is perhaps the first title to be truly emblematic of that. Not that the prior soundtracks, particularly those by Masato Nakamura for the first two Mega Drive games, were lacking, but Sonic CD represents a huge leap forward for the series in terms of its music. While the technology of the Mega CD may have only provided modest graphical gains, the uplift in audio was revolutionary, allowing for the use of studio quality recordings rather than synthesised tracks transcribed from demo tapes, as was the process for Sonic 1 and 2 (and would continue to be so for the remaining games on the Mega Drive).

Frankly, the results are phenomenal. In terms of application, the soundtrack nails theming just as well as the graphics do, though the focus in this area of presentation is more on the time travel aspect than environmentalist subtext. Present is once again the default here - most similar to the music of the New Jack Swing genre, these tracks feature a lot of bombastic brass, classy piano and persistent synth percussion, as well as fantastic use of sampling (a series-first for Sonic), and generally sit in the 120-140bpm range, with a couple of outliers on either side of that. In the bad future mixes, the tempo raises a little and the sampling and percussion develop a greater presence as techno and electronic elements are added into the mix, all in service of a more frantic and strained vibe. By contrast, the good future mixes generally dial the tempo back a bit and favour the keyboard (now emulating chimes and xylophones rather than strictly keeping to the piano) and brass elements of the original tracks, supplementing them with moderate amounts of saxophone to create an optimistic and serene atmosphere). Finally, the past mixes are all rendered at the system level in PCM (pulse-code modulation) format, a la the Mega Drive games. The instrumentation in these tracks is generally ambiguous, but a throughline of wind instruments and somewhat more archaic drumbeats (with frequent tom drum usage) is definitely present. Whether the decision was made on artistic merit or out of pragmatism regarding system memory is a debate that I don’t think has definitively been settled, but the past tracks have a brilliant identity all their own as a result.

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Frankly, the greater fidelity in sound quality and even more avant-garde style than the previous games make it hard for me to really critique Sonic CD’s soundtrack in a technical sense, since I lack the musical knowledge and vocabulary to articulate my enjoyment in any meaningful way, but I can say with confidence that it’s up there as one of the series’ very best. Picking a favourite from each era, my highlights this time around are Collision Chaos Past, for its catchy pan flutes and orchestra hits, Quartz Quadrant Present, for its multiple tempo changes and sonorous piano medley, Stardust Speedway Bad Future, for its near constant but ever-changing samples and intermittent police sirens, and Metallic Madness Good Future, for so brilliantly reinterpreting the originally menacing composition into something that’d normally be entirely unexpected for a final level theme. Outside of those, the final boss theme is appropriately dramatic and, while I’ve already shouted out the game’s opening theme, its credits theme, Cosmic Eternity ~ Believe in Yourself, is absolutely worthy of praise also. Honestly, I’d say this is one of those soundtracks where you can pick pretty much any track and be met with a pleasant listening experience.

But that’s not all, as Sonic CD is the gift that keeps on giving. During the localisation process, some moron at SEGA of America decided that the original soundtrack was too much like club music and wouldn’t be entertaining enough for American audiences. Whoever had that take was dumb and wrong, but I will forgive them because it resulted in a whole other soundtrack for the American release of the game (PAL regions kept the original Japanese soundtrack). Composed by in-house SEGA musicians Spencer Nilsen and David Young, with performances by Brad Kaiser, Erik Frykman, Bobby Vega, Armando Peraza and jazz trio -Pastiche- (Sandy Cressman, Jenny Meltzer and Becky West), I think the American soundtrack might best be described as more atmospheric than its Japanese counterpart. The mission here seems to have been to produce something more reflective of the imagery seen within the game’s locales rather than exploring the themes of time travel. For example, the green shores of Palmtree Panic are accompanied by a bright sax lead and lots of tom drums, while the industrial locale of Quartz Quadrant places heavy emphasis on its electric guitar shreds.

That’s not to say that the individual mixes don’t match the mood of each time period, simply that the differences are perhaps more subtle, with instrumentation generally being consistent between each time zone. That, and I find that the melodies themselves are better in the moment than after the fact, as most of them don’t quite worm into the ears the same way that the Japanese tracks do, in part due to how the tracks are structured to build in progressive sections of instruments layering on top of one another, rather than there being a clear melody anchoring each song. This is all great if that’s your bag, I just happen to derive the more enjoyment from the original music. With that said, there are some tunes that I do prefer to hear the US versions of, such as Tidal Tempest and Wacky Workbench, while others, like Stardust Speedway and Metallic Madness, are more of a toss-up with each as good as the other in my mind. Unfortunately, this soundtrack is stuck with the now-incongruent past themes from the Japanese version of the soundtrack, given that replacing these PCM compositions would be more taxing than simply swapping out the CD audio files, so the US version loses points on the cohesion front. Also worth noting is that, rather than having separate intro and ending themes, the US soundtrack opts to give us two different versions of its vocal theme, Sonic Boom. The intro version is pretty well-loved and was probably my first exposure to Sonic CD as a whole, but I’m partial to the ending version myself, given its lower tempo and guitar strumming towards the end. So, while the US soundtrack by and large isn’t my thing, it’s absolutely worth listening to, and modern rereleases graciously cater to both audiences with an option to choose your preferred soundtrack.

And that’s Sonic CD, one of the sequels of all time. A quirky, oftentimes scattered and frustrating game, albeit one wrapped in the best presentations values this series had yet seen at the time of its release. It’s a game that very much needs to be met on its own terms – you can’t play it the way you would play Sonic 1 or 2 and expect to have a good time. Heck, you can’t guarantee enjoyment even by playing it the way it expects you to, but it’s nonetheless an interesting look at the direction Sonic could’ve gone in, not to mention the game where it all began for Amy Rose and Metal Sonic, two future mainstays of the series. The game’s saving grace is most certainly that it’s an unfiltered blast of Naoto Ohshima’s conception of the Sonic world directly onto your eyeballs, backed by tunes that are as timeless and unmistakable now as I’m sure they must’ve been back in the day. It’s a bit of a shame that Ohshima didn’t take another shot at directing after Sonic CD, honestly. His role in Sonic reverted back to being a designer in future titles and, after a couple of non-Sonic director credits with NiGHTS Into Dreams and Burning Rangers (both Sonic Team-developed titles for the SEGA Saturn), he’d left SEGA completely by the turn of the millennium. Surely if he were to take another crack at a Sonic game in, oh, let’s say 2023, he’d be able to refine the weaknesses of this one and give us a truly good Sonic game without caveats. Ah well, we can but dream…

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Addendum: Miracle on 93rd Street

Spoiler

Anyone following this thread in real time will be keenly aware that this one took me a while. There are a few reasons for that. Partly, it was because I was struggling to articulate my criticisms of Sonic CD in a way that read well (my initial writings on Sonic CD’s clunky level design were clunky, go figure), though partly it’s just because I’m really good at procrastinating. The thing I want to highlight, however, is that this is the first time in this series that I’ve had to do multiple playthroughs of a game to really crystallise my thoughts on it. Part of this was due to the two approaches to getting the good ending that I mentioned in the main post, but the bigger factor here was that my initial playthrough used a mod that improves Sonic CD to the point that I had to ask myself whether my experience with it really fell within the purview of critiquing the original game.

A bit of context first though. The Retro Engine remakes that I’ve been referring to in this series up until now didn’t actually start with Sonic 1 in 2013, but Sonic CD in 2011. I don’t know the exact reason for this – perhaps it was because rereleases of Sonic CD were less frequent than the “core” Mega Drive trilogy games, with the last one having been as part of Sonic Gems Collection for the sixth generation of consoles (GameCube, PS2, Xbox); perhaps it was in an effort of synergistic branding given that 2012’s Sonic 4: Episode II would end up as a narrative follow-up to this game – whatever the case, Sonic CD was the pitch that kickstarted perhaps the best 1:1 remakes within the medium (barring some minor graphical issues on mobile devices). Another reason why CD is a bit of an oddity when it comes to the remakes is that its initial release was on PC and consoles as well as mobile devices, simultaneously releasing on Steam, the PS3 and Xbox 360 digital storefronts and even hitting the Ouya just over a year after that released (even after the mobile exclusive release of the Sonic 1 remake).

I can’t speak to the other releases of this remake, but the Steam port (handled by Blit Software, as were all the other non-mobile versions) has always been a little naff compared to the later remakes, introducing some minor bugs that scuff the release while also lacking features that would be standard in the Sonic 1 and 2 remakes (such as backports of features from Sonic 3 & Knuckles, most notably Knuckles himself). Despite all of this, Sonic CD modding didn’t really take off until its decompilation started being circulated online, along with the Sonic 1 and 2 decomps that would be used as the basis for Sonic 1 Forever and Sonic 2 Absolute. For whatever reason, perhaps because Sonic CD at least already existed on PC, Team Forever hasn’t given any attention towards CD so far. As such, this time I’ll be talking about Sonic CD: Miracle Edition.

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Art by MeloSoni12

Brought to us by way too many people for me to list here, but chief among those peter4432, Miracle Edition is a mix of pre-existing mods and new ideas, with a mission statement of bringing the 2011 version of the game in line with its Sonic 1 and 2 brethren, while also adding a slew features unique to CD. It’s not necessarily as content-rich as Sonic 1 Forever and Sonic 2 Absolute, but I’d argue that a lot of what those creations provide are bonuses, secondary to getting the best versions of those games onto PC in the first place. As well as retaining the initial Retro Engine upgrades to Sonic CD (widescreen aspect ratio, the Sonic 2 spindash, a time attack mode, playable Tails and the option to choose between the Japanese and US soundtracks, with other quality of life tweaks and bonuses besides), Miracle Edition introduces a litany of new options, such as Sonic Mania’s now iconic Drop Dash, Sonic 3 & Knuckles’ Insta-Shield and elemental shield monitors, and sprite options, including the smooth rotation that would become standard from the Sonic 1 remake onwards. Such is the attention to detail in this project that there’s even an option to restore the pre-title screen fade-in colour to the original Mega CD black, having been changed to a dark blue in the remake.

But, while certainly appreciated, this stuff is small potatoes. There are two features in particular that by themselves allow Miracle Edition to stand undisputed as the definitive way to play Sonic CD, even including the official releases. The first of these is an extremely granular soundtrack editor. While the official release allows for a binary choice between either the JP or US soundtracks wholesale, Miracle Edition goes above and beyond, allowing not only a choice of music on a per-zone basis, but on a per-era basis, as well as allowing custom choices for specific music instances such as menus and the race with Metal Sonic.

On top of all this, Miracle Edition even includes remastered versions of the past themes using high quality samples and some bonus tracks. A lot of these exist as options for various menus within the game, and are taken from the game’s two OST album releases, Sonic the Hedgehog Remix (JP) and Sonic Boom (US), but there are a few choice selections here too, namely two remixes of the US version of Stardust Speedway – the bad future track that shows up as bonus music in Sonic Generations and a separately-released arrangement of the present theme, both by Jun Senoue and Cash Cash. As if that wasn’t enough, the mod really seals the deal with an option for US-styled past themes, giving fans of that soundtrack a complete experience after 30 years of incongruity. The arrangements in question were created as an artistic experiment by King Meteor back in 2020 and, despite seeming not to use the same PCM format as the original JP past themes, do capture their primordial vibe while paying tribute to the Nilsen and Young compositions, fitting perfectly alongside them.

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Already, the mod makes a very compelling case for the definitive Sonic CD experience, given the unparalleled suite of options it provides on all fronts, but I’ve saved the best feature for last. In addition to everything else the mod already does to improve the game; the real showpiece of Miracle Edition is its overhauled time travel system. In concept, it makes three very simple changes. The first of these is adjusting how time travel is initiated – instead of this being automatic upon reaching the required speed after passing a time warp plate, the overhauled system requires that the player execute a spindash or peelout in order to enter the time travel state. Second, the time required to sustain time travel speed is greatly reduced. As mentioned in the main writeup, this increased from around three seconds in the 1993 release to around five in the 2011 release – this is a lot more drastic of an increase than it reads, as those two extra seconds are often all that’s required for Sonic to come crashing to a halt against some rogue terrain, losing his ability to time travel. Finally, the transition between time periods is almost instantaneous, cutting out the interstitial animation in favour of a white flash just a second after Sonic himself has disappeared in a trail of flames, Back to the Future style – this was, in fact, Ohshima’s original vision for how time travel would work in the game.

Taken together, the impact these changes have is profound. Unintentionally initiating time travel is pretty much no longer an issue, as it only ever happens by human error. As a knock-on effect, the player is now able to choose the terrain they use for initiating time travel and, as a result, only ends up in the time period that they actually want to travel to, made even more convenient by the shortened period from initiating time travel to actually warping. This is all done without breaking the gameplay loop of Sonic CD, since exploring levels for time warp plates and robot generators is still required to excel. The instant transition from one era to another is just the icing on the cake, cutting wait time during gameplay to an absolute minimum, just enough for the player to mentally prepare for a new level layout, and then back into the action with no loss of momentum.

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As one last bonus, Miracle Edition offers an additional reward for collecting all the Time Stones – Miracle Sonic, a fan-made form originally created by artist Pixy-pie. Functionally, Miracle Sonic does all the things that Super Sonic does, providing invincibility and a dramatic boost to Sonic’s speed and jump height, but with one specific wrinkle. By holding a spindash or a peelout, Miracle Sonic can travel into the past or future respectively. Since grabbing all the Time Stones automatically trashes all of the generators in the past anyway, this reward is more a novelty than anything else, but being able to access any part of a level in your preferred era at will gives new incentive for exploring levels, especially in a game as varied in its aesthetics as this one.

And this is why I had to grapple with whether I could really hold up my time with Miracle Edition as a valid point of reference for critiquing Sonic CD. To be blunt, the answer is no, I can’t. I don’t think I’m being hyperbolic when I say that these simple tweaks to the time travel system raise Sonic CD from being a C-tier game to being a B-tier one. At the same time, it doesn’t fix everything, or even much of anything else as far as gameplay is concerned. While its impact on time travel is now greatly ameliorated, the often schizophrenic and at times obstructive level design still exists, and can still throw the player into sequences of various bumpers, leaving only dead air as they wait for Sonic’s feet to hit solid ground again. Furthermore, the bosses still blow chunks, even if Miracle Sonic’s invincibility can mitigate a lot of tedium by allowing you to brute force most of the bosses without risk of dying. Thing is, I’m fine with all of this. If Miracle Edition meaningfully changed the level design or bosses, it’d be straying from the foundation of the original game, even if that were in pursuit of a more enjoyable experience. I’m also unsure that the time travel gimmick would be as effective a part of the gameplay loop when removed from Sonic CD’s unique and unconventional level design, as much grief as that level design causes me.

What Sonic CD: Miracle Edition represents then, is an idealised version of Sonic CD. A version of the game that is conscious of the original’s warts, but that also appreciates that those warts are part of the identity, choosing to retain them as it instead focuses on polishing the diamond in the rough. While not the best point of reference for a critical discussion on the original game, this is absolutely one I can recommend to those who want to experience Sonic CD and have the best possible time while doing so, and can see myself returning to it in the future, which is more than I feel towards base Sonic CD. Mission accomplished, I’d say.

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The one big mark against this mod then is the barrier to accessibility compared to the previous two mods I’ve looked at. With those, setup was as easy as you’d like, simply requiring you to drop your own .apk files from the Android versions of the games into their respective batch files to produce an easy-to-use .exe. With Sonic CD: Miracle Edition, the complexity of setup varies depending on what version of the game you’re using as a base. In order to avoid enabling piracy, Miracle Edition requires that players provide their own data file from their copy of Sonic CD. This isn’t much of an ask if you own the 2011 release of Sonic CD, since this file is very easily accessible by navigating to the game’s folder within your Steam library using your file explorer. You do need to download the game’s decompilation, as well as a mod loader and a couple of pre-requisites, but these are all fairly straightforward to download and execute.

Where things become complicated, however, is if your copy of Sonic CD exists as a part of Sonic Origins (yes, it does always come back to that this game). Rather than being accessible within Origins’ Steam library, the data files for the games within the collection instead need to be extracted from other files using separately downloaded tools. An extra step, but nothing dramatic, right? Sure…if you don’t own the Origins Plus DLC. If you want to use Amy and Knuckles in Sonic CD: Miracle Edition, you are pretty much required to compile your own build of the decompilation, which involves downloading a coding environment and related dependencies (which can total up to gigabytes worth of data) before entering a series of specific commands that produces a decompilation that easily breaks if you so much as name the file directory wrong. All this for the sake of checking a single flag that enables the use of two characters.

I understand that the folks behind the mod didn’t want to poke the SEGA bear, but I find these measures to be unreasonable. One of the things that the Sonic fandom is known for is its incredibly talented modding and hacking community and the brilliant, easy-to-use tools it has created. This does little to stop those who want to access such content illegally, as they will find and circulated the required files regardless, but does a lot to stop many others who do legally own Origins Plus and want to experience that content in a package that isn’t riddled with problems (I promise, I will give this its own writeup, sooner rather than later). It doesn’t affect the quality of the mod itself, but I do think it’s important to know going in, especially with the 2011 release having been delisted by SEGA, making the simplest method of setup no longer legally available. My advice would be to skip the Origins Plus content and just go through whatever the simplest setup method is that’s available to you. It feels a little deflating to end such a glowing writeup of this mod with a complaint about such a frustrating decision, but Sonic CD already has its fair share of them, so what’s one more on the pile?

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Next instalment: Sonic Chaos (SEGA Master System and Game Gear, 1993)

Edited by AlexArtsHere
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1 hour ago, AlexArtsHere said:

It almost feels a little silly to get so philosophical concerning a 1993 platformer about a fast hedgehog, but

yet somehow you pulled it off. masterful post

Edited by Integrity
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