Sonic the Hedgehog (Sega Genesis)

Hello once again, dear readers! Baron Samedi here, and I ve just stolen the Wayback machine from Peabody and Sherman. What are they gonna do, complain? They re bound and gagged! AHAHAHAHA!!!!! Anyway, my purpose in, er... Borrowing the Wayback machine is to take you way back to a golden age... In video gaming. 1991. The Genesis was on the market and beginning to catch on, and soon we would see a 16-bit entrant from Nintendo called the Super NES. We re going back in time witness - and possibly assist - a man named Yuji Naka in creating a character who will help Sega finally topple the goliath Nintendo empire. Step inside...

Where are we now? We re moving... I guess we re in Mr. Naka s car trunk. I hear a screeching sound, and someone up front is now cursing out the hedgehog, wishing they would move faster. Now he s mumbling to himself about the video game character he s trying to come up with. He s got one... A carpenter! No, its been done. An elf!... No, also been done. Sounds like I have to inspire the poor guy. Is there a jack in here? Yes... The trunk pops open as the car grinds to a halt. And Yuji is coming back here to see what the problem is... Hey Mr. Naka, why don t you use the h... I choke on the rest of what I was going to say as Mr. Naka quickly hits me with a baseball bat, chokes me with a bungee cord and leaves me for dead right in the middle of the road. As I come to and step back through the Wayback machine, I come to a conclusion: God obviously had no plans for me to be involved in the creation of Sonic the Hedgehog.

That s okay. At least his creation exists, and that s what s important. Sonic did exactly what Sega wanted him to do, and that was claim video game industry dominance from Nintendo, even if it was only for a short time. These days, Sonic is actually appearing on Nintendo consoles. Remakes of both Sonic Adventure games have been released for the Gamecube, and the Game Boy Advance has two original Sonic games, Sonic Advance and Sonic Advance 2. There s also a new Sonic game in production for all three of today s major consoles. This review isn t about any of them. No, this review is taking us back to when Sega was still a first-party company, creating games to serve only on whatever ill-fated console it happened to be catering to at the time. This review is taking us back to the very first, original, Genesis-exclusive, Sonic the Hedgehog game.

For those of you who have been on Mars for the last 12 years and don t know who Sonic the Hedgehog is, let me clue you in. He s only been one of video gamedom s most popular and beloved characters. He s had two animated shows based on him (with a third due out in fall), a series of comic books, and a Macy s Thanksgiving Day balloon. As for the character, he s probably the only marsupial on the planet capable of outrunning The Flash. He s totally neked, except for a pair of red and white sneakers on his feet, which give him his sound barrier-bursting speed. He had one of the most brilliant 16-bit careers of the era, but once 128-bit came about, he began to flounder. Maybe it s time for me to go through Wayback again and kill Yuji Naka to make sure those atrocities never surface... Oh crap... Peabody and Sherman chewed their way through my binding and were ready for me this time... Oh crap... They have a shotgun... If I don t come back, avenge my death...

Back to the subject now. In the very first Sonic the Hedgehog, everything was so simplified. There were no Tails, no Amy, none of those torturous emerald search levels which made Sonic Adventure 2 such a pain, and Dr. Eggman had an Americanized (and much cooler, in my own humble opinion) name, Dr. Robotnik. Back then, the game was as absolute bare-bones as Sonic could get. It s just Sonic and Dr. Robotnik this time. Dr. Robotnik s plans back then simply involved snatching defensless, innocent animals out of the wilderness and turning them into super killer indestructable robots of death. Now enter Sonic, who is playing the animal rights activist in this production. Like any good animal rights activist, Sonic is appalled at what Robotnik is doing to these cute little creatures. Unlike most animal rights activists, however, Sonic decides to take decisive action beyond just lobbying Congress. Out he goes to free the animals, with nothing but his power sneakers and a spikey haircut.

Robotnik, being a mad scientist, doesn t make it too easy. He s littered six zones with his super killer indestructable robots of death. Furthermore, each zones is also littered with various treacherous obstacles, most of which are capable of slowing Sonic s blazing progress, if not stopping him altogether. However, these obstacles all do a lot in showing off the game s brilliant level design. The guys at Sega sure thought up some clever ways to knock off hedgehogs. Fortunately, Sonic can avert death by picking up power rings, which are all over the place. As long as Sonic is holding at least one of these sparkly gold rings, he ll always be able to absorb one extra hit before death. If he gets hit while carrying rings, the rings all fly out in a shiny shower for you to collect before they all disappear. At the end of every level, the number of rings Sonic collected is added to the total score. Even better, if you collect 100 rings, you get an extra life. The insurance policy, by the way, doesn t cover Sonic in the cases of accidentally falling into a bottomless pit or being crushed.

If you have 50 rings when you reach the end of whatever act you re in, you have a chance to jump inside of a giant gold ring, which thrusts Sonic into the uber-cool bonus stage. In the bonus stages, you guide Sonic through a rotating maze, gathering rings which will earn you extra lives and continues if you gather enough by the time you win or lose. The real object of the bonus stages, however, is to guide Sonic to the center of the maze, break through a few legions of diamonds, and grab one of the six chaos emeralds (yes, I said six. There are only six in this game.) If you manage to grab all six emeralds, you get to see a slightly different ending. It s a shame the emeralds don t warrant grabbing for something other than that reason, though - Super Sonic wouldn t show until the next game.

As for the zones themselves, there are six, each of them are divided into three acts. You start out in the Green Hill Zone, which is a nice little intro to what you re in for along the line. After that, you blast through the Marble Zone, which may be the only linear zone Sonic ever zipped through. Every other zone in the game has nonlinear routes, and often you can jump to one route from another with no difficulty, but not in Marble Zone. The two most fun zones are probably the Star Light Zone, a metallic-looking zone suspended over a bottomless pit, and the Spring Yard Zone, a zone littered with so many springs, you ll often find youself backtracking as much as you are progressing. The most annoying zone is easily the Labyrinth Zone, which has an overexcess of water - water which hampers Sonic s movement, and water in which he WILL drown if not fed air bubbles at regular intervals. If you manage to get Sonic onto a piece of uninterrupted flatlands going fast enough, Sonic will run until he hits a wall or obstacle or whatever. He ll glide over pits, and the screen will barely be able to keep up with him. At the end of every zone, Dr. Robotnik awaits you with a new robot machine with which to bring the pain. Sonic s boss battles are really nothing to fret over. All of them are moderately difficult at the hardest, and all the machines take about eight hits before going into the scrap bin. After the battle, Sonic frees a bunch of animals from an animal trap.

As for Sonic, he isn t quite the marvelous marsupial he s become in the last console generation. All he can do right now is run, jump, and curl into a ball. He beats his enemies the old-fashioned platform way, by jumping on top of them. And he has a variety of power-ups to grab, including sneakers which make him run even faster than usual, and a group of stars which surround him and make him invincible. There s also a bubble shield which lets him absorb an extra shot before losing his rings, but there s nothing spectacular.

If you stop moving long enough to admire the scenery, you ll see some of the nicest imagery the Genesis has to offer. While most of the enemies, including Dr. Robotnik, don t have a whole lot to say with their limbs, Sonic is a fluid thing when he first starts running. If he keeps going, his legs become a blur, and if you look close enough, you can even see his spikes flapping in the breeze. The levels and backgrounds all splurge with bright and appropriate colors, and animation lines are nonexistant. As for the cute little forest creatures Sonic is fighting to free, you have no soul if you don t think they re cute enough to be worth fighting for.

I d love to ramble a few short lines about how the music is just your typical platforming fare, but your typical platforming fare just isn t this memorable. each zone is as appropriately scored as it is colored. The music in Green Hill Zone is catchy and upbeat, the music in Marble Zone is a bit slower and more sinister-sounding than everything else, the music in Spring Yard Zone is, well, springy, and the sounds of the springs in the zone almost sound like part of the score. Very nice. The title screen track is used whenever Sonic grabs the invincibility power-up, and the music goes faster whenever Sonic grabs the power sneaker power-up. Nor are the sounds your typical platform fare, and that, friends, is an accomplishment. Sonic has a loopy-sounding jump, and rings make ringy collection sounds upon being collected. The power-ups come in the forms of moniters which must be pounced on in order to be collected, and they make a nice pop sound when collected. Sonic the Hedgehog has some of the finest 16-bit sounds I ve ever heard.

The controls for Sonic the Hedgehog couldn t be simpler. The d-pad and one button will do everything. Sonic can leap, roll, and look up or down (by ducking.) Since the game is based on speed, though, you ll have a bit of trouble getting Sonic to go up steep hills if he s not going fast enough. Sonic, you see, doesn t just break into his fastest stride when he starts running. He starts off a bit slow, and picks up speed as he goes along without interruption. It may sound annoying, but it s actually very innovative, and it does its job for the game perfectly.

No Tails, no Knuckles, no weird abilities granted by shields, but the original Sonic the Hedgehog has aged gracefully. In fact, compared to the 3d slop Yuji Naka s been churning out ever since the advent of 128-bit, the old 2d Sonic games are looking and playing better than ever. You may explore every nook and cranny of every zone on your first playthrough, but it ll still never get old.

graphics-9.3
audio-10
gameplay-10
replay-10
overall-9.9