Twenty-odd years ago, many a Saturday morning would be spent playing Sonic. Or Sonic 2. Or Sonic 3. And today, a Saturday, I played and completed 3D Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on the Nintendo 3DS. It was awesome. Like Gunstar Heroes and the first 3D Sonic the Hedgehog, the 3D here is mostly subtle. The original parallax layers are now given actual depth, and although this makes it feel more like a pop-up diorama than properly 3D it still makes …
Um, yeah. So I now own 12 (different) copies of the original Sonic the Hedgehog game. And that doesn’t even include the Master System and Game Gear versions – just the Megadrive one, and it’s ports. This is the only one in 3D though. OK, so it’s not “as 3D” as 3D Space Harrier. This is a gentler, more incidental 3D, with all the layers of fore- and background parallax now on their own 3D plane. You know what? It …
I was expecting to be disappointed. After all, how could I be anything but? Although if you’re set up to be disappointed and your low expectations are pretty much met, how could you actually be disappointed? Deep. Things started out surprisingly well. Classic Sonic’s first few levels were pretty good, actually, even if they did still feel like the physics were on the wonk. Even Modern Sonic’s levels were bearable for a while, but as the game progressed things just …
There was a demo for this a few months ago. It wasn’t very good. It was “classic” Sonic in a re-imagined Green Hill Zone, ruined by awful physics, jerky scrolling and not being able to see anything as the graphics were too “busy”. Oh, and Sonic was about one tenth the size he should have been in relation to all the other objects and baddies. This demo improves on the previous one greatly, by fixing much was wrong with the physics (although …
With all the Chaos Emeralds, of course. Only lost a couple of lives (Scrap Brain Zone 2 *shakes fist*) but somehow didn’t collect many along the way. I suppose it’s just because I didn’t bother trying for them, and after getting the Chaos Emeralds, didn’t bother with collecting many rings either. The end of game boss is laughably easy these days. I remember him being nails back in the day, but Sonic 2 and Sonic 3 both have much harder …
T’other day I found myself in HMV and happened upon Sonic Classics Collection (Sonic 1-3 and Sonic & Knuckles) for the DS. I’d heard about it ages ago, but don’t remember it actually coming out. As is the way with Sonic games of old (and sadly, often of new), I had to buy it. So I did! And it’s the most faithful version of Sonic I’ve played on a handheld. OK, so it seems the screen resolution is slightly too …
Bought this earlier in the week. Well, it was rude not to, wasn’t it? I already own it for practically every other format it has ever come out on, so I sort of had to. It’s actually my least-played 16-bit Sonic game. That’s probably down to it being the last released though, coupled with the fact I usually played it locked-on to Sonic 3. It’s still excellent, however, but does feel a little short without Sonic 3 in there. It’s …
It would appear that my upgraded water bike thing (that’d be “jetski” then) still isn’t nearly fast enough to beat Johnny the Torpedosharkrobot for the remaining Chaos Emeralds. So, I won’t be getting them any time soon then.
Phew! It’s about time I completed another game. Haven’t completed one in weeks! So there was just one more set of levels (well, aside from repeating a few hidden ones to pick up items I’d seem previously but it wouldn’t let me collect) – the pirate’s base in the old ruins. It was pretty easy, and the face-off with Captain Whisker and Johnny was alarmingly simple. Of course, there was a reall boss after that – a giant robot thing …
After complaining about the backtracking and repeating levels thing on this game in ugvm, I got a reply saying that you don’t need to redo levels so much, if you explore the map and find hidden islands, and do those instead. So, armed with that advice, I set about finding hidden islands, which did indeed provide a larger quantity of Material needed to build things (in this case, a radio tower) than the proper “story” levels. I had to redo …
I have come across a major, irritating, and almost game-breaking problem with this game today. I couldn’t progress yesterday as I needed to build a new boat. But I couldn’t build a new boat as I didn’t have enough of the required Material. The solution? Play levels I’d already played before. Again. And again. Until I’d collected enough to carry on. How annoying! Then I had to race a shark on sea bikes, and got a Chaos Emerald for my …
It was only fairly recently that I completed this for the Wii. So why get it for the 360 as well? Because it’s Sonic, of course! (NB: Rule of “It’s Sonic, of course!” does not apply to Sonic Heroes, Sonic and the Secret Rings or Sonic the Hedgehog 3D) So I’ve managed to complete Chemical Plant Zone, having nabbed all the Chaos Emeralds before the end of Chemical Plant 1. It really helps not having picked Tails to accompany me. …
Picked up the final Chaos Emerald on the first Marble Garden level, and then went on to complete the game! I only died once, and annoyingly it was a completely avoidable crusher on the very last level. How irritating!
I actually bought this on the Wii’s Virtual Console on Friday when it was released, but apart from a very brief play, I didn’t really get into it right away. Today, though, I made a proper start on it (which involved deleting my saved state data, as the display was shaking horrifically, in the same way it does with Kid Chameleon, but it’s OK now), and by the end of the second act of Hydrocity Zone I’d already managed 6 …
No, not the awful recent 3D “masterpiece” that I refuse to buy, but the original Megadrive version, available today on XBLA. Yes. I already have this game twelventyzillion times. Yes, I have completed it on the Wii since Christmas. Yes. I did buy it. Again. But it is lovely, see? And this version lets you save your game whenever you want! And there are leaderboards! So it was worth it, yes? Of course it was. Anyway. I’m up to Spring …
