Entry 3- Sonic 2 Review

     Welcome back to Gamer Goodybag my fellow nerds, hope everyone is doing well and thank you for returning for returning for the newest entry. My preamble will not be as long as the previous posts do not worry, I just want to say if anyone here has played any of the games I reviewed and want to offer their opinions of if they enjoyed them or not, feel free to leave a comment down below I love hearing stories about these kinds of things. Alright, let's not waste any time and jump straight into today's topic. Sonic 2 for Sega Genesis released in 1992.

    

      Despite being born in 1999, I had a lot of fond memories playing many video games that were before my time due to hand me downs from family and neighbors, as well as playing rereleases of many games before that era on newer consoles at the time. Regardless if you are a regular or casual gamer,  chances are you have played at least one Sonic game in your life. I fell in love with the Sonic the Hedgehog series at the age of 4 playing the games on my grandmother's PlayStation 2, Specifically the Sonic Mega Collection which featured every Sonic game from the Sega Genesis on it. Ever since then I have been a huge fan of the blue blur and try to play any new game of his that comes out when it does. While not every single game in the franchise is a winner, I am more than willing to defend the series as a genuinely great one that is an important part of gaming history. While all of the Genesis titles are fantastic games, I will be going with Sonic 2 as it is often considered the best game by majority of the fanbase. Do these claims hold up accurately, or is it nostalgia based bias? Let's dive on in and find out.

    If you have not played this game before here is a rundown: You play as Sonic the Hedgehog along with his little fox buddy named Miles "Tails" Prower. Your goal is to help rescue the cute woodland creatures from the evil Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik. The story is simple but for a game like this it does not need to be complicated at all. The main goal is to run from Point A to Point B on 21 2D side scrolling stage before time runs out and without losing lives. The levels are relatively short usually lasting less than 5 minutes and they are divided into two acts for ten zones with a boss fight at the end of each second act. Along the way there are 7 colorful gems called the Chaos Emeralds that you want to collect before finishing the game for the best possible ending. In order to get the emeralds you need to collect 50 rings ( which also double as Sonic's life system) and pass a checkpoint to enter a pseudo 3D bonus stage where you must race to collect more rings and survive to get the emerald. Get all 7 and you get to be Super Sonic, Sonic's most powerful form, and unlock the best ending.                                                 

     Let's look at the concept of the game compared to the first game, The original Sonic game was extremely popular since its release in 1991 and became a title that was so synonymous with the Sega Genesis it was packed in with every console from thereon out. While the development of the first game was solely done in Japan, the second game was a joint venture between Sega of Japan and Sega USA, due to Sonic being very popular here in the United States. The co-creators would fly back and forth between Japan and California over a nine month period, longer than it took to make the first game, and despite cultural differences between the two teams, they were still able to release the game on time with huge marketing campaigns and an overall more than successful experience. The game itself has many of the positive aspects that came from the first game, but what really made this game better was that it was longer and more fleshed out due to the longer development time. There were more levels this time around and the gameplay was much faster now. The fun about the Sonic games is going fast through all these stages with occasional puzzle solving thrown in there and Sonic 2 definitely delivers on this.

    The gameplay from the first game was not bad at all, but compared to Sonic 2, it was much more slow and had more parts that were focused on waiting to move to avoid falling off of ledges, As well as higher difficulty level. Thanks to Tails being your player 2 You now have extra chances to finish the stage whether he is controlled by the CPU, or by a human player 2, which also makes the game multiplayer and more fun for people to play together. The controls are also very easy to pick up as you just have the Directional buttons and 3 buttons for jumping, but Sonic's new Spin Dash move makes the game even faster as by holding down on the Directional buttons and pressing the jump button fast, he will roll into a ball at the speed of sound and blast through the stage. As a kid it was always fun to watch this happen  and even nowadays you do get a sense of adrenaline when you manage to roll through enemies and break through scenery.

    The music and graphics department are some of the game's strongest features. Sonic has always been known for its iconic level designs ranging from bright colorful islands, to underwater temples, to industrial factories, to the flashy neon casino lighting, to haunted houses, and of course the robotic space stations in the sky. Sonic 2 features many of the most iconic zones in the series such as Emerald Hill Zone, Chemical Plant Zone, Casino Night Zone, Wing Fortress and many more. There were actually a few cut levels in the various prototypes of the game, which I highly recommend looking up if you are interested the game has so much cut content its amazing how different it was. These levels are all accompanied by incredible soundtracks that fit each level perfectly and are just a blast to listen to even when the game's off. Chemical Plant Zone specifically has become a staple song in the Sonic franchise even to this day, being one of my personal favorite songs in any video game. To put it simply, Yasushi Yamaguchi and Masato Nakamura both truly hit it out of the park designing and composing for this game.

    So overall, despite my nostalgia with this game, what are my overall final thoughts? Well obviously this game is a classic and even if I did not grow up with it, I would still recommend this game to any platformer fans. The characters are fun and lovable, the artwork is beautiful, the music slaps, and while its not a terribly long game (around 2 to 3 hours) There is so much fun to be had and even when the game is over, there is replayibility in going back and trying to catch all 7 Chaos Emeralds for the best ending possible. If I do have any issues with the game its mainly due to the fact that originally there was no save feature for the game as sonic 3 would be the first game to implement this. So if you lose all your lives, you are starting over at the very beginning. Because of this most people as kids could only get so far into it. There was however a password system that helped bypass this, but this game came out before the internet so this was not easily accessed knowledge before then. Nowadays the game has been rereleased with save features on modern systems so this is not a terribly common problem anymore, more so if you are playing on the classic hardware. The final boss also is very annoying due to the fact that there are no rings in it so you have to get really good at memorizing the patterns or you will start from the beginning of the first phase over and over again. It definitely frustrated me when I played through the game fully last year. Despite these hiccups, I can safely say this game is a 9/10, Imo its one of the greatest games of all time and definitely deserves to be recognized as such. Thankfully it is an easily accessible game as outside of the Genesis, It is also available in game compilations and emulators for PC, mobile devices, and most PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo consoles for cheap. If you have not played it before, please do yourself a favor and give it a try, you will be glad you did.

    Wow that was a lot to go through, thank you guys once again for reading and I hope to see you all next time when I tackle another favorite game of mine. Until then, Stay Nerdy my friends. Iron Pearl out!