I played Sonic 2 (and Knuckles) · 5:53pm Apr 24th, 2020
Before going into the game, I'm going to wax nostalgic on this for a bit. I loved Sonic 2 as a kid. I was the little brother, so I always played as Tails. This was the best little brother game, there was very little I could do to screw things up (except, of course, in the half pipe) and at times my lousy playing actually helped out (Again not in the half pipe.) This was a game I could play with my brother and it was great. And as I slowly got better through constantly sacrificing the poor fox I was able to consistently help out.
I felt a real accomplishment when my brother would ask me to play it with him, like I was actually good at something.
There's also a two player head to head option where you compete on certain levels. I rarely won, but I still had fun. And I made my brother angry more than once by hitting the switch box (I don't know what it's really called) and swapping our positions when he was really close to winning.
Okay, so Sonic 2 was the introduction of Tails, who would just follow Sonic around not really doing anything unless player two jumped in, and if player two left the controller alone Tails went back to follow mode. Actually really cool for the time.
A while later you get Sonic 3 with the introduction of Knuckles. Now early on there were rumors that Sonic 3 was an incomplete game and that Christmas Season we effectively got confirmation with the Sonic & Knuckles expansion cartridge that you plugged Sonic 3 into for the rest of the game and the ability to play as Knuckles.
As kids this was insane and amazing! And then we found out that if you plugged in Sonic 2 you play the whole game as Knuckles. The rumor mills at school turned for a long time about the implications and of course other games you could play a Knuckles in just by plugging in other games: Altered Beast, Alex Kidd, Some kids would even say that their uncles had Nintendo games it worked with. (Is that kind of obvious lie bragging still a thing? It was rampant back in the early 90's.)
Anyway, with Genesis games it technically worked, you got A game but it was just the Sonic 3 special stages for every game but Sonic 2 & 3.
So while I still had my setup from the Master System ready I pulled out the Genesis and started plugging every extension into it except the Power Base Converter because I wasn't playing Master System games at the moment. Plug in the game, plug the other game into the game and turn my abomination on.
The games opens with you in Emerald Hill Zone and it's time to get moving. Not too much by way of story to lead into it.
It's an old school Sonic game so it's geared towards getting through a level as fast as possible and some platforming. The controls work great for this, but there are differences when you're playing as Knuckles, for instance he doesn't jump as high as Sonic or Tails, he can climb walls, and of course the gliding. There are entire levels you can skip just by climbing up high and gliding. Particularly Chemical Plant, which I don't like anyway.
I did recently find out that it's not common for people to get all seven Chaos Emeralds in Emerald Hill Zone (hence the name, at least between my brother and myself) and always thought I was only so so at the game for not being able to do that. I just got the last two in Chemical Plant, and yes, I'm bragging because I can't brag to my brother about it.
Once you've got all seven emeralds and collect 50 rings by pressing a jump button in mid air you transform into a super form. Now this just makes you faster and invincible while slowly depleting your rings (this game is also the first appearance of Super Sonic) But Knuckles glides by hitting jump twice and you have to glide into walls to climb them. So unless you're okay turning super and slowly losing your rings, once you've got fifty rings the glide and climb is taken off the table. Though you can glide and climb as Super Knuckles.
The Special Stages change with each Sonic game and in Sonic 2 it's the half pipe. You're running down a pipe and have to collect rings. I'm not a fan of the controls in this, moving left and right feels sluggish and if you're playing as Sonic and Tails jumping moves you either in front or behind the other. (As the little brother it was my job to keep Tails in the F*****g back. His words.) I had a much better time with Sonic 1's motion sickness inducing spinning maze, though I'll take the half pipe over Sonic 3's special stages.
Anyway, while the game isn't significantly different as Knuckles if you don't use his special abilities, if you do getting through levels becomes much easier. Controlled gliding takes the place of precision jumps, vanishing platforms can be bypassed entirely and getting up a sheer cliff is simple. The final boss is harder though, because you don't jump as high, but if you get the pattern it's no challenge.
It's still a fun game and one of the classic Sonic games. If you've got the games why not give it another play through. I'm not 100% sure they're available on the Switch or Steam, but no harm taking a look and giving them a try if they are.
Sonic 2 was pretty cool, but personally, I always thought that Sonic 3 and Knuckles was the best Sonic game for Megadrive. It was long, with two super forms (super and 'hyper') for both Sonic and Knuckles (Tails had one form for some reason, and you had to collect all the chaos emerald AND the... big emeralds from the second part of the game), and the level design was cool. The music was awesome too. For example, this track sounds great even today:
Ah, good old times
5249591
My favorite was Sonic CD. Does that count? You needed the Genesis (Megadrive) to use the Sega CD.
I loved the music. Time Travel was implemented well and actually seeing the difference you made between timelines was great. Not to mention making bosses slightly easier if you got the good future for the levels. It's got my second favorite special stage (Mania now has my favorite.) And the race against Metal Sonic was probably one of the best levels.
Though it did lack super forms and that was unfortunate.
5249616
Ah, yes, Sonic CD was also excellent (loved the music too), although I played it only on the emulator years later. But yeah, lack of super forms was a downer. Also, you either loved or hated the more 'realistic' speedball mechanic that needed 2 seconds to charge (unlike in Sonic 2 or 3). From what I understand, Sonic CD was designed by people who created the original game, while Sonic 2 and 3 were designed by a different team, that's why they were pretty different.
Personally, I had preferred Sonic 2/3 mechanics myself, but I agree that Sonic CD was a solid game nevertheless, and some people loved it more.
The golden times with so many good Sonic games... For what they did later to Sonic, guys from SEGA should be put on trial
5249756
I didn't know that 1 and CD were done by different teams from 2 and 3, that does explain a few things, like no super form.
The whole thing about the change in Sonic came from a change in company management, and this change literally blames Sonic fans for not liking the later games. They no longer care about quality control and just shovel out games hoping the name will continue to get them sales.
Now I liked Sonic Adventure one as a change, and something new. I even had some fun with Sonic Adventure 2, though I didn't like that the change was effectively permanent. That's what ended Sonic for me.
Unfortunately I'm playing a later game in the series. I'm going to finish at least one path before I write a review of it, but it's not looking good.
I will say this for Sega, when some Sonic fans started getting attention for making their own fan game. Rather than sending them a C&D order (Bucking Squaresoft! Bucking Nintendo!) they paid the team to finish the game and slap an official Sega endorsement on it. This is Sonic Mania and I really do like this new game.
My brother has a saying about Sonic Mania and Sonic forces.
In Sonic Mania you have a fan game that feels like a real sequel.
In Sonic Forces you have an official game that feels like a bad fan game.
5249799
I watched some video about this a few years back, and it would seem that I flipped that around, sorry
. According to Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_CD#Development
The team behind Sonic 1 went to work on Sonic 2, while Sonic's character designer Naoto Ohshima, formed a new team to work on Sonic CD. The new team was composed of programmers working on other titles, and they used Sonic 1 code as the base:
In any case, it was a different team with a different vision. Therefore we got different gameplay
As for the rest... I agree that's one of the reasons, but I think it's more complicated (isn't it always?). Sonic Adventure 1 was arguably a hit, and IMHO the game aged pretty well (aside from cringy English dubbing). SA2 was a mixed bag (I swear, whoever designed Knuckles/Rouge levels just wanted to torture players
), but it still sold well (as far as I remember). But Sega was bleeding money at the time. First was the whole Sega 32X vs. Saturn debacle that pissed off fans. Then Saturn turned out to be a flop (mostly due to the complex design), then Dreamcast was quickly losing ground to PS2.
When they pulled out of the console market, they were already a shadow of their former selves and needed cash badly, thus the era of bad Sonic (and not only Sonic) games began. It seems like good old 'milk it dry' tactics, Sonic literally became one of Sega's most money earning merchandise. The games were pushed out the door because they needed money. Sonic 2006 is the best example of that - a broken game, pushed out only because 'we need to capitalize on Christmas time!' (although, in this case, even if they fixed all the bugs, I think the game would suck anyway). But even if the games were mostly crap (and to be fair, not all of them were crap!), they still sold and boosted the sales of Sonic merchandise that Sega needed that to survive.
But, you're right too, Sega is definitely NOT listening to fans. They also have a weird tendency to fix things that are NOT broken. This is something I simply don't understand. I never played it, but people who have played Shadow The Hedgehog complained that mechanics that worked well in previous games - like auto aim or snapping to grinding rails, were suddenly much less reliable in that game for some reason. The same goes, again, for Sonic 2006, I've seen on YT how 'fast' Sonic could move in that game outside of the 'super speed' section, and comparing that to the good old SA1/SA2 he is a damn turtle. WHY? Whoever at SEGA thought it was a good idea to dump down Sonic's speed?! I don't get it... Good thing they fixed that in Sonic Unleashed and (hopefully) later games.
Sadly, I have a feeling that Hasbro is gonna do the same to MLP show, and reset it back to the 'roots' (as in, make it into a cheap, toy commercial again)
.
5249968
That's alright. Amd that's some interesting stuff about Sonic CD.
You can say that again.
As for Shadow the Hedgehog. Yeah, none of it works. Just none of it. The only thing I can really say in it's favor is that it doesn't have the loading issue 06 had. And it only cost me a dollar when I did buy it.
5249974
Nice meltdown
That video reminded me of a time when I watched a few hours long Sonic 2006 gameplay video labeled 'Was Sonic 2006 really that bad?' or something like that. Guys playing that game back then also had similar reactions. And then concluded:
The sad part here is that it still happens all the time (*cough* Fallout 76 *cough*
), and yet, people keep buying games from these crappy publishers. Pretty sad, really.
5250055
Bethesda is hit and miss, They've not messed up enough for me to think about walking away yet. Then again, I don't play many of their games to begin with. Fallout 3 and The Elder Scrolls (mostly Skyrim and Oblivion.) But they've also got community support which Sonic games don't have. There are die hard fans that fix problems in the games and make great addons. So even if the game isn't good dedicated fans can pick up the slack. (They shouldn't have to, but I appreciate that they do.)
They've always got some glitches, but there are times that those actually improve the games. At least for the comedy.
Speaking of comedy, this is my favorite rendition of that freak out.