Sonic Games

The gaming world used to be dominated by two entities; Nintendo, and their mascot Mario. This all changed with Sega's pound for pound answer to Mario, Sonic The Hedgehog. Sonic was a cute, lovable mascot, just like Mario, and the game was a platformer. A very good platformer, at that.

The gameplay still seems innovative, even when I play it now. I love the speed at which you can play Sonic. The FPS (frames per second) is incredible. It definitely pushed the envelope on the first generation consoles. You can get going so fast that it becomes so hard to control, yet the controls stay completely responsive, which is what is great about Sonic. Mario just makes it look like you standing around when played next to Sonic the Hedgehog. The game can go so fast that even today some gamers can get overwhelmed with how fast you can have Sonic going. The twists and loops were also very cool. It almost felt like there was a third dimension in the game, and to achieve that with 2D graphics on a Sega Genesis must have been painstakingly hard to do.

The graphics are yet another high point, and maybe even the highest point for Sonic. The sprites (characters) are fairly detailed and the colors are sharp. They also refresh pretty rapidly, and even when I compare it to an Xbox 360 game, I don't really notice a difference. It's incredible to see how Sonic doesn't appear to be hampered at all by the ancient hardware of yesteryear.

The idea of not being able to die while holding a ring is also very intriguing. It's basically like health, but a little less direct, as for every 100 you get, you get a new life. You do lose some coins when you get hit, but they just fall all over the place, and give you a chance to regather them before you get hit again.

Sonic the Hedgehog also features some of the best level designs I've ever seen. Almost all of the levels are unique, and basically nonlinear. There is a Spring Yard Zone, where you bounce off coiled piece of metal after coiled piece of metal, a Star Light Zone , where you have to use see-saws to get up to where ever you are going, and there's also a Labyrinth Zone, where you have to keep going through water. Be careful in the water. If Sonic doesn't get his regular dose of an air bubble, he'll drown. I thought this was a pretty cool feature, though, instead of giving him the supernatural ability of being able to either breathe under water or hold his breath long enough to traverse the water.

The music for Sonic the Hedgehog is absolutely amazing. The one thing that turns me off of retro games is the horrific music, but this doesn't happen at all with Sonic. The musical score is very addicting, and fun to listen to. It doesn't get annoying like "beep...boop...beep, beep...boop" does.

There were some power-ups in Sonic the Hedgehog, but there was just the standard speed boost, shield (good for one hit), and invincibility.

Overall, Sonic the Hedgehog is still a great game to play. It is simple, but not overly simple, and has slid graphics and sound which won't annoy the modern gamer.