A Very Underlooked But Remarkable 2D Platformer

Sonic Pocket Adventure is the perfect game for anyone who enjoyed the genesis classics even remotely as it captures the spirit of those games well.To the point of reusing level themes in a inoffensive way as it takes the themes but brings completely new level design to the table in a Sonic Mania like fashion.I think its really impressive how good the spritework is in this game considering its limited hardware and its less screencrunched than the "Advance" games ontop of having airtight controls.And for a very out of the blue handheld game the bossfights are very creative sporting many unique gimmics my personal biggest problem about the game is that it really had to reuse Metropolis Zone.Conclusion is if you have access to this game by the limited various ways to play it I cant recommend it enough for a genesis sonic game fan as its everything that made those games good.

TRIVIA
There is a playable prototype for the game that you can find on the internet that has a few minor differences if you want to do so!

Cool novelty, not much else.
It being a sort of "Sonic 2 Remix" is a very neat concept although it doesn't really do too much in this area, would've loved to see them be more explorative. NGPC music conversions are always great to hear so I love what it does to the 3&K OST. Game controls well, level design is pretty good till you hit Sky Chase/Aerobase where it feels like the team really just gave up, thankfully Gigantic Angel brings it back in line with the rest of the game. Boss fights are exceedingly average except the Gigantic Angel boss which is actually abysmal. The special stages being the halfpipe really doesn't work well with everything else going on, doesn't help that your reward is extremely boring due to it just being their Doomsday Zone with no way to go Super in the actual levels. Overall, very cool novelty and definitely one of my preferred handheld Sonic games but not much outside of that.

At this point, I've exhausted so much of the Sonic franchise that all I have left are the more obscure stuff to truly sink my teeth into. SegaSonic will probably allude me until I can finagle my way through setting up MAME on my Steam Deck, but aside from that, all I had left until recently are the Boom trilogy, 8-Bit Sonic 2, Free Riders, UnWiished, Knuckles' Chaotix, actually finishing Secret Rings, and Sonic Pocket Adventure. Not the most stellar lineup, but I've been chipping away the last few weeks. So, after Knuckles' Chaotix provided me with one of the worst 2D Sonic experiences I've had in a minute, I think only a few words can sum up my feelings after completing Sonic Pocket Adventure.

"Finally, some good fucking 2D Sonic."

You're not getting much out of Sonic Pocket Adventure that you haven't already seen or heard before; it's pretty heavily leaning on Sonic 2's zone themes with bits of Sonic 1's in there, and mostly uses remixes of Sonic 3's OST as far as its sights and sounds are concerned. Definitely wish some of the music was chosen better; the Sonic 3 bonus stages get used as regular level themes, and the final boss is the Sky Sanctuary theme. The OST as a whole is just remixes of pretty great tracks already, so there isn't much to complain about besides their useage and the bitcrushed nature of them, but it's worth taking a note that your eyes and ears aren't getting much new here. Whole game definitely pops visually, though, as expected from SNK at the time. Really colourful, and I adore the unique sprite set that Sonic has.

There's also the unfortunate Dimpsisms seen throughout; things like sudden bottomless pits, special stage problems pertaining both to overly slippery controls and overly specific entrance conditions, you can unfortunately see a few of the seeds from some of the more aggravating quirks of the Advance and Rush games being planted here. Game also has a bit of weird hitbox fuckery with things on the crushers, shoutout to them killing me while moving upwards while I was just touching the side of them from the ground, that's cool.

But for Dimps' first attempt at 2D Sonic, in what's meant to be something akin to a Mega Man Xtreme sort of "small scale rehash on a handheld" type of deal? It's pretty damn good! Absolutely love the spritework, the physics are pretty spot on, and there's enough unique content between the game's level design and boss fights to warrent checking out, unlike what it possibly could've been if it really went down the Mega Man Xtreme route and just felt like a truncated mishmash of Sonic 1 and 2's level designs and bosses wholesale. A really great time, hoping this one day leaves the NGPC hell and gets a wider rerelease!

You know, they had a really good chance to put this in that second Neo Geo collection on Switch, we could've had a box art with Sonic and Mega Man on it, but we truly live in an unjust and cruel society...

I think its funny that this is one of the few games IGN has given a 10/10 to in it's lifespan, and I can kinda see why they would rate it so highly. This game is very interesting in its circumstances of development and release. It is a 2D sonic game that had released in 1999, right as sonic was about to enter the 3D era, it's developed by dimps, who would later go on to make all the 2D sonic games for roughly next decade, and it functions as both a early glimpse into that kind of gameplay while also providing a decent compilation of classic sonic zones from sonic 2 that all play rather well. For its time, its a very solid game. Nowadays though, especially considering the fact this game hasn't been rereleased ever and you need to go hunt down a neo geo pocket color to actually play it, its not really worth that kinda hunt. While the rehashed sonic 2 levels were likely fresh in its time as a way to get portable sonic on a system that doesn't drink batteries like water, in todays day and age there are much better ways to get your 2D sonic on wherever you want. If you are curious enough to be looking at this review, then by all means go for it tho, games solid.

i can't tell how much the concentrated cruelty i experienced was just because sonic 2 was like that [haven't played in ages, can't tell] or because of screen crunch. probably moreso the latter mixed with the secret third thing of new dr. suess logic. get the 7th emerald by making sure to bump it off the final boss even after the torture of the downscaled special stages? you have to step on tiny atomic explosions to reach eggman? applying sonic 1's special stage access method to a game that doesn't have three acts in a zone, in a game that otherwise is just Mini Sonic 2?? oh brother.

Uma surpresa agradável, basicamente uma saladinha de vários elementos dos jogos do ouriço, com seu level design majoritariamente retirado de Sonic 2. O que mais chama atenção é ver o mascote da Sega ganhando um título exclusivo em um portátil da SNK, essa cruza exótica já prende o suficiente a atenção dos mais fãs como eu, e comigo amando Sonic 2 claramente acabei curtindo bastante este jogo também

Depois de uma série de tentativas da Sega de trazer o Sonic para o seu console 8 bits ou seu portátil, aqui finalmente vemos isso feito com considerável maestria. Visual fantástico, física sólida, controles bastante competentes e mesmo com todas as fases sendo reaproveitadas, todas elas possuem notável diferenciação em level design. Não me importo com retakes desde que possuam o mínimo de originalidade, e mesmo que tenham jogado no seguro por aqui, foi tudo bem divertidinho de se jogar

Além de nunca perder um bom ritmo, vários bosses são originais e os que não são ainda são muito bacanas de se ver no jogo, como o Knuckles reprisando seu papel em Sonic 3. Pode não ser uma experiência essencial nem destacável, mas tendo me tirado uns sorrisinhos já me sinto bastante confortado

This game, for some reason, kinda intrigued me for a long time, so, obviously, i had to emulate it to see why i was

And after playing it...it was alright

Sonic control pretty decently and he is enjoyable to play in those sort of remix of level from sonic 1 and especially 2 (something odd that i noticed is that sonic 3 music are the one remixed in this game, oddly enough): we have a remix of green hill, chemical plant, casino night, aquatic ruin, sky chase, wing fortress and a sort of mix between scrap brain and metropolis zone

So basically this game is doing a similar thing that sonic mania and....sonic 4... ugggghhhh

Fortunatly, the level design is decent in this game, not amazing, but this game made the smart move to take only one zone from sonic one (the only good one), and to not entirely take metropolis, so yeah, well played dev

This game is honestly kinda cool, but its about it, its just a nice but really short game, that doesnt have a lot of issue (except the hitbox detection that can be really jank in some place), but doesnt have outstanding element

It's an interesting game, in that its one of the only games in the franchise that really blurs the line of "Classic Sonic" and "Modern Sonic", this game was basically Sonic Mania before Sonic Mania, taking elements of all the original trilogy and mashing them all up. Its pretty good, better than the Game Gear titles I would say, but worse than the Advance trilogy. Its lack of originality takes it down a peg in my opinion. It really is just that perfect bridge of what 2D Sonic handheld titles would be, the culmination of what the Game Gear / Master System titles had been building up to, and the first steps of the Advance series, transitioning to modern designs halfway through. It has much better jump physics than most handheld equivalents of the era, that's something they always tend to mess up in my opinion, Sonic on the Game Gear and the Mario Land series just have really floaty jumps, ruining the game feel when compared to its console counterparts, but this game does a better job at translating fluid jump physics to a weaker device, a better job, not a perfect one however mind you, since the physics in Sonic games are so intricate it's a hard thing to nail exactly, but its more than adequate. This game is also infamously the game that got a perfect 10/10 from IGN in its review, not sure I'd go that far, but, hey it's pretty great.