This review is from the perspective of someone who NEVER PLAYED THE GENESIS ORIGINALS. I got into Sonic in the 2000's with Adventure 2, fell out of it after Generations, and got back into it with Frontiers. But I never played the games that started it all, and this collection happened to be on sale on Switch, so...
I'm going to review each game individually, the collection's score being the average of all of them.
Sonic 1: 2/5.
Sonic 1 is a classic case of "first game syndrome." SEGA had an amazing concept for a platformer protagonist, and pulled it off brilliantly. Sonic's speed, rolling gimmicks and fast-paced action were like nothing seen at the time. And Green Hill Zone was the PERFECT first level to showcase their new mascot's strengths: wide open areas to build up speed, loops to show the physics, multiple paths, enemies and bosses used perfectly to show off Sonic's skills...
And then someone thought: what if, for Level 2, we throw him into HIS WORST POSSIBLE ENVIRONMENT!!!
The jump from Green Hill to Marble Zone is one of the most jarring I've felt in a platformer. Marble is a slow, cramped, puzzle-based level that doesn't play to Sonic's strengths at all. I'm not against more methodical platforming in Sonic, but this isn't the way to do it. It's telling that even speedruns have to wait on some traps.
And then there's Labyrinth Zone. Which is at least more INTERESTING than Marble, but is still slow, frustrating... and you can drown due to bad bubble rng. (It's far more consistent in later 2D games) And it gets reskinned for the final level because of course.
Starlight and Green Hill are the only levels in Sonic 1 that feel "Sonic-like" to me. This is clearly a case of throwing things at the wall to see what stuck, and later games sure realized what did and, well, stuck to it. Worth playing to see where it all began, but I'd recommend cheesing this one with Tails or Amy.
There's a REASON not much in this game gets referenced except Green Hill.
Sonic CD: 4.5/5
The oddball of the original tetralogy, but you know me and underdogs. Is it any surprise I ended up loving it? What I love about CD is its levels work both for speed and exploration, letting you pick and choose which approach you prefer. Want to explore each area in all timelines, saving the past to create a Good Future? You can do that. Want to blaze through quickly? Just get enough rings for the Special Stages, having all the Time Stones will guarantee Good Futures for the rest of the game.
I was surprised at the variety in level gimmicks and concepts here. Wacky Workbench is my favourite, a level I love and hate in equal measure.
Sonic has new speed tech here, but this game benefits the most from the Origins Plus re-release, as it adds not only Amy but also Knuckles.
CD's presentation is also top-notch. The wacky, colorful environments may not be everyone, but they're beautiful, and the MUSIC is incredible, both the Jp/EU and US soundtracks. (Origins lets you swap between both)
Oh, and I see now why people love the Metal Sonic race. One of the series' greatest bosses.
My only gripe is the "pseudo-3D" special stages... aren't great. The hitboxes on the UFOs are endlessly frustrating.
Sonic 2: 5/5
Sonic 2 basically took the few good levels of Sonic 1 and made that the entire game. The moment I first played Chemical Plant, I knew I was going to LOVE this game. Going so fast you nearly outrun the camera... in 1992. And this game DOES have slower, more platform-focused levels, but they feel far more natural. Aquatic Ruin is what Labyrinth Zone should've been. Metropolis is EVIL but still decently fun. Wing Fortress is obtuse at first but really fun once you know where to go. The boss fights are more elaborate, dynamic, and fun, even the infamous final gauntlet that gives you no Rings. (Though I admit, that must've sucked without the infinite lives mode)
This game introduced Tails, but it's hard to judge him in this context as, apparently, playable Tails in the original version was just a Sonic clone with no flight. Origins backports in S3 Tails, along with Knuckles and Amy, adding replay value.
Sonic 2 has the perfect length for firing up a run on Switch on the go, and it's got an "elegant simplicity" to it that makes it imo the objective best of this collection. I DEFINITELY see why this game defined so many childhoods.
Sonic 3 & Knuckles: 4.5/5
The game so big, one cartridge couldn't contain it, they say. "Big" is the key word here, Sonic 3 really went all-out to end the tetralogy: more playable characters, more levels, LONGER levels, not just Super forms but HYPER forms, more dramatic boss fights, and a bigger focus on story with higher stakes.
Thing is, bigger doesn't always mean better. Sometimes I feel 3&K is too ambitious for its own good.
Take the story, for example. People complain about excessive story in some modern Sonic games, and I think the seeds of that started here. While I love how each Act and Zone seamlessly transitions into the next, many levels have sequences that essentially amount to unskippable cutscenes. See the airship bombing run before Angel Island Act 2's boss, for example. These are nice at first, but you have to sit through them on every replay, and every time you die.
And while there's some GREAT levels here (Hydrocity, Ice Cap, Mushroom Hill, Flying Battery, Lava Reef, to name a few), several are too long to the point of overstaying their welcome. Case in point: the Time Bonus scoring doesn't seem changed from Sonic 1, CD and 2, so beating a level in over 5 minutes is considered "too slow". This was reasonable there. But hitting 5 minutes is a legit challenge in a lot of 3&K levels, and in some the original game's 10 minute death timer was a real threat. (Looking at you, Sandopolis Act 2, the second coming of Marble Zone...)
Then there's the Special Stages, Blue Sphere. Probably the most mechanically solid of the 2D games, but man are the Super Emerald ones BRUTAL. The reward is worth it, but yikes.
The boss fights are a real highlight though (my jaw dropped when I saw Marble Garden's boss, which has you carried by Tails the whole time to fight in the sky), and Knuckles having his own campaign with slightly different levels and a new final boss was a cool touch. (That'd influence the series' approach to characters in the future)
So Sonic 3 & Knuckles isn't my favourite of these games, but it's still excellent.
As for Origins' own additions, besides 4 playable characters in all 4 games (which is amazing), there's Boss Rushes, Mirror Mode, and short challenges remixing content. (Oh, there's also 12 Game Gear games in Plus, I haven't tried most of them yet) They also added amazing new cutscenes to start and end each of the 4 games, tying them together. And that last one, unlocked by beating all 4... man, I nearly teared up as it framed the collection as the story of how these 4 best friends met.
The collection gets a LOT of negative press online and experiencing it in a vacuum I'm not sure why. Maybe its issues are more noticeable if you played the originals, or people hate the DLC pricing scheme or delisting of old versions. But as someone who just wanted to experience some old games he missed, and see where Sonic began... I don't regret my purchase. (I'd recommend waiting for a sale on the Plus bundle though) And I'm going to continue enjoying these classics for years to come. (Maybe not Sonic 1 though...)
I'm going to review each game individually, the collection's score being the average of all of them.
Sonic 1: 2/5.
Sonic 1 is a classic case of "first game syndrome." SEGA had an amazing concept for a platformer protagonist, and pulled it off brilliantly. Sonic's speed, rolling gimmicks and fast-paced action were like nothing seen at the time. And Green Hill Zone was the PERFECT first level to showcase their new mascot's strengths: wide open areas to build up speed, loops to show the physics, multiple paths, enemies and bosses used perfectly to show off Sonic's skills...
And then someone thought: what if, for Level 2, we throw him into HIS WORST POSSIBLE ENVIRONMENT!!!
The jump from Green Hill to Marble Zone is one of the most jarring I've felt in a platformer. Marble is a slow, cramped, puzzle-based level that doesn't play to Sonic's strengths at all. I'm not against more methodical platforming in Sonic, but this isn't the way to do it. It's telling that even speedruns have to wait on some traps.
And then there's Labyrinth Zone. Which is at least more INTERESTING than Marble, but is still slow, frustrating... and you can drown due to bad bubble rng. (It's far more consistent in later 2D games) And it gets reskinned for the final level because of course.
Starlight and Green Hill are the only levels in Sonic 1 that feel "Sonic-like" to me. This is clearly a case of throwing things at the wall to see what stuck, and later games sure realized what did and, well, stuck to it. Worth playing to see where it all began, but I'd recommend cheesing this one with Tails or Amy.
There's a REASON not much in this game gets referenced except Green Hill.
Sonic CD: 4.5/5
The oddball of the original tetralogy, but you know me and underdogs. Is it any surprise I ended up loving it? What I love about CD is its levels work both for speed and exploration, letting you pick and choose which approach you prefer. Want to explore each area in all timelines, saving the past to create a Good Future? You can do that. Want to blaze through quickly? Just get enough rings for the Special Stages, having all the Time Stones will guarantee Good Futures for the rest of the game.
I was surprised at the variety in level gimmicks and concepts here. Wacky Workbench is my favourite, a level I love and hate in equal measure.
Sonic has new speed tech here, but this game benefits the most from the Origins Plus re-release, as it adds not only Amy but also Knuckles.
CD's presentation is also top-notch. The wacky, colorful environments may not be everyone, but they're beautiful, and the MUSIC is incredible, both the Jp/EU and US soundtracks. (Origins lets you swap between both)
Oh, and I see now why people love the Metal Sonic race. One of the series' greatest bosses.
My only gripe is the "pseudo-3D" special stages... aren't great. The hitboxes on the UFOs are endlessly frustrating.
Sonic 2: 5/5
Sonic 2 basically took the few good levels of Sonic 1 and made that the entire game. The moment I first played Chemical Plant, I knew I was going to LOVE this game. Going so fast you nearly outrun the camera... in 1992. And this game DOES have slower, more platform-focused levels, but they feel far more natural. Aquatic Ruin is what Labyrinth Zone should've been. Metropolis is EVIL but still decently fun. Wing Fortress is obtuse at first but really fun once you know where to go. The boss fights are more elaborate, dynamic, and fun, even the infamous final gauntlet that gives you no Rings. (Though I admit, that must've sucked without the infinite lives mode)
This game introduced Tails, but it's hard to judge him in this context as, apparently, playable Tails in the original version was just a Sonic clone with no flight. Origins backports in S3 Tails, along with Knuckles and Amy, adding replay value.
Sonic 2 has the perfect length for firing up a run on Switch on the go, and it's got an "elegant simplicity" to it that makes it imo the objective best of this collection. I DEFINITELY see why this game defined so many childhoods.
Sonic 3 & Knuckles: 4.5/5
The game so big, one cartridge couldn't contain it, they say. "Big" is the key word here, Sonic 3 really went all-out to end the tetralogy: more playable characters, more levels, LONGER levels, not just Super forms but HYPER forms, more dramatic boss fights, and a bigger focus on story with higher stakes.
Thing is, bigger doesn't always mean better. Sometimes I feel 3&K is too ambitious for its own good.
Take the story, for example. People complain about excessive story in some modern Sonic games, and I think the seeds of that started here. While I love how each Act and Zone seamlessly transitions into the next, many levels have sequences that essentially amount to unskippable cutscenes. See the airship bombing run before Angel Island Act 2's boss, for example. These are nice at first, but you have to sit through them on every replay, and every time you die.
And while there's some GREAT levels here (Hydrocity, Ice Cap, Mushroom Hill, Flying Battery, Lava Reef, to name a few), several are too long to the point of overstaying their welcome. Case in point: the Time Bonus scoring doesn't seem changed from Sonic 1, CD and 2, so beating a level in over 5 minutes is considered "too slow". This was reasonable there. But hitting 5 minutes is a legit challenge in a lot of 3&K levels, and in some the original game's 10 minute death timer was a real threat. (Looking at you, Sandopolis Act 2, the second coming of Marble Zone...)
Then there's the Special Stages, Blue Sphere. Probably the most mechanically solid of the 2D games, but man are the Super Emerald ones BRUTAL. The reward is worth it, but yikes.
The boss fights are a real highlight though (my jaw dropped when I saw Marble Garden's boss, which has you carried by Tails the whole time to fight in the sky), and Knuckles having his own campaign with slightly different levels and a new final boss was a cool touch. (That'd influence the series' approach to characters in the future)
So Sonic 3 & Knuckles isn't my favourite of these games, but it's still excellent.
As for Origins' own additions, besides 4 playable characters in all 4 games (which is amazing), there's Boss Rushes, Mirror Mode, and short challenges remixing content. (Oh, there's also 12 Game Gear games in Plus, I haven't tried most of them yet) They also added amazing new cutscenes to start and end each of the 4 games, tying them together. And that last one, unlocked by beating all 4... man, I nearly teared up as it framed the collection as the story of how these 4 best friends met.
The collection gets a LOT of negative press online and experiencing it in a vacuum I'm not sure why. Maybe its issues are more noticeable if you played the originals, or people hate the DLC pricing scheme or delisting of old versions. But as someone who just wanted to experience some old games he missed, and see where Sonic began... I don't regret my purchase. (I'd recommend waiting for a sale on the Plus bundle though) And I'm going to continue enjoying these classics for years to come. (Maybe not Sonic 1 though...)
2 Comments
@MeanEvilWitch I guess some things got fixed in later patches? I'd vaguely heard that. Just like Frontiers, I've come into the game a year late after all the patches, so I've missed its rough parts. And as someone who never played the original Genesis games, I wouldn't know where the porting issues are, and I only experienced one major bug in my multiple playthroughs of each of the games (getting into part of Wing Fortress I wasn't supposed to, and getting stuck. Thankfully enemy bullets reached in there, so I could die on purpose to escape).
I enjoy the boss rush modes and getting to play as Amy and Knuckles in all the games. Some call Amy "Easy Mode Sonic" but her gameplay has more nuance than you'd think, which is typical of her playable appearances. She breaks a lot of bosses though, which is fun.
I enjoy the boss rush modes and getting to play as Amy and Knuckles in all the games. Some call Amy "Easy Mode Sonic" but her gameplay has more nuance than you'd think, which is typical of her playable appearances. She breaks a lot of bosses though, which is fun.
MeanEvilWitch
19 days ago