Man, I just don't really get this one. Did they think they were cooking here?
The controls are a bit obtuse to wrap your head around, with the ring that Tails carries being the defining way you interact with this game. Tails can throw the ring (with the direction of the ring being a bit unpredictable) to damage enemies and the ring can also interact with environmental objects like poles and minecarts. I'd say they actually do a pretty good job expanding on this mechanic for what it is, but it just isn't very fun.
Tails is made of paper in this game, and will die the instant you hit a wall, ceiling, or floor, no matter how much health you have. Getting hit by an enemy will send you careening to the floor, which you might be able to recover from if you mash the A button fast enough. This just isn't a rewarding system in my opinion, and it breaks with Sonic series tradition of staying alive with one ring for seemingly no reason. This game would be a lot more tolerable it you weren't dying every 10 seconds.
The visuals are actually pretty impressive for the system, with characters that are actually well rendered and expressive, but the environment design leads to some issues. Namely, it's often hard to tell what is a wall and what isn't a wall. It led me to crash into walls that I thought were background decorations, and to avoid background decorations to my own demise. The screen crunch doesn't help much with this wall issue either, as you don't even see them coming fast enough to react sometimes.
This game just ain't it, it's not fun, it's hard and frustrating to get used to, and it doesn't provide much fun or value when you do get used to it. It's also super short, so I imagine that this would have been a disappointing pickup for a kid back in '95. Definitely not worth your time.
The controls are a bit obtuse to wrap your head around, with the ring that Tails carries being the defining way you interact with this game. Tails can throw the ring (with the direction of the ring being a bit unpredictable) to damage enemies and the ring can also interact with environmental objects like poles and minecarts. I'd say they actually do a pretty good job expanding on this mechanic for what it is, but it just isn't very fun.
Tails is made of paper in this game, and will die the instant you hit a wall, ceiling, or floor, no matter how much health you have. Getting hit by an enemy will send you careening to the floor, which you might be able to recover from if you mash the A button fast enough. This just isn't a rewarding system in my opinion, and it breaks with Sonic series tradition of staying alive with one ring for seemingly no reason. This game would be a lot more tolerable it you weren't dying every 10 seconds.
The visuals are actually pretty impressive for the system, with characters that are actually well rendered and expressive, but the environment design leads to some issues. Namely, it's often hard to tell what is a wall and what isn't a wall. It led me to crash into walls that I thought were background decorations, and to avoid background decorations to my own demise. The screen crunch doesn't help much with this wall issue either, as you don't even see them coming fast enough to react sometimes.
This game just ain't it, it's not fun, it's hard and frustrating to get used to, and it doesn't provide much fun or value when you do get used to it. It's also super short, so I imagine that this would have been a disappointing pickup for a kid back in '95. Definitely not worth your time.