I decided to beat this game in my backlog because it was supposed to be super short and I wanted to see if I could beat it in an hour.
This game is, put simply, flaming garbage. The only thing it gets right is that it does in fact function and allow you to control a blue hedgehog named Sonic. The bare minimum requirement. Pretty much everything else is a failure. A big one is the level design! The levels are often quite bare and end up very much "nothing" levels, leading the first three zones to be romps with no difficulty and little direction, the first level was beaten in like a minute without me even trying. Green Hill Zone is one of the saddest Green Hill Zones you'll see, Yellow Desert Zone is a desert zone but it's only real gimmick is "spikes exist", Red Volcano Zone ISN'T EVEN RED but while it has tricky platforming sections this is an area where the level design really rears its first issue. Put simply, the game doesn't properly put danger in areas such as the lava platforming sections, the end result is that death is nigh impossible and cheese is ease. I ended up just jumping repeatedly and grabbing a ring, good Sonic games don't make this so easy.
But then we get to Blue Marine Zone and seriously who DESIGNED this? You move SO. SO. SLOW. Slow enough that when I showed my friends I had to add the disclaimer "no, it isn't lagging, you just move that slow". And both of the first two acts are one way pipe mazes with air blowing to force you to do VERY specific actions to continue. The platforming isn't precise, you don't get to go fast, Sonic looks like he is clipping into the pipes entering them half the time, it's an absolutely miserable experience that ensures the game won't come close to escaping the lowest rungs. The final level of Silver Castle Zone (I do like that name admittedly) is 70% teleporter maze which is mostly just boring? It isn't like there's a realistic time limit to race against, so it is mostly just trial and error especially because most of it is low on enemies and you have rings anyway. Putting the enemies in some tight corridors does show this game has some rather...iffy hit detection on normal enemies, though!
Bosses are all bad. Very simple patterns that do not evolve during the fight, honestly like half of them basically use the same pattern, the fact Sonic in this game loses only 10 rings at a time means you have to get hit a LOT to die against them, they only have a single attack, and one of them is underwater with slug speed and it makes me want to scream. There is a post-final boss you can get by collecting every Chaos Emerald Shard, but I didn't do that and have no desire to go back and try to do so. The third acts are all leads up to them and are almost all non-existent, which is fine, but I do want to know why Yellow Desert Zone's had to be an annoying vertical level just so you can grab rings.
Graphically, it's not great but could be worse, it is really obviously aping from Donkey Kong Country with the pre-rendered look. But compared to those games the sacrifice in animation quality is obvious, and it really lacks proper composition of levels. The DKC games put a lot of thought into what their graphics would look like when rendered as 3D sprites and so how the world was composed, really go read about the game's design it is pretty intense, while it is really obvious here that a very basic Sonic look was just thrown into pre-rendered style. Red Volcano Zone looks good, but I'd say the other levels range from mediocre at best (Green Hill Zones) to actively disgusting (Blue Marine Zone). Also something about whenever Sonic goes on a loop, which is very rare in this game, feels off to me. Overall, I would say it is somewhat below average. The music in this game basically dribbled out of my brain as soon as I turned it off, which is rare for a Sonic game.
Frankly, this game was overall an embarrassing performance and there's no excuse for it, in the 2D Platformer landscape all 3 Super Mario Land games had already come out on the Game Boy brick edition and I've heard both Sonic: Triple Trouble and Sonic Chaos on the Game Gear are much better games. It's failure all the way down and I don't think there was a single point I was actively enjoying myself. And while not relevant to the game's quality I really just wanna end by saying: Sega, WHY did you release Sonic Blast and Sonic 3D Blast in the same week with extremely similar cover art when neither game had anything to do with each other? Please...
This game is, put simply, flaming garbage. The only thing it gets right is that it does in fact function and allow you to control a blue hedgehog named Sonic. The bare minimum requirement. Pretty much everything else is a failure. A big one is the level design! The levels are often quite bare and end up very much "nothing" levels, leading the first three zones to be romps with no difficulty and little direction, the first level was beaten in like a minute without me even trying. Green Hill Zone is one of the saddest Green Hill Zones you'll see, Yellow Desert Zone is a desert zone but it's only real gimmick is "spikes exist", Red Volcano Zone ISN'T EVEN RED but while it has tricky platforming sections this is an area where the level design really rears its first issue. Put simply, the game doesn't properly put danger in areas such as the lava platforming sections, the end result is that death is nigh impossible and cheese is ease. I ended up just jumping repeatedly and grabbing a ring, good Sonic games don't make this so easy.
But then we get to Blue Marine Zone and seriously who DESIGNED this? You move SO. SO. SLOW. Slow enough that when I showed my friends I had to add the disclaimer "no, it isn't lagging, you just move that slow". And both of the first two acts are one way pipe mazes with air blowing to force you to do VERY specific actions to continue. The platforming isn't precise, you don't get to go fast, Sonic looks like he is clipping into the pipes entering them half the time, it's an absolutely miserable experience that ensures the game won't come close to escaping the lowest rungs. The final level of Silver Castle Zone (I do like that name admittedly) is 70% teleporter maze which is mostly just boring? It isn't like there's a realistic time limit to race against, so it is mostly just trial and error especially because most of it is low on enemies and you have rings anyway. Putting the enemies in some tight corridors does show this game has some rather...iffy hit detection on normal enemies, though!
Bosses are all bad. Very simple patterns that do not evolve during the fight, honestly like half of them basically use the same pattern, the fact Sonic in this game loses only 10 rings at a time means you have to get hit a LOT to die against them, they only have a single attack, and one of them is underwater with slug speed and it makes me want to scream. There is a post-final boss you can get by collecting every Chaos Emerald Shard, but I didn't do that and have no desire to go back and try to do so. The third acts are all leads up to them and are almost all non-existent, which is fine, but I do want to know why Yellow Desert Zone's had to be an annoying vertical level just so you can grab rings.
Graphically, it's not great but could be worse, it is really obviously aping from Donkey Kong Country with the pre-rendered look. But compared to those games the sacrifice in animation quality is obvious, and it really lacks proper composition of levels. The DKC games put a lot of thought into what their graphics would look like when rendered as 3D sprites and so how the world was composed, really go read about the game's design it is pretty intense, while it is really obvious here that a very basic Sonic look was just thrown into pre-rendered style. Red Volcano Zone looks good, but I'd say the other levels range from mediocre at best (Green Hill Zones) to actively disgusting (Blue Marine Zone). Also something about whenever Sonic goes on a loop, which is very rare in this game, feels off to me. Overall, I would say it is somewhat below average. The music in this game basically dribbled out of my brain as soon as I turned it off, which is rare for a Sonic game.
Frankly, this game was overall an embarrassing performance and there's no excuse for it, in the 2D Platformer landscape all 3 Super Mario Land games had already come out on the Game Boy brick edition and I've heard both Sonic: Triple Trouble and Sonic Chaos on the Game Gear are much better games. It's failure all the way down and I don't think there was a single point I was actively enjoying myself. And while not relevant to the game's quality I really just wanna end by saying: Sega, WHY did you release Sonic Blast and Sonic 3D Blast in the same week with extremely similar cover art when neither game had anything to do with each other? Please...