In the year of 1991, company Sega created the Sonic the Hedgehog series, to compete with Nintendo's mascot at the time Mario and provide more sales for the Genesis console. The game turned out to be a booming success in places like the US and sparked the Nintendo vs SEGA war. The battle between the blue haired speedster and the Italian plumber carried on for nearly a decade, until the unfortunately SEGA stopped producing consoles and focused on making half baked titled practically holding the hedgehog hostage (but thats for another day). However most Sonic fans reminisce on the golden era of Sonic and the classic titles that made him a worthy opponent in the 90's.

I've always been the Mario man. I grew up with the DS and Wii and although playing a lot of Dreamcast and Genesis games I only touched upon Generations. After finally playing the original titles, I have to say with dissapointment the first game did not age well. Or at least, my perception on the hedgehog as a whole.

I was quite surprised to find out that the Sonic games arent always about going fast. The first game actually takes it quite slow by having lots of enemies and placed structures in the way to make you slam into walls or take more time collecting treasures and rings. This was quite.. shocking to me? One minute ill be going super fast going around cool loops and the other time all my speed will be halted down because I have to do a parlour segment. I'm Marble Zone for example, there's a part where you have to stand on a moving block as it will traverse slowly across a pool of lava. This is just boring? You shouldn't have these constant patterns of halting all my speed and progress across stupid parkour and cramped tiny spaces. People can feel differently here, but Sonic' movement does not compliment this type of gamestyle, as sometimes I feel too slippery and fast for my own good.

Lets talk about, in my opinion, the worst level design of the game. Labyrinth Zone consists of these tight cramped spaces with the exception of small moving platforms in a circuit that Sonic has to stand on and move across. The worst part is easily that 80% of this zone takes place entirely underwater. Sonic moves slower and his jumps are a bit floatier, and he will also drown if he spends too much time in the water. You've probably heard this from many other reviews, but this is not fun to play as well. And if you suck like me you'll constantly be bumping into things meaning you have to sluggishly scram to pick them all up again. I just don't understand that a game that was advertised as this speedup go fast as this cool hedgehog focuses on tight platformery levels, although it is classed as such.

However I did genuinely like some levels such as Star Light Zone and Green Hill. The pixel art and soundtrack will always be ahead of it's time and ages fairly well (seriously all OST in this game is a bop you can't take that away).

The boss fights are ok. Some like the Labrynth one are extrenely frustrating but very rhymetic and simple, which I thinks help. I dont wanna spoil the last boss but I wish it did something different as it was extremely underwhelming.

Theres nothing else to really say about the game. For the time the first Sonic title was great however outdated level design has soured the experience. However, I have heard that later titles (most importantly 3) improves on this so hopefully the game is just suffering from first game syndrome. The race of the two gaming titans continue.

"Sonic the Hedgehog. More action, More speed , Sega Genesis, it's a whole lot more for less."