I’ve had a love-hate relationship with Sonic CD for years, I used to despise this game with a passion, but over time I have grown to appreciate more of what this game tries to do, despite the fact I still stand by most of my criticisms.
At its core it’s a classic Sonic game, Dr Robotnick has set his sights on Little Planet, where he plans to use the 7 Time Stones to turn the planet into a weapons base. Sonic sets off to stop him in the first animated cutscene to grace the franchise, which is to this day, absolutely awesome. This was the game to introduce Amy Rose as well as her kidnapper, Metal Sonic, 2 iconic characters who would be here to stay.
Sonic’s control is about the same as in Sonic 1, there is a Spindash but in the original release it was pretty bad, requiring a lot more windup for a not so stellar performance. However you can use the Super Peel Out in this game, which allows sonic to take off at a much greater speed, at the cost of not being protected from hazards… unless you just roll after using it. So do that instead.
You can play the game as you normally would, but doing that isn’t going to be very fulfilling. Stages in this game are very vertical in design, so just going left to right takes almost no time at all. Bosses are mostly pathetic, including the final one, as a classic sonic game, CD has pretty simple level design that doesn’t make for the best adventure.
But it’s the other stuff you can do that makes the game much better. CD has 2 endings, The Bad ending where you rescue Amy but Little Planet goes on to be Eggmans base as he wanted, or the good ending where Sonic saves the planet and releases it from its shackles.
In order to do this you have 2 options, the first and main choice is time travelling, but finding a sign labelled “past” or “future” and running at a consistent speed, Sonic can travel to a different time period within the level, and this is such a cool concept. In the past of every zone you must locate an destroy a robot generator, which encourages exploration. Then you can see the fruits of your labour by optionally returning to the future and seeing little planet freed from Eggman’s oppression. It’s a really satisfying gameplay/story intergration, despite time travelling being harder than necessary at certain points, especially in the original with its dodgy hit detection.
If you don’t want to do that, simple collect 50 rings and enter the levels special stage at the end of an act. These special stages were horrid in the original, and I still find them very hard. But collecting all the time stones guarantees the good ending. So you have options.
With these elements, Sonic CD becomes a much bigger and more interesting game. This is helped by how colourful the presentation is, and the INCREDIBLE Japanese soundtrack. I don’t mind the US soundtrack, it gave us “Sonic Boom”, but the Japanese OST clears.
Sonic CD is an oddball for sure. I’m not sure I can even explain why it works when the pieces seem so lacking individually. But it does work, and nowadays I really enjoy it.
At its core it’s a classic Sonic game, Dr Robotnick has set his sights on Little Planet, where he plans to use the 7 Time Stones to turn the planet into a weapons base. Sonic sets off to stop him in the first animated cutscene to grace the franchise, which is to this day, absolutely awesome. This was the game to introduce Amy Rose as well as her kidnapper, Metal Sonic, 2 iconic characters who would be here to stay.
Sonic’s control is about the same as in Sonic 1, there is a Spindash but in the original release it was pretty bad, requiring a lot more windup for a not so stellar performance. However you can use the Super Peel Out in this game, which allows sonic to take off at a much greater speed, at the cost of not being protected from hazards… unless you just roll after using it. So do that instead.
You can play the game as you normally would, but doing that isn’t going to be very fulfilling. Stages in this game are very vertical in design, so just going left to right takes almost no time at all. Bosses are mostly pathetic, including the final one, as a classic sonic game, CD has pretty simple level design that doesn’t make for the best adventure.
But it’s the other stuff you can do that makes the game much better. CD has 2 endings, The Bad ending where you rescue Amy but Little Planet goes on to be Eggmans base as he wanted, or the good ending where Sonic saves the planet and releases it from its shackles.
In order to do this you have 2 options, the first and main choice is time travelling, but finding a sign labelled “past” or “future” and running at a consistent speed, Sonic can travel to a different time period within the level, and this is such a cool concept. In the past of every zone you must locate an destroy a robot generator, which encourages exploration. Then you can see the fruits of your labour by optionally returning to the future and seeing little planet freed from Eggman’s oppression. It’s a really satisfying gameplay/story intergration, despite time travelling being harder than necessary at certain points, especially in the original with its dodgy hit detection.
If you don’t want to do that, simple collect 50 rings and enter the levels special stage at the end of an act. These special stages were horrid in the original, and I still find them very hard. But collecting all the time stones guarantees the good ending. So you have options.
With these elements, Sonic CD becomes a much bigger and more interesting game. This is helped by how colourful the presentation is, and the INCREDIBLE Japanese soundtrack. I don’t mind the US soundtrack, it gave us “Sonic Boom”, but the Japanese OST clears.
Sonic CD is an oddball for sure. I’m not sure I can even explain why it works when the pieces seem so lacking individually. But it does work, and nowadays I really enjoy it.