Growing up, I had a friend who owned a Game Gear and a PlayStation, two systems which were rather difficult for me to play unless I spent the afternoon over at his place. His parents were heavy smokers, I remember his house didn't have any smoke detectors plugged in, always reeked, and was perpetually steeped in a cloud of sweet, sweet second-hand smoke. I have a lot of "fond" memories of sucking in that nicotine rich air and dying repeatedly to the first boss of Sonic the Hedgehog 2. I've told this story before, but Sonic 2 for the Game Gear is intrinsically linked not only to that moment in time but to that stench. Every time I look at Sonic 2 I think "this is the most any video game has smelled like cigarettes."
Our brains are weird like that, though mine might be especially so...
Another unfortunate consequence of this nostalgia for Sonic 2 is that the Game Gear version exists in my mind as the definitive edition of the game, which is only something a crazy person or Sega would think. Like all the Sonic the Hedgehog games released for the Master System, Sega deems the Game Gear versions as the only ones fit for rerelease, and since I committed to playing everything on the Sonic Gems Collection, I guess I had no choice other than to constantly fall onto spikes and careen directly into enemies. Afraid nothing could be done about that. No sir, there definitely isn't a Raspberry Pi in the other room with a complete Master System library on it!
A lot has been said about screen crunch in the Genesis Sonic games, but I promise you haven't experienced true 4:3 hell until you've booted this thing up. Sonic 2 is already full of spike-riddled lower paths, high speed tubes with branching tunnels that punish you for taking wrong turns, and bosses that must be confronted with zero rings. Limiting the player's visibility makes it that much harder to avoid hazards both below and within your path, resulting in a version of Sonic 2 that is unnecessarily difficult and frustrating to navigate.
The first boss fight is against a robotic pincer bug situated at the base of a steep incline. It cannot be harmed directly, instead the player must dodge steel balls being dropped from off screen at varying heights and speeds all while working against gravity. Since boss fights must be done with no rings, you can't afford to make even one mistake, and though I'm perfectly capable of clearing this boss as an adult, it was sheer agony as a child. Not that I would've made it much further were I as capable as I am now, as without the aid of quick saves, I almost certainly would have run through all my continues even attempting to reach the boss of Green Hills Zone, which requires you to jump on springs and make several leaps of faith over pits full of spikes. No rings. Not a single one.
These are poorly designed levels regardless of screen real estate, so I would say the degree of separation between between the Master System and Game Gear version is mediocre-to-terrible. I did not bother collecting all of the Chaos Emeralds because I don't know how and don't have patience for that, so I'm afraid Tails is DEAD and will never appear in another Sonic game ever again.
Our brains are weird like that, though mine might be especially so...
Another unfortunate consequence of this nostalgia for Sonic 2 is that the Game Gear version exists in my mind as the definitive edition of the game, which is only something a crazy person or Sega would think. Like all the Sonic the Hedgehog games released for the Master System, Sega deems the Game Gear versions as the only ones fit for rerelease, and since I committed to playing everything on the Sonic Gems Collection, I guess I had no choice other than to constantly fall onto spikes and careen directly into enemies. Afraid nothing could be done about that. No sir, there definitely isn't a Raspberry Pi in the other room with a complete Master System library on it!
A lot has been said about screen crunch in the Genesis Sonic games, but I promise you haven't experienced true 4:3 hell until you've booted this thing up. Sonic 2 is already full of spike-riddled lower paths, high speed tubes with branching tunnels that punish you for taking wrong turns, and bosses that must be confronted with zero rings. Limiting the player's visibility makes it that much harder to avoid hazards both below and within your path, resulting in a version of Sonic 2 that is unnecessarily difficult and frustrating to navigate.
The first boss fight is against a robotic pincer bug situated at the base of a steep incline. It cannot be harmed directly, instead the player must dodge steel balls being dropped from off screen at varying heights and speeds all while working against gravity. Since boss fights must be done with no rings, you can't afford to make even one mistake, and though I'm perfectly capable of clearing this boss as an adult, it was sheer agony as a child. Not that I would've made it much further were I as capable as I am now, as without the aid of quick saves, I almost certainly would have run through all my continues even attempting to reach the boss of Green Hills Zone, which requires you to jump on springs and make several leaps of faith over pits full of spikes. No rings. Not a single one.
These are poorly designed levels regardless of screen real estate, so I would say the degree of separation between between the Master System and Game Gear version is mediocre-to-terrible. I did not bother collecting all of the Chaos Emeralds because I don't know how and don't have patience for that, so I'm afraid Tails is DEAD and will never appear in another Sonic game ever again.
Weatherby
10 months ago