I love you Tails, but you have disappointed me so. You might think silly of me to be let down by such a game. Even if a metroidvania with Tails using all his little gadgets and doohickeys is a really cool concept for a Sonic spinoff that gives my boy the spotlight he needs, this is still a Game Gear title after all, so naturally you’d expect something short of stellar.

But the thing is, this game starts off really good!! Apart from it taking me too long to figure out how to change abilities, the levels are fun to go through and Tails controls well. His movement physics aren’t bad and the flight option allows for some unique exploration challenges not typically seen in the genre to this day. I was pleasantly surprised with how much fun I was having!

It’s once you get a few levels deep do the cracks start to show. Eventually you are required to do a fair amount of backtracking, using your abilities to open the routes that you’ve missed. Of course, this should be fine in theory but I found two main issues:

Firstly, Tails can only carry 4 abilities at once, if you want to swap them out you need to leave the level you are in (by walking either all the way to the end or back to the start), then return to Tails’ House and swap them out. Obviously this kinda BLOWS because your time is wasted if you don’t happen to bring the right thing with you. It may have been a hardware limitation, or maybe it was intentional to pad out the play time, but if Tails simply had access to all his abilities at once, he would be able to spend less time faffing about for no reason.

Secondly, Alternate paths are often very camouflaged. You will certainly walk past a mostly regular looking wall without knowing that it could have been blown up with the 3rd or 4th bomb ability that you unlocked. In general, bad level design is more common as you get further into the game, so I resorted to a walkthrough and much more common save states for the second half.

Other than those fundamental problems, the rest of the experience was just alright, the item selection is half creative and fun (abilities based on Sonic, Knuckles and Fang are here!), but half useless or samey (which you probably won’t even entertain trying out because again, your slots are valuable). The story is simple and cyuuuuuute but nothing to shout about. Level theming is VERY underwhelming for a Sonic game (even if we do get to swim in a submarine), and the few boss fights are mostly mediocre with one or two cooler ones.

It may be because I spent more time in the levels but I thought the music was good and for sure one of the better game gear soundtracks! Some nice compositions here! I was a little disappointed to not find many covers / rearranges on youtube, rare sonic fanbase L, but this one I did find was indeed very nice.

So here I am disappointed purely because my hopes surprisingly shot up at the beginning, but it's okayyyyyyy... Tails Adventure may be very flawed, but it was a cool time and as a certified Two-Tailed Fox stan I am quite glad I played through it since it does carry my enthusiasm for his character very well. Safe to say we probably ain’t gonna get anything like this from SEGA again.

I’m gonna talk about both Drift 1 and Drift 2 since I don’t feel like writing two reviews and they are so similar it doesn’t really feel worth it.

For what Sonic Drift wants to achieve it’s not bad at all. Problem is it’s not achieving much pfftt. I don’t think an 8-bit kart racer released in 1994 was ever going to knock anyone’s socks off, but for little Jimmy in the back of the car on the trip to grandma’s I imagine this to be a very serviceable way to pass the time. It’s a good, engaging challenge to look at the map and signs, and make your turns at the right time! The minimum for a racing game!

Unfortunately that minimum is about all it has going for it, so anyone who isn’t little Jimmy is unlikely to willingly spend more than an hour with this game. The general Sonic theming is as good as it could be with tracks based on Sonic 1 zones, and characters with varying stats (not told in the game? Maybe in a manual?) reflecting their personalities(?), but it’s very hard to appreciate that when the actual game is just so barebones. The “items” don’t add too much either. The little animations and pictures of the characters that change depending on whether they’re winning or losing do a put a smile on my face though, they’re just so silly (and some very derpy :P ).

Sonic Drift 2 devs read my last paragraph, said “get a load of this guy!” and proceeded to shove a bunch of new stuff into the game that kinda feels like if it got a modern day dlc:
- More characters! Fang, “Knucles”, and Metal Sonic are here, cool.
- More creative zones! Some Sonic 2 based ones and a quite a few original ones
- More ambitious stages: more obstacles in the road, tunnels, half-pipe turns, bottomless cliffs, seizure inducing lightning effects, etc.
- More opportunities to use items, and character abilities

There is probably a bunch of stuff I’m missing as well because I admit I didn’t exactly play this one thoroughly; I was definitely getting bored. Theoretically these features should make the game much more interesting. For me though, I’m still playing Sonic Drift, and no amount of cool additional sparklies or shinies is really elevating my experience very much. If all of the concepts in this were moved to a mega drive version (with easy built in multiplayer??) then I think I could appreciate them much more, instead of just occasionally feeling like I did something cool that I previously couldn’t do.

Apparently there is 2-player versus available. I'm just learning right now, you gotta use the “Gear-to-Gear” cable pfftt. That would totally be the most fun way to experience the Drifts. But as they stand, racing against the CPUs just wasn’t too thrilling after the first couple GPs.

Drift 1, Drift 2, it’s all the same really.

Sonic 2 without the 2?

This one is quite a mixed bag. Definitely a One Step Forward Three Steps Back kinda deal when you compare it to the games that came out before.

Can’t believe they had the balls to put Tails on the Title Screen even though he is effectively nowhere to be seen. You even made these cute little pictures of the two buddies together before every zone and you don’t even get to play as him at all! I did get all the chaos emeralds and I was just met with the most awkward stare down from both of the characters at the end. Talk about unsatisfying, although at least the end credits were kinda nice.

Unfortunately the overworld map is gone so we don’t see how we get from place to place. To be honest the zone structure feels really off in general. Green Hills Zone (yes, Hills, not Hill) is the fourth level for some reason?? It is by far the easiest level so I don’t know why. The first level is underground with lava pits and some very cheery music. I’ve got no problem with trying to go against platformer tropes but this just doesn’t feel like an adventure; some very stock feeling level themes just kinda slapped together.

Speaking of the music, not only do I not really care for any of the tracks (Green Hills being the exception), but they mostly feel like they could be swapped around between each zone and no one would bat an eye. Tracks don’t convey any sense of the environment you’re in (unless the environment is you sitting down staring at an 8-bit game), and hence again, remove any feeling of adventure. This might sound like a harsh criticism but I can’t really forgive it since the previous entry actually did this very well.

Playing the Game Gear version immediately allows you a free pass to use save states wherever you please because when one of the chaos emeralds is quite literally off of the screen it becomes very clear that very little testing was done for this version. And you will be punished for it, because compared to 8-Bit Sonic 1, the challenge has definitely increased. Some of the levels feel a bit more open now with multiple routes. Unfortunately the quality just isn’t quite there…

To go into detail on some of the levels, as I said, mixed bag.
Green Hills has some nice fast sections, but act 3 has horrible blind spring jumps that took me way too many tries than was fun.
Gimmick Mountain (AWFUL NAME) actually uses those spinny things from 16-Bit Scrap Brain and implements them into the level pretty well! It has some challenging platforming sections with conveyors as well. This would probably be the best zone if the Game Gear screen wasn’t cucking me every single jump.
Turns out Aqua Lake (I instinctively typed Labyrinth for a second) was actually the first Zone to introduce putting Sonic inside a bubble and moving him around in a water based stage. I think this is a fun gimmick! Unfortunately the rest of the stage is hot garbage, and I like Labyrinth Zone, both 16-bit and 8-bit. Oh no I don’t like it in Sonic 4 who tf do you think I am you sicko. Anyway it’s a very boring water level outside of the bubbles, and it also looks really ugly.
Scrambled Egg Zone has to be my new least favourite Classic Sonic Zone, it’s just pick a path. Fuck you.
Crystal Egg Zone has to be my SECOND least favourite Classic Sonic Zone! It’s not difficult or bullshit but it’s horrendously ugly and completely nonsensical gameplay wise. This is what I grabbed the emeralds for?
Other gimmicks like the minecarts and hang gliders were alright. Couldn’t figure out the hang gliders really and they seemed pointless. The minecarts were fun to try and jump out at the right time, but this was only done like, two or three times.

Bosses! Again! Mixed. Bag. A couple fun ones and a couple really god awful shit ones! Silver Sonic was by far the best and Eggman was AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA WTF who tf why why why it's so bad. Starts off a little confusing and potentially challenging, but once you figure out how it works it just becomes a boring as heck waiting game. It’s also the only boss you’re likely to hear the smoke alarm segment of the boss theme. (I know this probably wasn’t made with headphones in mind but my goodness was that unpleasant to hear.)

To conclude, it’ssssss okay.. leaning towards bad really. Some good gimmicks, some underwhelming. Some good level design, some horrible. Some pretty levels, some ugly. Some fun bosses, some stupid bosses!
A mediocre time but it has its highlights... kinda.