Sonic the Hedgehog
Unfinished game at all #6
Type of Game
The younger brother, who in theory is half as talented, yet manages to do almost better.
Release date on our machines
November 1991, a few months after his older brother, which makes sense.
Developer
Ancient Co. Ltd., their very first game! Which took them about fifty times less time to release than Earthion, heheheheh.
Publisher
SEGA Enterprises Ltd., yeah, we're talking about Sonic, actually.
Sonic the Hedgehog : available on... 3DS in 2013, and that's it. Hey! What are you waiting for to release a Master System Mini, come oooooooooon!
I can't remember exactly when I got this game, but I do remember pestering my father with ‘But I got Sonic at Mom's, so why can't we have it heeeeeeere?’ And it paid off in the end. I was careful not to tell him that the Sonic he had at home displayed half the colours and pixels, as I was so excited to be able to indulge my new addiction to the blue hedgehog, both in Le Havre on the Mega Drive and in Rouen on the Master System. From then on, I had to say goodbye to valiant second-stringers like Rocky, After Burner, the Ninja and Bonanza Bros. Too bad, I'd never finish them, but I needed time to get to grips with my new cartridge. In the end, I never finished Sonic either. Just like none of the other Sonic games I played. What a wonderful fraud addiction that was. I don't think my father really followed me on that one. Maybe he would have preferred to play an aircraft game. Well, not maybe, as there was no doubt about it.
Two Sonics for the price of... well, two.
But he always prioritised my gaming requests over his own until the end of the PlayStation era, even though he had the console all to himself twenty-eight days a month. Good for him.
Hedgehogdum and Hedgehogdee
One day in 1990 in Japan, the Game Gear was born. Later that same year, someone at SEGA said, ‘It would be nice to have a showcase game to sell this console better. A Sonic game? Like the one coming out on Mega Drive? Let's do it.’ And another must have added, ‘And, um... while we're at it, let's develop it for the Master System too.’ ‘The what?’ exclaimed the first. ‘Yes, well, sorry, but Americans are still buying it, and Europeans even more so,’ replied the second. The first sighed, ran his hand over his face and finally declared, ‘All right, fine. But you put Yuzo Koshiro on it.’ The real story probably didn't unfold quite like that, but it led to the same result, so I prefer my version. Mr Koshiro, who already had an impressive CV thanks to his work on the Revenge of Shinobi soundtrack, set up his own company, Ancient, and put together a small team (which apparently included his mother and sister). At the end of 1991, little Sonic finally arrived on SEGA's 8-bit console.
Delighted to have bribed my father into getting me the cartridge of my choice, I start a game and find myself back in the adorable Green Hill Zone of the Mega Drive. It's slower, the music seems a little simpler, there are fewer mountains in the background, and the flowers are real 2D sprites rather than conversions of 3D models. There are also fewer stars flashing around when you collect an invincibility bonus. But no matter! It's still so much fun! And then, just when you start to feel at home like on the 16-bit, it changes! No Marble Zone, but a Bridge Zone instead, nicely located on a map of the island at the top of which Dr. Eggman has set up his big factory. I love maps in games, especially those in Super Mario World, Super Mario Bros. 3 and Link's Awakening.
I like knowing it's there, even if it serves no purpose, as is the case here or in Asterix. That's where I started losing my first lives. The automatic scrolling and the bridge planks collapsing as we passed over them stressed me out way too much. The jungle gives you a chance to catch your breath, before plunging you straight back into the anxiety of the flooded maze. Just like on Mega Drive. Those stages freaked me out so much! At least here, there's no ultra-oppressive alert when you run out of air underwater. That's something, at least. Anywayl, couldn't they have included another area from the first game? I loved Spring Yard and Star Light. And of course, Scrap Brain Zone taunts me with its presence, tormenting me across two generations of consoles. I don't think I ever got past Act 3 on the Master System.
There's a section with electric arcs everywhere that made me rage quit. Then I read people on the internet saying that the first Sonic games are easy. Hey, give me a break, okay? Ah, I'm being told that it's not Scrap Brain Act 3, but Sky Zone Act 1. Well, you hear the same music, so sorry about that. The real Sky Zone composition appears in Act 2. While this game draws heavily on the original 16-bit version (especially when it comes to making me whine, as we've seen), it also develops its own ideas. A bit like the two Castle of Illusion games, and I mean a bit, so leave me alone. Among these new features... the absence of vertical loops and the inability to recover some of your rings when you get hit. Oh, great! Can you still run and curl up into a ball, or do you start from scratch like in a 70s platformer?
Um... sorry, that went too far, let's start over. Chaos Emeralds no longer serve as rewards for special stages, but are hidden away in the corners of levels. And since this Sonic takes a beating when racing against his Mega Drive counterpart, we have a little more opportunity to explore the surroundings. I had absolutely no idea that the Sonic Master System ran slower at the time, and I was just trying to race as fast as I could on both consoles. In any case, I never collected all of these gems in any game. The other real differences are the special stages. Gone are the psychedelic rotating mazes that were as easy to navigate as an anvil on acid; now we switch to huge rooms with bouncy surfaces everywhere, where we are simply asked to collect tons and tons of rings.
After that, there are no major innovations in gameplay like there were in Sonic 2 Master System, but there are still some cool things, like running on a floating log to make it move forward, teleporters, and, um... okay, being carried along on flying metal planks, which I never got to see, since I kept dying because of those damn electric arcs in Sky Zone. I could have believed that the inspiration for the despicable Wing Fortress in Sonic 2 MD came from there. Anyway, some of the places you visit offer more verticality, more real platforming sections and less frantic running with no control over anything. I tried to say that nicely, because I like frantic running with no control in Sonic games, but I may not have succeeded. Frankly, the waterfall level in Jungle Zone is a complete copy of Pitfall the Mayan Adventure. Almost.
Great Replacement
Yuzo Koshiro reworked some of Masato Nakamura's tracks from the 16-bit Sonic. If I heard correctly, this only applies to the title screen, the invincibility bonus, and the Green Hill Zone. Legend has it that he converted Masato Nakamura's entire soundtrack to 8-bit before ultimately composing almost the entire OST himself. Why? Because he claimed he could do much better? The legend doesn't say, but it has been passed down from generation to generation since the Carboniferous period. I would have liked to hear the entire converted soundtrack, just to see what it would have sounded like. Does it exist somewhere? Nothing official, anyway, I don't think. We can get a glimpse of it with the track Marble Zone, which must have been part of the final version but was removed for reasons unknown to me. The legend doesn't give any details about that either. That said, I have nothing against Yuzo's creations. Who in their right mind would criticise his musical skills? I also like how the melodies evolve as the game progresses, becoming increasingly darker. Well, not really dark, but rather alarmist. Although obviously, that doesn't apply to Bridge Zone and its hellish scrolling, which is given a cheerful theme. The titles of Jungle and Labyrinth Zone could easily fit a Disney game, such as an 8-bit Quackshot or Duck Tales. It's a semi-compliment, because it sounds less Sonic than the rest. Scrap Brain and Sky Zone, on the other hand, are perfect. Does all this date from before or after Streets of Rage, by the way? Just so I know, and can do nothing with the information. Come on, I'll put on something rather cute, just for a change from my usual love of depression.
Sonic as a social reference point
To my great disgrace, I don't think I persevered much with this Sonic episode. I must have eventually succumbed to the call of progress and loved Sonic 2 on Mega Drive so much that all the others seemed insignificant in comparison. It's a shame, because it had quite a few good things going for it. Not as many as the 8-bit version of Sonic 2, or even Sonic Chaos, but still enough to have its own groupies, who prefer it to its 4th generation console counterpart.
Even though I continued to love my father's Master System, long after the Mega Drive arrived at my mother's house, and even after the PC arrived, I obviously didn't cherish it enough to ask for all the Sonic games on it. Even less so to save it from the junkyard when my father bought the PlayStation 1. What possessed me to abandon it like that? I could have started my retro gaming collection there, then moved on to the other consoles I loved, and then bought machines I'd never seen in action, set up a room just for that in my house, seen my partner leave home for good, lost my job because I spent all my working hours looking for good retro gaming bargains, had to sell everything to be able to eat... yeah, thanks Sonic, you're a real mate.
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