Great review!  Thanks for shedding some light on this.


It would make no sense at all for this to not be released in the West (after all, how much is there to localize, and isn't this a great cash-in?); however, has this been confirmed for the West yet?

Having only played the first two sonic games, the level design in the second halves of the games has still left a terrible taste in my mouth.  After having Genesis and the Sonics earlier in life, I went back during high school and beat Sonic 2, making me realize how much I actually dislike Sonic.  It's like the designers forgot what their game was about halfway through.


That said, I still kind of hope this makes it here just to go back and see what it's like to replay the first nowadays. 

@EJ - The first of the 3D Reprint titles from Sega (Space Harrier) has been confirmed for the West, but hasn't received a release date of any kind. I don't think Sega even made that big of a deal about it either. Hopefully with this new partnership (or whatever the hell you want to call it) that was talked about between the two companies at the last Nintendo Direct, we'll hear something about Western releases for all of these soon. The games have little to no text to translate, and for two of them (Sonic and Altered Beast), the English version is already included in the final game! I'm not sure about Space Harrier and Hang On, though.


@iDra - I'm totally with you. I thought a possible reason for this could be that the developers stacked the game like that intentionally because they wanted people who played the game (and who would probably never beat them) could still walk away satisfied. I HOPE that's true, because if it's not, then, well, the last half of the game is flat out bullshit sometimes. Underwater stage, I'm looking at you!...Thank god for save states in this, though. If they weren't there, I probably wouldn't have finished the game!

Are we seriously shitting on Sonic the Hedgehog being a 2D platformer here? These are the kinds of reviews that lead to the level design in Sonic the Hedgehog 4, Mr. Bivens.

Marble, Labyrinth, and Scrap Brain zones are all necessary evils  that do the very important task of providing the sort of precise momentum based platforming that Star Light Zone  or Spring Yard cannot without those feeling incredibly disjointed. the change of pace represents a new challenge and the slower paces give the player a better understanding of Sonic's handling, which is then applied proportionally to the game's just difficulty curve.

Sonic being all about speed is a common misconception that is all but driven further by the speed booster and spring laden level designs of future titles that all but play themselves for the sake of this 'Speed'.

Sonic the Hedgehog is all about momentum based platforming across environments both smoothly hilly and blocky.


... so now that Sonic fanboy hour is over, I'm glad to hear you like this port. too bad it doesn't seem to be based off the recent Andriod/iOS port with proper 16:9, options to turn off the land and air speed caps, playable Tails and Knuckles all fully equipped with spin dash, and an option to play with things like Sonic 3 Style shields and 7 special stages so Super Forms can be accessed.

Honestly I never cared about speed in Sonic, it was a silly gimmick like setpieces in CoD. Only speedrunners had any chance of controlling the game when it was at highspeed because you couldn't react, you had to know beforehand what the level was like.

@ClexYoshi - Fair enough. Even with the game being momentum based, I still find the stop and go aspects of the latter stages a bit jarring. Now, I'll go on record saying that I'm not really too familiar with old school Sonic games aside from Sonic 2 (which I had on the Game Gear as a kid). I respect the series and Sega for bringing a different kind of platformer to the fold, but that doesn't keep me from being frustrated with the game from time to time.


The final verdict with this game - it's probably the best version out there. Period.