There is one icon that stands above all others on the Sega Genesis system. Do you know who it is? Of course you do – Sonic the Hedgehog! Do you remember the cartoon? I don’t know why but they had him eating chili cheese dogs all the time… If someone knows what the heck that is supposed to mean please let me know. Anyway, this guy was pretty much the ambassador of Sega. The original game came with the system and really was quite fun, although a little simple.
The goal of this game was to do one thing and one thing only – get the rings!!! Okay,
He kinda smirks, doesn't he?
there’s some blah blah about rescuing animals but really? It’s all about the rings. Everybody knows it’s all about the rings, even Sonic. This game had some really cool things in it though. One of my favorites is the secret areas.
This was a pretty cool feature where you could run or jump out into a hidden area and usually collect some extra rings. The levels were timed so you could spend a lot of time going on runs looking for secret areas; it was just an extra cool feature to work with. Maybe not a game a changer, and a know a lot of people didn’t even bother looking for them, but I enjoyed this extra “Easter egg” feature of the sonic franchise. The basic game play was pretty simple; I’ll give you a brief rundown.
Pretty much you just run around in a side scroller classic fashion, left to right and through some pretty cool loop de loops. You also end up doing quite a big of vertical movement in the Sonic games which can be frustrating if you’re not used to the vertical element in your normal game play. I think the Sega especially made a lot of use of the vertical plane, Nintendo for whatever reason seemed to avoid this. I don’t know why and maybe it’s not true but that’s how I feel. At the end of the level you’ll find a boss of some kind. You run around, dodge whatever his specific attack is, and then generally bop the guy on the head three times and he runs or flies off. He’ll leave behind a capsule of poor woodland critters, you jump on the button and they’re free! Weeeee! It’s pretty fun though, I can’t lie. Sonic is a classic scroller and the iconic Sega game. You’ve got to have it and you know it.
The gameplay IS fantastic