Genesis ~ Sonic the Hedgehog Review

Overview

Sonic the Hedgehog is the official mascot of Sega and this is the game that started the phenomenon. It certainly does live up to it's expectations. It's about the evil Dr Robonik capturing all these animals and Sonic must venture through various worlds to free them.

Gameplay

You make your way through each level collecting rings, going as fast as you can to get a higher score as well as trying not to get hit by the other robots around you.

When you have rightfully obtained 100 rings, you get a bonus life.

The theme of this game is speed and irony. Sonic is a hedgehog and hedgehogs are slow.

Sonic however is very fast indeed and can go at blistering rates across the screen.

However, he does need a bit of time to accelerate. Sonic's amazing speed can at times annoy you, because while you're making your way across full speed across the screen, you can very easily come across hitting robots and falling off into holes. The way Sonic jumps is interestingly handled through him spinning and is hard to get grips with.

But overall, this is some of the best gameplay you can ever get on the Sega Genesis in platform games.

9 out of 10

Graphics

The theme here is speed and this game shows it in fascinating colours. Alot of detail has gone into this game. Including lively backgrounds and cartoonish animations, still maintaining immaculate detail when Sonic is at full speed and not to mention the super fast frame rate. Top class stuff.

5 out of 5

Sound and Music

The sound effects are excellent, including great whizzing sounds when Sonic is in top speed, and dings and dongs when Sonic hits things with his spiky body.

The music is excellent too. It changes after every world has gone by and wonderfully suits towards the graphics.

5 out of 5

Game Design

This is where all the fun is. Every level has so much detail added in; including a range of different heights to go around, so there is more than one way to go when doing levels.

There are even some interesting objects to help Sonic out, like swinging platforms to get across spikes and springs to increase Sonic's speed. This has to be some of the best level design I've ever seen in Platform games.

Ths game isn't too difficult and not too easy. It's set at a just right difficulty for everyone to enjoy.

5 out of 5

Longevity

You're likely to be coming back for more after you've either completed it or trying again after losing all lives.

Sadly, there is no save game function or passwords to cement your places.

A pity really, because if there is, it'll make all our lives alot easier.

3 out of 5

For: Super fast framerates, lively graphics, sound and music, awesome level designing, lots of speed, good difficulty level

Against: Sonic's speed can get annoying, can't save games, no passwords.