I grew up as a Nintendo kid. I started out with my brother’s NES and SNES; eventually getting my own N64 and Gameboy. Platformers and action-adventure were my genre of choice. Quite predicably, I was a huge Mario fan. Super Mario World and SMW 2: Yoshi’s Island being my favourites. I owned no Sega consoles. I had nothing against them at all, and was always interested in the games. As a child, I didn’t exactly get games all the time. Those were a Christmas/birthday thing, leaving me without about 3 a year. Fortunately, having all my brothers games allowed me to play many older games too. So, there really wasn’t room for me to also have a Sega system. There were enough Nintendo games that I wanted, to where going multi-platform wasn’t necessary.

I had always been interested in the Sonic series though. I was excited when Sega gave up consoles to focus only on games. Finally I could play their games on a Nintendo console. My first experience with Sonic was on the day I bought a Game Boy Advance. The game I choose to buy with it was Sonic Advance. I turned the game on and took a few steps forward after choosing to play as Sonic. Suddenly, a bullet fell on me and I lost all my rings. I was very surprised. Why would I have suddenly been damaged by an enemy that isn’t on the screen? I rushed to retrieve the lost rings, but was still confused by this design choice. I shrugged it off, and continued onward. Something else weird happened; after being launched forward by one of the many speed-increasing ramp-things, I was sped straight into spikes. These spike go up and down making the trip across them a random encounter if you will be hit or not. Once again, I was really surprised by this. I found such “trap-like” level design to be nonsensical. It only got worse as it went on. The whole game felt like a couple of middle-schoolers sitting around, drawing level designs during Recess and saying “lol we will put more TRAPS here, they will never expect that!”.

This was different from other platformers I had played. Getting through a stage in Sonic Advance has much less to do with accurate platforming than it does just stage memorization. Mario isn’t like this. The Mario games have a steady, slower pace that introduces each challenge in a sensible way. It can be difficult to navigate the levels, but not because you can’t see what is there. When I jump on a block in Mario, I don’t worry about if could be one of five different functions that may or may not kill me. In Sonic, I’ll see multiple paths to choose and standing on the wrong thing could end up as hedgehog death. The Mega Man series also relies heavily on playing through stages again and again. However this is to learn the enemy patterns and timing for jumps. It feels more structured and reasonable than the guesswork in Sonic Advance. It is hard to say exactly why dying over and over in Mega Man in completely fine, while losing some rings in Sonic from an unknown enemy is so aggravating.

That is not to say that I didn’t enjoy the game though. Quite the contrary, I’ve played it through as each character -including Amy- and enjoyed several aspects including the music and spritework. What most attracted me to the game, though, was the open stage design that allows for many ways to progress through the zones. Each time I would play a stage, I would have fun trying to find alternate paths through it.

Sometime later, I was at my brothers house after he returned to the States from Korea. There he had bought a Dreamcast and a load of games. One of these was Sonic Adventure 2. As I mentioned, I did enjoy playing Sonic Advance. I was very interested in giving this game a try. I did not have any complains about the challenge feeling too randomized.. I had an issue with the lack of any challenge at all, along with several other problems.

What happened to the non-linear design that I loved so much in Advance? Now in 3D, the level design is more straightforward than I had expected. Sure, riding down the street and tearing up cars while rocking “Escape the City” is a lot of fun, but the focus seems to be more on streamlined speed than what I wanted. Also, with each of the three character types comes a totally different gameplay approach for their stages. The Tails/Eggman levels have each character (depending on light or dark story) piloting a mech. The pacing is slowed down from the Sonic stages, but are still very linear and you simply run and shoot your way to the end. There may be a few time you’ll need to find a switch or something, but its mostly just jumping and shooting from point A to point B. The auto-aim feature leaves you free to not really pay too much attention to what is going on. It seems reasonable to balance out the speed Sonic stages with Tail’s calmer robot action, but it doesn’t stop there. We also have the Knuckles/Rogue areas that are totally different from the rest of the game. In these levels, the player must explore quite expansive levels for the location of three randomly placed chaos emerald pieces. Using clues and a metal-detector like system, it can take quite a while to search through the levels for the treasure. Unless you are a lot faster than I am, the game ends up being more of this gameplay than the other two types. While I find the Knuckles stages fun, they can become quite dull and do feel relevant to the Sonic series at all. All these other playing styles overshadow the Sonic-y segments, which should be the meat of the game. One part goes from a Knuckles stage, to a Sonic boss fight, to a Tails stage and another Knuckles stage. Three non-Sonic stages in a row, except with a Sonic boss fight stuck in. Because, you know, people primarily play Sonic for the bosses.

One aspect of the Sonic series that is extremely apparent in Sonic Adventure 2 (and less so in the other games) is how campy it is. Sonic isn’t too bad, but certainly is an attempt at a “cool” game protagonist when compared to Mario and other characters. Just look how edgy Sonic is when I don’t press any buttons for a few seconds and he taps his foot and points forward in irritation. And Knuckles- how can anyone be as cool as Knuckles! Rap music plays during his stages and he has dreadlocks that make him cool. Wait did Sonic just go Super Sayain? I think he did. Tails was cute and cuddly before, but now he has a mech. Between the music, the epic plot, and the characterization, the Sonic series just feels like it is trying to hard. It ends up being hilariously cheesy, but in a fun way. When I was a kid, I hated the XTREME ATTITUDE of Sonic Adventure 2, but now I see it as hilariously awesome.

A few years ago, I was given the Mega Collection for Nintendo Gamecube. I played it for a while, but I was seeing some of my complaints with Sonic Advance appearing in it and was apprehensive. For a long time, I went without playing it and considered myself just not much of a Sonic kind of guy. With the Sonic the Hedgehog 4 announcement and everyone so excited, I decided to give the games another try. To a lesser degree, I was facing the same frustrations in these early titles as I had found in Sonic Advance. I wasn’t exactly struggling in the games. Actually I find them much easier than I expected. Making it through the first two games without getting a game over is tough for a complete Sonic newcomer, but I don’t find the games all that difficult. Even though I wasn’t dying a lot, losing rings over and over to failed guesswork was getting old. I wanted to love the games. I adored the open stage design here even more than Sonic Advance. The gameplay is excellent and overall I was having a good time.

As I kept playing the games, they became more and more enjoyable. As I started to learn the stage design and be able to avoid more obstacles I grew to appreciate the games more. Games like Mario, Mega Man, Kirby, and Castlevania are easily accessible and fun the first time. Sonic is more like a shmup- it doesn’t really make sense at first, but once you get into it it becomes awesome. I have been playing Sonic constantly for the past three weeks. Bitterly at first, but now completely addicted. I just wish I had discovered this sooner, because I love these games! My current favourite is Sonic and Knuckles. Some zones I love are Ice Cap (Sonic 3), Labyrinth Zone (Sonic 1), Casino Night (Sonic 2), and Lava Reef Zone (Sonic and Knuckles).

I am glad to have discovered how fun the Sonic series can be. Unfortunately I had been burned early on by some newer titles, but I can understand completely why the originals are considered classics.

I blame Kyle(lwelyk) for not shutting up about Sonic and making me interested.

Tagged with: Sega • Sonic • Sonic 3 • Sonic 3 and Knuckles • Sonic Advance • Sonic Adventure 2 • Sonic and Knuckles • Sonic the Hedgehog • Sonic the Hedgehog 3