Sonic Retrospective Part XIII - Sonic the Hedgehog Pocket Adventure

The Neo Geo Pocket was one of the many short-lived handhelds that fell to Nintendo's domination of the handheld market and there was a Sonic game for it. Sonic the Hedgehog Pocket Adventure is almost like a remake of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 using Sonic 3 music. It is also the first Sonic game made by Dimps, who would go on to make almost every other portable Sonic game.

The levels all correspond to Sonic 2 levels, but shuffled up a bit. The level design is even much the same in some stages. Here is the level map of Pocket Adventure's Aquatic Reflex Zone and here is a level map of Sonic 2's Aquatic Ruin for comparison. While they are not exactly the same, they are very similar. 

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Sonic Retrospective Part XII - Sonic Adventure

There was no real Sonic game for the SEGA Saturn, so it wasn't until the Dreamcast that a real 3-D Sonic title was made. There was work on a game called Sonic X-treme, but that got canceled and shuffled between systems. This is unfortunate, because Sonic's love interest in the game was planned to be a new character called Tiara Boobowski, which is ridiculous.

In making Sonic Adventure, the team redesigned the characters, making Sonic lankier and more cartoony. They also added a lot more characters, and decided that giving each one their own level types would be more interesting than each playing as similarly as they had in the past. They also took trips to South America for research on temples and jungles in order to plan the appearance of areas in the game like Mystic Ruin.

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Sonic Retrospective Part XI - Spin-offs up to 1997

Sonic has had a lot of spin-off games, and most of them do not require more than a passing mention. As such, this post will cover all of the Sonic spin-off games up to Sonic R in 1997. While some deserve a bit more discussion, including Knuckles Chaotix, most of these games will only get a few sentences. If you don't care about stuff like edutainment titles, come back next post where I finally talk about the first real 3-D game in the series: Sonic Adventure.

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Sonic Retrospective X - Sonic Blast

Sonic Blast is the last 2D main series Sonic game we're going to see for a while, and it, sadly, is one of the worst 2D Sonic games. Despite having a very similar name to Sonic 3D Blast and nigh identical box art, the games have nothing in common with each other. Instead they made the graphics look vaguely 3D and called it good.

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Sonic Retrospective IX - Sonic 3D Blast: Flickie's Island

Sonic 3D Blast (Also known as Sonic 3D: Flickie's Island) is the third game in the series to use an isometric viewpoint to simulate 3D. The other two, Sonic Labyrinth and SegaSonic the Hedgehog, will be talked about soon in a post detailing spinoffs. Sonic 3D Blast is an interesting attempt at bringing Sonic to 3D that unfortunately strips much of what most would consider to be Sonic from the game. 

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Sonic Retrospective Part VIII - Sonic Triple Trouble

Sonic Triple Trouble (Japanese title: Sonic & Tails 2) is a direct sequel to Sonic Chaos. However, unlike Sonic Chaos, Triple Trouble is much more reminescent of a Genesis title and contains much longer stages. It also adds a lot more vehicular sections.

Unlike the other Game Gear games, Sonic Triple Trouble has no Master System version. Despite this, the game feels more like a console Sonic game than the others on the Game Gear. Like its prequel, you Sonic has his Super Peel-Out and this is the second to last game it appears in. Tails can fly, but it again uses the awkward hold up and press jump while standing system instead of the much simpler jump mashing the main series utilizes.

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