Retro Gaming Australia

With Sonic the Hedgehog being Sega’s breakout success in the home console space, it seemed only natural to develop a Sonic game to promote their new CD based add-on, the Mega CD. The Sonic development team essentially splintered off into two groups; a team at Sega Technical Institute in the USA led by Yuji Naka which developed Sonic 2, and a team in Japan led by Naoto Oshima which made Sonic CD. This led to Sonic CD having a distinctly different feel to Sonic 2.

It’s kind of sad to think about it, but Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was the last universally praised Sonic game. Sega really threw everything they had at the sequel – it was a joint development effort between Japanese and American development teams. It was bigger, better looking, had a great soundtrack and some of the best momentum based platforming you’ll ever see. It was the #1 best selling game on the Mega Drive and Genesis, and may still be the best selling title in Sega’s catalogue.

Sonic Adventure marked the long awaited return of Sega’s mascot and the franchise’s first foray into full 3D. Widely praised at the time, and one of the most successful games on the Dreamcast, critics have been less friendly to the game over time, given that it was the first game to introduce a large number of playable characters who weren’t Sonic.

Sega will be releasing a 3D version of the original Sonic the Hedgehog as part of their 3D enhanced re-release program for the Nintendo 3DS eShop.

This updated version of Sonic the Hedgehog will be boasting many enhancements such as the Sonic 2 spin dash, save states, the ability to switch between different regional versions of the game, and even choose between Model 1 and Model 2 Mega Drive sound. These enhancements are completely optional, meaning you can play the game in its vanilla form.

3D Sonic the Hedgehog will be released in Japan this week for 600 yen. Hopefully we’ll hear word of a local release soon.

Sonic Adventure 2 was released to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the series debut in 2001. The 10th Anniversary Birthday Pack release of the game is well worth tracking down. The game itself…well, the Sonic bits are pretty good, but the rest of it…yeah.

Sonic Adventure DX: Director’s Cut is an enhanced port of Sonic’s 3D debut. It bumps up the frame rate to 60fps, adds the Mission Mode and throws in 12 of Sonic’s 8-bit adventures for good measure.

Nope, still don’t like NiGHTS.

It’s arguably one of the best games on the Mega Drive, if not of all time, but Sonic the Hedgehog was the recipient of a totally crude PAL conversion. I decided to take the opportunity to illustrate just how slow and sluggish that particular version of the game is in this latest edition of Retro Gaming Theatre.

This video runs through the first four acts of the game, and a couple of special stages.

Sonic & Knuckles is alright on its own, but combine it with a copy of Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and you have the best Sonic game ever produced. They were actually intended to be one game throughout most of development until the high cost of production for the large cartridge size the original Sonic 3 project needed forced Sega to cut the game into two – Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Sonic & Knuckles.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 was meant to be Sega’s big game for 1993, but the project proved far too ambitious with the required cartridge size needed to house the game’s content simply being far too expensive to produce. They split the game into two halves – Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Sonic and Knuckles, and hurriedly assembled a team to develop Sonic Spinball to go to bat in its place, eventually releasing Sonic 3 in March 1994 and Sonic & Knuckles in October 1994.