I'm not using it as an excuse, I'm just trying to say that you'll have more luck at turning cameras and such quicker with a mouse. Which is very useful in many a game. =P And now, a review, in anticipation of me getting the Sonic Hits Collection!
Sonic The Hedgehog (Sega Genesis):
Graphics: Well, for it's time, the graphics were amazing. They're 16 bit, and everything just seems very detailed for the time. Granted, since it was just the first game, they only got better as the games progressed, but I'm not reviewing all the genesis games here, am I?
Anyway, the levels had very good designs; the colours were vibrant when they needed to be, and the backgrounds fit the levels very well, adding life to the game as well. I give the graphics, for it's time, a
8/10. There's a reason for it being low even for it's time; I said I wouldn't talk about the other games; not that I wouldn't compare. =P
Story: The story was... Non-existent, to be honest. It was a case of 'it's all there in the manual', taken to the extreme. No 'cutscenes' except for the ending; and even then, there wasn't much. There were two endings, but there was very little change between them; if you got all 6 Chaos Emeralds, then there'd be flowers and Robotnik stamping his feet in frustration; if you didn't, then he'd be juggling the Emeralds you didn't get.
Factoring in the Manual, however, it had some more storyline. Basically, Dr. Robotnik, known in Japan(And everywhere now) as Dr. Eggman, captured all of Sonic's animal friends on South Island, and had them attempt to search for the 6 mythical Chaos Emeralds. Not standing for Robotnik's evil plans, Sonic the Hedgehog set off at the speed of sound to stop him, traveling through 6 zones, defeating the evil scientist in each. That's all the story, seriously. Due to this, I'll give the story a
5/10, but i'm not going to factor it in, since it wasn't really important anyway; the main goal was to go very, very fast.
Gameplay: This was the first game in the series; and it shows. The gameplay is good, but the tweaks in the games that came afterward would have been very nice for this game. Sonic's speed is capped; so even if you manage to go really, really fast, he'll subtly slow down until he's back at the capped speed. There is no spin dash, since that was only introduced(albeit in nerfed form) in Sonic CD. He can, however, roll into a ball on the ground still, so that's still an easy way to defeat enemies on the ground. Other than that, it's relatively normal; he has his spin jump attack, and the monitors are obviously around. You can get rings, and turn invincible, and even get a shield to take an extra hit. If you are hit without a shield, you lose all your rings, and if you're hit without any rings you lose a life.
Despite that, if you land of spikes, you lose your rings... however, if you hit the spikes again after that, even with invincibility frames, you instantly die. It's a glitch that's been fixed in most every version and game since, but it was a pretty big oversight at the time, and very likely caused a fair share of annoying deaths, since it was just not something you expected, since normally if something wanted to kill you that badly in games, it would just plain kill you in one hit. =P And since not even the lava in Marble Zone did that...
Another thing that might seem odd, if you play the games out of order, is that in this game, there is no Super Sonic at all. Sure, you can go through all the psychedelic special stages, and gather the
6 Chaos Emeralds... but wait,
6 Chaos Emeralds? Yes, that's right, there are only 6 Emeralds here. And since Sonic needs
7 to transform into Super Sonic, even if there was such a feature, Sonic would be unable to utilize it. And given the confusing mess that Sonic 2's Super Sonic is, it might be for the best. Overall, I'd give the gameplay a
7/10. It's not that the gameplay's bad; but the future games improved on the gameplay so much, that it's hard to go back to it unless you're playing a version that has the improvements, or you just plain want to see how well you do without them.
Music: I'm not sure what
not to say here. The music is just plain awesome. From Green Hill Zone's calming music, to Marble Zone's... well, old-time sound, I guess; to Star Light Zone's awesome starry theme, the music in Sonic games is pretty much guaranteed to be awesome. Unless you're listening to music from Sonic Chronicles. In which case stop that. But yeah, too much that I'd have to say if I went too in depth, so let's just give this a
9/10 and move on.
Overall: While Sonic The Hedgehog is a great game; there's just no denying that the later entries did what it does, and did a much better job at it. I still say to give it a shot, however, I have to only give it a
7.5/10 due to it not aging quite as gracefully as it could have. But yeah, definitely give this game a play, even if only for it's music; and with the smartphone(And hopefully PC? D=) remake coming out relatively soon, you have the perfect opportunity to play this Genesis classic! Or, alternatively, if you have the PS3/Xbox 360 version of Sonic Generations, this is an unlockable in it. But not the PC version, because Sega decided PC versions shouldn't get bonuses like that.
Next up: Sonic The Hedgehog 2!
I'd review Sonic CD next, but I'm gonna wait to actually play it first. I'd think you'd get the better opinions that way. =P
