A Brief Background: The Alien franchise (Various, 1979 to present) has certainly had a long and complicated history with videogame adaptations that includes real-time strategies, crossover titles, survival/horror experiences, and a fair number of first-person shooters. Similar to how director James Cameron more thanmet the challenge of delivering a sequel to Ridley Scott’s commercial and highly influentialAlien (ibid, 1976), Konami produced a popular arcade port of Aliens(Cameron, 1984) that came to be regarded as one of the best games in the franchise. However, Konami lost the rights to the Aliens license by the time the divisive third film was released; hampered by production woes, delays, and script problems, it took some time forAlien³ (Fincher, 1992) to become a cult favourite for many fans. It was, however, accompanied by two videogame adaptations, the first being a decent, if confusing, run-and-gun adventure, and the second being this arcade-exclusive rail shooter. In many ways a precursor to SEGA’s later success with the House of the Dead series (SEGA/Wow Entertainment, 1996 to 2022), Alien³: The Gun was lauded as one of the best light gun shooters around at the time, one that successfully merged the atmospheric horror elements of the film with the action-packed enjoyment of a rail shooter.
The Review: I’m tackling my review of Alien³: The Gun a little differently to my other game reviews; it’s still going to be a shorter review because of how short the game is, but I did finish it so I want to go over my thoughts in a little more detail and give it a proper rating. The first thing I need to say is that the game’s title is pretty ridiculous; yes, Alien³: The Gun tells you everything you need to know but could they really not have come up with something a little more interesting and exciting for a subtitle than just The Gun? Secondly, I emulated this game and the ROM I played was a little buggy; elements like the heads-up display (HUD), aiming reticule, foreground, and background would often be invisible or appear corrupted, which was a bit of an issue but I was still able to power through the game thanks to the gift of unlimited credits. Finally, Alien³: The Gun is an Alien³ game only in the sense that it takes place on Fiorina “Fury” 161 and contains locations and Xenomorphs that mirror the film, but it’s actually more like a sequel to the movie and has far more in common with Aliens than the third movie. Rather than playing as Lieutenant Ellen Ripley, you and a friend take on the role of two United States Colonial Marines charged with investigating the Sulaco and cleaning up the rampant Xenomorph infestation on Fury 161, though movie stills are used at certain points to convey story beats like the Alien’s demise from the end of the film. Your standard issue pulse rifle has two basic fire modes; the first is a rapid-fire function tied to a firepower meter and the second sees you tossing out a limited supply of grenades (or “bombs”) to clear all onscreen enemies. If you simply hold down the trigger, you’ll run out of firepower and be left vulnerable as the game automatically moves you through the various corridors and locations; when you input a coin to continue, your bombs will clear a path for you and you acquire a flamethrower to mix things up or restore your health by shooting supplements.
You’ll gun down swarms of Aliens in a game whose action is closer to Aliens than Alien³.
Your main objective is to survive each stage of the game, wipe out any Xenomorphs, robots, or androids in your path, and take out the boss waiting at the end of the stage. There are five stages but, at various points, you’re asked to pick a floor or door or need to shoot through a door to reach a different area, which leads to different routes, thus adding a bit of replay value to the game. You start off on the Sulaco, which is now infested with Alien eggs; Facehuggers leap at the screen and Xenomorph warriors scuttle about on the floors, walls, and ceilings, slashing at you and being left a quivering mess of green goo as you blast off their limbs. Sentry turrets also take shots at you, dead bodies are everywhere, and you’ll be treated to the familiar squeals of defeated Aliens and a few voice samples as you progress. While the Sulaco is obviously based on the location seen in Aliens, right down to the cryo-sleep chamber, the rest of the game’s stages take place either on the storm-swept surface of Fury 161 or in the prison and refinery on the planet. You’ll blast through the mess hall, infirmary, tunnels, and furnace as you go but watch out for the prisoners; not only do you need to avoid shooting them, but you’ll also have to try and save them when Aliens grab them from the vents. Other memorable moments from Alien³ are also surprisingly recreated, such as the scene where the inmates use themselves as bait to trap the Alien in the corridors (they even explode like in the movie), you encountering a Xenomorph in the bowels of the prison, and a final confrontation with the Alien in the lead works. The amount of enemies or prisoners you killed and the damage you took is tallied up at the end of each stage; do well and you’ll gain a higher rank and score higher on the high score table, though this is mainly for bragging rights.
Alien variety is a bit lacking, and nowhere is this clearer than in the final, unimpressive boss.
Although Alien³: The Gun doesn’t feature any of the recognisable music from any of the films, the action comes thick and fast; since it’s a rail shooter, you’re given very little time to breathe and, unlike other light gun games, there’s no cover or reload options so you’re left ploughing ahead into the claws of swarms of Aliens. Weyland-Yutani androids and robots pad out the enemies you’ll encounter, and you’ll see other Alien variants, such as bipedal ones like in Alien³ and “warrior” Aliens like those from Aliens and even Chestbursters (with some even exploding out of the chests of the prisoners!) Each stage ends with a boss battle that basically amounts to you being guided around an enclosed space and blasting at a larger foe until their health bar is depleted; the first boss you’ll face is the “Super Face-Hugger”, a bigger variant that scuttles about, pops back up time and time again no matter how much it appears to be dead, and spits acid at you. After escaping the flaming wreckage of your shuttle and braving the harsh landscape of Fury 161, which is swarming with Aliens and salvage robots, you’ll battle a massive tank-like vehicle. Target its cannons and turrets and it’ll eventually detach and hover in the sky shooting missiles at you! After passing through a pitch-black area with your infrared goggles, you’ll fight a larger Alien drone at the prison entrance. This critter is pretty fast and agile for such a big bugger; it also slashes at you, whips you with its tail, and charges at you with a headbutt and basically sets the standard for the subsequent Alien boss fights. You’ll battle Alien³’s bipedal creature, the “Super Dogburster”, in the bowels of the prison; this one also charges at you and likes to hide behind the many pillars but has the added threat of spitting purple goop from afar to damage you and briefly obscure your vision. After surviving the tunnels, you fight another large Alien by the lead works; this time, you’re stuck in place but it’s pretty simple to stun-lock the Alien until it flees. You catch up to it at the blast furnace and must unload everything you have to force it into the lead works; though it appears defeated, it’ll claw its way back out and you’ll need to shoot the pipes overhead to rapidly cool it and finish it off. After that, you have one last challenge to beat and, thankfully, it’s not a Xenomorph Queen! Instead, you’re confronted by an “unidentified man” (who I assume is Bishop II from the movie) who unloads on you with a flamethrower after learning that you destroyed all the Aliens; simply shoot at him until he stops getting up and you’ll earn yourself a bit of text to wrap things up and a place on the high score table.
The Summary: I love a good, action-packed light gun game; they’re mindless fun but, sometimes, that’s exactly what you want and Alien³: The Gun certain delivers in this regard. Unfortunately, like its home console cousin, Alien³: The Gun is a little restricted by being associated with the Alien³ movie. It’s pretty obvious that this is an Aliens game dressed up to resemble Alien³; you have all the same weapons, sound effects, and even a few locations from Aliens featuring prominently against the background of Fury 161 to bolster Alien³’s far more subdued and bleak narrative. I can understand that, as it’s hardly exciting to make an action-shooter based on a movie with only one Alien in it, but it begs the question of why anyone thought a videogame adaptation of the slower, more contemplative Alien³ was a good idea. Still, that aside, this is a really fun game; it’s painfully short and light on additional weapons and such, but there’s some great attention to detail sprinkled throughout. You can blast off Alien limbs, destroy many parts of the environment (both for fun and to damage foes), and it’s interesting that the developers added in a limited branching path system; it doesn’t change the game that much, but it adds replay value, if nothing else. The Aliens are fun to blast into smithereens, the weather effects on the planet’s surface add a bit of atmosphere, and I enjoyed how aspects of the film were recreated, especially in the mess hall and candle-lit corridors. The bosses could’ve had a little more variety, for sure; as much as I applaud the game for not wheeling out an Alien Queen, it feels like Alien³: The Gun has less Alien variety than other Alien videogames from around this time and plays things a little too safe by just offering bigger, scarier versions of the Xenomorph. In the end, there are obviously better rail shooters out there, but you could do a lot worse than giving Alien³: The Gun a shot; of all the Alien³ videogame adaptations, it’s the best (though not the most faithful) simply for its brevity and the fast-paced, explosive action it offers.
My Rating:
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
Pretty Good
Have you ever played Alien³: The Gun? If so, how do you think it compares to the home console adaptation of Alien³? Were you disappointed to see the bleak, atmospheric Alien³ adapted into an all-action shooter? Which of the branching paths did you take and what did you think to the boss variety on offer here? Are you a fan of Alien³? While Alien videogame is your favourite and how are you celebrating Alien Day this year? Whatever you think about Alien³: The Gun, or Alien³ in general, share your thoughts below or drop a comment on my social media, and go check out my other Alien reviews across the site.
Released: October 1992 Developer: Probe Software Also Available For: Amiga, Commodore 64, Game Boy, Game Gear, Master System, Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES)
First Impressions: At first glance, Alien³ seems to share many similarities with the Aliens (Konami, 1990) arcade game; the visuals, especially the sprites, onscreen text, and environments, are strikingly similar and Ripley even wields many of the weapons featured in that game. However, the moment you actually start playing the game, you realise that it’s an entirely different beast, one that has a bit of an identity crisis. For starters, as mentioned, Ripley is armed to the teeth; she’s got the iconic Aliens pulse rifle, a flamethrower, a grenade launcher, and regular grenades, making her decidedly more formidable than she was in the source material, where the entire point was that she and the inmates had to come up with out the box solutions to deal with the resident Xenomorph. Secondly, and most crucially, the game isn’t just a mindless run-and-gun; instead, you’re given a strict time limit to complete a specific objective in each stage and reach the exit, and the game’s locations take on a far less linear, much more labyrinthine structure that closely mirrors the panic and claustrophobia of the movie. Ripley is tasked with rescuing inmates and destroying the Xenomorph infestation, objectives that are somewhat aided by the onscreen Aliens-style motion tracker and the various vents and ladders that help her to get around each location.
Although heavily armed, Ripley’s greatest challenges are the timer and maze-like levels.
Alien³ utilises a simple control scheme, but one I had to shuffle about a bit; by default, A switches your weapon, B jumps, and C fires, but I swapped fire to A and switch to C as that was more comfortable for me. You can pick between one and nine continues, but these are actually how many lives you have, and whether you want to play on Easy, Normal, or Hard mode. I chose nine lives and the Easy difficulty and still found the game to be quite challenging; the timer is a constant headache, meaning you need a lot of trial and error to find the optimal route around each stage, something that is hampered by dead ends, hazards (such as fans and my pet hate, fall damage), and the Xenomorphs. Aliens will crawl out of the ground and along the ceilings and walls, dropping on you and charging at you, though you thankfully don’t have to worry about them constantly respawning or acid damage. Later, Facehuggers apparently also show up and you have to shake them off with the directional pad, though I never saw any in my playthrough. You’ll occasionally have to make some blind jumps to avoid slippery slopes or make use of moving platforms to reach new areas, as well as activating consoles to open doors (or simply blowing them open with a grenade). If you fail to rescue all of the prisoners in time, a gory scene plays out showing them, and Ripley, succumbing to their Chestbursters, and you’ll have to replay the entire stage from the start all over again, which is a real pain in the ass.
My Progression: As I said, Alien³ has a bit of an identity crisis. Judging by Ripley’s weaponry and the way the Aliens are presented, it seems like the developers wanted to make something more akin to the action-orientated Aliens but were stuck adapting the most recent movie. The game impresses quite well with its arcade-style graphics; Fury 161 is recreated nicely, including a wasteland up top and different layers within, and Ripley has a basic alternative pose when left idle. Each stage is preceded by a drooling Alien face and the music is quite jaunty, which is at odds with the bleak source material but helps keep you engaged in the action. Sadly, the gameplay and steep difficulty curve are where Alien³ falls apart; the time limit is way too tight and health and ammo pickups are so scarce that it’s a chore just getting through even the first stage. I was just about able to tank my way through to the third stage, where the layout just became too confusing to continue and I was forced to quit.
Sadly, the game’s difficulty, stringent timer, and lack of passwords make progression a chore.
This wouldn’t be a problem if Alien³ incorporated a password system, but it doesn’t; there are cheats out there, but I couldn’t get any of them to work so I’m not sure if I’ll ever progress further into the game, especially as you can’t seem to earn extra lives or continues. Looking ahead, the game sees Ripley venturing into the blood-stained medical wing, a cargo area and butchery also feature, and the game even includes an Alien nest that is, again, visually ripped straight out of Aliens. Xenomorph eggs pop out Facehuggers, slime drools from above, and various ridge-headed versions of the Xenomorph act as “Level Guardians”, spitting acid, jumping about the place, making use of higher platforms, and players will need to fend off two at once in a large industrial area in order to get their final score tally and earn the extremely lacklustre text ending in with Ripley simply leaves the prison without any repercussions. I’m surprised that the developers resisted the urge to have Ripley fight an Alien Queen, as is often standard for Alien videogames, though these boss battles seem to increase in difficulty simply because the area you battle them in increases in size, giving them more places to hide and surprise you with some acid projectiles from behind the prominent foreground images.
Alien³ is a strange entry in the franchise to adapt into a videogame, and it seems like the developers shared this philosophy; there’s a reason why the game has more in common, in terms of action and gameplay, with the Aliens arcade game than the actual movie on which it’s based and that’s the fact that Alien³ would work much better as a point-and-click adventure or a survival-horror style title, two genres that probably wouldn’t have been successful at the time or on the Mega Drive. It’s not a bad game, really, it’s just the difficulty curve is way too steep; either the game needed a password system or the timer needed to go, but without either it’s a real test of your skill and patience to get anywhere beyond the first few stages. I liked the level of detail, even though things were a bit stiff and janky at times (Ripley sometimes struggled to go down ladders), and the use of gore when you inevitably mess up. The lack of enemy variety was a bit of an issue, though; Alien games, especially around this time, tended to go a bit bonkers with Alien variants but Alien³ plays things way too safe. In the end, it was a largely forgettable and disappointing experience for me, especially as it could’ve been so much more if the Aliens arcade game had simply been ported instead. Still, maybe I just suck; maybe you actually really enjoyed this game. Maybe you had no issue rescuing all the prisoners and navigating the maze-like levels. Or, maybe, you prefer a different Alien³ videogame, or a different Alien game entirely. Whatever your thoughts and feedback, feel free to drop a comment below or on my social media and be sure to check out my other Alien content on the site.
Story Title: “The Death Egg Saga Book One: Scrambled” Published: September 1996
Story Title: “The Death Egg Saga Book Two: Poached” Published: October 1996
Story Title: “The Death Egg Saga Book Three: Over Easy” Published: November 1996
The Background: When Sonic the Hedgehog blasted onto the videogame scene in 1991, he was an immediate hit thanks to his debut title being bundled with the Mega Drive and SEGA’s aggressive marketing campaign. His popularity exploded with Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (SEGA Technical Institute, 1992), however, and Sonic merchandise was suddenly everywhere; not only did he feature in the Macy’s Day Parade and in cartoons but he also starred in a number of comic books. Following the initial four-part miniseries, which mashed together narrative elements of Sonic’s cartoon adventures, Archie Comics began regular publication of what would become the longest-running videogame comic book ever. In time, to capitalise on Sonic’s continued popularity, a number of spin-off comics were produced, including limited issue releases such as this one designed as adaptations of various Sonic videogames. While the videogame lore often clashed with Archie’s unique continuity, and later led to a series of convoluted retcons, these did introduce popular franchise characters like Knuckles the Echidna into the comics and helped to broaden Archie’s continuity.
The Review: Since I wasn’t able to get my hands on Archie’s Sonic comics over here in the United Kingdom, I’ve always had a bit of a fascination with them, despite how complex their narrative eventually became with a whole mess of original lore and characters clogging up the pages. Still, one of the first priorities for me when these comics were collected in mini volumes was to pick up the “Death Egg Saga”, which was published in one of those Sonic the Hedgehog Select collections, primarily because Sonic 3 & Knuckles is my favourite of the classic Sonic games but also because I was intrigued to see the Death Egg, and Knuckles, looped into Archie’s quasi-continuation of the notoriously popular Sonic the Hedgehog/SatAM cartoon (1993 to 1994). For context, “The Death Egg Saga” picks up shortly after the long-lost King Maximillian Acorn was finally rescued from the Zone of Silence after being trapped there around about the same time Doctor Ivo Robotnik conquered Planet Mobius. While the Freedom Fighters celebrated their liege’s return, this would come to upset the balance of power and focus of their crusade against Dr. Robotnik as the out of touch King Acorn undermined the authority of his daughter, Princess Sally Acorn, and favoured the likes of the abrasive Geoffrey St. John over Sonic. Consequently, the story begins with St. John (one of my least favourite Archie characters) skulking around the Freedom Fighter’s hidden haven, Knothole Village, at the crack of dawn; he’s spotted by Sonic and the two get into a war of words that almost comes to blows before Sally intervenes and reveals that her father is slowly losing his mind and body to a bizarre crystalline infection.
When Sonic and Tails look for Magic Rings to help the King, they stumble upon the Death Egg!
As best as Knothole’s resident physician, Doctor Horatio Quentin Quack, can figure, this is a result of the King’s extended stay in the mysterious Zone of Silence; in order to keep the Freedom Fighters from panicking, King Acorn’s condition has been deemed top secret and Sally orders St. John to stand guard over the King while they explore their options. Their trusty mechanic and science expert, Rotor the Walrus (occasionally called “Boomer”), is at a loss but rookie Freedom Fighter Miles “Tails” Prower hits upon a possible solution when he observes that the King’s crystalline skin resembles the texture of Chaos Emeralds. This prompts Sonic to retrieve his recently-acquired “one-billionth Magic Ring” to try and use its Chaos Emerald powers to reverse King Acorn’s condition, though it proves to be a fleeting solution. Rotor theorises that the Ring is unique to Sonic and suggests gathering as many others as possible to try again, prompting Sally to send Bunnie Rabbot and Antoine D’Coolette out to the mysterious Lake of Rings in the forest and Sonic and Tails to the Ring Grotto outside Robotropolis, Dr. Robotnik’s industrial, mechanical city. This area has been irrevocably changed and damaged following a recent fight between Super Sonic and Hyper Knuckles, and Dr. Robotnik’s attacks, and the two are stunned to find the Ring Grotto has been sealed beneath an impenetrable steel dome. Sonic leaves Tails to watch over the area while he races off to recruit a bruiser named Carl Condor to help bust it open, and the young fox-boy is shocked when the dome suddenly opens up and the Grotto’s entire supply of Magic Rings is sucked up into the clouds courtesy of a giant vacuum tube, which also takes Tails along with it! At the Mobian Cliffs, Sonic is shocked by a sudden and unnaturally faster solar eclipse, almost as if something artificial were crossing the Sun’s path, and horrified to find that Carl has been robotocised; caught off-guard, Sonic is rendered unconscious by the mechanical vulture and carried into the sky towards an ominous, egg-shaped superstructure.
Knuckles and the Chaotix are aghast when the Death Egg tries to submerge the Floating Island!
This is, of course, the Death Egg, Dr. Robotnik’s newest and most dangerous creation. After leaving his nephew and whimpering subordinate Snively in charge of overseeing Robotropolis’s reconstruction (a position he immediately and amusingly abuses), the cybernetic dictator revels in his glory as he powers up the Death Egg with the Magic Rings and prepares to use it to roboticise every living thing on the planet! However, while the Magic Rings ensure that the Death Egg is effectively invulnerable to external attack, Dr. Robotnik still needs a Chaos Emerald to bring the station to full power; additionally, he sucked up some unwanted additional weight that’s keeping it from reaching its proper orbit, but has no idea that Tails is in amongst the trees and debris. Thinking quickly, Tails jams himself into the discarded wreckage of a disobedient SWATbot so he can explore the space station undetected, while Sonic escapes the talons of the Condorbot and defies the laws of physics to pinball his way onto the Death Egg just as Tails jettisons the crap that was weighing it down. With the Death Egg scrambling their communications signal and the King’s condition worsening, Dr. Robotnik guides the Death Egg towards the Floating Island (as it was then known), which naturally attracts the attention of the island’s hot-headed guardian, Knuckles. Swooping up to intercept the Death Egg, Knuckles is hit by a laser blast from the satellite’s “eye”; luckily, this simply stuns him and he falls into the arms of his friends, the Chaotix (Mighty the Armadillo, Vector the Crocodile, Charmy Bee, Espio the Chameleon and…*sigh* Archimedes the Fire-Ant). The group watch as Dr. Robotnik drops a squadron of gigantic Burrobots to dig up the island’s Chaos Emeralds, which they race to stop to keep the island from plummeting from the sky. While the Chaotix attack the massive drilling mechs, Sonic tears his way through the Death Egg but arrives too late to keep Dr. Robotnik from ramming the satellite into the Floating Island! The Chaos Emerald is able to keep the island aloft, but the sheer weight and thrust of the Death Egg causes it to tip to one side and forces it into the sea below!
Thanks to repurposing Dr. Robotnik’s mechs, Sonic and Tails are able to destroy the Death Egg.
Naturally, Sonic leaps into action, only to end up attacking Tails by accident. To make matters worse, Dr. Robotnik shields himself from Sonic’s attack with a thick wall of plexiglass and then chokes him out with a spew of poisonous gas. Luckily, Tails recovers from his assault and uses his SWATbot suit to break through Dr. Robotnik’s defences and destroy his control panels, saving Sonic from suffocation and sending the satellite uncontrollably hurtling into space. Thanks to a “stabilising field” built into his “Gravi-Gauntlet”, Dr. Robotnik staves off the sudden drag of inertia and escapes to his auxiliary control room; he then sics a massive robotic Sonic doppelgänger on the two. While a far cry from his sleeker, more popular counterpart or even Sonic’s more versatile Mecha Sonic form, this “Silver Sonic” has the muscle and armour to shrug off Sonic’s attacks and manhandle (or should that be hoghandle?) him with punches, kicks, and slams but proves disappointingly susceptible to an electric shock from some conveniently-placed severed cables. Despite the failure of his Silver Sonic, Dr. Robotnik resorts to another back-up plan, donning his “most sophisticated battle armour ever”, the Eggs-O-Skeleton, which augments his physical strength by drawing power from the Death Egg itself! Sonic evens the odds by (…somehow…) commandeering Silver Sonic’s mechanical body and battling the rotund dictator on equal ground. The melee escalates but, ultimately, Sonic hurls Dr. Robotnik up through the ceiling and out of the Death Egg; during the fight, Tails was somehow able to rig the Death Egg to explode and the two beat a hasty retreat, swiping the stolen Magic Rings and making it safely to the surface before the Death Egg’s destruction (which, while somewhat anti-climactic on paper, is “seen and felt” all around the planet). While Snively faces the wrath of his uncle and master and the mad cyborg swears revenge upon Sonic and the Freedom Fighters, Sonic and Tails race back to Knothole to see if the Rings will cure the King, which is a plot thread left unresolved in this miniseries.
The Summary: As ever, one of the main appeals of Archie’s attempt at a Sonic 3 & Knuckles adaptation is the artwork; Archie Comics, especially at this time, did a great job of emulating the character designs and locations seen in SatAM, with Patrick “Spaz” Spaziante being their standout artist. Manny Galan is no slouch here, though, and there are times when his version of Sonic evokes the character’s more dynamic and streamlined Japanese presentation; Archie’s original characters, like St. John, don’t fare too well but SEGA’s characters all hold up quite nicely, though I’m not massively onboard with the artistic shortcuts taken to basically show Sonic and Knuckles flying simply because they need to get up to the Death Egg. Everything is still early Archie, though, meaning the Floating Island doesn’t look that great, the Death Egg has an ugly and needlessly “busy” design, and there’s an element of daft childishness in some areas as the comic still hadn’t quite shaken off the influences from SatAM’s more slapstick sister series. As if often the case, the first few pages are bogged down with recapping the events from previous issues and even prior Archie stories, but it’s not too invasive.
While there’s some decent build up to the Death Egg, it feels secondary to King Acorn’s plight.
The biggest issue with Sonic Quest is that it’s not much of an adaptation of Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Much like in their other videogame tie-ins and those seen in Fleetway’s publications over here in the UK, Archie’s writers pick and choose elements from the videogames to incorporate, almost as if they were drip-fed footage and details of SEGA’s upcoming games rather than being privy to full details ahead of time. Thus, elements of Sonic 3 & Knuckles are spread out across different stories and one-offs, such as introducing Knuckles and even the Chaotix before the Death Egg. While the Death Egg is at the centre of Sonic Quest, it’s not really the narrative focus; the satellite doesn’t appear until the end of issue one and is destroyed before it can really do anything other than steal some Magic Rings, blast Knuckles, and almost submerge the Floating Island. On the plus side, the story does a great job of building the threat of the Death Egg; hiding it, seeing it on computer monitors, and especially the “eclipse” sequence all add to the anticipation of the space station’s big reveal and it’s portrayed (on paper) as being a serious threat as it’s allegedly capable of roboticising the entire planet. However, since it lacks a Chaos Emerald, it cannot actually do this and it’s one attack is enough to simply stun Knuckles, significantly diminishing its menace. I think the story would have benefitted from being five or even six issues long and seeing Dr. Robotnik successfully attack the Floating Island with the battleship and steal a Chaos Emerald to robotoicise large areas of Mobius, which would have greatly raised the stakes of the narrative.
Things pick up when Silver Sonic appears but the story wastes a lot of its more interesting elements.
As presented, Sonic Quest doesn’t even require Sonic to begrudgingly join forces with his hot-headed rival; Knuckles’ involvement is more of a glorified cameo and, while he and the Chaotix do fend off the gigantic Burrobots, he does nothing to help destroy the Death Egg. Indeed, since Sonic and Tails do all the work from inside the space station and sabotage its controls, there was never any danger of Dr. Robotnik acquiring a Chaos Emerald so Knuckles could’ve been entirely absent from the story. Additionally, we don’t really get a sense of the interior of the Death Egg; we only see a few corridors and rooms, with the bulk of the story taking place in a confined control room, and the main concern of the plot is more about getting the Magic Rings to cure King Acorn, with the Death Egg presented as more of an inconvenience since that’s where the Rings are being held. Things pick up a bit once Dr. Robotnik unleashes Silver Sonic but, while I enjoyed this fight and the artwork here, this mechanical monstrosity is defeated with a ridiculous amount of ease, exhibits no personality, and is somehow easily controlled by Sonic after it’s defeated. Even the showdown between Sonic and Dr. Robotnik ends up being quite disappointing; not only is Dr. Robotnik’s Eggs-O-Skeleton a weak design and a poor substitute for his more imposing Death Egg Robot, we never get a sense of what he’s capable of while wearing it beyond “being stronger” and he’s easily trounced by Sonic piloting the remains of Silver Sonic. There’s almost an intriguing element to this in the panels where Sonic is so fixated on ending Dr. Robotnik that he briefly considers risking his life, but it’s swept under the rug by a quick word from Tails and wouldn’t really resurface until the comic’s fiftieth issue. In the end, this was an enjoyable three-issue adventure; the art is good, the writing isn’t too hammy, and there’s some fun visuals whenever the Death Egg is looming over the Floating Island. However, it just reads like another Archie Sonic adventure; the Death Egg should’ve been a massive event, one stretching across multiple issues, but just comes across as another of Dr. Robotnik’s many maniacal schemes. As soon as we see it, it’s destroyed without really doing anything except threatening the Floating Island, something easily solved by Tails being a bit trigger happy, and there’s never a sense that this is truly the final victory for Dr. Robotnik in his war against the furries. It’s a shame, really, as this could’ve been a great way to build bridges between Sonic and Knuckles or even have the Chaotix team up with the Freedom Fighters, but it just comes across as a throwaway tie-in with little impact on the ongoing narrative beyond finding a cure for the King.
My Rating:
⭐⭐
Rating: 2 out of 5.
Could Be Better
Did you enjoy Sonic Quest? Did you collect the miniseries when it first released or, like me, did you pick it up in a later collection? What did you think to the depiction of the Death Egg? Do you agree that it was neutered compared to the videogames or were you impressed with its appearance? Were you disappointed that Sonic and Knuckles didn’t team up to fight at and by how easily it was brought down? What did you think to Silver Sonic and Dr. Robotnik’s Eggs-O-Skeleton armour? Which of Archie’s videogame tie-ins was your favourite? How are you celebrating the anniversary of Sonic 3’s release today? Please feel free to share your memories of Archie’s Sonic comics and Sonic 3 & Knuckles below or on my social media.
January sees the celebration of two notable dates in science-fiction history, with January 2 christened “National Science Fiction Day” to coincide with the birth date of the world renowned sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov, and HAL 9000, the sophisticated artificial intelligence of Arthur C. Clarke’s seminal 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), being created on 12 January. This year, however, I’ve been spending every Thursday of January celebrating sci-fi’s toughest lawman, Judge Joseph Dredd!
Released: 16 June 1995 Developer: Probe Software Also Available For: Game Boy, Game Gear, PC/MS-DOS, and Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES)
A Brief Background: Still published to this day, British science-fiction comic book 2000 AD first appeared in February 1977 and, in March of that same year, introduced readers to the uncompromising lawman of the future, Judge Joseph Dredd. Created of John Wagner, Carlos Ezquerra, and Pat Mills, Dredd became one of the most popular and iconic British comic book characters of all time. Accordingly, the character has expanded beyond the comic book panels and into the realms of videogames on more than on occasion; his first videogame outing was a largely repetitive platform shooter, a concept expanded upon by its bigger, more graphically impressive Amiga follow-up. Dredd’s relationship with videogames is largely considered to be hit and miss but, when the time finally came for the character to make the jump to the silver screen, an adaptation was put into development. While the movie would become a notoriousbox office bomb, developers Probe Software sought to be as faithful to the production as possible by digitising the film sets to be featured as locations in the game, however their efforts resulted in mixed-to-negative reviews across the board. While some reviews praised the gameplay and fidelity to the source material, others criticised the difficulty and lack of variety, and the game failed to make a lasting impression regardless of which system it was played.
First Impressions: Judge Dredd is a 2D, sidescrolling run-and-gun that, for the most part, emulates the plot and visual aesthetic of the bombastic movie. Players assume the role of Judge Dredd (whose sprite more resembles his comic book counterpart than Sylvester Stallone’s look from the film) and play through twelve stages taking out street punks, mutants, and even Dredd’s fellow Judges just like in the movie. Players are given three lives to start with and can collect more by picking up extra life icons, and each stage has a primary a secondary objective, both of which are relayed to the player using sprite art modelled from scenes of the film and traditional text. Primary objectives range from destroying ammo supplies, locating Dredd’s mentor, Judge Fargo, reaching the council in the Hall of Justice, and defeating specific enemies. Secondary objectives appear to be option, but you must complete the primary objective in order to exit the current stage, something which can prove problematic given how maze-like and strangely designed many of the game’s stages are.
Though often cluttered, the game certainly makes an effort to marry the visuals of the film and comic book.
Judge Dredd is armed with his trust Lawgiver; tapping or holding the A button will see Dredd fire a variety of shots, from unlimited regular bullets to heat-seekers, grenades, and missiles, and you can even hold down the button to fire uninterrupted. Dredd can also sprint by tapping the directional pad (D-pad), and shoot while running, jumping, and crouching, and in all directions (including diagonally!) Although some objectives tell you not to shoot certain enemies, you’re free to be as trigger happy as you like; however, you’ll score more points if you use Dredd’s melee skills (A up close or X if you have a six-button controller) to disarm and arrest perps when “GUILTY” appears over their head. Dredd can jump with B and even fly about for a few seconds if you find an Anti-Grav Belt; you’ll be doing a fair amount of platforming but Dredd can’t jump very high so you’ll often need to make use of ladders, monkey along overhead lines, or even a running jump to reach new areas. Dredd can also crawl about, push some objects, and access terminals to see his current mission progression and health and ammo stats or lock doors in certain stages. Dredd controls quite well but is a bit clunky; pressing up will scroll the screen, which can be disorientating, and there’s a few too many frames of animation at times, meaning there is often a delay between button presses. Dredd is quite sturdy but can replenish his health with small and large hearts, pick up additional ammo, or even grab a temporary forcefield and invincibility to help even the odds.
There’s some variety on display in the different Dredd’s objectives and gameplay mechanics.
After completing each stage, you’re given a score tally and a password to help you skip ahead; while there don’t appear to be any useful passwords for this version of the game, such as infinite health or ammo, it is a handy feature to pick up where you left off or try out different missions. In my case, this is almost mandatory; it took quit a bit of trial and error to complete even the first stage as you can get stuck in an area with no way back. While Dredd will nip up on the spot after being killed, it’s quite easy to get stuck as ladders and hazards aren’t always immediately visible, and while you can duck and shoot most enemies, you’ll be majorly outclassed by the wild mutants in the Cursed Earth and the Atomic, Bacterial, and Chemical Warriors (A.B.C. Warriors) you’re tasked with destroying later on. The game certainly looks good; sprites are a bit small but Dredd has some fun idle animations, such as twirling his gun and cleaning his badge (there’s even a little squeak-squeak sound effect), and there’s some splashes of blood when you off enemies. The environments are visually very faithful to the movie, including trucks, futuristic skyscrapers, and the Statue of Liberty as in the film, but can be cluttered and a little too large for their own good. Gameplay is somewhat broken up by one stage that has you flying through the skies on your Lawmaster while fending off pursuing Judges (Herman Fergusson/Fergee fires at the rear while Dredd fires ahead) and by the fact that some enemies will be possessed by the four Dark Judges; you’ll know when they are as they’ll have an aura about them and a spirit will fly out that you can catch for bonus points if you have some Boing ammo.
My Progression: Judge Dredd is a surprisingly tough game; at first, it reminded me of classic run-and-guns like Turrican (Factor 5, et al, 1990) or Duke Nukem (Apogee Software, 1991), especially with the placement of the heads-up display and dystopian, sci-fi setting. Seconds into the first stage, I hit a literal wall and had to think for a minute as the ladder I needed was so difficult to see and things only got more confusing from there; vents randomly damage you, trash falls from above, and you can’t even step in a small puddle of water in the Cursed Earth without taking damage. Just destroying the ammo crates in the first stage is a chore as they can only be destroyed by your explosive weapons and you need to explore the stage in a specific way so you don’t miss any and get stuck. Rather than running past terminals in Aspen, you need to access them to initiate the lockdown procedure, and enemies can take a few shots before they go down even before the clunky A.B.C. Warriors enter the picture. It appears that most stages end with a boss battle, too; the first is a guy who looked a lot like DC Comic’s James Harper/Guardian and who constantly blocks your shots with his shield while firing at you with a machine gun, tossing Molotov Cocktails, launching an almost unavoidable energy wave, or bashing your head in when you get close. You can use nearby barrels for cover but he absorbs shots like a sponge and the timing required to jump and duck under his shots meant that I couldn’t actually beat him!
Sadly, the game’s difficulty meant I couldn’t get very far and I wasn’t motivated to skip ahead much further.
Using a password, I jumped to stage two and fared much better n the Aspen Penal Colony. There’s some neat effects on the waters of the sewer area and I was actually able to beat the stage the boss, a brute with a big club who rides an elevator that he tries to crush you with, tosses grenades and Molotov cocktails, and smacks you silly up close. It was a slog, but I did beat him, but I couldn’t get past the Cursed Earth for the life of me. Here, the mutated inhabitants live in the ruins of society and Judge Hunters patrol the wooden walkways, but the leaps of faith and confusing level layout got the better of me. I skipped ahead to the Hall of Justice and that wasn’t a problem, nor was the chase on the Lawmaster, but the A.B.C. Warriors stomping about on the construction site around the Statue of Liberty were enough to have me calling it quits. They’re immune to your regular shot, so you’ll need a healthy supply of missiles or other explosives, but their missiles and the stage’s bottomless pits were the last straw for me. it was a bit of a shame as the game’s layout and objectives actually got easier the deeper I got and, from what I can see, there’s a bit of a post-game that looks right up my alley. After dealing with Dredd’s psycho clone brother, Rico, players head to Deadworld, an alternative dimension where all life was deemed a crime, to do battle with Dredd’s reaper-like spectral counterpart, Judge Death! I could’ve used passwords to jump ahead to this point but I decided that enough was enough, but I am impressed that a videogame adaptation from this time actually expanded on the film; the game does a decent job of following the movie’s narrative but infuses it with more elements from the source material, including my favourite Dredd antagonists, the Dark Judges, which is pretty rare for a game of this era in my experience.
I wasn’t really sure what to expect from Judge Dredd; videogame adaptations of movies tended to be more hit than miss back in the 16-bit games, at least in my experience, but sadly there were some issues here that kept me from really enjoying the experience. Visually, the game is both impressive, bland, and confusing all at the same time; the horizon and backgrounds aren’t always very detailed but the foregrounds are almost too detailed, making things a bit cluttered and messy at times. Dredd looks great and plays okay, but I find it amusing that the developers included the ability to arrest people when Dredd is far more likely to just sentence criminals to death for even more infractions. Since the game doesn’t really penalise you if you kill everyone, I recommend taking a traditional run-and-gun approach, especially as you’ll be distracted by vague objectives and the maze-like areas. Overall, it was a mediocre experience, one that I struggled to get through thanks to the difficulty spike and clunky presentation. It’s a shame as I feel the concept could have legs if it was more like Contra (Konami, 1986) or Metal Slug (Nazca Corporation, 1996) and leaned more into arcade-style action rather than tedious exploration. Still, maybe I’m being too harsh? Maybe you actually enjoyed the gameplay on offer here? Perhaps you prefer one of the movie’s other ports or a different Judge Dredd game entirely? Either way, I’d love to hear about it so leave a comment below or on my social media and be sure to check out my other Judge Dredd content.
After the release of Sonic the Hedgehog (Sonic Team, 1991), Sonic firmly established himself as the hot new gaming icon and catapulted SEGA to the forefront of the “Console Wars”. Anticipation was high for a sequel and, in keeping with their aggressive marketing strategies, SEGA dubbed November 24, 1992 as “Sonic 2sday”, a marketing stunt that not only heralded the worldwide release of the bigger, better sequel but changed the way the videogame industry went about releasing games for years to come.
Story Title: “Attack on the Death Egg” Published:7 August 1993 Writer:Nigel Kitching Artist:Ferran Rodriguez
Story Title: “Super Sonic” Published:21 August 1993 Writer:Nigel Kitching Artist:Richard Elson
Story Title: “Megatox” Published:2 October 1993 Writer:Nigel Kitching Artist:Richard Elson
Story Title: “Casino Night: Part 1/2” Published:22 January 1994/5 February 1994 Writer:Nigel Kitching Artist:Richard Elson
Story Title: “Hill Top Terror” Published:19 February 1994 Writer:Nigel Kitching Artist:Ferran Rodriguez
Story Title: “Pirates of the Mystic Cave” Published:2 April 1994 Writer:Nigel Kitching Artist:Richard Elson
The Background: Sonic the Hedgehog was a massive success for SEGA; thanks to an aggressive marketing campaign and including it with their 16-bit Mega Drive, SEGA saw sales of over 15 million copies upon its release. However, all was not right at SEGA as Sonic mastermind Yuji Naka quit for the California-based SEGA Technical Institute. After bringing in many of his own Japanese staff, Naka spearheaded the creation of a sequel while an entirely separate, Japan-based team worked on Sonic the Hedgehog CD(SEGA, 1993). Though mired by an influx of ideas, another internal contest decided Sonic’s new sidekick, Miles “Tails” Prower, and improved graphics and gameplay saw Sonic 2 become incredibly successful; 400,000 copies were sold in its first week alone, with over 6 million units during the Mega Drive’s lifespan. SEGA’s control of the home console market shot up by 40% as a result of Sonic 2; the game was widely praised upon its release and is still held in high regard, with many claiming that it is the best in the series. This, more than anything, helped catapult Sonic to mainstream success and saw SEGA briefly usurp Nintendo’s position at the top of the videogame industry and SEGA were quick to capitalise with a slew of merchandise, including cartoons and comic books. About six months after Archie Comics began publishing a weird amalgamation of the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog (1993 to 1996) and Sonic the Hedgehog/SatAM (1993 to 1994) cartoons, United Kingdom publisher Fleetway Editions Limited brought us “Britain’s Official SEGA Comic”, Sonic the Comic (StC), a fortnightly publication that I collected diligently until its unfortunate end. Though pulling much of its lore from the now-defunct Mobius and Doctor Ovi Kintobor storyline that was prevalent outside of Japan, StC quickly veered away from the source material to recast Sonic the a mean-spirited leader of a gang of Freedom Fighters made up of both videogame characters and anthropomorphic characters adapted from the videogames. Like the Archie comics, StC often included a few very loose adaptations of the videogames, though these were often heavily truncated and adapted to fit with its noticeably different lore. Sonic 2 was no different, with many elements of its plot and gameplay being loosely peppered throughout the comic’s early issues.
The Review: So, as I mentioned, StC often included truncated videogame adaptations. Sometimes these stretched over a few parts, or a handful of separate parts; sometimes they carried on through spin-off strips. But, quite often, StC simply adapted the general sense of the source material over various issues and stories, and that’s very much the case with their adaptation of Sonic 2. From issue one, StC quite clearly takes place after the first videogame, with Sonic generally sticking to the Green Hill Zone and other locations from the first game but also visiting or at least referencing events from the second game, if only because Tails was regularly included as Sonic’s sidekick. I suppose you could argue that Sonic 2 takes place between issues, but I always assumed that the first two games happened, and the comic went from there. All this is to say that, initially, I was simply going to review “Attack on the Death Egg” but I decided to make things more difficult for myself and review a bunch of StC stories that are clearly pulling from the second game, while also inserting their own lore. One of the most prominent bits of original lore in StC was their version of the Kintobor origin; in StC, the kindly Doctor Ovi Kintobor was transformed into the evil Doctor Ivo Robotnik after an accident involving a rotten egg and a massive dose of chaos energy from the six unstable Chaos Emeralds. Somehow, Dr. Kintobor’s consciousness was imprinted onto a Golden Ring and then transferred to the computer and acted as a guide, warning system, and information network for Sonic and his gaggle of Freedom Fighters, and an occasional emphasis was placed on Sonic carrying or hiding his guilt for his role in the creation of Mobius’s power-hungry dictator.
Sonic and Tails return to the Death Egg to stop it from destroying the Emerald Hill Zone.
I offer this context because “Attack on the Death Egg” opens with Sonic operating the Kintobor Computer and Tails expressing childish curiosity about the kindly doctor’s holographic face, which acts as an interface to make the machine easier for Sonic to use. The computer reveals that Dr. Robotnik’s all-powerful Death Egg space satellite is not only still in one piece after Sonic 2 but is currently on a collision course with the Emerald Hill Zone, so Sonic has Tails fly them to Dr. Robotnik’s “flying fortress” (obviously the Wing Fortress Zone), though Tails is clueless as to why they’re heading there and not to the Death Egg. While the fortress is largely abandoned, it’s not without some recognisable defences; Sonic dodges a Cluck’s cannonball and ends up battling the laser cannon boss from the videogame (though Sonic’s dialogue and inner monologue implies he’s never encountered this before). Similarly, Tails is completely clueless about the Wing Fortress; he doesn’t even realise it has a spaceship there, which is a bit odd as the Sonic 2 cutscene clearly showed him helping boost Sonic onto the same craft. One quick stomach-churning trip to space later and the two are back onboard the heavily damaged, egg-shaped space station; there, Sonic is…not surprised, more excited and insulted…to see Mecha Sonic is still operational, albeit badly damaged. Sonic makes short work of his chunky robotic doppelgänger, ramming it with a Super Sonic Spin Attack and then kicking its head off, before ordering Tails to take the one and only escape pod while he (as in Sonic) manually redirects the Death Egg to plunge into the ocean rather than destroying the Emerald Hill Zone (which I believe causes a continuity issue for later in StC when Knuckles the Echidna makes his debut). Although Tails weeps for his friend and vows to tell tales of Sonic’s heroics, Sonic obviously escapes certain death and appears to bask in the glory of his bravery.
A near-death experience in the Oil Ocean Zone sees Sonic briefly become the enraged Super Sonic!
StC returned to Sonic 2 in the very next issue, which saw Sonic and Tails help with a raging inferno at the Oil Ocean Zone; while original character Red and the other firefighters have battled the blaze for three days with little success, Sonic easily disperses the burst of flaming oil by creating a “Sonic-Cyclone” with his super speed. However, the dangers of the gigantic oil refinery remain and Red implores Sonic to help them clean the place up with his unprecedented knowledge of the many traps placed around the Zone. Naturally, Sonic agrees without hesitation, but is surprisingly caught off-guard by a lone Aquis; this robotic seahorse singes him with its flame shot and forces him into one of those slippery oil slides, apparently incinerating him alive in a pool of oil! Thankfully, Sonic survives but the stress of the anticlimactic near-death experience transforms him into Super Sonic! Now, this is something else StC took major liberties with; in StC, Super Sonic is a mindless, enraged, demonic entity hell-bent on destruction and chaos and much more akin to Doctor Bruce Banner’s green-skinned alter ego than a conscious, Super Saiyan-like power-up. Sonic first transformed into this being after absorbing a massive dose of chaos energy from the volatile Chaos Emeralds, and then again after collecting too many “Mobius Rings”, and he would undergo the transformation whenever pushed too far, such as here. Now faster than light and able to fly, Super Sonic ploughs through the Aquis in a fit of rage but is so consumed by hatred and evil that he then tries to murder the little woodland critter than pops out of the Badnik! Thankfully, Tails talks some sense into the rampaging, invincible hedgehog, calming him down before his temper got the best of him, returning him to normal and allowing him to make good on his promise to clean up the Oil Ocean Zone.
A daring rescue mission to the Chemical Plant Zone sees Sonic battling the vile Megatox.
After a two-issue gap, StC tapped into Sonic 2 for inspiration for one of the most memorable stories of the comic for me, “Megatox”. This one has special meaning to me as, when I was a kid, before we could afford to buy StC on the regular, I only had two issues; one was issue two, and one was issue ten, so I read “Megatox” to death back in the day. By this time, Dr. Robotnik has overtaken Mobius thanks to taking advantage of a time dilation a few issues back; his Badniks and military Troopers are everywhere and Sonic and his friends have been forced on the run in disguise as Bob Beaky’s traveling circus. This is why Sonic infiltrates the Chemical Plant Zone dressed in a massive snow suit and hat and pretending to be Bob Beaky, loyal servant of Dr. Robotnik’s; this allows him to get into the toxic facility, where Troopers are working woodland critters to exhaustion and disciplining them with energy whips. Disgusted at the Trooper’s mistreatment of innocent Mobians, Sonic quickly abandons his disguise and trashes Dr. Robotnik’s goons; since they don’t use animals as power sources, Sonic doesn’t have to worry about holding back and literally bursts through them to lead a desperate escape attempt through a tunnel full of a strange, pink, toxic gunk. Although Sonic gets the critters to safety (and even frees another from a Grabber), he’s startled when the toxic gunk (known as “Mega Mack”) suddenly comes to life and attacks him, assuming a sentient, corporeal form called Megatox. Once a scientist charged by Dr. Robotnik to create a poisonous chemical to kill Sonic, he was transformed into living Mega Mack after a freak laboratory accident and wastes no time in fulfilling his objective by choking and poisoning Sonic with its toxic body. Already feeling the effects of the poison, and unable to directly attack Megatox since it is essentially living water and incapable of being destroyed through conventional means, Sonic instead burrows through the ground and disperses Megatox all over the countryside (no doubt indirectly polluting the nearby environment in the process) using a vortex, ending the strange creature’s threat…for a time.
Sonic ends up captured during his mission to liberate the Casino Night Zone.
Eight issues later, Sonic 2 was used as the basis for a two-part story; these weren’t uncommon in StC, and a lot of Sonic’s stories were two-part tales. This one takes place in the Casino Night Zone, here realised as a gigantic fun park adorned with Dr. Robotnik’s visage. The Casino Night is also home to a number of…well, casinos. Sonic and his buddy, nervous but tech-savvy Porker Lewis, sneak into the Zone and are disgusted to find the Dr. Robotnik has not only rigged all the games to strip guests of their money and worldly possessions but is turning them into compulsive gamblers using hypnotising beams from a massive, garish statue in his image. Dr. Robotnik (here still sporting his sadly underused videogame design and spitting out egg puns aplenty) has left the Casino Night in the hands of three original characters knock-off villains, the Marxio Brothers – cigar-chomping leader Grouchio, underappreciated stooge Chicio, and the mute trumpet-honker Harpio – thinly-veiled composites of the Marx and Super Mario Brothers from the never-seen (but, assumedly, terrible) Marxio World. When Porker’s specially-created disruptor fails to work from a distance, a frustrated Sonic resolves to get closer so he can put a stop to Dr. Robotnik’s diabolical scheme and, afraid of the hedgehog’s wrath, Grouchio orders Chicio to unleash a swarm of laser-firing Troopers into the Zone. Although Sonic fights them, the sheer numbers cause him some concern and see him fall into a trap; more specifically, a giant pinball machine that batters him about and almost ends with him becoming a hedgehog kebab…until he simply gets out of it with relative ease. Unfortunately, Sonic is forced to surrender when Porker gets captured and tied up by the Marxio’s, ending the first part with him admonishing his nerve-wracked friend even as they await certain death tied to rollercoaster tracks.
After winding up Porker, Sonic humiliates his captors and ends Dr. Robotnik’s casino plot.
“Casino Night” continues in the next issue, picking up right where the first part left off and, thankfully, sparing us any flashbacks or wasted time recapping the previous events. StC was great like that; they just did the smallest text box or a bit of dialogue and that was it. Another thing it was good at was painting Sonic as an absolute prick; like, he was heroic and brave and all that, but Goddamn was he an abrasive, self-absorbed, egotistical bully sometimes. Mostly, he threw his insults at Tails, but he wasn’t above tormenting Porker either, and he does that in this issue, driving the poor pig into a panic by pretending like they’re doomed to die. After getting his kicks from Porker’s abject terror, Sonic vibrates the ropes that bind them at super speed and breaks them free seconds before their gruesome demise. Spotting the Marxio’s nearby, now in possession of the disruptor device, Sonic pursues them into the nightmarish pinball machine that functions as the heart of the Casino Night Zone and runs rings around them as they try to smash and bash him with their metal pole…things (a weapon Sonic’s ill-fated ally, Johnny Lightfoot, would later take as his own). Although Grouchio smashes the device, Sonic is far from perturbed; in fact, he was simply stalling for time to allow Porker to reprogram the Casino Night’s main computer and cause all of the machines to pay out bucketloads of cash. As an exclamation point, Sonic has Porker destroy the head of Dr. Robotnik’s statue, disrupting his hypnotic rays and delivering a decisive victory in the ongoing war against the egg-shaped tyrant.
Sonic’s efforts to save a Hill Top Zone village see him becoming the maniacal Super Sonic once more.
Super Sonic made a return in the very next issue, which took place at one of my favourite Sonic 2 Zones, the Hill Top Zone. “Hill Top Terror” sees Sonic and Tails assist a small village at the base of an active (and very close to erupting) volcano. Before landing, Sonic has to take out a small group of Turtloids, oddly seeming to fly at superspeed and then observing that he can’t actually fly and needs Tails to rescue him with his biplane (which earns the two-tailed fox what can be loosely called a compliment). Sonic and Tails meet the bird-like tribe and their leader, Chief Kordon, who explains that the Mountain of Destiny threatens to wipe them out, claiming it to be the wrath of the Gods, which Sonic dismisses with a casual flippant comment. Racing to investigate, Sonic and Tails are surprised by a Rexxon dwelling in the boiling lava of the mountain; with Tails struggling to keep them from falling to their deaths, the stress of the situation causes Sonic to transform into his demonic other half once more. After taking his anger out on the Badnik, Super Sonic is left hungry for something to destroy and therefore unimpressed by Dr. Robotnik’s seismatron, which causes the volcano to violently explode and spells doom for the village. Thankfully, Tails hitches a ride out of there on Super Sonic’s leg and then manipulates the malevolent creature into stopping the volcano by questioning his power and ability. The effort of creating a “Super Sonic fan to cool the lava” is enough to not only save the villagers from a horrible death but also to return Sonic to normal; though he has no memory of his time, actions, or the threats he made towards Tails as Super Sonic, just enough of his personality remained to carve an effigy of himself on top of the mountain for the villagers to admire.
Sonic encounters the greedy Captain Plunder deep in the Mystic Cave Zone.
Finally for today, we have “Pirates of the Mystic Cave”; this story is actually something of a prelude to StC’s later adaptation of Sonic CD and introduces readers to one of StC’s more annoying recurring original characters, Captain Plunder and his Sky Pirates. The story sees Sonic, Tails, Porker, and Johnny exploring the Mystic Cave Zone in search of Amy Rose, Sonic’s lovelorn number one fan who joined the Freedom Fighter team some issues prior and had a knack for getting herself in trouble. While there, they’re attacked by the caterpillar-like Crawltons but, unlike usual, these Badniks are empty of helpless woodland critters. Sonic and Tails are soon cut off from Porker and Johnny by a massive steel door and summarily attacked, and knocked out, by electrical bursts courtesy of a gaggle of Flashers. When they awaken, they find themselves in a cove where Amy is held prisoner in a wooden cage by the hulking, warthog-like Captain Plunder. Desiring Sonic’s cache of Chaos Emeralds, Captain Plunder first threatens Tails with walking the plank and then ruthlessly kicks him down a chasm, but Sonic reminds his young friend that he can fly and therefore the attempted murder is easily thwarted. While Sonic is unable to hurt Filch, Captain Plunder’s resident poltergeist (whom the captain himself murdered for being greedy with the biscuits), he is able to fight the hook-handed warthog. However, far from a mere meek damsel in distress, Amy talks sense into the two and convinces them to join forces against Dr. Robotnik; although Sonic can’t surrender the Chaos Emeralds, he can offer information which of Dr. Robotnik’s air freighters are worth robbing and the cutthroat crew offer the Freedom Fighters some much-needed backup in the fight against the dictator. Although Captain Plunder agrees to the deal and the Freedom Fighters are allowed to leave unharmed, he vows to use the situation to his advantage regardless and steal the Chaos Emeralds at the first opportunity.
The Summary: There’s a real variety in these six (technically seven, I guess) stories; none of them are a direct adaptation of Sonic 2 by any means and, indeed, the comic plays fast and loose with the game’s continuity at the best of times. One thing I enjoy about Sonic’s comics is how the game locations are actually used and expanded upon, becoming intricate cities, populated areas, and really feeling alive and part of this diverse and often wacky fictional world. The cartoons and movies really struggle with this aspect; occasionally, Zone names and locations are referenced, seen, or somewhat evoked, but it’s never as explicit as in the comics, where anthropomorphic characters live and work and struggle like in the real world. Other concepts, like gameplay mechanics such as Golden Rings and such, were never quite as easily translated in the comics; like the cartoons, these were downplayed or ignored, with stories largely focusing on the Chaos Emeralds and using Rings very sparingly, as though this mechanic were something that only existed in the context of the videogames and wasn’t quite the same thing in this new fiction.
The stories do a great job of bringing Sonic 2‘s locations to life.
Regardless, these stories tell quite a few fun and interesting tales in just a few pages. All but two of these were illustrated by the great Richard Elson, the premier artist of StC who always delivered some of the best, dynamic, and visually interesting sequences and panels. However, this isn’t to discredit Ferran Rodriguez; while his art style is noticeably less detailed than Elson’s and far more simplistic, his characters and locations evoke the anime aesthetic channelled in the manuals and advertisements for the games, especially over in Japan, therefore bringing a more “SEGASonic” version of the character to StC. While some of the writing is a little off (Sonic’s constant heckling of Tails and Porker can make him out to be more of a bully) and it’s a little weak that Super Sonic’s first big appearances were a result of mediocre Badniks like Aquis and Rexxon, the visual representation of the Zones used is absolutely spot on. StC rarely, if ever, took much inspiration from the actual plots of the videogames beyond Dr. Robotnik enslaving animals and polluting the environment, but they always did a bang-up job of bringing the game’s Zones to life in their adaptations, and all of these look great. Sure, Wing Fortress and Death Egg are a little lifeless and dull and Hill Top Zone is less of a lush mountainscape and more of a barren, rocky volcano, but Elson’s depictions of the bustling, pollution-spewing Oil Ocean and Chemical Plant Zones is a joy to behold. There’s so much detail there, with elements from the games (like the oil slides, the toxic gunk, the pinball arena, and the ominous caves) tweaked to become somewhat believable and fully flesh out environments. This is probably best evident in the Casino Night Zone, which takes more from the bustling city you see in the background of the Zone but still includes the bounce springs and bumpers, though Oil Ocean Zone really came off incredibly well, too.
Some unique supporting characters and world-building bolster these stories.
Like basically all external Sonic media, StC was rife with original characters; many, especially those in Sonic’s gang, were adapted from the Mobius lore but others, like Captain Plunder, were a little more surreal and yet fit quite well with this version of Sonic’s world. Few of them make much impression in these stories beyond Captain Plunder and, I guess, the Marxio Brothers for being parodies of SEGA’s rival, Nintendo. One thing you may notice is that Dr. Robotnik doesn’t show up much in these stories and Sonic doesn’t actually fight him directly; this was actually quite common, especially after Dr. Robotnik took over Mobius and became virtually untouchable, and much of the ongoing story was about striking victories and disrupting his operations, not unlike what we saw in SatAM, casting Sonic firmly as the underdog despite him always coming out on top. For those who were hoping to see a traditional Zone-by-Zone adaptation or a bigger, more dramatic showdown on the Death Egg, these stories will probably be a disappointment; indeed, the Death Egg wouldn’t be properly explored or seen as a real threat until later, after Knuckles’ introduction, so I can understand why “Attack on the Death Egg” might fall a little flat in that regard. Still, I think these stories collectively do a decent job of capturing some of the essence of Sonic 2 and recontextualising the Zones and gimmicks into something that would actually work as a living, real place. Many of the elements seen in these stories would return in later issues, with Captain Plunder, Megatox, and the Marxio Brothers becoming recurring villains and anti-heroes, and basically all of Super Sonic’s unique characterisation as this out of control, destructive force was established here. Naturally, there’s a lot of bias on my part; I grew up reading these stories and was an avid collector of StC and really enjoy how they adapted the source material into something recognisable, but still distinctive in its own right, and I definitely think their efforts to incorporate and expand upon Sonic 2 resulted in some fun and visually engaging stories here.
My Rating:
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Great Stuff
What did you think to Sonic the Comic’s adaptations of Sonic the Hedgehog 2? Did you read StC as a kid and, if so, what did you think to its unique take on the source material? Which of these stories was your favourite and what did you think to the StC version of Super Sonic? Would you have liked to see a more direct adaptation of the games in the comics and how would you compare with StC did with the American comic books? What are some of your favourite stories, characters, and moments from StC? How are you celebrating “Sonic 2sday” this year? Whatever your thoughts on Sonic 2, and Sonic comics in general, share them below or join the discussion on my social media.
With the release of Sonic the Hedgehog 3(SEGA Technical Institute, 1994), gamers were introduced to Knuckles the Echidna. This mischievous, dreadlocked antagonist was created by Takashi Yuda and his debut was made all the more impressive by virtue of the fact that Sonic 3 was too big to fit on one cartridge, which meant that Knuckles was the first of Sonic’s supporting characters to co-star in a main series videogame when Sonic & Knuckles (ibid) was released on this very day in 1994.
Story Title: “Carnival Night Conspiracy” (Parts 1 to 6) Published: 12 November 1994 to 21 January 1995 Writers: Nigel Kitching Artist: Richard Elson
The Background: After Sonic the Hedgehog rocketed to mainstream success and helped SEGA to usurp Nintendo to capture the allure of the videogame industry, SEGA capitalised on Sonic’s popularity not just with videogames but also a slew of merchandise, including cartoons and comic books. About six months after Archie Comics began publishing a weird amalgamation of the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog (1993 to 1996) and Sonic the Hedgehog/SatAM (1993 to 1994) cartoons, United Kingdom publisher Fleetway Editions Limited brought us “Britain’s Official SEGA Comic”, Sonic the Comic (StC), a fortnightly comic book that I collected diligently until its unfortunate end. While StC pulled much of its lore from the now defunct Mobius and Doctor Ovi Kintobor storyline that was popular outside of Japan at the time, StC quickly veered away from the source material to recast Sonic the a mean-spirited leader of a gang of Freedom Fighters made up of both recognisable characters and anthropomorphic characters adapted from the videogames. Like the Archie comics, StC often included someloose adaptations of the videogames that adapted the source material to fit with its noticeably different lore. After his introduction in a multi-part story loosely based on Sonic 3, Knuckles almost immediately graduated to his own back-up stories in the pages of StC; while these initially tied up some loose ends from that story and cherry-picked ideas from Sonic 3 & Knuckles, they soon evolved into their own beast entirely to expand on Knuckles’s vague backstory and craft a version of the character entirely unique to any seen in other Sonic media.
The Review: Although “Carnival Night Conspiracy” is Knuckles’ first solo story arc in StC, it wasn’t actually his first solo story; the Guardian of the Floating Island first appeared in a short story in a StC summer special, which basically showed how he met Dr. Robotnik and served as a tantalising prelude to his first multi-part appearance in the main Sonic the Hedgehog strip. “Carnival Night Conspiracy” takes place directly after that; thanks to Dr. Robotnik being unable to hide his true nature for too long, Knuckles soon realised that the egg-shaped dictator he had aligned himself with was actually plotting to merge the twelve Chaos Emeralds into six and absorb their powers. Fortunately, Knuckles was able to use the power of the elusive Grey Emerald (also known as the “Control Emerald”, kind of a precursor to the Master Emerald and something commonly found in Sonic lore at the time) to stop Dr. Robotnik. He then aided Sonic and the other Freedom Fighters to repent for exposing their secret base and, after a massive battle, left on frosty terms in one of Dr. Robotnik’s Egg-O-Matics. This is where we find Knuckles at the start of the story, making his way back to the Floating Island (as it was known then; “Angel Island” wouldn’t become its name until 1999), only to have his ride suddenly explode thanks to a self-destruct mechanism triggered by Dr. Robotnik. Thankfully, Knuckles wasn’t too far from his floating island home and bails out, using his unique ability to glide to reach safety. However, from the clouds above the island he spots a bustlingly casino city, one well-guarded by Dr. Robotnik’s Troopers and just one of many outposts and bases the mad scientist secretly constructed on the island without Knuckles’ knowledge. Insulted and peeved by this, Knuckles burrows his way into the heart of the city, confused by the bright lights and the purpose of the casinos and restaurants and unaware that he’s being watched until he’s confronted by a massive construction robot.
Knuckles reluctantly allows the Marxio’s to stay after being won over by their thrilling ride.
However, it’s no match for Knuckles’ super strength and he easily trashes it in one hit, but his heckles are only raised further when he barely avoids a sniper shot! Clambering up to confront his shooter, Knuckles is met by Carnival Night City’s owners and operators, the swindling conniving trio known as the Marxio Brothers. Led by the cigar-smoking Grouchio and made up of underpaid dogsbody Chicio and the mute Harpio, the Marxio Brothers are a composite of the comedians the Marx Brothers and the Super Mario Brothers and first appeared in StCsome years prior where they were in charge of the similarly-themed Casino Night Zone. Although he initially demands that they pack up and leave, Knuckles is won over by Grouchio’s silver tongue and the smarmy salesman pitches that their casino will help Knuckles spruce up his island for when his lost people eventually return and easily explains away Dr. Robotnik’s Troopers as being security guards they purchased. Naturally, Knuckles is sceptical, but still somewhat naïve to the wider world and awestruck by the technology and allure of modern Mobius, so he allows the Marxio’s to give him a tour and take a ride on a high-speed rollercoaster, completely unaware that the trio do actually work for Dr. Robotnik. Strapped tightly into the Hell House Ride, Knuckles enjoys the thrill of the rollercoaster and admires the amount of effort the Marxio’s went to make the ride dangerous and exciting, using his super strength to smash through any hazards that come his way and being so won over by the fun and exhilaration offered that he agrees to let the slimy conmen stay on the Floating Island. Overjoyed, Grouchio makes Knuckles a partner in their endeavour, granting him a luxurious office (to the echidna’s chagrin) and the title of “Marketing Consultant” ahead of them opening the park to the public.
Knuckles smashes the Marxio’s craft and then forcibly removes them from the island!
However, when Knuckles leaves to take care of Dr. Robotnik’s Launch Base Zone, the Marxio’s pursue him in their three-seater craft and Chicio accidentally lets slip that the egg-shaped dictator is bankrolling their entre endeavour. Though frustrated by his brother’s stupidity, Grouchio has no qualms about transforming their craft into a heavily-armed combat mech and unleashing its full might against Knuckles, who is summarily beaten into unconsciousness. However, right as the first guest arrive on the Floating Island and Grouchio is regaling Dr. Robotnik with their victory and promises of fortune, Knuckles recovers and redoubles his efforts, easily dodging their missiles and massive mechanical fists and tearing the craft apart with a superpowered uppercut. To stave off Knuckles’ wrath, Chicio redeems himself by calling in and hoard of Badniks and Grouchio wows the park’s guests by spinning the resulting destruction as a performance celebrating Knuckles’ victory over Dr. Robotnik. Unable to destroy the Carnival Night City with so many innocent lives at risk, Knuckles allows the Badniks to close in on him so he can destroy them all in one fell sweep and comes up with a simple, direct, and effective solution to his problem. By striking a fault line with one massive punch, Knuckles just breaks the entire Carnival Night Zone off the Floating Island! Thankfully, this severed chunk of rock contains just enough residual power from the Chaos Emeralds to allow it to slowly drop to Mobius below rather than plummeting down and killing the three, and it crashes before the startled eyes of a young boy who was unable to make the trip. With his mission complete, Knuckles orders the startled guests to vacate his island and stoically prepares to rid the Floating Island of every trace of Dr. Robotnik.
The Summary: I was super excited about Knuckles at the time; I was so stoked for Sonic 3’s release and absolutely captivated by this grinning, mysterious, antagonistic red echidna (often referred to as a “spiked monkey” in magazines). When he first appeared in the StC summer special, I couldn’t wait to see when he would make his StC debut and it seemed to take ages for him to show up, but boy was it worth it at the time! Then, after proving a formidable foe and a reluctant ally, Knuckles got his own back-up feature in StC beginning with this story and they quickly became my second favourite strip of the comic after Sonic’s. Nowhere is it more evident that “Carnival Night Conspiracy” was meant to be seen as an important feature, one second only to Sonic’s strips, than in the presence of artist Richard Elson, easily the comic’s most talented hand, who had illustrated Sonic’s stories for years and this definitely helps to bolster the tale as being important to the ongoing Sonic 3 adaptation in the comic at the time.
The story went a long way to establishing Knuckles as a bad-ass loner.
Knuckles retains much of his characterisation from his debut appearance; he’s hot-headed, proud, and incredibly naïve, easily awestruck by the ways of the surface world and manipulated by others. He is a little more guarded here thanks to being burned by Dr. Robotnik, but not so much that he doesn’t just forcibly eject the Marxio’s or that he can’t be won over by a rollercoaster ride. His focus is on safeguarding his home, however, and eradicating Dr. Robotnik’s influence from its surface; when the Marxio’s get in the way of that, and his reluctant hospitality, Knuckles doesn’t hesitate to fight back and trash their machine, but he’s not so single-minded in his vendetta as to endanger anyone’s lives. The Marxio’s have always been joke villains in StC but they work here as Dr. Robotnik’s proxies; Knuckles was never the airheaded, gullible fool in StC but many of the comic’s villains did manipulate and betray his trust, though the situation was a little different each time and he generally seemed to learn from each encounter. The primary thrust of this story, though, is to establish that Knuckles is a hot-headed loner who wants to live in peace and solitude on his island and that he’s an extremely tough physical specimen, able to glide, scale walls, and smash an entire chunk off his island with his incredibly strength. Lacking Sonic’s grating arrogance and proclivity for quips, Knuckles comes across as a bad-ass recluse who isn’t to be trifled with and who will unleash an incomparable wrath on anyone who threatens his home or tries to take advantage of him.
My Rating:
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
Pretty Good
Have you ever read “Carnival Night Conspiracy”? Did you pick the issues up when they were first released and, if so, what did you think about Knuckles’ first spin-off? What did you think to Fleetway’s introduction and characterisation of Knuckles and the way they handled his backstory? Were you a fan of the Marxio Brothers? What did you think to Knuckles’ early crusade against Dr. Robotnik? Which of Fleetway’s Knuckles stories and/or characters was your favourite and why? Are you celebrating Knuckles’ big day today? Whatever you think about Sonic the Comic, and especially Knuckles, leave a comment down below or let me know by commenting on my social media.
Sonic the Hedgehog CD(Sonic Team, 1993) released on this day back in 1993. produced alongside the blockbuster Sonic the Hedgehog 2(SEGA Technical Institute, 1992), Sonic CD expanded upon the Blue Blur’s original debut title with lush graphics, a time travel mechanic, gorgeous anime opening, and by introducing Metal Sonic (one of Sonic’s most popular and enduring rivals) and Amy Rose. Considered by many to be one of the best of the classic Sonic titles, Sonic CD might not be one of my favourites but it’s still a classic in it’s own right and worth a bit of celebration.
Story Title: “Go Ahead…Mecha My Day!” Published: August 1995 Writer: Mike Gallagher Artist: Patrick Spaziante
The Background: SEGA were quick to capitalise on Sonic’s popularity once he catapulted to mainstream success and helped them to usurp Nintendo’s position at the top of the videogame industry. Following Nintendo’s success with DiC, SEGA licensed a series of cartoons that were soon accompanied by a four-part miniseries published by Archie Comics. Archie’s Sonic the Hedgehog comics went on to become the longest-running videogame comic book ever and, amidst continuing the adventures of the Knothole Freedom Fighters, the Archie comics weaved in storylines, characters, and elements from the videogames, often changing them to fit their unique narrative. Although a mechanical version of Sonic had featured in Archie’s comics prior to this story (and many more would follow over the years), Sonic’s most recognisablerobotic duplicate debuted in the comic’s twenty-fifth issue as part of a loose adaptation of Sonic CD and would go on to continuously plague the hedgehog and his allies even when IDW swept away Archie’s continuity in favour of their own.
The Review: I didn’t grow up reading Archie’s Sonic the Hedgehog comics; as far as I know, there was no way for us to get hold of them here in the United Kingdom back in the day, so I’m not entirely sure I was even aware of them until late into my teens. I did watch Sonic the Hedgehog/SatAM (1993 to 1994) though and, like many kids from my generation I was, deeply invested in the series and frustrated when it ended on an unresolved cliff-hanger. Although the Archie comics never actually resolved this cliff-hanger and were more like a spin-off than a true continuation, they were the closest thing we’d ever get to an official follow-up to that successful cartoon and, in the years since, I’ve read through the entire Archie Comics run. It has its good points and many bad points, but I found myself enjoying it well enough, especially once they started to incorporate more elements from the source material and veer away from the comedic slapstick that muddled the narrative tone of the first fifty-or-so issues. I’ve already explored how awkward the incorporation of these videogame elements was to the series; the same was true of the UK’s Sonic the Comic (1993 to 2002) and is to be expected when you’ve gone off on your own pretty complex tangent and then have to shoe-horn in official canon into the narrative, but there’s an appeal to the series nonetheless thanks to nostalgia and my love for Sonic.
While Sonic tests Rotor’s new device, Dr. Robotnik plans to lure him into a deadly trap.
“Go Ahead…Mecha My Day!” (great pun, by the way) begins with Sonic impatiently enduring the hooking up of a video camera to his sneaker; developed by Knothole’s resident mechanic and tinkerer, Rotor the Walrus, the “Sonicam” sends a direct feed back to the Freedom Fighter’s computer so they can keep track of where Sonic is and any potential dangers they need to be aware of. Princess Sally Acorn, leader of the Knothole Freedom Fighters, is particularly pleased with this new technology given that a “new Zone portal” just opened up and is in need of exploration. Sally’s fears about this situation are well founded as it turns out that the Collision Chaos Zone is the creation of Mobius’s mad cybernetic dictator, Doctor Robotnik. However, while he looks like the SatAM Dr. Robotnik, at this point Archie’s version still has quite a bit of his bombastic and foolish variant from the Adventures of the Sonic the Hedgehogcartoon (1993); this means he breaks the fourth wall, chuckles maniacally to his bumbling Badniks, and lacks the grim menace of the SatAM version. However, there’s enough of that interpretation of the character in Dr. Robotnik to order his latest, most mysterious creation to kidnap Sonic’s number one fan, Amy Rose, and then issue a direct challenge to Sonic, daring him to test his speed and skill in his Collision Chaos Zone to rescue Amy. Naturally, Dr. Robotnik plans to stack the deck against Sonic by having his long-suffering, snivelling nephew and head minion, Snivley, struggle into an elaborate Robotnik costume and burn up the road behind Sonic to force him into an even deadlier trap.
Racing to save his friends, Sonic is confronted and challenged by his metallic doppelgänger.
Naturally, Sonic wants to leap into action right away; determined to prove himself and to rescue one of his greatest fans, he thinks nothing of jumping head-first into such an obvious trap, such is his confidence. However, Knothole is a democracy and, as a result, he’s forced to heed to Sally’s more level-headed orders; to get a better sense of what dangers lie ahead, Sally has Miles “Tails” Prower fly on ahead to scope out the area…and he’s immediately captured by Dr. Robotnik’s Swatbots. Fed up with waiting, Sonic races out to the Zone portal and, despite Dr. Robotnik struggling with his lines, is brought abreast of the escalating hostage situation; thanks to the Sonicam’s slow-motion function, Sally and Rotor are able to look in as Sonic races through the bizarre environment while Snively incinerates the path behind him, all to force Sonic into a confrontation with Mecha-Sonic (also referred to without the hyphen). Oddly, Mecha-Sonic’s dialogue seems to indicate that the two have met before, but this was the character’s first appearance; however, it wasn’t uncommon for the videogame’s events to happen off-panel and between stories throughout Archie’s run, even though that doesn’t really align with the narrative presented here, making this allusion confusing, at best. Anyway, Mecha-Sonic challenges his rival to prove his speed in a race through the Stardust Speedway Zone, with Tails and Amy as the prize and Snively pursuing them in Dr. Robotnik’s craft
Sonic’s speed is too much for Mecha-Sonic and Dr. Robotnik’s plot is easily foiled.
Of course, Sonic takes the bait and “engages” with Mecha-Sonic, much to Dr. Robotnik’s glee; while Amy wails at the engagement pun and Rotor scrambles to account for interference from the Stardust Speedway Zone, we’re treated to a nice two-page spread of the two rivals exchanging taunts and shoving past each other in a pretty neck-and-neck dash through the Zone, which is brought to life by the unrivalled Patrick “Spaz” Spaziante and is certainly faithful both to the level layout from the videogame and the anime sequences that accompanied it. However, Sonic has no idea that Dr. Robotnik has set up a failsafe at the finish line; a massive weighted door that will crush Sonic when he passes under it (which Dr. Robotnik demonstrates by crushing Crabmeat, though this doesn’t kill the woodland critter tapped within him since that wasn’t really a thing in this continuity). Although Sonic gains the lead, Mecha-Sonic uses holograms and environmental hazards to distract and trip him for an unfair advantage, meaning tensions are high as they race down the final stretch. Here, Sonic debuts his new “Figure Eight Super Peel-Out” for a burst of acceleration that pushes him into “warp speed” and Mecha-Sonic summarily melts itself in half by overexerting its thrusters. Sonic is even spared a gruesome end thanks to the timely intervention of Princess Sally but, when Dr. Robotnik throws a tantrum over the loss, volunteers to give the dictator a chance to squash him. When Sonic easily dodges out of the of the trap, he invites Dr. Robotnik to inspect the mechanism for faults and then encourages the reader (represented by a literal on-panel finger) to activate the trap and crush the cyborg madman beneath it. The comic the ends with Tails and Amy free, Dr. Robotnik squashed under his own trap, Mecha-Sonic left sparking on the racetrack, and the heroes celebrating the comic’s first twenty-five issues.
The Summary: I went to great pains at the start of my review to try and prepare you for the fact that Archie’s Sonic comics weren’t exactly known for their 100% fidelity to the source material when they started adapting more elements from the videogames into their plot but, even considering that, “Go Ahead…Mecha My Day!” is even less of a Sonic CD adaptation than its Sonic the Comic counterpart. Both plucked only the most iconic elements of the videogame (Amy, Metal Sonic, and parts of the environments) and shoe-horned them into their unique narrative, choosing to focus more on the battle between Sonic and Metal Sonic than the time travel plot. While the Sonic the Comic adaptation benefitted slightly from being a multi-part story told over a few issues, both adaptations have about the same level of substance thanks to the first two parts of the story simply setting up for Sonic’s adventures on the Miracle Planet. This location doesn’t even appear here, however; instead, we get two of Sonic CD’s more recognisable areas (Collision Chaos and Stardust Speedway) but they’re presented as being “creations” of Dr. Robotnik, existing in another dimension, of sorts, rather than being on the Little Planet. The Time Stones are also completely absent, as are any elements of time travel or Dr. Robotnik’s plot to conquer the Little Planet, meaning the plot is all about the race between Sonic and “Mecha-Sonic” to rescue Amy (and Tails).
It’s a bit slapstick and barely has anything to do with Sonic CD but at least the art is nice.
Even when you get past the fact this this isn’t really an adaptation of Sonic CD, “Go Ahead…Mecha My Day!” is a bit weak overall; the story’s far too short, Dr. Robotnik lacks the menace of his SatAM counterpart, and there’s never really a sense of danger even when Mecha-Sonic makes its appearance. Like in the Sonic the Comic version, Mecha-Sonic can talk; here, it seems to have been programmed to ape Sonic’s snarky attitude as much as his speed as the two trade quips and grandeur during their confrontation. Though it demonstrates none of its videogame’s other powers, Mecha-Sonic is shown to be a wily antagonist and fully prepared to cheat to gain an advantage, but it’s ultimately handicapped by its mechanical construction and thus falls apart when it tries to match Sonic’s near-limitless speed. Still, the art used to render Mecha-Sonic and the race is impressive; Spaz was always Archie’s best artist when it came to Sonic and he does a great job on the title character, his robotic rival, and Dr. Robotnik. Given that it takes place in this quasi-SatAM continuity, the story also features appearances from the Knothole Freedom Fighters; Tails wasn’t yet the genius mechanic we know him today so Rotor fulfils that role and his Sonicam keeps them up to date with Sonic’s situation while Antoine D’Coolette is simply there to spout nonsense and oppose Sonic out of spite. Since she was always portrayed as Sonic’s equal in the field, it’s obviously Sally who drops in to lend a hand in the finale, emphasising the camaraderie that was so important to this interpretation of Sonic, though it’s made explicitly clear that he didn’t actually need any help. In the end, this was a decent enough story with lots of great art and fun, engaging action but it’s let down by its brevity, the awkward goofiness permeating throughout it, and the fact that it basically has nothing to do with Sonic CD beyond some extremely basic elements.
My Rating:
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
Pretty Good
Have you ever read “Go Ahead…Mecha My Day!”, or any of Archie’s Sonic the Hedgehog comics? If so, what did you think of the story and the way its focus on the race between Sonic and Metal Sonic? Were you disappointed by the lack of any other elements from Sonic CD? Which of Archie’s original characters was your favourite and what did you think to their award-winning run? How are you celebrating Sonic CD’s anniversary this year? Whatever your thoughts on Sonic CD, or Sonic in general, feel free to leave a comment below.
Sonic the Hedgehog was first introduced to gamers worldwide on this day back in 1991 and, since then, has become not only SEGA’s most enduring and popular character but also a beloved videogame icon and, in keeping with tradition, I have been dedicating the entire month to celebrating SEGA’s supersonic mascot.
This review has been supported by Chiara Cooper. If you’d like to support the site, you can do so at my Ko-Fi page.
Released: 14 November 2006 Developer: Sonic Team Also Available For: PlayStation 3
The Background: It always surprises me how often I see people online touting the myth that Sonic the Hedgehog (henceforth Sonic ’06) is some under-rated classic and worthy of your time and attention but this really isn’t the case. As a life-long Sonic fan, I first played it on the PlayStation 3 and, while I enjoyed the cutscenes and the soundtrack, I was unimpressed with the many glitches, load times, and dreadful gameplay experience and haven’t returned to it since finishing the main campaigns some seventeen years ago. Sonic ’06’s development is an interesting story; intended to celebrate the franchise’s fifteenth anniversary, Sonic co-creator Yuji Naka was eager to reinvent Sonic for the then-current generation of high-definition consoles and even had the game take the simple title of Sonic the Hedgehog to indicate its status as a series reboot (despite its numerous narrative ties to previous Sonic games). Tools like the Havok engine allowed the developers to use new lighting options, a day and night system, and craft a far more realistic setting for Sonic and his friends, who were redesigned to better fit in with this aesthetic. Two characters whose gameplay greatly benefitted from the Havok physics engine were Shadow the Hedgehog, who was able to drive and pilot a variety of vehicles, and newcomer Silver the Hedgehog, whose telekinetic powers gave him more options for interacting with the environments. It wasn’t long, however, before Sonic ’06 ran into problems; Naka left the project, and Sonic Team, to form his own company, developing the cutscenes proved problematic, and the development team was split in two to develop a concurrent Nintendo Wii-exclusive Sonic title. Despite impressing with some pre-release footage, Sonic ’06 was met with universal derision upon release; while the graphics and music were seen as somewhat impressive, the level design and camera were heavily criticised, as was the awkward romance between Sonic and Princess Elise, and the game is generally seen as the worst in the franchise. Although it received a fair amount of downloadable content (DLC) following its release, Sonic ’06 was one of many sub-par Sonic games de-listed from online marketplaces for the longest time, and SEGA scrambled to make good on their next mainline Sonic title, which was the shot in the arm the franchise desperately needed after this travesty of a game.
The Plot: Doctor Eggman kidnaps Princess Elise of Soleanna in the hopes of harnessing the destructive “Flames of Disaster” that dwells within her, and only Sonic the Hedgehog can save her form his clutches. However, his quest is obstructed by the mysterious Silver the Hedgehog, who has travelled back in time to stop a disaster he believes Sonic causes, while Shadow the Hedgehog works to uncover the truth behind the evil spirit Mephiles, who has stolen his form.
Gameplay: Sonic ’06 is a third-person, action/adventure platformer that divides its gameplay between three different main playable characters, three main story episodes, and largely attempts to focus on speed or action but also muddies its concept with janky physics, puzzle solving, and exploring a large hub world. Clearly taking inspiration from Sonic Adventure(Sonic Team, 1998), the game’s characters will wander around the large, mostly barren castle town of Soleanna, chatting to eerily lifelike non-playable characters (NPC) for hints or side missions when not taking on one of the nine main action stages. Also like in Sonic Adventure, you can only play as Sonic to start with and will unlock Shadow and Silver’s stories as you progress and encounter them and you’ll occasionally get to play as other characters during action stages and in the hub world as the story dictates, though this time you do get a rudimentary (often useless) compass to guide you around Soleanna and its other areas.
Run, grind, and spin about as Sonic but good luck controlling him in the awful Mach Speed sections.
Across the game’s three main characters and nine total playable characters, the controls are largely the same but each one has different abilities and play styles. Pressing A lets you jump or interact with characters, X will perform a special action, and you can use the Right Trigger to activate certain character abilities as dictated by a power meter that builds up as you defeat enemies (or stays constantly full if playing as Sonic). Sonic is, naturally, geared more towards speed; pressing A in mid-air will allow him to dash forwards towards the nearest enemy, spring, or other interactable object with the Homing Attack. Tapping X performs this super janky sweep kick and slide that allows you to slip under certain walls and often leaves you sliding about on your ass like an idiot, but holding X lets you charge up and release a Spin Dash. It’s worth noting that you cannot defeat enemies just by pressing A; even though Sonic’s in a ball as normal, this won’t inflict any damage and will cause you to lose Golden Rings, the life source of your characters. Sonic’s stages are full of dash pads, springs, loops, and other gimmicks designed to get him moving as fast as the sluggish game engine and messed up camera will allow; often, you’ll be battered about like a pinball and it’s usually better to simply relinquish control of Sonic or make very small inputs to the control stick or else you could miss a jump pad or just randomly fall through the environment. Sometimes, you’ll be told to “Jump!” and have to press A to hop from wall to wall to progress; other times, you can take a short cut on a rail, and you’ll soon acquire upgrades that let you dash along a trail of Rings with X (if the game actually registers your inputs) and perform a bounce move to gain extra height on your jump, along with other far more broken mechanics I’ll talk about later. Speaking of broke, though… Sonic has a unique gameplay feature wherein some stages will require him to “Speed up!” in a “Mach Speed” section. Here, Sonic will blast ahead at the speed of sound (or the closest approximation this sluggish engine allows), barely giving you any time to react to incoming obstacles and enemies. You’ll need to jump way ahead of time to clear these hazards, and sometimes the controls and camera will force you to run towards the screen or at an angle, practically guaranteeing that you’ll take damage, fall through the environment, or just be sent spiralling to your death. As a precursor to the later “Boost” mechanic, these are some broken, glitchy, messed up sections that can burn through your lives faster than the shit-ass collision detection and are easily one of the worst parts of Sonic’s gameplay.
Shadow’s geared more towards awkward combat and janky vehicle gameplay.
After clearing Sonic’s episode, I played Shadow’s story, which is kind of akin to the hard mode of the game (outside of the DLC). Shadow plays a lot like Sonic; he’s fast, performs a Homing Attack and Spin Dash, hops on the same rails and boost pads and uses the same gimmicks as Sonic, such as flying on an eagle and riding water currents. Unlike Sonic, Shadow’s gameplay is geared more towards activating switches, destroying stuff, and combat; kind of like in the under-rated Shadow the Hedgehog (SEGA Studios USA, 2005), Shadow can perform the Chaos Spear in mid-air by pressing X (or holding X to charge it up), which will stun nearby enemies, and you can mash A after a Homing Attack to do a little combo. More often than not, this will either miss or see you attacking thin air; while this often still damages enemies, so broken is this game, it usually leaves you vulnerable. Shadow can also perform the Light Speed Dash and he also has a meter that builds up as he defeats enemies; once full, he can pull off a “Chaos Boost” with RT that smashes certain rocks and seems to increase his attack power (but not his durability), and this can be upgraded with Memory Shards you purchase from shops. Although Shadow doesn’t pick up and use guns and weapons like in his solo title, he can hop into a number of vehicles; you’ll take the controls of buggies, motorcycles, hovercrafts, and gliders either as an option or by choice in order to progress. You can press Y to hop in and out, A to accelerate, X to reverse, and use the vehicle’s weapons with RT, though you can’t be too trigger happy as weapons will need to cool down or reload over time. When in the hang glider, the game switches to a kind of auto scrolling shooter and has you blasting enemies and obstacles and dodging hazards to not get hurt; the hovercraft allows you safe passage over quicksand and instant death water, but they can both be tricky to control and it’s not always clear where you need to go, with Dusty Desert requiring you to pass through a series of stone columns to open a door. Other vehicles, like the buggy and motorcycle, are more optional and often ill advised; it’s better not to have to contend with the buggy’s janky collision detection and tumbling physics in Crisis City but the motorcycle can help you to catch up to Dr. Eggman’s speeding train…if you can control its breakneck speed, of course!
Silver’s far slower and has to endure frustrating platforming and puzzles.
Last of all, I played as newcomer Silver, who’s this naïve little telekinetic hedgehog from a wrecked future who’s come back in time to kill Sonic. He’s basically Future Trunks but far more gullible. Of the three main characters, Silver is the slowest; he trots along like he has rocks in his boots and can neither Spin Dash or roll into a ball when jumping, though he can still bounce on springs and be propelled along (and through the environment…) by dash pads. His gameplay is significantly different thanks to his telekinesis, which allows him to float by holding A, grab incoming projectiles or nearby crates and objects with RT, and hurl them back at enemies or towards destructible targets with X. These powers are tied to his meter, which refills automatically as long as you’re not jumping, and Silver can also create paths, construct bridges, or turn girders and such into springs to progress onwards by holding RT on special glowing circular spots. Silver’s gameplay is much slower and more deliberate and more focused on exploration, platforming, and puzzle solving; side quests see him navigating through rings in platforming challenges, for example, or moving or tossing objects with his mental powers, and action stages are reconfigured to allow him to charge certain platforms to spring himself upwards, carry him across gaps, balance weights with boxes, or guide large balls of magnesium through laser traps. One of his most frustrating gimmicks crops up in Dusty Desert; here, you must use Silver’s telekinetic push (which can be used with a tap or charge of X) to knock giant billiard balls into holes within ten moves. Later, you have to hit one such ball down a narrow, winding corridor trying to avoid holes and such, which can be very tricky, and Silver’s piss-poor jump and expendable meter can make platforming across temporary and sliding platforms a chore in later stages.
You can briefly also control a bunch of slippery supporting characters who can break the game.
As you play through each episode, you’ll get the chance to switch to one of the other three playable characters mid-way through certain action stages as their paths cross, and each character is supported by two allies who occasionally follow them across Soleanna and throughout the action stages. Sonic teams up with Miles “Tails” Prower and Knuckles the Echidna, Shadow is joined by Rouge the Bat and E-123Ω “Omega”, and Silver falls in with Amy Rose and is supported by Blaze the Cat. Each of these has their own unique playstyles, though some are shared; Knuckles and Rouge can both glide and climb walls (though good luck detaching from some walls and fighting against the camera, which tends to freak out while following you) and can attack with punches and kicks (though not with their glide…), Tails can toss Dummy Ring Boxes at enemies with X and “snipe” at them by holding the button, which Rouge can also do with her bombs (though she can also place these on walls). Tails can also fly for a short time and will get a boost by flying through mid-air rings like in Sonic Adventure, while Omega can float along and awkwardly boost up to platforms with his jetpack, target multiple enemies by holding X or perform a big power shot by pressing X in mid-air. Amy uses her signature Pike-Piko Hammer to smash enemies, but its range is so short and broken that it’s hard to avoid taking damage; she also has a pretty broken double jump but is largely a shadow of her former Sonic Adventure self. Blaze is also pretty broken; she has this homing tornado attack that sees her just dart about like she’s possessed and can also perform a flaming twirl; she’s okay as long as you keep the reigns tight with her but she (and all of these “amigos”) are very slippery and unwieldy. Generally, you switch to them to platform across a small area, take out enemies, and hit switches but you’ll also switch to controlling them in the hub world for side quests and take on easily the most frustrating stages in the game in the final chapter. When playing as Sonic, you’ll also have to carry Princess Elise to safety a few times; in these stages, she’s constantly in your arms but you can still perform a version of your Homing Attack and she’ll even shield you from quicksand and water when you hold RT, though this is dependent on your meter.
Graphics and Sound: One of the best things Sonic ’06 has going for it is it’s awesome soundtrack; Sonic games have always had great soundtracks but, ever since the pop/punk-rock direction of Sonic Adventure, the 3D games just went from strength to strength during this time. The main theme, “His World”, is a suitably catchy tune from Ali Tabatabaee and Matty Lewis of Zebrahead, while long-time Sonic collaborators Crush 40 performed an awesome cover of “All Hail Shadow” as Shadow’s theme. Even Silver’s disco-infused jive, “Dreams of an Absolution”, is pretty great and there’s even a sappy lyrical cover of Dreams Come True’s “Sweet Sweet Sweet” by Akon included. While the hub worlds don’t exactly impress in the music department, the action stages and boss battles all fare pretty well, with the music (like much of the game’s presentation) again harkening back to Sonic Adventure. Where the game falters, however, is in the voice acting; once again, the Sonic X (2003 to 2005) cast return and, once again, I remain unimpressed by Jason Griffith’s stilted, unenthusiastic portrayal of the character. Every word out of his mouth is lacking in emotion or passion and just sounds like someone reading a script, and Amy Palant is at her most grating as Tails but, to be fair, the script is absolutely awful at times with such cringe-worthy lines as “It looks like the princess has been moved to another location”, words not matching the subtitles, and even a botched take included. Thankfully, Mike Pollock is still great as Dr. Eggman and even Dan Green does a decent, if over the top, job as the unnecessarily dark Mephiles.
Despite the high-quality cinematics and music, this game is a laggy, buggy, glitched mess.
Graphically, the game is an equally mixed back; the high-quality cinematics are fantastic and another of the game’s few highlights, showcasing Sonic and his friends and enemies in all their glory. The cutscenes that use the in-game engine, however, aren’t quite as impressive; characters plod about like puppets, the physics are as all over the place as during gameplay, and there’s a distinct lack of polish to these. The NPCs are even worse, flailing their arms about and yapping their mouths just to say “Thank you” and very few of them make an impression beyond the agonising load times. Any time you want to start a side quest, you need to talk to an NPC; accept their mission and you get a load screen, then the NPC says something like “Go for it!” and you get another load screen. Clear or fail the mission and you get another load screen, then another dialogue box, then the results screen…and then another load screen. Loading screens even interrupt the action stages as well, with new areas needing to be loaded in mid-way through and this can even screw up your run as you can be dropped into the action without warning, which can cause you to miss dash pads or get hit by enemies. While the gameplay is generally okay, the controls, overall, are as slippery and finnicky as the camera; the camera never seems to be where you want it, freaks out for no reason, and is a constant source of frustration but sometimes the game just won’t register your inputs, or randomly decides it doesn’t need any inputs…until it does…or you just run head-first into an obstacle or through the environment and to your death. There are times where characters glitch out, erratically flailing all over the place, times when you can walk on vertical surfaces or ceilings, and times when the ground suddenly loses its collision detection. Collision detection, on the whole, is broken to all hell in Sonic ’06; you’ll pass right through objects, enemies can fire at you through walls and doors, and the entire game’s performance suffers as bad as an 8-bit title sometimes when too much is happening on screen.
Stages are varied, but nothing new and basically rip-offs from Sonic Adventure.
Sonic ’06 is also a bit weird in terms of its environments; taking the real-world-meets-fantasy premise of Sonic Adventure and really running with it, the game takes place in a castle town that’s similar to Venice or Europe but, while Soleanna looks pretty, it’s very lifeless and there’s not much to see or do. Action stages are accessed using mirror gates, which is a step down from Sonic Adventure, and many are just poor recreations of gimmicks from that game; we’ve got a beach (complete with killer whale), a snowy mountain (complete with snowboarding section and giant snowball), a volcano level (which includes a frustrating light puzzle that you’ll be doing at least three times), and even the Egg Carrier shows up again (though you don’t get to visit it here). You’ll also cross a desert (complete with instant death, barely tangible quicksand), a swamp-like jungle filled with ruins and featuring springboard lilies and turtles to ride, and storm through Dr. Eggman’s underwater base, which is full of annoying bubbles of magnesium and glass doors but does have some interesting visuals in its aquarium motif. Two of the worst stages in the game are Kingdom Valley, a ruined castle-like environment full of water and collapsing columns, and Crisis City, an apocalyptic city full of fire traps and besieged by a raging tornado. For the most part, the visuals actually aren’t too bad; the level of detail in Crisis City’s destruction is a stark contrast to the bright, cheery joy of Wave Ocean, and there are a few unique gimmicks in each stage; sometimes you’ll be jumping over mace-filled sand waves, or springing from ropes, or racing across the surface of the water desperately hoping that the game will stay stable, but mostly you’re just charging to the finish, ranking be damned, and trying not to die.
Enemies and Bosses: For the most part, Sonic ’06 does away with the traditional Badniks and replaces them with very Sonic X-esque mechs; these military-style robots drop from the sky and hobble about shooting missiles, bullets, and plasma shots at you and, upon destruction, will fill your meter and award you points for your score ranking. Some hover in the air shooting lasers, some are smaller and more akin to Badniks and can be destroyed by targeting their leader, and some are much bigger, shooting their arms at you and requiring that you knock them down to target their power core. As the story progresses (or sooner, depending on who you play as), you’ll also battle Iblis Monsters that are very similar to the Black Arms from Shadow the Hedgehog; there’s leaping and fire-breathing lizards, flaming bats that swoop down at you, big projectile-spitting worms that burst up from the ground at the worst moments, and large magma-like titans who hurl rocks at you. Sonic and Shadow can chain together successive Homing Attacks to get past all of these, each of which slows the action down with a life bar, but Silver and Tails and the like will have to resort to throwing stuff at them. For the most part, they’re just obstacles, as annoying and inconvenient as the spikes and spike walls and flame plumes, but they’re incredibly generic for Sonic enemies and get repetitive very quickly.
Dr. Eggman’s contraptions are sadly few and far between, and quite repetitive.
There are eleven bosses in Sonic ’06; three are fought by all three main characters in slightly different locations in the story, two are rival battles, four are exclusive fights, and one is, obviously the final boss. First, let’s talk about Dr. Eggman’s massive mechanical monstrosities, the Egg-Cerberus and the Egg-Genesis, though neither are much of a threat. The Egg-Cerberus races around the arena smashing down columns and towers, occasionally pouncing at you, and emitting a destructive shockwave that you need to jump over. Sonic and Shadow must avoid these attacks and then grind up the robot dog’s tail to Homing Attack the control antenna on its head, then you need to awkwardly direct the machine to run into a wall to damage itself. When you’ve dealt enough damage, it’ll jump to the background and let Egg Gunners shoot at you before trying to squash you, and the fight is made trickier with Shadow as he has that janky melee function. The Egg-Genesis is much easier by comparison; this floating battleship fires missiles, Egg Fliers, and Egg Gunners at you and can only be damaged by attacking the glowing core underneath it (as Sonic) or by sending missiles and objects flying at its arms and core as Silver, Omega also battles this boss in the DLC, though this is even easier thanks to his greater arsenal of weapons, however you do have to be careful to avoid its high-powered homing laser attack and its suicide run when it’s health is drained. The only time you’ll battle Dr. Eggman one-on-one is in Sonic’s story in a variation of the Egg Viper boss from Sonic Adventure; floating amongst the clouds outside the crumbling Egg Carrier, Dr. Eggman will attack you from the Egg-Wyvern, swooping by and firing projectiles at you, blasting a big homing shot, and destroying your platforms with its harpoons. When it swoops over the gantry, you need to quickly Homing Attack the antenna and try and cause it to fly into some debris; Dr. Eggman will then send out some pods you can attack to hit him directly but, again, he’ll try and obliterate you with a suicide run near the end so be on your toes.
Iblis comes in many monstrous, frustrating forms, though Mephiles is ridiculously easy.
Another recurring boss is the flaming demon who has ravaged the future, Iblis. Essentially the fire counterpart to Chaos, this mindless beast is encountered in three different forms, with Silver having to battle two that are exclusive to him. Sonic and Shadow will battle Iblis’s second form inside a volcano after clearing Flame Core; this is a slow and boring battle that can get very annoying as you basically have a few rock platforms to jump to and Iblis will routinely cause more to drop from the ceiling while also destroying some in its attempts to attack you, which almost always manages to hurt you. Hop over the platforms to one of the three orbs and wait for Iblis to prep for its jump, dodging any flaming projectiles it sends your way. When it’s about to jump, activate the orb with a Homing Attack and Iblis will get stuck, allowing you to attack its weak spot on its head, and then the whole thing repeats with Iblis’s attacks becoming more aggressive and it even trying to ram you for the final hit. Silver battles Iblis’s first and third form at the start and end of his story and on a 2.5D pane; in the first encounter, Iblis blasts flaming rocks at you and tries to crush you with entire buildings, but you can simply avoid these attacks and telekinetically toss its projectiles back at it to break away its rocky outer shell. The last battle is a bit trickier; Iblis is constantly moves towards you, again raining projectiles across a small stone platform that it will chip away at until it’s completely destroyed. Iblis also sends out flaming shockwaves that you either need to jump over or stand under and conjures a massive flaming comet to throw at you. However, don’t be intimidated by its size; simply catch it with your telekinesis and send it back to the creature along with any other projectiles you can; eventually, it’ll collapse near your platform and you can float over to use the psychokinesis pad to deal big damage. Shadow also gets two exclusive battles against Iblis’s other half, Mephiles; in the first fight, you need to continuously attack his mini shades until you can perform a Chaos Boost, which will draw him out from your shadow and allow you to land Homing and melee attacks. After enough damage is dealt, you’ll switch to Omega and finish him off with the robot’s massive cannons, but you won’t have any help in the second battle. This time, Mephiles is protected by a shield and conjures large, laser-firing shadow monsters that you must defeat to build up your meter. Activating Chaos Boost again draws Mephiles out so you can attack him, though he darts about to make himself a harder target, commands his shades to swarm you, and fires a massive energy ball at you before forcing you to chain together Homing Attacks to reach him for the final hit.
After struggling through the rival fights, all three hedgehogs power-up todefeat Solaris.
Like in Sonic Adventure, you’ll also have to take on rival battles against Sonic, Silver, and Shadow. The first of these is probably Sonic ’06’s most infamous legacy; when you face Silver in Soleanna, he’ll throw shit at you and, if you attack him directly or even face him, he’ll grab you with his telekinesis and send you flying with a cry of “It’s no use! Ta-ake this!” Literally nine times out of then, you’ll get locked in a vicious cycle where he does this over and over either until you’re dead or you have to restart as you keep collecting one Ring upon damage, but you can get around this. Basically, you need to grab some Rings and run around and far away like an idiot; you won’t be able to see Silver because the camera is awful but, eventually, you’ll here him cry “How about this!”, which is when he gathers up projectiles to throw at you; this is your chance to attack him but for God’s sake dash away immediately after or else he’ll grab you. This is slightly harder with Shadow as you can’t easily chain Homing Attacks, meaning you’ll end up attacking the air instead of escaping, and Silver tends to blast you upwards as well. When playing as Silver, these battles are much easier but can still be annoying; both Sonic and Shadow can attack from afar with their Homing Attacks and you’ll have to run around like a moron waiting for projectiles to pop back in for you to throw at them. If you’re able to keep from rage quitting when playing through the ridiculously hard final stage, with its instant-death time rips and wonky physics, you’ll take on Solaris in the final battle. Here, Super Sonic, Super Shadow, and Super Silver have to take it in turns to attack the raging Sun God; you can switch between them with Y (the other two will “collect Rings” in the mean time so you shouldn’t ever run out of power) and attack with X (Super Sonic charges ahead, Super Shadow launches and charges Chaos Spear, and Super Silver captures projectiles with LT and tosses them at Solaris). It’s not massively clear (ironically, unlike other Sonic games, the supporting cast doesn’t give you clear direction) but, to start with, you need to destroy Solaris’s arm with Super Silver, then the other arm with Super Shadow, and finish it off with Super Sonic all while it throws projectiles and screen-filling lasers at you. In its second phase, Solaris is much more aggressive but it’s pretty simple to stay out of range of its lasers and switch to whichever hedgehog it’s not shielding against to defeat (and probably for an S-Rank as well).
Power-Ups and Bonuses: As in pretty much every Sonic game, Golden Rings are your life source; as long as you have at least one, you’ll survive most attacks and, with a hundred, you’ll earn an extra life. As ever, you’ll also find Item Boxes strewn around the action stages that’ll grant you a speed-up (practically a death sentence with this game’s wonky physics!), the rare invincibility, an extra life (which annoyingly won’t respawn if you die after a checkpoint), a bunch of rings (either five, ten, or twenty), or fill your meter so you can perform Chaos Boost or telekinesis. You’ll also spot rainbow rings around the place, which will give you a score boost and act as shortcuts, and there are a decent number of checkpoints (though sporadically; some stages need more, some don’t need any). When you finish a mission or action stage, you’ll receive a ranking based on your score, time, and performance; the higher your ranking, the more Rings you earn and can then spend at shops around Soleanna. This allows you to buy upgrades for Sonic, Shadow, and Silver, such as the Light Speed Dash, bounce, and Chaos Boost, but you’ll also be able to perform more powerful attacks as Shadow and Silver to stun nearby enemies. Sonic’s upgrades take the form of gems and change the colour of his shoes; you can switch between these with the directional pad and activate them with RT for some truly bizarre and game-breaking effects. Sonic can toss an emerald and teleport to it, stop in mid-air to charge his Homing Attack, blast ahead with Mach Speed at any time, shrink, create a magnetic shield to attract Rings, and whip up a tornado to deal damage though, honestly, I never used any of these and found most of them were either useless or didn’t work as intended.
Additional Features: There are twenty-three Achievements up for grabs in Sonic ’06 and they’re all pretty rubbish. You get an Achievement for clearing each episode, and then finishing the last story, and another three Achievements for fully upgrading each of the three playable characters. You’ll also get Achievements for finishing the story on Hard mode, completing every side mission (easily accessible from the main menu, thankfully), and for finding and earning every Silver and Gold Medal in the game, meaning you need to complete every mission and stage with an S-Rank. Silver Medals are scattered throughout the stages and Gold Medals are awarded for clearing stages and, as I said, getting S-Ranks so good luck in obtaining all of them with this dodgy game! Sonic ’06 was also bolstered by some DLC, which includes an even harder difficulty setting, a boss rush, and the “Team Attack Amigo” pack. This is somewhat similar to the last stage of the game and has you playing through short sections of the main story as the supporting characters (Tails, Rouge, etc), culminating in a boss fight against the Egg-Genesis as Omega. You’ll also unlock a sound test and movie theatre and can play a rudimentary multiplayer mode similar to the one seen in Sonic Adventure 2(Sonic Team USA, 2001) in which two players either work together to find Chaos Emeralds or race against each other, but I can’t imagine anyone wanting to play this mess of a game with you.
The Summary: This is the first time I’ve played Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) since I first finished it on the PlayStation 3 and there’s a damn good reason for that. Yes, surprise surprise, I do not hold Sonic ’06 in high esteem; for me, this is one of the absolute worst Sonic games ever made, and one of the worst videogames ever made, and nothing and no one will ever convince me otherwise. The potential is there, and that actually makes things worse; the high-quality cutscenes, the soundtrack, even some of the new characters and concepts are all very appealing. The call-backs to Sonic Adventure are fun…on paper, but the whole game feels like a downgrade and a poor imitation of that far superior and varied classic 3D Sonic title. But what really kills the game is the gameplay; Sonic ’06 is just all over the place, juggling too much and stretching itself too thin, and the game engine cannot handle it. Slowdown, glitches, and diabolical hit detection combined with ridiculous load times and an absolutely atrocious camera are enough to drag this game down but when you factor in the almost unplayable Mach Speed sections, the janky vehicle combat, and Silver’s slow, frustrating gameplay then you hardly have a winning formula. I give the game props for having other characters be playable, even in supporting roles, but they’re poorly implemented and it’s a missed opportunity to not allow the “Amigos” to be playable in every stage and mission. A lack of boss variety, unclear objectives, and some game-breaking shit like the Silver boss and Sonic’s upgrades only exacerbate the game’s issues; the side missions basically amount to defeating enemies or passing through rings and there’s just not much on offer to keep you coming back. Sonic ’06 is more than a slog; it’s like stumbling through quicksand and it throws some ludicrous roadblocks in your way, from racing to stop or destroy a train to desperately trying to dodge instant-kill hazards. To me, there’s little saving grace to this game; it certainly wasn’t the big reboot or return to form the franchise needed and was, instead, a slap in the face to gamers everywhere and a massively rush, missed opportunity for SEGA’s high-speed mascot.
My Rating:
⭐
Rating: 1 out of 5.
Terrible
Can you think of anythinggood about Sonic ’06 that isn’t the soundtrack or cutscenes? What did you think to Silver and the three different gameplay styles on offer? Which was your favourite and did you enjoy playing as the likes of Tails and such? What did you think to the story, Mephiles, and the never-ending quest to rescue Princess Elise? Did you ever find all the Medals? What’s your favourite Sonic game, good or bad? How are you celebrating Sonic’s anniversary today? Whatever your thoughts on Sonic ’06, share them down below or start the discussion on my social media.
Sonic the Hedgehog was first introduced to gamers worldwide on 23 June 1991 and, since then, has become not only SEGA’s most enduring and popular character but also a beloved videogame icon and what better way to honour SEGA’s supersonic mascot than by celebrating his birthday all throughout June.
This review has been supported by Chiara Cooper. If you’d like to support the site, you can do so at my Ko-Fi page.
Released: 28 November 2012 Originally Released: June 1996 Developer: SEGA Original Developer: SEGA AM2 Also Available For: Arcade, GameCube, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
The Background: As you’re probably aware, Sonic the Hedgehog (Sonic Team, 1991) was a massive success for SEGA; it catapulted them ahead of their rivals, Nintendo, and changed the face of the “Console Wars” forever. Sonic the Hedgehog 2(SEGA Technical Institute, 1992) not only continued that success but also catapulted Sonic into mainstream popularity. SEGA were quick to capitalise on Sonic’s popularity, licensing the character out for comic books, cartoons, and all kinds of merchandise and producing a number of spin-off titles for all kinds of consoles and placing Sonic into many different genres, from racing games to puzzle games and, of course, a fighting game. Sonic the Fighters (also known as Sonic Championship) was developed by SEGA AM2 after the team were spotted dabbling with Sonic character models during the development of Fighting Vipers (SEGA AM2, 1995), whose game engine formed the basis of Sonic the Fighters. I was lucky enough to play Sonic the Fighters at SEGAWorld back in the day but, for many, their first experience with the game was when it was released as part of Sonic Gems Collection (Sonic Team, 2005). Although the game has been criticised for being nothing more than a basic fighting title, Sonic the Fighters was eventually brought to PlayStation 3 and Xbox Live as a digital title that not only gave the game a new coat of paint but also added additional characters and gameplay modes.
The Plot: Doctor Eggman and his new version of Metal Sonic, Mecha Sonic Model. 29 (or “Rocket Metal”), have constructed a spherical battle station, the Death Egg II in orbit. Sonic, his allies and some disreputable types, are each in possession of one of the eight Chaos Emeralds but Miles “Tails” Prower’s Lunar Fox rocket ship can only seat one so they decide to hold a one-on-one tournament to determine who will fly up to stop Dr. Eggman.
Gameplay: Sonic the Fighters is a 3D polygonal fighter in which you pick from one of eight playable characters and battle the other remaining fighters on a series of garish 3D planes, including a mirror match against a monochrome double of your character, before blasting up to the Death Egg II and battling Metal Sonic and Dr. Eggman. You can select from series staples Sonic, Tails, Amy Rose, Knuckles the Echidna, and Espio the Chameleon and some of the franchise’s more obscure characters Fang the Sniper (also known as Nack the Weasel), Bark the Polar Bear, and Bean the Dynamite. Whichever character you pick, you’ll be tasked with pulling off a variety of rapid-fire punches, kicks, and special attacks using the Y, B, and A buttons in co-ordination with other buttons and directional inputs. You can throw your opponent, duck and sidestep attacks, and raise a barrier by pressing X to block incoming attacks. If your opponent shatters this barrier, though, and you run out of barrier energy, you’ll be left stunned and vulnerable so it’s best to time the use of your barrier to when it’ll be at its most useful. You can also press back, Y, and B to expend some of your barrier’s energy and enter “Hyper Mode”, which will bestow you with some sparkles and increase your speed and attack stats.
Each character has a variety of special moves tailoured to their unique physical attributes.
As a 3D polygonal fighter, Sonic the Fighters allows for a series of basic combos and character-specific special attacks that are awkwardly pulled off using directional inputs and button presses or combinations and change depending on where you’re standing and the position of your opponent, meaning that it’s easy to enter a button combination and simply spam the same moves over and over again. Each character controls a little differently and focus on a slightly different method of attack: Sonic is all about his trademark Spin Dash, Tails can charge at opponents head-on using his twin tails like helicopter blades, Knuckles can glide across the screen, Amy wallops her foes with her Piko-Piko Hammer, Bomb tosses a variety of bombs, Fang uses his rapid-fire popgun, Espio tosses opponents around with his tongue, and Bark is all about the grapples and high-impact punches. Each is just different enough to add a bit of variety to the fast-paced and simplistic gameplay, with Amy favouring barriers, Bark being slower but hitting harder, and Espio being notably aggressive in his attack but you can easily just mash at the buttons and come out on top more often than not.
Sonic the Fighters is all about fast-paced, frantic, cartoony combat and very little else.
Perhaps fittingly, fights in Sonic the Fighters are extremely quick and frantic; health bars seem to drain extremely quickly, especially when you’re hit with a few frenzied punches or a throw or two, and it won’t take you longer than ten minutes or so to blast through the arcade ladder on the easiest setting. You can customise the difficulty of the single-player arcade mode, the length and number of rounds, and set the strength of attacks and number of barriers characters have from the main options menu, which can make the game easier and harder depending on your setup, but it’s a rapid fighting game that bombards you with colours, cartoony slapstick, and a quick burst of adrenaline rather than being a deep or complex fighter. Unlike a lot of fighters, there’s very little to break up the action in Sonic the Fighters; there’s no bonus stages or mini games to worry about and variety only comes into play in the garish and colourful stages and the brief little cutscenes that play in the game’s final stages. Every time you play the game, you’ll battle the same opponents in the same order in the same stages, which only adds to the game’s repetitive and predictable nature, and the only option you’re really given to try and spice up your fights is that you can press the Start button to switch the perspective to slightly behind your character (though I found this a bit disorienting for a one-on-one fighting game).
Graphics and Sound: Characters are brought to life in the finest polygonal graphics the arcades had to offer; fighters are large, colourful, and extremely expressive, spewing Golden Rings every time they’re hit, squashing when hit with big moves, and reacting with an over-the-top, cartoonish slapstick that really adds to the game’s charm. And, honestly, it’s a good job that these aspects are present in Sonic the Fighters as these kind of graphics (while impressive and trend-setting at the time when the industry was swamped with traditional 2D fighters) really haven’t aged well at all. Seriously, games like Virtual Fighter (SEGA AM2, 1993), Soul Edge (Project Soul, 1995), and Tekken (Namco, 1995) might have shown what the next generation of home consoles and 3D polygonal graphics were capable of but they look pretty ass these days and Sonic the Fighters is no exception with its harsh edges and blocky textures. Still, the game is very bright and colourful and really pops out at you…well, I say “pops” but really it screams in your face with how vibrant and garish it can be. Every character stands out from even the most colourful backgrounds thanks to their large, blocky size, cartoonish expressions, and vivid, recognisable colour schemes (Sonic is a stunning blue, Fang is a unique purple, and Bark is a big cream-coloured polar bear, for example). The character designs really are spot on, with each character having their own unique little quirks and animations to help them stand out; Fang bounces on his tail like a pogo stick, Tails flails his arms around in a little flurry, and Bean haphazardly tosses his bombs with reckless abandon.
Stages are vividand mostly based on the franchise but very restrictive and a bit bland at times.
The game’s final bosses only continue this, with Metal Sonic rendered beautifully in 3D (he is probably the most smooth and impressive of all the game’s characters) and even Dr. Eggman’s little mech looking both cute and perfectly in character (if a bit small). Each of the game’s eight characters has their own stage and the majority of these stages are based on recognisable Zones from across the Sonic franchise but, ironically, the four core characters (Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy) seem to have been slightly misplaced in these stages. You’d think that you’d face Sonic in the Green Hill-inspired South Island and Knuckles in Mushroom Hill but, actually, you face Knuckles in South Island and Espio in Mushroom Hill, which is a bit odd. Fang, Bean, and Bark and all perfectly placed in Casino Night, Dynamite Plant (which seems like an amalgamation of Chemical Plant, Oil Ocean, and Metropolis Zone), and Aurora Icefield, however. Stages are limited to a very small, restrictive 3D plane that, yes, you can freely navigate around using movements and sidesteps but they’re not very big. You won’t have to worry about ring outs, however, which is good, and you can smack your opponent into, and bounce them off of, the walls of each stage, which can produce comical sounds from the Sonic sound effects library.
A handful of cutscenes utilise the in-game graphics and models to relay the premise of the game.
One area where the game really excels in its music; jaunty, upbeat, energetic tunes accompany the start, end, and duration of each round and it (like the game’s general aesthetic) reminds me of the look and sound of Sonic 3D: Flickies’ Island/Sonic 3D Blast (Traveller’s Tales/Sonic Team, 1996) and even the Sonic the Hedgehogoriginal video animation (Ikegami, 1999). When you win a round, you’ll also view an instant replay of the last few moments of the fight, much like in Tekken, and a handful of quick, simple cutscenes (which utilise the in-game graphics) show Dr. Eggman copying your fighter for the mirror match and relay the general plot of the game as well as the dramatic ending that sees you battling against a strict time limit.
Enemies and Bosses: As a one-on-one fighting game, you’ll be tasked with battling every character in the game in your quest to secure the eight Chaos Emeralds and take on Metal Sonic and Dr. Eggman. No matter who you pick, though, two things are guaranteed: one is that you’ll battle a monochrome double of yourself and the other is that you’ll face the same fighters in the same order every time, meaning you can prepare accordingly for the unique traits of each fighter without being taken by surprise, though it does make the single-player arcade ladder very predictable and repetitive. I played the game on the easiest difficulty and found that the first few fights were pretty much a walk in the park: Knuckles is extremely unaggressive and rarely even tries to launch an attack against you, Amy likes to hide behind her barriers to drag out the battle, and Bark, for all his size and power, is pretty easy to dominate with the faster characters. Things always seem to take a turn for me when I go up against Espio, who appears to be much more aggressive in his approach, and Fang, who is extremely cheap to both play as or fight against since his popgun just blasts projectiles with relentless abandon.
Once you get past the tough Metal Sonic, you’re given just fifteen seconds to take out Dr. Eggman.
Once you conquer all of the fighters and secure the eight Chaos Emeralds, you’ll rocket up to the Death Egg II and do battle with the game’s toughest opponent yet: Metal Sonic. Metal Sonic is a fast, aggressive move thief, busting out a version of Tails’ helicopter drop and Knuckles’ glide by rocketing across the screen like a torpedo. He can also blast out a large laser from his chest and drain your health bar with just a few combos and is easily the most frustrating opponent in the game made all the more annoying because of the game’s dodgy controls and requirements to properly pull off special moves. Once you finally take out Metal Sonic, though, the Death Egg II’s self-destruction sequence begins and Dr. Eggman comes stomping out in his little pincer mech and tries to keep you from escaping before the space station explodes. For this battle, you’ll automatically be placed into a permanent Hyper Mode but, on the flip side, you’ll also be given fifteen seconds to defeat Dr. Eggman in a single round fight and, if you fail, it’s game over. Thankfully, Dr. Eggman is no real threat (at least on the easiest setting) and you can simply trounce him in no time at all by spamming whatever attacks and combos you know before he even has a chance to unload his best attacks against you.
Power-Ups and Bonuses: There’s no extraneous power-ups or onscreen collectibles to worry about in Sonic the Fighters; it’s about as bare bones as you can get for a fighting title and the only power-up you have at your disposal is the Hyper Mode, which can be activated for a few seconds at the cost of some barrier energy and can help turn the tide if you’re struggling. If you manage to reach Metal Sonic without losing a single round, and score the win in the first round against him, you can activate your Hyper Mode to transform into Super Sonic for the remainder of the game. Obviously, this only applies when you’re playing as Sonic and no other character gets this buff and, unfortunately, there’s no way to play as Super Sonic outside of this requirement but it’s pretty cool to wreck Metal Sonic and Dr. Eggman as a fully powered up Super Sonic if you’ve got the skills and luck to activate this form.
Additional Features: There are twelve Achievements for you to earn in Sonic the Fighters and you should probably be able to get them all in one quick playthrough without any real difficulty. Seven of the Achievements are earned simply by completing the arcade mode on any difficulty; you’ll also nab another from playing arcade mode and battling your monochrome doppelgänger and, as long as you press the attack against a defending opponent, you’ll most likely grab another at the same time, too. The only ones that you might have to think a little harder about are ‘A Small Transformation’ (which requires you to get squashed by Amy’s hammer attack), ‘Perfect’ (which requires you to complete one round without being hit), and ‘Honey the Cat’ (which requires you to press Start when selecting Amy).
This version of the game adds three extra fighters to play as, which is a nice touch.
Speaking of Honey, this character was officially added to the game’s playable roster of fighters in this console port, which is very much appreciated. You can also play as Metal Sonic and Dr. Eggman by pressing Start when selecting Sonic or Bean, respectively, but you can only play as these two outside of the arcade mode, which is a bit of a shame. Equally disappointing is that other cut variants of the bosses were still inaccessible even in this game and that there’s no way to play a one-on-one fight against a computer-controlled opponent outside of the arcade mode. You can, however, fight against a friend in both couch co-op and online and compare your scores and winning streaks with others with the online leaderboards but, sadly, that’s it; there’s no gallery or character models or anything, which is a bit of a shame.
The Summary: Sonic the Fighters is a fairly decent little blast of fun that should keep you satisfied for about, maybe, half an hour at the most. The arcade mode is a breeze to blast through in about ten minutes, depending on your skill level and the difficulty settings you set up, and there’s some fun to be had playing as each character and basking in their vibrant, animated 3D models. As an obscure entry in the Sonic franchise, you could do a lot worse and it’s great seeing Fang, Bean, and Bark brought to life in 3D and given a chance to shine. I’ll never understand why it took SEGA so long to bring these fantastically-designed characters back into the franchise and that, and my brief experience with the game at SEGAWorld, means I have a bit of a soft spot for this mostly forgotten entry in the franchise. However, it can’t be denied that Sonic the Fighters isn’t really that good of a gaming experience or a fighting game; it’s bright and vibrant and full of quirky, cartoonish charm but there are definitely better 3D fighters out there from the same time and the game is just too fast and too frantic for its own good, meaning it’s a disappointingly short and underwhelming experience that is only worth your time because it’s kinda cheap, the Achievements are dead easy to get, and you can breeze through it easily enough even when facing the game’s cheaper, more frustrating opponents.
My Rating:
⭐⭐
Rating: 2 out of 5.
Could Be Better
Are you a fan of Sonic the Fighters? Which of the game’s roster was your favourite and why? What did you think to the game’s aesthetic and gameplay? Did you struggle with the controls and button inputs or did you discover a depth to the gameplay that I missed while madly mashing buttons? Did you ever play Sonic the Fighters out in the wild or did you first experience it when it was ported to home consoles? Would you like to see SEGA attempt a Sonic fighting game again sometime, maybe in the mould of the Super Smash Bros. series (HAL Laboratory/Various, 1999 to present)? Whatever your thoughts on Sonic the Fighters, leave a comment down below.
Sonic the Hedgehog was first introduced to gamers worldwide on 23 June 1991 and, since then, has become not only SEGA’s most enduring and popular character but also a beloved videogame icon and, in keeping with tradition, I will be dedicating the entire month to celebrating SEGA’s supersonic mascot.
This review has been supported by Chiara Cooper. If you’d like to support the site, you can do so at my Ko-Fi page.
Released: 20 June 2013 Originally Released: 22 September 1995 Developer: SEGA Original Developer: Aspect Also Available For: Game Gear, Gamecube, PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X, Xbox One
The Background: Thanks to SEGA largely ignoring them these days, many people forget that Sonic’s iconic and much-lauded Mega Drive titles were accompanied by a fair few videogames for their 8-bit consoles. The 8-bit versions of Sonic the Hedgehog (Ancient, 1991) and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Aspect, 1992) were considerably different from the 16-bit counterparts, featuring entirely different Zones, gameplay gimmicks, and features, and this continued to Sonic’s other 8-bit titles, which tended to be more experimental compared to the mainline games. This is best evident in Sonic’s long-time kid sidekick, Miles “Tails” Prower , getting a few spin-off titles of his own, with this particular game facing criticism upon release for its slower pace and only really finding its fans later in life as retrospective reviews appreciated the role-playing elements of the game, though the back-tracking and inventory management was seen as a downside. Since Tails Adventure was a Game Gear exclusive title back in the day, I didn’t play it until it was featured in Sonic Adventure DX: Director’s Cut(Sonic Team, 2003) and, even then, I never actually sat down and put effort into playing through it until I picked up this Nintendo 3DS port of the game.
The Plot: Before Tails met Sonic the Hedgehog, the two-tailed fox cub used his various gadgets and inventions to travel across Cocoa Island to liberate it from the Battle Kukku Empire, an evil empire that sought to conquer the world using the legendary Chaos Emeralds.
Gameplay: Tail Adventure (oddly referred to as “Tails Adventures” in-game) is a 2D, sidescrolling action/adventure game that emphasises slow-paced exploration and backtracking, making it more like a “Metroidvania” style game than a high-speed platformer. Players are placed into the role of cute little two-tailed fox Tails, who plods along a number of fairly samey island environments tossing bombs, acquiring new gadgets, and using his twin tails to fly to new areas. Although you don’t have to contend with a time limit when playing, Tails’ flight is restricted by a meter, which drains the longer you fly; rather than tapping A to gain height, this will cancel the flying state so you need to use up on the directional pad (D-pad) to get higher and you can extend your flight meter by finding the six Chaos Emeralds across the game’s stages. The B button sees you make use of your currently equipped item; Tails starts off with a regular bomb, which can be tossed when standing still or dropped when flying, but can carry up to four at once and you can switch between them from the pause screen by pressing left or right on the D-pad. Tails can look up and duck down to scroll the screen vertically, which is useful for spotting enemies just out of sight or spikes, and can even toss bombs while ducking to take out smaller enemies. He will also automatically clamber up small ledges and walls when near to or jumping to them, but his default walking speed is incredibly slow and you’re not able to perform signature Sonic moves like the Spin Dash or Super Sonic Spin Attack without a specific gadget.
Tails embarks on his own solo adventure with his trusty bombs and helicopter tails.
As ever, Golden Rings are your life source; however, this time around, you lose a certain number of Rings depending on how you take a hit and they act more like traditional hit points in a role-playing game. You can pick up Rings from defeated enemies or find them either lying around a level or behind destructible walls and they’ll respawn when you leave the area, allowing you to farm them if need be, and Chaos Emeralds will also increase your maximum Ring count. Once you clear a stage (each of which is generally comprised of about three different screens with different paths accessible by your different gadgets and skills and capped off with a boss battle), Tails can navigate across Cocoa Island using a map screen. From here, you can jump back to Tails’ House at any time to swap out your gadgets, review your password (necessary to continue your game when you get a game over), or kit out Tails’ submarine, the Sea Fox. When in the Sea Fox, the game becomes a sidescrolling shoot-‘em-up of sorts as Tails explores new areas underwater, blasting at enemies and blocks with missiles and mines to reach new areas on and around Cocoa Island. Like Tails, the Sea Fox can be equipped with up to four different gadgets but it also comes with a drill appendage to plough through walls, though you’ll need to manually turn the submarine around with the A button, which can be a bit clunky.
Hop in the Sea Fox and explore your environments to find new gadgets and solve puzzles.
The bulk of the game is focused on exploration; at first, you’re somewhat limited to where you can go and will be teased by upgrade pods and areas of each stage that you can’t reach yet. Tails can blow through blocks and walls, push rocks and springs to climb and get higher, and often has to contend with blasts of wind that either hold him down, push him back, or blast him upwards. Many stages are rife with spikes, fireball-spewing lava pits, or in pitch black darkness, requiring careful navigation or new gadgets to get through; others are slightly maze-like and contain multiple exits, with some depositing you back on the map screen rather than advancing you forwards. Each time you get a new item or gadget, it’s worth equipping and experimenting with it to see how it might open new paths to new upgrades or stages in places you’ve already explored, and this is actively encouraged as it’s the only way to complete the game. You’ll be revisiting many areas but especially returning to Lake Rocky as you upgrade the Sea Fox, and a number of stage hazards will slow you down; you’ll have to redirect conveyor belts with your wrench, blow through walls with your bombs or napalm, dodge missile turrets, press switches to lower electrical barriers, and send your little Remote Robot through small gaps to grab items or solve puzzles. Occasionally, you’ll need to perform some tricky platforming, often with enemies hovering right in the way, making your way upwards on drafts of air and watching for ceiling spikes; other times, you’ll be hopping around on rapids and being blasted around under water (with no fear of drowning, thankfully), and returning to Tails’ House again and again if you get halfway through a stage and realise you don’t have the right item equipped (though there is a teleporter than makes this much faster than going back through the whole stage).
Graphics and Sound: If you’ve played any of the other 8-bit Sonic videogames, Tails Adventure will look and sound very familiar to you; many of the sounds (such as Ring collection and boss hits) are recycled from those games and the music is right in line with the jaunty chip tunes of those often overlooked titles. While the heads-up display is very sparse, even for an 8-bit Sonic title, the game does suffer from noticeable slowdown when there’s a lot happening onscreen. Not only does the game include include the signature “SE-G-AA!” jingle during the opening and a brief opening sequence in which Tails and Flickies are panicked by the Battle Kukku Empire, other cutscenes play when bosses appear or when Tails hops into the Sea Fox. Tails also has a cute idle animation where he digs in the ground or fiddles with his wrench, his flying sprite changes and becomes more dynamic as his meter increases, and he even has a pretty spectacular death animation that sees him sent flying.
While the environments can be a bit bland, the sprites and animations are pretty good.
There are twelve stages in Tails Adventure, though many are quite similar, with recycled foregrounds and sprite elements being recoloured and shuffled about. There are some interesting visuals considering the limited hardware, however; Volcanic Tunnel is full of flickering fire, and lava pits, and Cavern Island is beset by water rapids. While the second part of Polly Mountain is similar to Volcanic Tunnels except requiring the Night Vision item to cope with the darkness, the first part is very vertical, with a pretty impressive landscape in the background and gusts of wind to contend with. Green Island sees you venturing through hollow trees, Caron Forest has a big waterfall in the background, vines hanging down, and tree trucks as bridges. When in the Sea Fox, you’ll explore underground coral reefs and hop around on rapids above water as you blast at enemies and, after conquering all of the main stages, the Kukku Empire’s Battle Fortress rises from the map and you end up exploring a purely mechanical location that recalls classic Sonic stages like Scrap Brain Zone.
Enemies and Bosses: The Battle Kukku Empire is made up of heavily-armed birds and robotic enemies not unlike Doctor Eggman’s Badniks; the Battle Kukku Empire’s birds pilot little hover pods and mechanical walkers, firing projectiles or flamethrowers at you, or fly around dropping bombs on you. Smaller ones can be harder to hit and move a lot faster, quickly being spawned in from gates, and the Kukkus will pilot their own submarines and even snipe at you from behind the environment by the end. You’ll also have to contend with robotic bats and mice, but probably the worst enemy in the game is a simple beehive that keeps spawning in bees until you destroy it, which causes the queen to pop out and chase after you, so it’s best you use your Napalm Bomb to quickly dispatch these little buggers.
A number of mechanical bosses will test your bomb-throwing prowess.
There are eight bosses to contend with throughout Tails Adventure, with one fought twice and some new upgrades being acquired after defeating them, and the first one you’ll battle with is the Bird Walker amidst the flaming background of Poloy Forest. This is a pretty simple boss that stomps and hops towards you and tries to fry you with its flamethrower; you can toss your bombs at it, or fly over it and drop them, but it’s worth noting that it can also shoot flames from behind. At the end of Cavern Island, another mechanical boss awaits: Mecha Golem (5-gou), which attacks with a swinging arm, causes boulders to rain from the ceiling, and takes a few more hits to destroy as you have to first blast off its cockpit to expose the pilot, and then continue attacking to finish it off. A similar boss is faced at the end of the Volcanic Tunnel; entirely stationary, it sits there firing a whole mess of projectiles at you. Some of these can be destroyed and you can avoid others by flying behind it and attacking the cockpit, but this was actually the most difficult boss in the game for me because of the sheer number of projectiles onscreen and the slowdown they caused. After finally getting the Sea Fox upgraded, you’ll encounter the Kukku Cruiser in Lake Rocky, which is a pretty simple and non-threatening boss battle as you simply avoid the depth charges it drops and unload on it with your Anti-air Missile until it goes down in flames.
The Battle Kukku Empire’stop dogs offer some diverse challenge.
The Battle Kukku Empire’s executives are somewhat more memorable boss battles; the first one you face is Battle Kukku XVI (or “Speedy”), a green rooster who initially confronts you on Polly Mountain in what amounts to a race. While you can throw bombs at Speedy and it registers as a hit, you’re actually supposed to avoid him (and the ceiling spikes) as you fly up without the restriction of your regular meter. Speedy will dart down at you like an arrow and can be tricky to avoid but gives up a Chaos Emerald once you reach the top. You’ll fight him properly on the Battle Fortress at the end of the game, however; this time, Speedy travels around the arena and fires a big projectile bolt at you. You need to anticipate where he’s going to appear or come around next and toss a bomb at him before quickly dodging his projectile and being hit by him as he barges past you, which can be tricky. Doctor Fukurokov also awaits on the Battle Fortress, though you don’t battle him directly; instead, he drops you into a mechanical arena full of lasers and spikes but these won’t harm you as you’re directing your Remote Robot through a narrow maze and having it drop a rock on the doc’s head. Finally, after besting Speedy, you’ll fight with the final boss, Great Battle Kukku XV; this large bird grabs and throws you if you get too close and tosses bombs at you. While you can fly over these, and him, to avoid many of his attacks, he becomes much more aggressive as you deal damage, spewing out bombs and walking across the arena to make himself a more difficult target to hit.
Power-Ups and Bonuses: To begin with, Tails is quite limited in his abilities; he can throw a regular bomb and replenish one Ring of his health with each Golden Ring he picks up, but he won’t become more versatile without exploring high and low for Chaos Emeralds to increase his flight meter and maximum Ring count and acquire additional gadgets to progress further and increase his attack repertoire. Tails can acquire new bombs that help him progress in different ways; the Remote Bomb can be rolled through small gaps and remotely triggered to destroy anything blocking your progress, the Large Bomb destroys all onscreen enemies and bigger obstacles, the Napalm Bomb sends a burst of flames out for wide coverage and to get past dense grass, and the Triple Bomb sends a spew of explosions out. You can also acquire Night Vision goggles to light up dark areas, Speed Boots to dramatically increase Tails’ walking and flying speed, a Hammer for a close-range attack, and a Helmet to deflect enemy projectiles.
Tails has a variety of gadgets and upgrades available to him to help him fight and progress.
Tails can use his Wrench to reprogram conveyor belts, teleport back to his house with the Teleport Device to save you backtracking, and lift heavy objects with the Super Glove while the Item Radar helps you find hidden items and the “Raido” lets you change the in-game music, Probably Tails’ most useful item is the Remote Robot, and indestructible little robot that you can direct, hop, and fly through narrow passageways to solve puzzles, and you can also grab Sonic, Fang, and Knuckles items to perform a Spin Attack, increase your chances of finding Rings, and punch enemies, respectively. The Sea Fox can also be upgraded with new weapons, such as mines and Anti-air Missiles to clear enemies or blocks below and above you, respectively, and the Vulcan Gun and Proton Torpedo to shoot down enemies in front of you. You can speed yourself up, gain the ability to jump up rapids by holding A and releasing it at peak charge, destroy all onscreen enemies with the Spark, and use Extra Armour for an invincibility that protects you until you leave the current screen.
Additional Features: There are six Chaos Emeralds and a total of thirty-four gadgets to be found in Tails Adventure. While you’ll naturally come across many of these, especially the ones that are necessary to progress, others are more hidden and optional. When you finish the game, you’ll be told your percentage of items found, but it appears as though you can’t return to your cleared save file as selecting ‘Continue’ simply restarted the game for me. Naturally, this 3DS version of the game allows you to save at any point with its save state feature, but you can also apply borders to the game, including a Game Gear border to recreate the original gaming experience.
The Summary: Although I never owned a Game Gear growing up, Tails Adventure has been on my list for a long time. I’ve dabbled with it, generally on Sonic Adventure DX: Director’s Cut, but never actually sat and properly played it until now. It’s definitely a curio amongst Sonic’s vast library of videogames and obviously very different from its mainline titles. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though; if you like Metroidvanias then there’s a bit of that flavour here, if maybe a little dumbed down for kids. The game has a very slow, deliberate, whimsical pace, feel, and aesthetic to it that makes it very visually appealing, if not necessarily too challenging or action-packed. It can be tricky and an obstacle to try and figure out what gadgets you need to progress and which stages to revisit and when to get everything you need, and a lot of the environments are a bit bland and repeated, but it was fun discovering new pick-ups and upgrades for Tails and his cool little submarine. I enjoyed how it wasn’t just Dr. Eggman and his Badniks and that the villains were visually interesting and quirky and I’d love to see the Kukku Empire crop up again in a videogame some time. Tails fits this genre of videogame very well so I could totally see this getting a revisit or a new coat of paint similar to Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker (Nintendo EAD Tokyo, 2014) if SEGA ever actually decided to dust off their sadly forgotten 8-bit titles. With some fun, cartoony sprites, a variety of interesting weapons to and secrets to find, and some wacky boss battles, Tails Adventure more than makes up for it slack of challenge and the limitations of its hardware with its presentation and tight gameplay.
My Rating:
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
Pretty Good
Are you a fan of Tails Adventure? Did you enjoy the emphasis on exploration and item usage as opposed to high-speed adventuring? Which of Tails’s gadgets was your favourite to use? What did you think to the Battle Kukku Empire and their quirky bosses? Did you ever own this on the Game Gear or did you play it in a later compilation or port? Would you like to see the Sonic franchise dabble in other genres using their many characters such as this? Whatever your thoughts on Tails Adventure, leave them below or drop a comment on my social media and be sure to check out my other Sonic content!
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