Sonic CD

It’s been about a month since I blatantly trolled Sega fanboys and classic gaming enthusiasts by announcing my dislike for most things Sega.  While I admit that this was as about as transparent as attention whoring gets, I want it to be clear that I stand by and truly believe all that bullshit I said.  Every last line of it.  Classic games are not as good as you remember and Sega games suck balls in general.

But what really pissed people off was going after Sonic The Hedgehog.  By the way people reacted to me asserting that it was never a good series to begin with, you would have thought I had Mother Teresa’s corpse exhumed just so I could defecate on it.  I just can’t comprehend why this series is so treasured.  It kind of sucks.  I can’t even believe this would qualify as being good “back in the day.”  Put this up against stuff like Super Mario Bros. 3 or even the Alex Kidd games from Sega and it seems like such a step backwards.

Which is actually what they had in mind when they designed it.  It was supposed to be Mario For Dummies, where the directional pad and only one button were needed and you wouldn’t be able to die if you had at least one ring.  It kind of shows that Sega held its own customers in contempt.  So basically, Sonic only exists because Sega wanted a Mario like character but thought its own users were too stupid to play a Mario game, and that just makes the crusader-like attitude of its fanboys all the more hilarious.

So the fanboys didn’t like my hate piece too much.  Most of the comments were completely asinine statements like “name one game from that era that was better than Sonic The Hedgehog.”  I could have been a total wise ass and said “anything!” but once you’ve got the monkeys throwing out “best game ever” statements, you’ve pretty much already won the battle.  Like I said in my VolChaos review, I find the entire situation to be sad.  Here are guys who are now in their thirties and they’re declaring the best game they have ever played and will ever play is one that Santa Claus gave them when they were ten years old.  I’m only 22, and I sure as hell hope I haven’t already played the best game I will ever play.  That would be tragic.

Pictured: something not worth the hype.

Granted, my only experience with the Genesis era Sonic games comes from when I got Sonic Mega Collection as a Christmas gift.  I might have even been the same age as those fanboys when I first played those titles.  Of course, by this point it’s 2002 and I’ve already played much better games, including some really spectacular 2D Mario games that Nintendo had ported to the Game Boy Advance.  Hell, I played Sonic Advance, an original 2D Sonic game on the Game Boy Advance that I had a better time with than anything on Mega Collection.

“Oh, but there’s another Sonic 16-bit era game.  One that destroys all those that came before it” cried the fanboys.  Indeed.  It’s called Sonic CD, and it’s the best of all the Sonics.  It’s so good that Sega seemed to go out of its way to not include it anywhere.  I mean, listen to how a guy I respect, Xbox Live Indie Game guru and Armless Octopus founder Dave Voyles described it.

Sonic CD is another fine example. It took a lot of the elements which made Sonic 1 so good, and vastly grew them. The future / past scenario for example, still hasn’t been done in other games to my knowledge. Sure, the 3D parts sucked and controlled like garbage, but the rest of the game provided a lot of innovation for the industry.

Well, what do you know, Sonic CD came out on Xbox Live Arcade and the Playstation Network this last week.  Since it was only $5, I figured what the hoo haw and gave it a whirl.  It makes me wonder what exactly Dave was even talking about.  What exactly was innovative about it?  It had an anime cut scene at the start?  Nah, that can’t be it.  What about the time travel gimmick?  Nah, games were already doing that too.

I got it!  It’s insanely easy.  Yes, I get it now.  Sonic CD was innovative because it introduced us to the era of the half-assed sequel.  Before Sonic CD came around, developers actually gave a shit when developing follow-ups to games.  And then this arrived, with its totally phoned in level design, boss fights that would embarrass the viewing audience of Yo Gabba Gabba, and levels where over half the game play is done automatically.  Developers took notice and said “wow, look at how amazingly shallow and empty this sequel is.  We didn’t know you could do that!”

If Sonic games were created for people too stupid to play Mario, Sonic CD must have been created for the recently lobotomized.  Everything in it feels stripped down.  There’s fewer enemies, shorter levels, easier bosses, and almost no way to game over.  It took me all of one hour to finish it.  At which point, it gave me TWO achievements instead of one.  How sweet of it.  I guess the innovation is supposed to be how there are multiple versions of each level, because you can hit a sign post that says “past” or “future” and if you build up enough speed, you time travel to an altered version of the same stage.  I don’t know if this has any other effect on gameplay, and the game doesn’t tell you.  It was beneficial to me because I nearly had to quit in the middle of one stage due to the strobey effects.  I swear, as I was putting down the control, I bumped into one of those time travel sign posts, hit a bumper, and suddenly I was in the past, sans flashy lights.

Here’s the thing about that though: the fucking game did all that by itself.  I had already put the controller down.  That’s one of my biggest gripes with the Sonic games, that they do all the hard work for you.  The first Sonic game I ever played was in fact Sonic Adventure on the Sega Dreamcast.  Everyone who played it remembers the iconic scene in the first level of that game where you’re on a dock running from a killer whale.  When I was ten years old, that was, up to that point, the single coolest moment I had seen in a video game.  And it was cool, until you realized that the game had all kinds of moments where it takes the controller away from you and does all the fancy stuff automatically.

But isn’t that how Sonic games always have been?  In Sonic CD, you spend most of the levels doing nothing while the game has all the fun for you.  Half the time in the game is spent watching Sonic automatically coast off bumpers and through tubes at warp speed.  Granted, that’s enough to give the Sonic fanboys their jollies, but I thought this was supposed to be the Crème de la Crème of series.  Instead, it’s probably the worst.  Unless you count the Game Gear titles, which were pretty bad.

Here’s my theory: most people who had this fascination with Sonic CD never actually played it.  Probably because you needed a Sega CD to play it and their parents weren’t willing to spring the extra $300 for the attachment.  So Sonic CD became the unobtainable entry in the series.  The one that was so good it had to be put on the most expensive system on the market at the time.  It got some good press coverage, but the Sega CD was pretty much dead on arrival and by time you could afford it, the next wave of consoles were coming and all the copies of Sonic CD had already been long snatched up as soon as they hit the clearance rack.  It’s status as the lost Sonic game made it the stuff of legends.

Well, legends do tend to disappoint.  Sonic CD is bad even by the low standards of the series.  It’s everything that every other 2D Sonic has been: horrible play control, no actual platforming skills required, cheap deaths, and lots of watching the game do all the work for you.  Only this time, it’s insanely easy, to the point that it’s a little insulting.  Thankfully, it would seem even the Sonic fanboys are somewhat on my side with this one.  Within 24 hours of Sonic CD hitting the PS3 and Xbox 360 marketplaces, I saw plenty of Sonic aficionados sulkily tweet “not as good as I remember it” or “that was disappointing.”  Others are pissing and moaning because some stupid song got cut out of the game.  Which is funny to me because I always thought gaming was supposed to be about the gameplay, not the title song during the opening cut scene that most people were likely anxious to skip anyway.

It goes to show you that the older you get, the less kind reality is to your childhood memories.  Guys, Sonic CD didn’t get bad.  It was always bad.  They all were.  You’ve just played better games since it came out.  Every time I go back and play something I liked as a kid, the memories just don’t hold up.  It happened to me with Sonic Adventure, Tony Hawk, and Crash Bandicoot.  That’s why it’s best to live in the now.  Don’t go back looking for moldy oldies.  The best game you will ever play hopefully hasn’t come out yet, but you won’t know that unless you look to the future for it, and not the past.

Oh, and as a spoiler, it’s not Knuckles Chaotix either.  I realize now that Sonic CD finally has a wide release, everyone is going to say “okay, it sucked, but I totally remember Knuckles Chaotix on the 32X being the most awesome Sonic game ever!”  Wrong!  If Sega had any faith in that game they would have re-released it by now.  They haven’t for the same reason they dragged their feet with Sonic CD: it sucks, and they know it.  Deep down, you know it too.  I haven’t even played it and I know it.  Helen Keller knows it.  She might be blind and deaf, but when shit gets piled this thick for so long you can smell it coming a mile away.

Sonic CD was developed by Sega

400 Microsoft Points said “honestly, if Sega had released Bubsy the Bobcat and Sonic had been the generic lifeless mascot of some nameless game company, would you even have known the difference?” in the making of this review.

My friends at GameMarx are giving away over FIFTY Xbox Live Indie Games as part of a huge contest.  Click here for the Youtube announcement video, and then click here to enter.

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53 Responses to Sonic CD

  1. Alan C says:

    The ‘taking the gameplay away from you’ thing became more prominent with each sequel. By the time we reach Sonic Rush, there’s barely any game left. That was my main complain when I played the demo of Sonic Generations – I pretty much just held the stick to the right. I even looked around the room while running at a few points, just to see what would happen.

    Anyway, Sonic CD is beyond my realm of experience, but it sounds like the real genesis (ha!) of that trend. I won’t bother to defend the first two Sonic games, because I don’t require you to like them as much as I do. But they did at least require you to actually play.

  2. Liam Cook says:

    I bought it for the same reason as you, since I’ve never really got the hype of sonic and I’d never in my life played a 2D version of it, and I’m equally disappointed. Somebody should probably say that if the games of your childhood had been released today (ignoring the fact that they led to innovation and evolution etc), they’d get 6/10 maximum. Well, apart from Busby 3D, that shit is timeless.

    • Alan C says:

      I think it depends on what you value in games. One of the reasons I generally had more fun with Sonic than with Mario is that Mario games generally have annoying music, whereas the early Sonic games had great music. For me, music is always a big part of the experience of any given game. If you’re someone who doesn’t really care about the soundtrack, then you will never comprehend most of what appeals to me about the Sonic games.

      (Incidentally, Escape Goat has fantastic music too. I just bought the soundtrack.)

      • I actually felt the reverse. A lot of Mario music has really stuck with me over the years. I never could get into Sonic music though. I don’t think it’s the songs themselves that’s the issue though. I enjoyed the high quality versions of the Sonic stuff in Smash Bros, but I really can’t get into the original Genesis versions. The MIDI instruments on the Genesis sound horrible.

        • Professor Fessor says:

          Both games have very memorable scores to me, but if what you look for in a game is a soundtrack then it isn’t really games your after is it?

        • “The MIDI instruments on the Genesis sound horrible.”

          I agree, they were horrendous, on just about any Genesis title.

          • >”The MIDI instruments on the Genesis sound horrible.”
            >
            >I agree, they were horrendous, on just about any Genesis title.
            >

            I couldn’t agree less.

            Read up on the audio hardware in the Genesis. There were 3 models released in the U.S., the second one had gutted some of the sound capabilities to make it cheaper to produce, so maybe that’s why you didn’t like the sound.

            See the Wiki article for a comparison clip: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_Genesis#CPU_and_memory

            Also, people didn’t use MIDI in the 16 bit days. They used trackers or wrote the assembly code to activate the FM and square, sawtooth, and triangle channels by hand. The composer might write in MIDI, but down the line it had to be converted to a non-MIDI format. There was a channel or two for raw audio samples, but you couldn’t store much. Creating music and SFX consisted of choosing when to utilize sample channels (read: sparingly) and tuning the the FM and waveform channels to get the sounds you wanted.

            Also, I don’t get why there’s this hate for Sonic games. I didn’t care for the Sonic Adventure series as much, but I don’t think my childhood love for Sonic 2 was unfounded. I actually enjoyed attempting to complete levels as quickly as possible with the fewest possible obstacle interruptions. It’s like going through Downhill Jam on Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and landing every grind on the way down, or getting gold on races in SSX. Can’t speak much about the difficulty of Sonic 1, 3, or others since Sonic 2 was the only one I played, but I’ll be damned if I ever get past Sky Chase Zone.

  3. Omar Salleh says:

    I have to admit, despite being an avid gamer when the original Sonic games came out, they never really grabbed me. I found them boring at the time, so I’m really not surprised that they would seem boring in retrospect, too.

  4. Just because it is old, or doesn’t hold up as well as it once did doesn’t make it bad. It’s simple, yes, extremely. Then again, so is Apple, as that is their mantra (ever notice that there is only ONE button on the phone?)

    You’re correct on many aspects though. Many people may have never had the opportunity to play this title as the Sega CD was a bit of an unobtainable item for years, due to price and availability, compounded with the fact that you needed to find a copy of Sonic CD as well.

    The “past” and “future” signs to affect gameplay as well. They don’t explain it to you in the game because it’s in the instruction manual :). But why they didn’t at least include a few pages of documentation along with these XBLA + PSN ports is beyond me. Laziness I suppose.

    —- Here it is, from Wikipedia: —-
    “By hitting posts labeled “past” or “future” and running at a consistently fast speed for a few seconds, Sonic can move between past, present and future versions of each level (with the exception of boss levels, which always take place in the future), containing different layouts with changes to placement and frequency of enemies and obstacles. By default, traveling to the future upon entering a level will take Sonic to a “bad future”, where enemies and deadly obstacles occur more frequently, providing a tougher challenge. However, if the player travels to the past and destroys a “robot generator” hidden somewhere in the level, returning to the future will take Sonic to a “good future”, where enemies are absent and there are fewer obstacles. If a “good future” is achieved in both acts of a zone, the boss level will take place in the “good future” as well, otherwise it will take place in the “bad future”. The player will also automatically achieve a “good future” in a level if all the Time Stones have been collected.”

    So it did add a bit to the gameplay.

    You’re correct to say that the bosses were a joke as well, because….they were. Bland, boring, and extremely easy. That pinball boss (which later led to “Sonic Spinball”) was time consuming and frustrating though.

    • Professor Fessor says:

      Ah, just what I wanted in my game that prides itself on being a blur, digging around a level for some obscure bullshit needed to make the HAPPY END!!!! Only you don’t.

  5. Professor Fessor says:

    *notices ‘The’ is capitalized*

    Yay!

  6. I loved the Sega Sonic games. I also got Sonic Adventure 2 when it was re-released on Gamecube, and while I see the glaring issues, I still loved it. Note my comments apply to the genesis games as like you guessed, I couldn’t talk mommy into buying the Sega CD 🙂

    Sega just makes quirky, shroom-inspired Gems. Do they have the technical genius of Mario 3? Never. But their game is to take ideas they find fun and run with them.

    Does Mario make it a point to include a completely separate puzzle-game as a side quest, changing it up in each title? You essentially get to play two parallel games while hunting the Chaos Emeralds. I always loved that.

    I also read when I was older that the true goal of the original Sonic the Hedgehog was to differentiate the “slow” 8 bit NES from the “awesomely futuristic” 16 bit Genesis. Sonic levels are designed to throw tons of parallax graphics at your eyes while you blindly race past a lot of sparsely-designed environments.

    Taking this into account, you’re right to conclude that the game isn’t that great now. The game IS easy, because if the penalty for blindly running right was too high you would stop doing it. The original selling point (the graphics) are now paltry compared to what even an XBLIG can push through the Xbox 360’s graphics card.

    The nostalgia I hold for the Sonic games can’t make me choose them today over the finely crafted experiences in Mario titles. However don’t discount Sega here because they produced something that in its time drove console sales and satisfied a lot of gamers who now argue that these games are “timeless”.

    Sonic isn’t timeless. But in his time, he helped establish the theory that ” more graphics sells more units”. You may even your consumer into long-lasting adoration for a blue hedgehog with an ‘edge’.

    • Professor Fessor says:

      Sega’s ‘game’ was to flesh out ideas that look fun at a glance. They were, at heart, an arcade developer. Arcade games didn’t have to be fun, they just had to entice long enough to sucker some quarters out of some people.

      You made one great observation though, “If the penalty for blindly running right was too high you would stop doing it.” Lemme try reworking that idea a little. If the pain of slamming your balls (or equilivent lady part) into a drawer was too great you’d stop doing it. What does that say about how good an idea it is to slam whatever into a drawer? How fun would a game be if it were centered around that task? Is it a good idea then to make such a game?

      • WoW does that exact thing, and it seems to work out pretty well. (12 million subscribers and climbing)

        Group as many nameless and lifeless NPCs together as possible can and have players collect X number of rat skins, rinse, and repeat.

        • Professor Fessor says:

          Are….are you seriously suggesting WoW and Sonic are similar?!

        • Jim Perry says:

          Group as many nameless and lifeless NPCs together as possible can and have players collect X number of rat skins, rinse, and repeat

          Which is why I’ve given up on MMOs until the next evolutionary jump. I had high hopes for SWTOR but was very disappointed that it’s just WoW reskinned. 😦

  7. “Taking this into account, you’re right to conclude that the game isn’t that great now. The game IS easy, because if the penalty for blindly running right was too high you would stop doing it. The original selling point (the graphics) are now paltry compared to what even an XBLIG can push through the Xbox 360′s graphics card.

    The nostalgia I hold for the Sonic games can’t make me choose them today over the finely crafted experiences in Mario titles. However don’t discount Sega here because they produced something that in its time drove console sales and satisfied a lot of gamers who now argue that these games are “timeless”.

    Sonic isn’t timeless. But in his time, he helped establish the theory that ” more graphics sells more units””

    Truth.

  8. retro replay says:

    This was probably the best and most under rated Sonic title of its generation. I loved it.

  9. Tom says:

    A couple years ago I went back and played the sonic games on an emulator, I never actually owned a sega genesis, but I’d played the games before at friend’s houses growing up. some things that struck me at the time replaying it:

    Sonic controls really sluggishly. Like really sluggishly, that was the hardest thing to get used to.

    There’s a lot more platforming than I remember. Running really fast was only a tiny portion of the game. It might have something to do with not knowing the levels at all, but the game struck me as more of a regular platformer than I remembered.

    The game is not at all blocky. That’s usually the most apparent thing of any old game. The sonic games are good at hiding it.

    Anyways, the sluggishness of the controls combigned with some of the platforming bits was the hardest thing to get used to, and I played the sonic games before when I was a kid. Sluggishness might not be the right word to use. It’s like riding an old bike and you expect it to be like every other bike that you’re used to, but its stuck in a really high gear and is really hard to get moving. That’s a terrible analogy, my point is I died like 4 times in a row at the end of the 2nd level Chemical Plant Zone cause I kept missing the moving platform you have to jump on. Controls are tight for things like jumping, but it takes time to build up your momentum which makes the platforming tricky. After a while I got used to it and made it all the way to that giant airship level near the end of the game. Like riding an old bike, but it’s a weird bike.

    Overall it seemed like a really solid platformer. I mostly played sonic 2, don’t think I ever played sonic CD. They’re all kindof the same though. lots of clever level design and cool bits. Drowning is still just as scary as I remembered.

  10. segata says:

    I liked sonic cd. I felt it was a good game. Maybe the reason the game seemed bad to you was because you just don’t like speed-based platforming. sonic just isn’t your thing. that’s okay.

  11. Craig says:

    I loved the game, because it had more puzzle elements than any other Sonic game(even today). The only hard part was the metal sonic race though, because Dr. R had a beam trailing behind you that insta-killed you and even ignored the game’s recovery mechanic, which made avoiding metal sonic all the more crucial.

    Sonic CD was a great game, considering it was being developed before Sonic 3. If it was released on a more known console and at a more appropriate time, I think people would have better opinions of it. Kinda rolled my eyes at Kairi’s silly opinions though(Mario was platforming for coma patients, you fool!)

    But hey, we can’t all be hot feminazi bitches.

  12. funinfused says:

    This was my favorite Sonic game of the bunch (Knuckles Chaotic wasn’t that good though it had an interesting 2 player mechanic). If you just ran straight through the game, you’re missing out. You can use the time forward / back to open up some new and interesting areas. I don’t agree w/ your losing control of Sonic assessment either… it’s like pinball, you set the initial direction and let the chaos ensue. Sonic is about speed and flying around out of control. It’s not a poor man’s Mario, it was never intended to be Mario.

    I won’t defend 3D Sonic though… those were never good at all. Some things just work so much better in 2D.

  13. I bought Sonic for my little brother for his birthday shortly after it came out. I was young and excited for it based on the marketting. Even then I felt it was missing something. By the second one I thought sonic was pretty bad, and the formula was an incomplete mess. We loved the split screen racing for some reason though. Never bothered with this one.

  14. Connor J. McIntyre says:

    Actually, the reason Sonic came to exist was to be a new mascot to wipe out Nintendo, so to speak. To say that Sonic was Mario for dummies would just be wrong. SEGA wanted to make a memorable character that gave a somewhat similar, yet contrasted feel to Mario. After all, Mario was the most popular character around so SEGA would have to make Sonic somewhat similar. Also Mario was slow unless you press down the B-button the whole time. SEGA wanted to give a whole risk-reward sort of gimmick so that the player would feel accomplished by completing the levels faster and having a high ring bonus. And even in a survey conducted in the 90’s, children could recognize Sonic, but not Mickey Mouse. So, next time your articles should say “in my opinion…” not “SEGA games suck balls.”

    • Kairi Vice says:

      I think this would be a good time to point out that any review is an opinion, not the gospel.

      By the way, it’s hugely amusing that it’s 2012 now and idiots are still trying to convince themselves that Sonic is somehow more culturally relevant than Mario, or any other video game character. As if they were ever rivals. Billions of Mario games sold. Just millions for Sonic. It’s a rivalry in the same way a hammer is a rival to a nail.

      • Not to go all ‘Nam veteran on you, but…you weren’t there, man!

        It’s easy for you to say Mario and Sonic weren’t rivals because you’re looking at statistics. You didn’t see what it was like then. There’s a reason that period is sometimes referred to (somewhat melodramatically) as ‘the console wars’.

        Whatever the state of their sales figures, culturally Mario and Sonic were rivals. They were the Beatles and the Stones, or Oasis and Blur. The video game departments of shops were divided into two sections, the Nintendo half and the Sega half, a big cut-out of Mario on one side, a big cut-out of Sonic on the other. They went in all the same directions – cartoons, puzzle game spin-offs, handheld versions – because they were opposites in a cultural tug of war. Maybe it was a rivalry artificially cultivated through marketing, but it was there and it was prominent. If you say it didn’t exist it’s because you weren’t there, man. You weren’t there.

      • Manndroid says:

        I think it’s cute how you try to gently (?) remind us all that your opinion is just an opinion, but then – in an equally adorable twist of irony – you essentially call your detractors ‘idiots.’

        For someone whose first console was a Playstation, I think you’d be best in pleading the fifth when it comes to this particular subject – Nintendo and Sega were very much rivals; Sonic was intended to try to take a slice out of the Mario pie. By sales figures alone, you’re failing to factor in that were THREE core Mario games on the market before Sonic the Hedgehog 1 was even released; not to mention that the Saturn fizzled, and offered no N64-era iteration of Sonic during the mid-to-late 90’s Nintendo renaissance. Simply put, Mario had a wider market, for longer, with more titles. To compare the two, however, is a bit silly; both are platformers, but do not play the same way. This is where a matter of preferences comes into play; a game should be measured on how well it accomplishes the goal of its genre, and Sonic did so extremely well. It’s saying something that as someone who played nearly every Mario game up through Mario 64 (I even played ‘Mario Bros.’ before there was a Super Mario Bros.), I still load up a Sonic game three to four times more often than I ever do a Mario game.

        It’s a matter of preference, as is my opinion that Sonic at least had the benefit of superior character design.

        Your admission to trolling the subject for attention has allowed me to make a pretty easy decision; this is the first and last time I’ll be visiting your blog. Disaffected reviews are good for publicity, but I’ll never take you seriously as someone who I think knows what they’re talking about.

        Have fun playing ‘Ms. Game Journalist.’

        • Kairi Vice says:

          When did I ever claim to be a journalist?

          • JazFusion says:

            “A journalist collects and distributes news and other information”. Hence, why those who report anything pertaining to news about video games are called “game journalists”. This can also encompass reviews, editorials, and columnists. Blogging is the internet’s unofficial journalism.

            So, sorry….you’re a game journalist.

            • Kairi Vice says:

              Well I renounce my journalism title and instead claim to be a mouthy bitch with access to a keyboard and nothing more.

              Or a blogger, since I don’t feel a blogger should be classified as a journalist. But I have never, nor will I ever, claim to be a game journalist. I’m not. I’m a game fan with a game blog that states my personal opinions on games and gaming.

              • JazFusion says:

                I said, “unofficial journalism”, but if you want to say “blogger” then you’re just arguing semantics. Speaking of semantics, I never said you were a mouthy bitch, but now you are. Passive aggression’s a bitch ain’t it?

                You can argue with me all day, but don’t go into a fight you can’t win. Just as it is your right to post a blog about your views on video games, so is it the readers’ right to post their views in the comments. It would be easier to disagree with you civilly if you wouldn’t attack your readers in your articles, or even comments for that matter. No one is stupid for liking certain games over others; and certainly not ones that are nostalgic.

                And when someone calls you out on it, you can either deal with it gracefully….or not.

                  • JazFusion says:

                    Hahaha Everyone acts tougher on the Internet. But be warned: the Internet is a big place with even bigger assholes. One day you’ll be humbled. Certainly not by me. That’s obvious.

                    But it’s been fun. Adieu.

                    🙂

                    • Kairi Vice says:

                      So to be clear, your husband comes here (the dude above), says he will never read me again after asserting that I claim to be a journalist, which I never have. In fact, I’ve said often on here that I have no aspirations to be a journalist. I don’t argue with him, just correct this mistake. Then he sends his wife to argue on his behalf? Yipes. Well, at least we know who wears the pants in that relationship.

                      Anyway, I would hope you would read more than one thing by me before you write me off. I don’t expect it, because you guys strike me as kind of thick, but it would be the polite thing to do.

                    • JazFusion says:

                      Also, just to be clear, my husband never sent me to argue on his behalf. I did that of my own volition, since the comment window was left open, and I was the one who pointed him to this article in the first place.

                      While I do wear pants, sometimes I’ll *GASP* wear a dress. Like right now!

                      I will also admit, publicly, that I read IGC/Kairi’s comment after mine the wrong way. I thought she was being passive aggressive; apparently that was not the case.

                      My whole point with the journalism thing was this: if you write poetry, you are a poet; no matter if you are compensated for it or not. If you write fiction, you are a writer; no matter if you are compensated for it or not. If you write about news in gaming, you are a game journalist; no matter if you are compensated for it or not. You can call yourself whatever you like; that is your prerogative. But I was speaking in technical terms. So, technically, someone calling you a gaming journalist wouldn’t technically be wrong.

                      As well, my husband was being sarcastic with that comment, so all of this is really a moot point.

                      I just like arguing.

  15. the awesome person says:

    the sonic games on the genesis were nothing more than mediocre tech-demos. with with a crappy cult-following of gamers who like to pretend a crappy game like sonic 3 and knuckles. is one of the greatest platformers all-time(lol). because that game was the only close to average game they payed attention to .when us gamers who had a super nintendo enjoyed more games then just sonic.

  16. the awesome person says:

    sonic 2 is awful to extreme levels.compared to the other genesis-era sonic games.it was barely a platformer(and thats saying something).in fact if sonic 06 didnt exist or had lesser flaws.sonic 2 would be by far the worst sonic game in existence.given how fucking boring the game is.the ironic thing is that i grew up with sonic games and loved them when they first came out(not to mention the phantasy star series which was atleast something i played other then just sonic).but going back to them today.and realizing how mediocre the 2d games were(maybe except for the first one which actually was a decent-platformer) .and how retarded the shitty-genesis-era sonic fags are. and how shitty and retarded thier existence is.with there retarded statements how bad all of the 3d games are(not as if sonic adventure has aged well but it aged better than crappy games like sonic 2 and sonic 3/knuckles).to idiotic statments on how there will never be a good sonic game again because of shit like not playing as super-sonic(a prince of persia 2008 precursor that made the games more autotarded then they already were)or having play as other characters that arent sonic(not like playing as sonic himself was any better). to stupidity that i can`t believe exist such as the fans bitching about sonic`s character design with the actually fitting modern design(long limbs. longer spines. fitting torso. the green eyes which people should`t really dont care if exist or not.) vs the awful original design(short limbs. fat body. the soulless black eyes that fanboys should`t give a shit about).i can understand if these people are pissed and everything(because lets face it there are tons of crappy games in this franchise especially when we are talking about modern ones).but they should`t be having any rage-fits about stupid shit like the fucking emerald hill zone not being remade in 3d(they might as well have rage-fits about a fucking crappy level that doesnt require any skill whatsoever. ironically that description fits sonic 2 well). or complaining about special stages not being in the games today(super sonic was not worth anything besides making the games he was in more boring than they already are).neither should they make debates about sonic 4 having physics breaking when the crappy genesis-games after the first one had tons of physics breaking in general. seriously this these “sonic-fans”should be ashamed of themselves. all these modern media fucktards who give the fanboys something to fap and wet ourselves to like yahtzee and morgan manjaw should be ashamed of themselves for licking the fanbase`s shit. somthingawful should be ashamed of itself. neogaf and its shitty-users should be ashamed of themselves. youtube users and deviantarts fags should be ashamed of themselves. anyone(and i mean ANYONE) on the internet who said the franchise went downhill the instant they went 3d should not only be ashamed of themselves but also taken to slaughterhouses so we can have more meat to eat than just cows and pigs. hell we should replace cows with shitty classic sonic fanfucks as our dominant meat-source. cannibalism should be okay since were eating dumb animals anyway. its not like classic fanfucks have anymore commonsense than dogs because atleast dogs have sense to know that two plus two equals four. seriously all these classic sonic fanfucks are like sciencetology. absolute BULLSHIT that should of been wiped out when they first came in to existence. yet they exist today as generally accepted sub-culture thats a giant hoax thats ruining humanity today.classic sonic fanfuckfags on the internet tell us that we should live a miserable life of negativity and self-loathing because they can`t realize their precious childhood was garbage because all they played was the awful sonic games on their genesis and missed out on other games they could of been playing(then again they brought that on themselves)going back to realize in real-life outside the internet where everyone is a role-play character of some sorts.that the sonic-games on the genesis were at best awful games that hardly describe the games they talk about on shitty message-boards while shitting on the modern-games in the same sentence.these people are frauds. liars. posers.posers.hypocites.and sciencetologists who want to make our lives miserable just the former president like george w bush did. we as normal human beings who want to have fun playing videogames. and explore the internet for infomation to help us improve ourselves. like how to actually make videogames ourselves someday.and post on messageboards and blogs to give our uncensored opinions on everything to bring up interesting prespectives on views in various things in life like entertainment. beliefs. nature. animals. family. friends. love. respect. people in general. shouldn’t have to put up with this excrement of a “fanbase” changing our views and censoring our opinions on everything we preserve and forcing us to live a role-play on the internet we don`t want to live. we should be exposing these retards and sciencetologists for the frauds they really are. hacking there profiles on the sites they post on. exposing their address. identity. and information. hiring hitmen to torture them. perhaps killing them on camera in a snuff-film. anything that makes this incompetent race of “humans” that makes the feel ashamed of themselves. killing them honestly isn’t good enough if you ask me.but instead making them suffer is whats gonna break them.like forcing them to realize how shitty their race is. how they “love” the felling of incompetence and self-righteous stupidity. in general forcing them to commit suicide from the realizing how terrible their shitty race is.besides theres no need to kill anyone because god did that for us when he launched a meteor to hit us at the end of the year. because hes ashamed of the classic sonic fanfuck`s exsitance and all the people who made humanity worth screwing over. THANKSALOT SCIENCETOLOGISTS. good going anywhere but hell you fuckwits

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  18. Jim Perry says:

    Just to add my .$.02 late, I’m 45, played my first games on an Atari 2600, and never liked Mario nor Sonic games. They both struck me as pretty dumb games. Give me a good RPG any day over any games from either series – The Bards Tale, many of the Ultima games, etc.

    Releasing old games like this is strictly a cheap attempt to cash in on nostalgia to make a quick buck, mostly because publishers are too afraid to take a chance on something new. If the industry could figure out that they need to spend some time streamlining the development process to make game dev easier, quicker, and cheaper so taking chances on new IP wasn’t so much of a risk, we’d all be better off.

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  21. SegaBoy says:

    Could you be any more a bunch of stupid Nintendo Fan boys and girls? I like Nintendo and they’ve had a lot of great games. But for every great Nintendo game, Sega had something better.

    Mario for Dummies? You want to know what was really Mario for Dummies?

    MARIO.

    The gameplay in ANY Sega game was infinitely better than what Nintendo offered. Alex Kidd, WonderBoy and the Monster Land Games, Sonic, etc were all better platformers than Mario or the like. Phantasy Star blew Final Fantasy away in all aspect. Look at the animation, story and gameplay of any of those games compared to FF and you’ll see how inferior FF was.

    The original PS was better than FF6 and PS4 completely demolished it. Sure, the SNES may have had more color than the Genesis, but look at the level of animation in PS4 compared to FF6. FF6 was nothing but a bunch of static sprites that shook a bit when hit. PS4s characters actually moved.

    And the story of FF6? Pathetic for the most part. Was I supposed to be impressed by an octopus or supposed tyrant that were nothing more than bad stand up comedians? I’m not saying there weren’t parts that were pretty awesome, such as the opera scene. But then they blew it by introducing the lame comedy that had no place in something that’s supposed to be epic.

    This doesn’t mean all Sega games were great and all Nintendo games were bad. But overall, the great Sega games always beat out their Nintendo counterparts. You know it’s true and you’re arguing in vain against it.

    But again, if you want to argue about Sega being for dummies, just remember one thing. Any time a Nintendo supporter tried to say Nintendo, they would say it “Intendo.” Nothing exemplifies the average Nintendo gamer more.

  22. J. Zinnel says:

    I know this is an old article by now, but I just stumbled upon it.

    If I recall correctly, the reason Sonic CD wasn’t re-released earlier is not because it sucked, but because Sega had long lost the source code for the game, and thus couldn’t re-release without rebuilding the entire game from scratch. It turns out that some random guy actually had said source code and Sega actually bought it from him to make the re-releases.

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