Sonic CD (1993)

Preliminary: I expected the graphics to be more imrpessively different from the Genesis games, but they're kinda clunky and weird looking. But I love the music so far and I prefer the level design to Sonic 2 so far. Sonic isn't a favorite series for me but this is on par with the first one (to me) so far... I'm on the third level though haha. And the things it's added don't seem to add much. Tho I will say I like that the orientation changes remind me of Tomba and Tomba 2. I haven't a clue what I'm doing with the time travel aspect, but as long as I clear the stage, I'm happy :-p (Ahhh, there's a different, best ending if you unlock the best futures for each stage. Interesting)

Oh wow turns out the music was changed for the later North American release, which is what I'm playing. Boooo. I technically should be playing the Japanese version then. Too bad cuz I was enjoying the music. (Ah yea the original music was much more... Sonic-ier) but one of the time versions of this first level has a good bossa nova rhythm haha.

Ok yea the Japanese music is great too. "Woo! Yea!" lol. Beautiful background grapnhcis too. The audio is definitely very busy and Sonic-y but good

Day 1

I love the colors in this level and lol at Sonic's face

I just had paused it to write in here but liked Sonic's face and was going to mention the Zone's colors :-p

It suffers from the usual Sonic gimmick of not being sure what walls can be gone through and background vs foregroudn is an issue like with many early platformers etc etc. But this at least earned its place with a 3 star as the most enjoyable Sonic so far since the first one and possibly even more than that one.

Tho the backgrounds and music continue to be good, the gameplay is starting the usual Sonic dry-ness (for me). It just doesn't embrace speed enough instead having tons of gocha moments if you're speeding along (tho this is probly my favorite so far in that regard) and hard-to-see enemies. Like I've said for the other 2, they should have encouraged just flying along and having fun, not discouraged it.

Part of me wants to stop after 7 zones, but the other part of me wants to see what other graphics and songs there will be. But then again I could experience that by watching a playthrough.

This is by far the furthers I've played in a Sonic but not lovign this mine dropping version of the boss. Never a big fan of "just wait out the attacks" mechanic.

Dang I feel like I'm flying through this. I'm on Wacky Workbench Zone III. This is my calm night where I'm only supposed to play for 45 mins at a time and then take 15 mins break, but this definitely is making me wanna finish it tonight! That's a good sign. Maybe this'll be the first 4-star Sonic for me tho the gameplay still has its clunkiness and non-preferred mechanics.

Day 2

The Look and Sound continue to be excellent. I didn't love the race against Metal Sonic but I didn't hate it either. And I believe I only have one area left! Mind you, I didn't explore each of the versions of each Zone, trying for best ending, etc. but I still am surprised I played a Sonic game this thoroughly. First of the series, in fact. Shows how much Sound affects a game to me, tho the level design was better than the others too. Still some very clunky mechanics that I'm sure Sonic lovers are used to but just don't make sense to me the way a jump on an incline is, the way you have so much momentum and sometimes it flies up an incline, other times you act like you had no momentum at all, etc. And if they want those kinda of mechanics, with chaos and fast speed, then the levels should be designed for them. instead, this time, the levels seemed to genuinely encourage slowing down and that helped me do so, rather than long stretches of nothing and then bam gocha enemies like the first one, this one had plenty of options on where you may end up if you embrace the chaos. And for people who love Sonic, they then can explore (no time limit hallelujah) and suss out every little bit of the game, and for those who wanted the game to embrace the chaos/not sure where you end up vibes, we are happy that we can just keep going on cuz we wound up on a new path and no biggie :-p

Ok how can somebody supposedly so fast walk that slowly up inclines? And these final levels are getting very tedious. And then Zone II of this final area is confusing, which is too bad cuz I was enjoying just sort of winging it and generally heading right in all levels. I guess it's acceptable for the final area but meh. Reminding me of the aspects of Sonic games I don't care for.

Lol okay right before I burned out, I was introduced to Tiny Sonic :-p And I suppose it's a positive that I keep intuitively/happening to find my way

Wow okay I finally had to referece a guide/faq and confirm that I really do have to take damage to hit the final boss? Kinda silly mechanic. Omg bahaha and right after typing that I lost all my Rings so I am basically a goner? (Nope, luckily I had knocked off 2 blades already... also, these blades should've looked more like.. blades)

Yesss a literal anime/cartoon at the end. And lolll "shoobydoo" singing for the ending wow "believe in yourself yourself!"

Look: 8.5/10

Sound: 9/10 Both versions of the soundtrack are solid, and that's impressive.

Play: 7.5/10 Best of the Sonics so far, but will never love love Sonics.

Feel: 8/10

Attachment: 8/10 If I were to return to an early Sonic, this or the first one would be it. This would be the wiser choice considering that I prefer its level designs and it has more replayability!

Overall: 8.2/10

Completion: Main Story

Playtime: ~2h

I tried playing this game again for probably the 10th time in my life, and it finally clicked for me this time. Each time I'd get confused by the level design and how at odds with the time travel gimmick it seemed, decide it was still just a bad game, and give up. I started playing it again, had that same reaction, and almost gave up again, but I decided I was going to start over and force myself to try for the good ending, destroying each generator.

By giving up trying to play the game like every other Sonic game and forcing myself to play the way it was intended to be played I finally understood the design: this is one of the most openly hostile and antagonistic toward the player games I have ever played, and it's fucking hilarious. I think maybe the devs in Japan were bitter about Sonic 2 being made in the US and not being able to work on it, because the main focus of this game was absolutely "Fuck them kids".

I went from being frustrated to howling with laughter at some of the later stages and how sneaky they are about completely fucking you over. I think my biggest laugh was in Quartz Quadrant Zone 2, where there is a checkpoint with a past sign next to it with a clear path to build up speed to time travel. You can run down it and will start time traveling, but what will happen is near the end of the time travel cutscene you hear "FUTURE", and instead of being in the past you travel to the bad future. They meticulously placed a future sign that sonic will run into during the cutscene just so they can get your hopes up and then blow it up in your face. This game is genius.

Game created at the same time of Sonic the Hedgehog 2, but a much different experience. Scott the Woz once said that people thought of this game as a rare masterpiece because it was not easy to play it (not many people had the Sega CD). Now that the game is on the gem collection (Gamecube), mobile and steam... It's not really rare and many people can now see the flaws of it.

For sure, it has some issues. Too much going on at the same time with the past-future thing and metal sonic holograms. I still liked the game tho.

Many people say that the artworks are a bit too intense for a fast paced game but I love it's originality. I love the introduction of Amy Rose and the most famous Metal Sonic form. The cutscene at the beginning of the game is just gorgeous. Sonic looks like a freaking superhero about to save the world by entering the Death Egg. I still watch the animation from time to time cause it embraces what Sonic was supposed to be in the beginning : cool.

Biggest complaint is the lack of direction and understanding of the futur-past stuff. First time I finished the game I did not even understand why I had the "bad ending".

Sonic CD fits perfectly in the gem collection in my opinion because it is a diamond in the rough. Not perfect, but when you dig, it's actually pretty fun. 3.5 feels right for this one.

I played the Steam version of this.

I love the animations and the music. This game has my favorite music in the classic games that I've played so far. This game is also the easiest to pick up and play casually. You can speed through levels pretty quickly and easily even on a first playthrough. Although there was one level that was the exception to that. I think the Steam version adds Tails as a playable character and he's way better than he was in Sonic 2. He actually gets to fly, so he isn't just a worse version of Sonic. It's a shame that they didn't include multiplayer though. Another neat feature is the time travel mechanic. There are basically 3 different levels of each act that adds replay value for those that like to see everything a game has to offer.

Now for the things I didn't like. The art is pretty bland. It makes a strong first impression with the vibrant colors in the first level, but as you progress through the game, the colors become a lot more muted and dull. I also don't think the theme of each zone was very diverse. In Sonic 2, each zone was distinct in aesthetics and mechanics. Sonic CD falls flat in that area. Another thing I did not enjoy was the special stages. In classic Sonic tradition, they're hard. Sonic 2's and Sonic CD's special stages in particular felt more like they were made to be technically impressive rather than being fun to play. Another thing I didn't like was that it feels like this game really encourages playing through each act in each time period to really get the full experience. With the labyrinthian level design, this feels pretty tedious. Again, I like linear levels more than open-ended ones. My last complain is a spoiler. Amy Rose and Metal Sonic appear so infrequently in this game. I think they appear twice total. Maybe I did something wrong and there are more opportunities to engage with both of them, but I was expecting the debut of two classic characters to have more of an impact.

Overall, I think Sonic CD is the easiest classic game to just jump in and play. Not sure how much of that has to do with the version of the game I played though. Next up is Sonic 3 (no Knuckles).

There's a great dichotomy when it comes to discovering something. Either something is hyped up to death and somehow lives up to expectations, or something is talked down so much that you find yourself wholly surprised when you enjoy it despite its so called shortcomings. Sonic 06 is very much like the second one. It's a bad game. There's no defending it. And while the Silver campaign is arguably the best thing in it, it's not nearly enough to salvage the rest of the title. That being said, Sonic 06 is also sort of weirdly enjoyable because of how bad it is. In a lot of ways, it's like Shadow the Hedgehog. Both games are terrible, and cast a horribly uneven light on a franchise already fraught with infighting from its own fanbase. But they're also sort of weirdly fun if you like bad games. They're the Mystery Science Theater of bad gaming.

The same, however, cannot bad said for Sonic CD, which falls into the first category mentioned. A game so overhyped, primarily due to Sega's outright unwillingness to re-release it for years (who could've known they were saving us from ourselves in hindsight), it's a game with such an enormous 16 bit chip on its shoulder that you expect it to not only be the best classic Sonic title, but also be able to cure diseases and end world hunger. And perhaps, with nostalgia colored glasses, one could forgive someones opinion on it. After all, we all have our "bad thing we can't objectively hate because we love it from out past" in our libraries, lord knows I have plenty of them. I can forgive those who might have a fondness purely because of when they experienced it. But objectively, even I can manage to look at other classic Sonic games I grew up playing and realize there's something off with them.

Sonic 1, for example, is slow. It's clunky. It's a lot more platforming than running. That doesn't sit well with people, especially in a franchise often discussed for its speed and high intensity movement. I still like the first Sonic game, but I can objectively recognize its faults, its flaws and its shortcomings. Sonic 2, arguably the best classic Sonic game and definitely my favorite, also has problems. For one, it's a tad too short. It's almost too fast. It's got a special zone that, understandably, may make some sick. Sonic 3 is awful. Sonic 3 has the most uninspired soundtrack (even in the original, yes) and its levels are so massive that it's outright impossible to finish them without simply holding the left button on your Dpad. Suddenly what was often the most overused criticism of the franchise has now become Sonic 3's saving grace. You just wanna get to the next level as fast as possible, and not because it's fun.

But Sonic CD is a mess on a whole other level, and doesn't work in any regard. And while I can appreciate, hell, even respect, when a franchise tries to do something different after such massive success - like Halloween 3, for example - I also have to state how it doesn't work, and oh man, almost everything in Sonic CD doesn't work.

They've taken a game that was designed for speed and turned it into an exploration based platformer. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, except that the levels are so poorly designed, such a incoherent mess of visuals, that you often do the same thing you did for Sonic 3, which is try and just get through them by simply holding right and hoping Sonic does all the work, getting to the goal primarily on his own without much more input from you. And what's more, is its gimmick. Sonic became more and more gimmicky over the years, and again, not necessarily a bad thing. Sonic Heroes, for example, was based entirely around a gimmick, and it kinda sorta worked. It, again, doesn't work in Sonic CD, and, again, primarily due to its shoddy level design. The gimmick in Sonic CD, for those unaware, is that you can play each level in the past, present or future. There are sign posts you must hit to visit either the past or future. Now, here's where the cool idea breaks down into an unworkable mechanic.

Because in order to initiate the time travel mechanic, not only do you have to find the sign posts - and "past" is the one you want most, and it's often the one you find least - but then you have to find a long enough straightaway in order to run fast enough to get it to send you to the past. If you don't find and do this in time, you lose the option, and have to find not only another sign post, but another straight away. In a game whose level design is so impossible to navigate, this becomes a monumental tasks of almost impossibility. And, to make matters worse, because the levels are so poorly designed, you'll often take too long trying to find either one of those, and run out of time altogether. Again, your best option is to simply hold right and hope to reach the goal. Survival winds up being your goal more than anything else.

And you do have the option to ignore the time travel mechanic and instead keep enough rings to activate the special stages at the end of levels, get the time stones (this games substitute for Chaos Emeralds) and get the good ending that way, but good luck getting to the end of the level with enough rings, because it's almost impossible to do, just like everything else in this game. And what's even worse is that, by implementing this workaround, the developers seemingly acknowledge that their mechanic works so poorly that they had to offer an alternative.

And what's worse is its bosses are barely bosses. More often than not, your goal, again, comes down to simply surviving the encounter and waiting for the boss to kill itself. For example, in Wacky Workbench, the boss fight is you on a conveyor belt while bombs drop from above that you have to avoid. This would be fine, except you aren't allowed to attack Robotnik. No. He's in a small metal tube that gets worn down on the belt the longer the "fight" goes on. Therefore, there is no fight. Your entire "boss fight" is now simply waiting for Robotnik to ruin his own device, after which it inexplicably explodes and you are allowed to go to the goal post. Most of the boss fights in this game are like this, by the way. And even worse than that are their outright level lifting from better levels, with mechanics taken from better levels and implemented more poorly. You want an example? Okay. Here.

This is Starlight Zone, from Sonic 1. As you can see, this level takes place in a starry sort of night sky on which you run across pretty multicolored platformers.

And this is Stardust Speedway, from Sonic CD. A totally original and different level that takes place in a starry sort of night sky...on which you...run across....multicolored...platforms.

It's the same level concept, just a thousand times worse. It's impossible to navigate, it's uglier, and it's hard to tell what's in the foreground and what's in the background and often what it is you're meant to be interacting with. And, they even outright stole a mechanic Sonic 02. In Sonic 02, in Casino Night, there are segments where you wind up tube like puzzles where you are thrown from spring to spring and have to press right or left in order to go the correct direction to further your progress. Stardust uses this exact mechanic, but way worse. Now, not only is it so fast and lasts so long that you can't exactly tell where it is you're supposed to go, but it can go on indefinitely if you make the wrong decision, which you will, because it's visually incoherent. And, yet again, the act ends with a boss that you simply have to survive, until getting a single hit on, upon which you win. And if you say "Well, you can't steal ideas from your own franchise!" let me assure you they can, because this and Sonic 02 were not in fact developed by the same team, and in fact this game came out a year LATER than Sonic 02.

Make no mistake. Sonic CD is bad. It's not even enjoyably bad, like Sonic 06 or Shadow the Hedgehog. It's bad bad. It's the bad kind of bad. It's the kind of bad that makes you drop your jaw in outright awe at its badness. At how the people making this could think they were making something worthwhile, something people might enjoy. Again, I recognize nostalgia often clouds objective viewpoints, and makes it harder for those who maybe grew up with it to criticize it properly, but even I'm capable of doing that with the games I loved, as I showed above. The original Genesis titles all have their pros and cons. This ones cons are just maximized on a greater scope, likely because its pros are virtually nonexistent. Yes, CD gave us some good stuff, I won't deny it. The Sonic Boom song is a delight, they introduced Amy and true Metal Sonic, and the original animated intro and outro are fantastic. But none of those are worth anything if the game they originated from are atrocious, and Sonic CD is atrocious.

I debated whether to make this a review or not, and opted not to because my reviews are not actually often reviews, and this one actually is, so I didn't want to lump this one off in with my regular reviews, hence why it's simply a wall of text. I'm sorry if you read through this, and I'm sorry if it was too long, but I'm the one who recently had to suffer through this in Sonic Origins, so I figured you'd be kind enough to share in my pain vicariously. Do not, under any circumstances, be fooled by the hype. Yes, sometimes the hype is real. Sometimes the restaurant is 5 stars. And sometimes they serve you a cowboy boot filled with dead insects and dish soap.

And in this case, Sonic CD's hype is, sadly, the latter.

Oh boy. Lotsa mixed feelings with this one.

So, it is a better game than both Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog 2, no doubts about that. The gameplay is great (even, for once, the special stages!), the levels are fun, the soundtrack is amazing, and all in all it's an awesome game.

However, the thing I was more excited about, the time travel mechanic... could pretty much be considered nonexistent, as activating the switch signs is terribly difficult: the levels don't give you barely any space to get enough speed to switch, and any stop or obstacle is enough to just cancel the whole thing. I tried several times on the first few stages and I end up just ignoring the signs and just playing the standard levels by themselves (even knowing that this would condemn me to the bad ending.) instead of just keep getting frustrated about trying to get the time travel working.

A waste of a very cool idea implemented in a very sloppy way that could have been the final bow to a pretty great experience of a game.

(Look, people! I can actually like games! I know, I'm surprised too!)

Replayed Sonic CD in Sonic Origins. (Got all the time stones, good ending.)

This is the classic Sonic game I always feel the most conflicted about. It had been a good while since I last played through it, and I wanted to see if my opinion on it would shift at all. I decided I would play this one how it's meant to be played: an exploration-focused platformer that has you finding the robot generators in the past version of each level.

At first I found myself starting to warm up to this one more? It's an interesting challenge to find a "Past" sign, find a place to run at full speed long enough to go to the past, and then find the robot generator to destroy it. The levels aren't particularly well-designed to accomodate for all this. To some degree, I felt like I was constantly fighting the game, like they had shoehorned objectives into a style of game that wasn't really designed for them. I also can't really think of any level that I love -- but I can definitely think of one I hate: the bounce house from hell known as Wacky Workbench.

So in the end I still find the game something of a mess. I might bump it up from a high 2 to a low 3, IDK. The bosses are pretty neat, and I dig the special stages. The Japanese soundtrack has some solid jams. (I actually wasn't as into the OST as I thought I'd be. Maybe because I was in the Past zones so much, and those aren't as much of bangers? There isn't much point in ever going to the Future zones if you're trying to destroy the robot generators.)

Bottom line: mixed bag. I'm glad later 2D entries (2, 3, Knuckles, Advance, Rush, Mania) would take the series in the direction they did.

Sonic The Hedgehog CD is one of the weirdest entries in the Sonic The Hedgehog series. It was made for the Mega CD Add-On for the Sega Genesis back in 1992 and was basically a powered-up Sega Genesis since it ran its own games, and was able to produce better sound. Most of which were these interactive movies such as the controversial game, Night Trap which brought a lot of legal attention to Sega. But the most sold game for the Mega CD was Sonic CD.

For the longest time, Sonic CD was seen as the hidden gem in the Genesis Sonic games due to the fact that it was so elusive. It was really hard to get your hands on the game because after a while, it was lost to time as it was stuck on the Mega CD and later PC.

It wasn't until the game practically released everywhere with the help of people like Christian Whitehead. Now that Sonic CD is so widely accessible now, does the game hold up to how people described it... Kinda

For starters, the animated cutscenes look beautiful and capture the personality of Sonic so well. And the music blows me away. They really utilized the audio power of the Mega CD. It's one of the best Sonic soundtracks I've listened to.

This game also introduces Amy Rose as a character. Sonic's obsessive, self-proclaimed girlfriend. It also introduces Sonic's first rival. Metal Sonic. A robotic Sonic that is nearly identical to Sonic in terms of attributes.

Now with gameplay, It's ok... The level design is all over the place and the game is way too overexposed with color. It's too hard to even know where enemies are because they blend to the backgrounds too well. Too much color. The bosses (With the exception of the insanely cool fight with Metal Sonic) are also way too easy.

Sonic is (I know this is ironic) too fast. He's a little slippery in this game and it can be frustrating. Tails is playable in the Christian Whitehead Remaster and he's basically easy mode. Still fun to play as

The cool thing about this game though is that you can time travel. By hitting a PAST or FUTURE sign and going fast for a certain amount of time without interruption, (Which can be done with a Spin-Dash or the new move, The Super Peel Out Basically a Spin-Dash but you can get hurt which makes it nearly useless). You will be transported to the "Bad Future" which is a redesigned version of the Zone and Act. Or the Past (Which is the same) but you can destroy these generators and Metal Sonic Machines to create a "Good Future". Doing this in all acts (Or collecting all 7 Time Stones) will unlock the good ending to the game.

However, it's the gameplay and sloppy level design that kills it for me

Sonic The Hedgehog CD has great animation, music, new characters, and a cool premise. But the game suffers from sloppy level design and graphics that make the game more of a chore to play. Didn't live up to the hype, but still a decent game

3/5

Would Lightly Recommend

This game is a fucking beauty to play.

It definitely limits its potential early on, structuring the levels around easy fast lanes and emphasis on speed despite the speed requiring very little skill to get to, and also shooting its foot in the exploration front by making it more annoying to get the best endings for every level.

Despite that, I can't deny how much fun I had with this game. It is just a pleasure to zoom through every level, and the level design is still super tight despite its shortcomings, with many ways to sequence break and speedrun the game to a point where it is at least better than some of its peers. The music and aesthetic adds tremendous quality to it too, especially with the JP soundtrack on (which you SHOULD have on). To me, this is one of a few cases where I think roller coaster design is only beneficial.

The bosses are fun too, they're not anything special but they complement rather than detach. The game's areas also have distinct feels to them on an aesthetical front that don't feel too similar to basic tropes in platformers. I definitely recommend giving this game a shot and hope you have a blast on it. (8/10)

Gameplay, Story and Value:

Functionally, Sonic CD works just like another other 16-bit Sonic games. All three face buttons jump, while holding down and jump will initiate a spin dash. New to the mix is holding up and jump to run in place, with a release resulting in a huge burst of speed, good for scaling inclines. Additionally, the way levels play out if just as familiar. You'll be running, jumping, bouncing and rolling your way to the goal post of two acts of each zone before facing off with Dr. Robotnik in the third.

It's strange, then, that despite all the familiarity of its concepts that it draws from fairly decent games that Sonic CD seemingly fails on all fronts.

The pieces are all there, but none of it really comes together. Running and jumping feel fine, but your spin dash is completely inconsistent. There's a bizarre charging period before you'll actually take off from it and even when you do there's a chance you'll just be stuck in place. As a result, there's a feeling of unresponsiveness in most things you do. The levels themselves aren't laid out very well, and even visually don't appear to be completely thought out. Any sense of speed you may start to get is immediately brought to a halt due to hidden springs or spikes, or sometimes for no reason at all! Other Sonic games have these speed traps as well, but Sonic CD seems to rely on the completely in order to break up any cohesion in its stages.

This is even more frustrating in Sonic CD, as it's key gameplay mechanic relies on getting solid runs it. Every act has three different variations to it: past, present and future. You start in the present, but by passing by either a Future or Past signpost and getting you hedgehog to 88 miles per hour, you can travel back or forward in time! The sub-objective of the first two acts of each zone is to travel to the past to destroy an evil robot machine in order to ensure a good future. Do this on acts one and two, and act three will be free of any and all enemies! Any enemies but Robotnik of course, which is fine as the boss fights are actually pretty good here.

Bonus stages are back, of course, though this time you're trying to destroy UFOs in a pseudo Mode 7 environment because... reasons. They're okay, but not particularly fun or interesting.

At the very least, Sonic CD does autosave your progress, so you won't have to suffer through a single sitting to finish it!

Presentation, Music and Sound:

Graphically, Sonic CD is pretty solid, even pretty good really. The problem lies is how these nice graphics are actually used. While the game, for the most part, aesthetically pleasing there are bizarre design elements scattered throughout the levels. These include rings floating in front of inaccessible surfaces and some questionable stitching and 3D effects. Enemies and items also have a tendency to blend in a little too much with their backgrounds on certain stages. It all just feels a bit... messy.

Stages after the first also blend together a bit visually, even when factoring in the different past and future tilesets for each zone. There are some fun exceptions such as a later zone that looks like it's made entirely of brass instruments though.

Sound effects are exactly what you'd expect from a Sonic game, which is to say they're familiar and distinct. That said, the game seems full of audio glitches that can result in annoyances such as the charging spin dash sound lasting several seconds after releasing. Other times, sounds just won't play at all, or will play when they shouldn't have.

Music ranges from passable to annoying. When you first turn on the game you're treated to the iconic, or infamous depending on how you feel about, Sonic Boom track, made possible due to the quality CD audio capabilities of the Sega CD. After that though, it's kind of all over the place. The introductory zone is all classic Sonic music stylings, while everything after that is a weird combination of forgettable tracks and weird voice sample filled mixes... It's not at all up to par with other Sonic games in terms of how good the music tracks actually are.

Afterthoughts:

I'm SO disappointed with a game I was so looking forward to. The whole game feels like the development team was given all the toys to make a Sega CD game, and really just didn't know what to do with them. It's not unplayable by any means, but between the mediocre level designs, audio and gameplay bugs and poor pacing, it's just not a game I want to come back to any time soon. It makes me think this might have been the point where Sonic really started going downhill...

Review:

Gameplay:

Note - My PVR crapped out after a good hour and a half of gameplay, so my session wasn't recorded. What's on display here is just for capturing screens and music samples. Includes the entire first zone and bits from others.