Summer of Sonic (2): Sonic the Hedgehog 2

So the Summer of Sonic, brought to you by spending $10 at humble bundle on the Sonic anniversary special, continues spinning on. You can check out  the previous entry here and the next entry, when it goes up, here.

Sonic 2 is more interesting to talk about than Sonic 1, for several reasons. It is a big step forward from the original game, on essentially every single level. That isn't especially interesting, but I guess we'll get into that. What is sort of interesting is that Sonic 2 was produced at the same time as Sonic CD, which leads you to see some interesting changes in design and ideas, but also it feels like something is missing from Sonic 1. Did it go to Sonic CD? I'm not really sure, but Sonic CD (which I've only played a little of, for now) certainly feels and looks more like the original than 2 does.

The other interesting thing is the fact Sonic the Hedgehog 2 introduces the first of what will eventually become an avalanche of side-characters of all shapes and sizes. What is interesting in this is it begins a certain weird facet of Sonic and how Sonic is evaluated.

Everything Sonic does wrong - other than the blatantly obvious, like shipping an unfinished beta as a product - is generally along a spectrum. People complain there are too many characters, and that's true, but Tails, Amy and Knuckles were all well received at the time. It's all in the transition, a moment of 'knowing when you see it' (usually when Shadow shows up) but each individual doesn't seem so bad back in the day.

Even Shadow is pretty damn hilarious at the moment, mind you...

Like, right at the beginning, with nearly the best game in the series, you can already see it starting to fall apart. Corporate mismanagement aside, it's already there, waiting in the weeds.
I ran through most of Sonic 2 twice, getting almost to the end on a 'normal' run and then deciding I should go for the "canonical" ending. In the first run I did the game without spending too much time in the special stages, I think I got to five emeralds and then I wasn't really hitting sign posts anymore. That sentence doesn't make any sense. Second run, I actually sat down and ground down the emerald stages til I finally flopped over the finish line on the last one. I seriously hit at the bare minimum for success, it wasn't pretty.

Sonic 2 is built around the same mechanisms and principles as the first game. It is ostensibly a "speed based" platformer, although it is in many ways worse at this than the first game. As I mentioned earlier, it adds a second character, who is capable of limited flight or something. I remember him being able to fly in Sonic 2, but I might be conflating his skill set with what he can do in Sonic 3. Playing him solo, he just seems like a kinda cruddy Sonic, although his facial expressions are great.

Much of Sonic 2 really isn't that fast, some of the levels are downright sluggish or have a lot of unnecessary jarring in the level design.

Sonic 2 is one of the nicest looking 16 bit era games. Things like mode 7 and another million colors no longer have quite the meaning they did back in 93 or whenever this game was relevant, but the quality of pixel art here really can't be overstated. The aesthetics remain appealing. Some of the levels are kinda hideous, but some of them like Aquatic Ruin or Oil Ocean are just really skillfully done. It is a bit sad that Sonic 2 reduces the number of "acts" within each zone from 3 to 2, so you get some additional variety but at the expense of seeing less of the really good zones.

One of the weirdest, and I mean weirdest things about this game is realizing the first level is terrible! Usually Sonic opening levels are really easy and built around showcasing the mechanics, but 2's opening level is filled with annoyances. Two of the enemies fire from off-screen, making them hard to hit or risky to skirmish with, and much of the zone's pitfalls or secrets are just janky. It isn't as noticeable when you're just breezing through, but when you're trying to grind out the special stages, you end up re-treading this pair of levels and man they are just not good.


The jankiest thing is the two platforms in the screenshot to the right. They exist purely to annoy you, you can't go back up them and you don't need them to run "down". They will always respawn, always there to just... Do nothing.

Fortunately, the next four levels are all excellent. Chemical Plant is so weird and strange looking it is memorable just for its oddly retro - with its dials and displays - mixed with futuristic smooth designs. Following that is Aquatic Ruin, which is the only real water level in Sonic 2 and contains very little water indeed. This is probably the best laid out level for seeing the layering of good Sonic level design. If you keep to the top, you're up in the canopy and see different enemies, different architecture and different challenges than if you fall to the bottom. You can see it somewhat articulated in the two screenshots, one up at the top of the ruins, the other drifting in the sunken depths.

If you look up Sonic Spinball, which I did receive a copy of from the bundle and no I am definitely not playing to a review, they make a point about how people "liked" Casino Night Zone. That marketing saw it as a success. I just want to mention, like, wow do they never get sonic games. The Casino was fun and chill, but as a kid, that's where you went to stock up lives. That's why people had a fondness for it when they were still getting bean-bagged in the game: it was a rare example of feeling "not cheesy" while a game hands out lives. Getting to the late game was pretty easy in Sonic 2, but once you got to the last couple zones and/or the last boss fight, it took some attempts. So you learned to gamble hard in Casino night zone.

Oil Ocean is my other stand out favorite from this game. For one, it is the last level before you get into the 'end game' but it has this nice transitional feeling that is often lacking in Sonic. Levels are usually so disconnected from one to the next, but here you feel like you're "reaching" the end but not quite there yet. This is the enemy's outer edge, the disgusting moat before the stronghold. Compare to the earlier levels, where the beautiful palm trees shift into chemical plant and then a romantic ruin then into a casino? Visually Oil Ocean is so weird and different, a reference to fabled Arabian nights and the oil empires without fully embracing either. The colors are weird, the enemies are weird, it's all pretty weird. But you don't see visual design like this anymore, so that's something oddly special.

Basically, Sonic 2 has lots of variety, lots of 90s style and lots of good music to back it up. It is a complete improvement across the board over the first game. It isn't perfect, but replaying it almost twice fully was quite enjoyable, whereas by the end of Sonic the One I was just sick of it. Even the old Genesis chiptunes have, on the most part, aged pretty well. Some of the music is bland or irreverent, but it's still has more than enough punchy tunes I enjoyed listened to.

I mentioned I'd talk of special stages, and here, I shall again. Sonic 2's special stages look less impressive than Sonic 1's at this point - rendering simple 3d isn't hard on someone's phone or watch, let alone console - but they still feel kinda neat. Until they don't, mind you. As I said above, I made the effort of collecting the emeralds for super sonic because canonically Sonic has the emeralds at the beginning of Sonic 3. So like, whatever. Please don't point out I'm playing Sonic CD between 2 and 3, because that wasn't canon, I'm doing that by release date.

The Sonic 2 special stages are probably the worst of the original trilogy. As I write this, I can't remember if CD's special stages were good or bad, but Sonic 3's are probably the best and Sonic 1's are just so chill. There's a weird shift in the design centered on them in two - for one, they actually strip your rings, so hitting them at poor times can actually negate free lives or getting continues at the end of the level, but they also fully reset the level. Everything is respawned, all rings and power ups back, etc.

It's kinda weird.

Other thing is they seem to overrided the purpose of checkpoints in a lot of spots. Signposts are laid out in order, as checkpoints, but it is actually easy to skip several of them per level especially you get further into the game, so you don't really use them as checkpoints. The net result is they seem to have been configured like a reward for key platforming, like you're going to want to hit special stages in Hilltop Zone or whatever. Like I said, they strip your rings, and you can't back trek in later levels, so they honestly feel like something you'd want to avoid. End result? You grind the sign posts at the very start of the game, and keep re-starting until you've gotten them all.

As for the special stages themselves, they're ... Kind of awesome, kind of awful? The two-player element is excellent, except if I recall correctly the second player can lose rings which makes it nearly impossible to do them on the default setting (Sonic + Tails) without a second player as the AI driven Tails is essentially a violent fox clown car. A second player does make it much easier, except they're designed to be rote memorized and not reacted to, leading to an experience where now two players have to grind the levels together.

Actually having Super Sonic for most of the game is kind of hilarious. Some stuff is just ridiculously easy, but other things become impossibly difficult to travel precisely over and unlike Sonic 3 you trigger it basically upon having 50 rings - which sometimes means you'll lose all your rings and then be left naked for an upcoming tough bit. I had to intentionally not pick up rings in the penultimate level, as Super Sonic doesn't mix well with a level on an airship you can hurl yourself off of at any minute. I mean literally, I'd get the 50th ring midair, he'd transform and instantly fall off whatever jumping puzzle I was doing. I think there's a route through the level you can do using super sonic, but even with save states it kinda tested my patience.

Obviously, this isn't the most critical review. Sonic 2 does have some weird flaws. Some of the level design can be pointlessly annoying or abruptly jarring, and the levels don't actually feel laid out in a thematic or difficulty based curve. They're just kind of random, which feels like it has a lack of care. I kinda feel like it should be laid out Emerald Hill -> Hilltop -> Aquatic Ruin -> Mystic Cave -> Casino Night ->Oil Ocean->Chemical Plant etc but there's no real difference either way. None of the levels actually felt much harder, I breezed through the game twice. In fact I remember Metropolis zone, one of the late levels, feeling really difficult... But it honestly wasn't. Sonic 2 is almost bitterly easy, which kind of annoys me, since I definitely remember thinking the end game was hard as a kid.

Like I actually think back to getting the lock on Sonic and Knuckles game with this, where you play as Knuckles, and being unable to finish it because the technique I used to kill the last boss didn't work with Knuckles. It's also not the technique I used to kill him this time, because apparently I was just making everything more difficult. Childhood.txt I guess.

Anyway, do I like Sonic 2? Yeah, obviously. It's good.