Summer of Sonic (3): Sonic CD

For a long time in my childhood and even into my adulthood, I completely did not realize Sonic CD was really a thing. I imagine I had at some point seen or heard about it, but my affection for the Genesis was never so great as to spend that kind of money on a wasted peripheral. So I just put it into the back of my mind and never considered it. Sonic to me, like many franchises, was swallowed up in the 3D era and forgotten about. Which is to say I pretty uniformly hated each and every transitional game of 2D into 3D. Yes, even that one, or that other one you're excited about. Yes, Sonic CD is 2D and gorgeous 2D at that, but by the time I had the funds to pursue a Sega CD, I certainly wasn't interested in doing so.

I believe the game was ported to be PC a long time ago, but I never saw that either. I hadn't realized I could be playing the game until it was ported to Steam, and even then, I think I pirated it and played it briefly before forgetting about it.

Sonic CD has, to my understanding, an interesting history. It is a marquee title for a system that sold very few copies. It is basically like headlining the titanic. It is also the product of splitting the Sonic team in half and producing two Sonic games at once, with rapidly divergent design perspectives. I feel that itching in the back of my teeth when I read about it, that sensation that the whole story isn't being properly presented to me, so I'll let readers do their own digging. It's certainly an interesting way to continue a franchise.

Sonic CD on Steam is, to my understanding, the Taxman / Christian Whitehead port in all its glory, and it does run well. There's a story about that guy in the first half of this Superbunny Hop video here, which deals with Sonic Mania, the announcement of which feels oddly coincidental. I didn't know, but realizing I picked up the anniversary bundle and this is the 25th anniversary announcement, it actually isn't much of a coincidence.

This is Sonic game #3 (done in chronological order) of Summer of Sonic. The previous game is here, and the next game will be here, once I actually get that written up.




Sonic CD is a time travel game, and as such, you can play the game in two ways. First, you can play it as a Sonic game. Or you can play it as a Sonic time traveling game. This may sound untoward, but simply put, the two elements do not fuse into a cohesive singular gameplay. Instead they clash with each other, and to be frank, I feel like the Sonic side lost.

Levels are built around traveling into the past and the future. On my first playthrough I had absolutely no idea why I would ever want to travel into the future. It seemed like a trap option to screw up traveling into the past, which was already kinda tricky. Looking it up, it mostly just exists for flavor.

You have to admire that kind of game design. Past, present and future all have different level layouts, changed sprites and changed behaviors. It is a fundamentally enticing prospect that the game seems to mostly have just to be there. And there's where the game starts to fall away for me. The time travel element is interesting, but it doesn't mix well with the run and hop Sonic gameplay. Levels are built more as expanses you explore since you need to be able to backtrack, ignoring how Sonic usually plays, becoming... Something else. Something new and different, and in some ways really cool, but just 'not muh Sonic'. There's an attempt to artificially add speed with speed boosts, springs and rocket pads and the like, but it ends up feeling very false. It's not a reward, or a brief out of control section, but a consistent element. In some of the sections I found this incredibly annoying, actually, and not pleasant whatsoever.

The time traveling itself is just... Awful. You hit a signpost and then you have the power to go one or the other way in time, once you hit a necessary speed and then sustain it. The end result is it takes a lot of planning or save-scumming to time travel, and then you see the goofy loading screen. The result is cool, don't get me wrong, but the actual process of getting from Present to Past is a bit of a hassle. I feel like the designer wanted that back to the future tension, but the end result is hard to predict until you've given a path a shot or two to figure out if it is long enough to perform the function you need.

Without the time travel element, though, most of the levels are over in a matter of minutes and are rarely all that challenging. They remind me a lot of playing mobile Sonic games, like Sonic Rush or Sonic Advance, which just doesn't tickle the Sonic loving part of my brain overly much. That's to say it reminds me of games that don't, not that it doesn't ever. Something about Sonic CD also reminds me of the game gear game, but I can't really articulate it.

Visually Sonic CD is a really interesting game. I don't know if I would say it looks better or worse than Sonic 2 or 3, but it certainly looks like a Sonic game and yet very different. It reminds me of playing Phantasy Star 2, which I've been plodding through slowly for writing a review. It uses simple elements to make the game feel technological in a neonfuture sort of aesthetic, a glowing and pulsing wonderland. The whole past-present-future thing is awesome when it comes to the visuals, it's just impressive and interesting. It is not a full on, organic to technological transition. The "good future" levels are techno-organic, beautiful sci-fi settings that I didn't expect. Even the final boss battle, in the good future, just looks like a total paradise.

As a weird little aside I found it rather jarring that when you kill badniks in this game, they release a flower rather than an animal. Not muh sonic! As it turns out, the little animal critters return if you break a second item in the past besides the main object, a holo-projector of Metal Sonic torturing animals. Once that's gone, they return en masse to celebrate. It's a nice touch, actually.

Sonic games have good music. At least the ones I've been playing. This is, in my mind, undeniable. I don't think Sonic 1's music is anything better than good, but everything after that had a good chance to have good music. Except maybe Sonic 2006 or whatever. Sonic CD has outstanding music, and it fights with the visual element for using the time travel mechanic well. Each section has different music based on era, which changes up as you time travel to something similar and it's just so good. If there's an argument buried in this game for swapping over to CDs, there you go. Just to be clear, that means each zone or act or whatever (the game seems to reverse the terms) has four tracks: Past, Present, Bad Future and Good Future. And each of these sounds similar to the one you'd transition from. It's just really good.

On the other hand, one thing Sonic CD manages, way more than any other Sonic game, is awful bosses. They are not built around the eight hit pattern avoidance set up of the other classic Sonic games - which, frankly, I would barely put Sonic CD into anyway - and rather have dumb conditions for defeating them, usually just getting through a tough section. I found them consistently cruddy, unpleasant and jarring as a Sonic fan. Part of that is innately nostalgia; a classic Sonic game need feel like a classic Sonic game, but some of them were just dull or stupid whatever emotion I brought to it. Ugh. The music track is ridiculous and catchy, though, so that's a plus.

So in the Sonic 2 review I was sort of saying the special stages struck me as the worst of the original trilogy, or I suppose, the original whatever the original games are numbered at. I had played Sonic CD when it first came out, but I never finished and my memories were hazy. In turn, Sonic CD's special stages are awful. I mean they're very clearly trying to do something that didn't work well that far back, but they're 3D with into to smash "UFOs". It ends up looking like Sonic in Mario Kart and it just isn't pretty (except the skybox, the skybox is really good) and just doesn't play well. It is time based, and you're constantly turning to try to get sonic to line up with a 3D object that isn't entirely obvious in its positioning.

Also: The special stages are ultimately pointless. I mean, the entire point of the game eating away at its own Sonic essence is to do the into past, destroy machine, back into future see the good future thing. The special stages allow you to ignore that, except, that's a huge chunk of content in the game just pissed away so instead you can do stupid UFO hunting. I'm not too keen on that.

I like Sonic CD, but as I said, it reminds me of playing mobile Sonic games and not the games I consider classic entries in the series. Sonic CD, more than Sonic 2, shows the kind of design that Sonic later often took on that frankly isn't why people remember Sonic well. I mean sure, it's fun, you've got springs and spites and all that, but it just doesn't feel as measured or sharp. Levels kinda blur together into very similar looking section with a lot of out control movement, and I just end up a little bored at those times. It is hampered by the fact you can end up 'going fast' in the wrong direction.

As you become accustomed to what Sonic CD is actually "trying to do" and let the "not muh sonic" fall away the game becomes more appealing, but it never takes on the sort of classic energy to me. It's good, great in parts, but it's no Sonic 2 or Sonic 3. But then, is that even fair? Is it trying to be those games? It was created after Sonic 1 but not after anything else, before the franchise even had a solid feel to it. Maybe it isn't really a Sonic game by most metrics of evaluation.

It does leave me wondering how I'd have taken Sonic CD as a kid. I spent most of this game wishing I hadn't put it on the list between Sonic 2 and 3, partially because I just wanted to play Sonic 3 and partially because I'm not sure how fair I'm being. Regardless, I'm still glad I got to play it, and I'm still glad it is available. I don't know that it makes Sonic Mania more or less exciting to me, but that game clearly has a pedigree behind it. The physics of this game are slightly different I think from Sonic 2 or Sonic 3, but so close I'm not certain. The level design is what feels 'un-sonic' and I assume Sonic Mania need not have that problem.

So I'd definitely recommend picking up Sonic CD, but I note that don't go into it expecting the lost classic Sonic game people might address or think of it as. It definitely is not. Go into it expecting an exploratory, interesting platformer staring Sonic and his physics.

As a total aside, it is rather fascinating looking at the development of consoles using CDROMs and how it very negatively impacted both Sega and Nintendo. Whatever you want to call it, the Sega CD is the beginning of the end for Sega as a console manufacturer; it sold poorly, created distrust in the brand and ultimately begins a series of failures that ended with the fantastic Dreamcast that was basically too good for this world. Nintendo meanwhile partnered with Sony, and through a story I've not studied in great detail, managed to create what may ultimately amount to their greatest enemy. No Nintendo home console has outsold the Playstation, and it was born of the CD Rom driven alliance. The Wii, which is regarded as a huge success, came very very close.

But for me, it was a while before I got any CD driven console. Sonic 3, which comes up next, was the last of the Sonic games I played on home consoles in my youth and really for a long time the only Sonic game I ever went back to re-play.