![]() Of course, not many people I knew got the game on that day – for most of us, it was a Christmas present in waiting. New, intensely colour-drenched levels (including ones set in a casino world, a chemical plant and an oil rig), an additional character (the super-cute fox Tails), split-screen two-player and insane-looking half-pipe bonus stages all combined to form a very tantalising package. My friends and I all pored over the gorgeous screenshots in mags like Sega Power and Mean Machines, taped and rewatched the short-but-sweet video footage previewed in ITV’s Bad Influence and Channel 4’s GamesMaster, and impatiently ticked off the dates on our calendar to the big day that was Sonic 2’s Day, which was akin to Christmas in November. Once more, Sega would create two separate follow-ups, and at the time there was no anticipation in gaming greater than for that sequel, specifically the Mega Drive one. Putting it harshly, the modest MS Sonic would not have set the world ablaze on his own, but for those of us who simply didn’t have the budget for a Mega Drive, it was more than enough.īy 1992, Sonic Fever was well and truly in overdrive, as was the demand for an inevitable sequel, both for the famous MD outing and its later-released, lesser-known MS counterpart. The MS version was lots of fun, and was clearly cut from the same gene pool as its sibling, but it can’t be denied that the MD got the real fancy stuff like loop-de-loops, superspeed, trippy bonus stages and astonishing graphics – the stuff that everyone was talking about – whereas the MS opted for a simpler, neater and yet still thoroughly engaging approach. A direct port of the Mega Drive game would have been impossible, so in partnership with Aspect, they smartly dreamed it up all over again, with the unique result being two entirely different games called Sonic the Hedgehog 2. They devised an entirely separate Sonic game that would adapt itself better to the 8-bit confines of the system. Yet, in an act of generosity, Sega wasn’t willing to forsake those still cradling their Master Systems: a console that, lest we forget, was already many years old. Sega was taking gaming into the 1990s with flair. Thrilling speed, amazing music, ingeniously intricate level design and instant accessibility made it a dream experience, an all-conquering behemoth. Still, that’s a testament to how phenomenally cool the first Sonic was back then, and still is now. ![]() ![]() Alex Kidd, like the Mega Drive’s endearingly clunky Altered Beast, was embraced by the public thanks to it being packaged with the console itself, but both games were already yesterday’s news, and it was all because of one spiky-haired, speed-racing blue mammal who stormed onto the scene in 1991 at lightning speed: Sonic the Hedgehog.Įven the mighty Mario felt temporarily passé around this time, a somewhat unfair state of affairs given Nintendo was delivering the likes of Super Mario World. It came with Alex Kidd in Miracle World built-in, a deceptively bright but quite tricky platformer that I’d lost patience with after it turned out my copy glitched just before the final room, which meant I never completed it. I had my very own out-of-date console and I loved it to bits, quaint 8-bit graphics and all. I’d been the proud owner of a Sega Master System II for only a few months and was all too aware that I was behind the times, what with everyone else going crazy over the 16-bit double impact of the Sega Mega Drive and the Super Nintendo. Sonic 2 was the first new game I ever owned, which makes it extremely special in my book. 3, Resident Evil 2, Half-Life, Halo, Goldeneye 007, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Grand Theft Auto V or Red Dead Redemption 2 are better – much better – and even though some of those more celebrated examples have also brought nothing but pure joy into my life and captured my imagination in ways few other things in life have, I still always find myself coming back to the one that arguably started it all. Of course, you know, deep down, that games like Super Mario Bros. A game that you have such a special, personal, inimitable connection with that nothing, not even legitimate criticisms about it from others, can dull your enthusiasm. Not the best, necessarily, but your favourite.
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