treasurin’ gunstar heroes

my sega experience continues to slowly grow. i finally beat a game on the original sega genesis, gunstar heroes, the first game created by treasure. treasure was apparently created by people who had left konami, and according to this article at hardcoregaming101.net gunstar heroes was developed by several people who had worked on contra iii, a game i had enjoyed but not loved.

although gunstar heroes may have taken contra as its starting point, its variety, unique weapon system (in which you combine two of four types of weapons to make a new one), and cartoony but cool personality make it feel distinctly fresh. in terms of comparing it to the contra series, hardcore gaming puts it well when it says:

In Contra, your heroes are killed after a single hit, demanding exact precision to dodge enemy fire or overpower quick moving bosses. Gunstar Heroes is much more forgiving, and doesn’t require nearly the same amount of reflexive intensity. While one could argue that it makes their games simpler, on the flip side, their relaxed approach actually make them a lot more fun, where you can concentrate more on the joys that come with dealing expansive amounts of damage without worrying too much about memorizing enemy patterns.

in what has become a treasure trademark the game is full of boss battles, and the screen is pretty much constantly chock-full of bullets and explosions, all at a blissfully smooth frame rate. the game features unlimited continues to further emphasize enjoyment as opposed to frustration, and in fact i played through the normal mode all in one sitting. there’s a lot of variety and a sense of always moving forward, although there’s one section (the dice palace) where the game slows to a crawl because you’re working your way around a board game-type board and, depending on how unlucky you are, you’ll probably end up having to play through the same mini-bosses many times. there’s also a shooter section at the end that feels unnecessary and frankly fairly dull.

overall, though, this is probably the best game i’ve played this year, although it doesn’t quite crack my greatest games of all time list. there’s a sense of sheer joy and fun that comes across, and the game points out the many things the contra series lacks that i never realized i missed, like a sense of humor and a cast of colorful antagonists (actually they’re literally “colorful” in this game, as they’re called by colors such as black and pink). i’m looking forward to trying out the game’s pseudo-remake on GBA, and at some point i’ll have to replay the original and experiment more with the different weapon combos instead of just sticking with the double chaser (and then maybe i’ll be up for tackling the hard modes). my experience with treasure games continues to deepen my appreciation for that studio, and i’m looking forward to continuing to delve deeper into their body of work.

treasure these gunstar heroes links:
- entry at wikipedia.org
- review at nintendolife.com
- weapons combinations FAQ

actual boredom playing virtua fighter remix

for my first game of 2012 i finished up my time with the sega saturn classic virtua fighter remix (although i did check out the original virtua fighter as well). i had gotten a sega saturn specifically to play historic games like this one, and i’ve also been trying to work my way through some of the major fighting franchises that i’ve ignored thus far. for a run-down of the gameplay and a comparison of the arcade and sega saturn releases, check out this article.

as most people know, virtua fighter is notable for being the first 3-d fighter. although it gets lauded for being “revolutionary”, as with the atari 2600′s adventure it feels like people are confusing “revolutionary” for “first of its kind”, although maybe it’s just the power of hindsight that makes the progression seem so inevitable. anyway, there’s clearly a lot of nostalgic love floating around for the game. this revisit at thunderboltgames.com seems fairly typical, and in 2006 EGM voted it as #20 in their list of “the greatest games for their time”. the entry at 1up’s similar 2004 list goes into greater detail about what was noteworthy about the game, namely the focus on realism.

with all the historical context out of the way, i have to say that i found that by modern standards the game feels incredibly dull. i don’t mind the large command lists of games such as soulcalibur too much in general, but the “difficulty” level of virtua fighter just wasn’t enjoyable. i’m not completely sure why that was; maybe it’s the overall slowness of the game. according to 1up the game relies “more on strategy and technique than memorization”, but even after playing through the arcade mode several times i still didn’t find much to interest me. for one thing, as with my experience with soul blade, i find the emphasis on following every attack that leaves your opponent on the ground with a follow-up attack (the latter of which does a disproportionate amount of damage compared to other attacks) to be a completely pointless combo. the ease with which you knock opponents out of the ring also doesn’t feel as fair as in the soulcalibur series. the focus on “realism” makes the game less flashy and eye-catching, but i think that was only a mild deterrent to me. i can’t help feeling that there’s something i’m missing in terms of enjoying the game, but i just couldn’t bring myself to suffer through the clunky gameplay any more even for the sake of video game history appreciation, and so i’ve set it aside for now and probably won’t be dipping into the rest of the series anytime soon. not the greatest start to 2012, but glad to be able to cross this one off the list.

some virtual virtua fighter links:
- entry at wikipedia
- thorough moves list at virtuafighter.com
- fairly barebones entry at virtuafighter.wikia.com; if anyone’s interested i spent most of my time playing as jacky. (yeah!)

checking out the soul of soul calibur

the original soul calibur on dreamcast is yet another one of the all-time greats that has been on my list of games to play, and it was actually one of my main motivations for buying a dreamcast. i’m not a huge fan of fighters in general, and although i had played and enjoyed soul blade for the original playstation a couple of years ago that game didn’t make me a convert to the series. unfortunately, although there was a lot i admired about this entry, it hasn’t drawn me in the same way that the smash series, or even the street fighter series has.

somewhat surprisingly the game doesn’t feel that different from the original in its fundamentals. the graphics are definitely a leap ahead and hold up extremely well, and the pace is much faster. the animations are all silky smooth, and the new characters are great. the sound and backgrounds are also well done. the addition of the 8-way run makes the game feel more dynamic but didn’t really feel essential, and namco seems to have removed the rock-paper-scissors-like mechanics of the original which took the form of horizontal and vertical moves and sidesteps. but at its core the game failed to engage me for the same reasons as its predecessors: the movesets tend to be repetitive, the stories are given a barebones presentation and are only mildly entertaining at best (although that’s true of most fighters), and being able to chain a follow-up attack whenever a character gets downed seems pointless. the restrictions in the mission mode are entertaining for the most part, although the majority of the 5* difficulty missions feel completely pointless. this time around it also seemed to be too easy to spam one move over and over again. also, even though it’s fairly easy to perform a wide range of flashy moves, the number of moves seems pointlessly excessive. maybe at tournament levels of play they become essential, but even though i can see why most people would love them, for me they just feel like crowd-pleasing padding.

well, certainly not of my favorite games, but i enjoyed the game overall and i can see why others praise it so highly. soulcalibur II is also on my list, so i’ll give that a go, although i’m not sure that i’m going to bother with much more of the series after that. we’ll see. oh, and in case anyone was wondering, i spent most of my time with kilik, who is apparently good for newbie players, although i beat the game (on varying levels of difficulty) with all the characters.

[just a footnote, i tried to find out how to properly punctuate soul calibur, i.e. whether or not it should be soulcalibur without a space. i did a quick survey of links online and on namco's sites and in their instruction manuals, and it seems that the original soul calibur was generally punctuated with a space, and that the subsequent releases were punctuated without it (even though the name of the series refers to a sword in the games that does have a space in its name). so for now i'll go with that assumption unless someone can present a strong case for the other side.]

some soulful soul calibur links:
- soulcalibur.wikia.com
- entry at wikipedia
- good FAQ at gamefaqs.com
- entry at gamerankings.com
- pretty funny “characters that fit snugly into ivy’s bra” feature at gamesradar.com

sonic + tails = sonic 2

i finally got myself motivated to play through the much-lauded sonic the hedgehog 2 for the first time. i’d enjoyed playing through the first game, and for this iteration i found myself reacting in similar ways to the core game mechanics: losing all your rings every time you get hit is still annoying; trying to get all the chaos emeralds is quite tedious; and the feeling of speed seems to be constantly stymied by backtracking to explore alternate paths and slower sections of regular platforming. the most annoying thing by far though is the final level which is incredibly cheap due to the fact you have to fight two bosses without getting hit once.

with those criticisms out of the way there was a lot i did enjoy. although many of the locales from the original reappear here there are quite a few new elements and some new and memorable game mechanics such as the seesaws in the hilltop zone. the pinball stages were as fun as ever, and it was great that sonic acquired a sidekick, miles “tails” prower (even though he doesn’t add anything to the gameplay), and a new “super peel-out” aka “spin dash” ability. the 3-D bonus stages are impressive, although they require too much memorization, and the levels in general are large, even though i wasn’t that motivated to explore them fully. as with the first game, the music and visuals are uniformly great.

although i don’t think i’m going to become a sonic super fan anytime soon, i’m getting to be a fan of the sonic series. so far i’ve played through an enjoyable duo of solid platformers, and i won’t be surprised if i end up playing through sonic 3 before too long.

rev up for some sonic 2 links:
- entry at wikipedia
- review at vc.nintendolife.com
- great page of info on the game at fansite the green hill zone. includes a lot of screenshots and sprites of the enemies.
- maps at soniccenter.org
- PDF of the manual at replacementdocs.com
- screenshots of the endings at vgmuseum.com
- and just in case you need it, here’s the info on the the level select code

cat and mouse MANIA

although my first foray into the sega dreamcast library was fairly random, there were several dreamcast-exclusives that were high on my list of games to check out. among them was the party puzzler chuchu rocket!, created by none other than the sonic team. i’m not exactly sure where i first heard about the game, but it looked like a colorful, quirky sega game, and although it’s not that well known those who do talk about it give it positive reviews.

the entry at wikipedia gives a good run-down of the space-mice-guiding, space-cat-avoiding gameplay (according to the manual chuchus are not mice; they’re space mice). i enjoyed the frantic pace of the multiplayer mode at first and definitely appreciated the style, well within the usual flashy-but-fun sega aesthetic, but i lost interest once i realized the game doesn’t require very much strategy: the outcome changes so quickly that winning involves more luck than skill. there are two other modes, stage mode in which you place arrows in real time to direct the space mice to their rocket, and puzzle mode where you’re given a limited number of arrows to position before setting the space mice and space cats loose on their fixed paths, rather like setting a rube goldberg contraption in motion. the former gets prohibitively difficult without another player to help out, but fortunately the puzzle mode is worthwhile enough that it makes up for the deficiencies of the other two modes. beating the stages in puzzle mode oftentimes ends up being a matter of trial and error, particularly for stages that are highly dependent on the movement speed of each space mouse or cat, but many of the stages are so ingenuous that the entertainment comes as much from finding the solution as just the act of setting the chuchu machine in motion and watching it chug along. the game apparently includes 100 of these puzzles and allowed users to submit levels online; apparently 2500 of them were included in the game boy advance release of the game. although i enjoyed beating a fair number of the puzzles in the dreamcast version, 2500 more seems like overkill. still, once i get through the dreamcast puzzles i’ll know where to head to next.

chuchu! make way for a rocket-full of space mice links!
- if you’re looking for wallpapers, the game disc actually includes some. rad!
- FAQ at gamefaqs
- list of unlockables at gamespy.com
- a review of the GBA game (apparently a launch title) at nintendojo.com

beasts altered

i finally got a dreamcast (just in time for its 10th birthday). continuing the trend, instead of starting off playing one of the classics i ended up playing something totally random, more specifically, one of the sega genesis games that appear on the sega smash pack compilation, the now-classic altered beast.

i’m pretty much a n00b when it comes to sega and its long and colorful history. the genesis version of altered beast was apparently the original pack-in game for the system in most areas outside of japan and is well known, although nowadays it seems to be among the many games that are universally panned (see poor milon’s secret castle as another example, which i recently reviewed). for a sample of modern-day reviews and people’s comments on altered beast, nintendolife.com has reviews of both the the original arcade version as well as the genesis version. both reviewers give the game the same score (3 out of 10), although the latter review seems to contain more nostalgic affection. for a run-down of the game itself, check out this page at i-mockery.com.

having no such nostalgia factor but having a much higher tolerance for old games and their limitations, i actually quite enjoyed this one. the “homoeroticism” is clearly just that peculiar brand of japanese humor that takes the form of extreme camp, which i found amusing, even more so when i contemplate the nations full of confused kids and their baffled parents that must have resulted. i was also entertained by the complete disregard for actual greek mythology (not unlike the classic kid icarus). the graphics are definitely impressive, keeping in mind this was almost exactly two years before super mario world was released for the SNES, and the character, enemy, and boss designs are all pretty well done. the enemies in particular are entertaining, with some classic japanese wackiness thrown in, e.g. the purple jump-kicking unicorns and yellow goats in the final level. i wasn’t bothered by the slowness of the gameplay, and although there’s not much variety in the main attacks they were still varied enough to make them worthwhile. the “altered beasts” and their attacks were the best part, and although i didn’t find the game to be overly repetitive, at five levels the game is definitely quite short; i would’ve definitely enjoyed another level with each of the beast forms. the ending is anticlimactic and the harder difficulties not much different than the normal mode, but the co-op was fun and the soundbites have added some classic quotes to my repertoire (the apparently much-appreciated “wise from your gwave!” as well as the baddie’s sinister “welcome to your doom!”).

i’ve settled on a few simple rubrics to help me rank games, including “would i want to play this again?” and “did i like this enough to check out some of the sequels?” for me the answer to both of those questions for this game is actually yes. and it turns out that there are a coupla sequels, and they’ve been catalogued by the good folk at hardcore gaming 101. sweeeeet. i mean, roooooaaaaarrrrr!!!

altered links:
- cheats at gamefaqs, including how to continue and select a level and difficulty
- screenshots of the ending at vgmuseum.com
- entry at wikipedia
- random page with sprites
- FAQ at gamefaqs (although no one probably really needs it)

shake those wiimotes!

i was never really into sega growing up (nintendo fanboy that i am, even back then) and am only now slowly working my way through the backlog of great sega games. i’d been intrigued for a while by the wii-make of samba de amigo, which came out in the US last september (although it has yet to make an appearance in japan, oddly enough). usually i like to play earlier iterations of a game before later ones, but after spending a fair amount of time trying to find a pair of the original dreamcast maracas on ebay i gave up and decided to jump into the wii version, particularly since i’m planning on taking the game home to play with my family in a couple of weeks.

the game’s mechanics are immediately appealing, but i quickly ran into the problem that everyone complains about, which is the accuracy of the controls, particularly at the higher levels of difficulty. i was really curious if reviewers’ complaints were fair or not, and for a fair amount of time i was undecided. on easier levels the controls are pretty forgiving, but on harder levels i was definitely having a lot of trouble getting my movements to register. but i couldn’t believe that a powerhouse studio like sega would ship a product with broken controls, so instead of giving up and declaring the game faulty i tried a lot of different things.

eventually i figured out how to get the controls to work pretty much perfectly, and now the only thing that mystifies me is: 1) why so many reviewers (such as IGN’s; yet again, IGN proves to be a poor source of information and my interest in them continues to wane even further) didn’t bother spending the time figuring out how to make the controls work. granted, maybe these people were used to the dreamcast controllers, but it can’t be that hard to figure out the wii controls because, judging by the leaderboards, apparently tons of people other than i have independently figured out how to make them work; and 2) why sega didn’t include a tutorial on how to use the controls properly. because once you understand how the controls actually work, the game is an absolute blast.

in case you too need tips on how to use the controls, it’s really simple. there are three positions: high, medium, low. the game registers positions based on the tilt of the controllers, so for the high position hold the controllers straight up, and then to shake tilt them down (i.e. away from you). for the medium position, hold them flat in front of you and perpendicular to the floor, and to shake just tilt them down (towards the ground). and lastly, for the low position, hold the controllers straight down, and to shake just tilt them towards the wall behind you. to do crossovers (the remotes pointing in the same direction), your arms (and your wiimotes) should actually be crossed over for them to register correctly.

and that’s it! the controls work extremely well with this setup, although i’m really curious to see if others have come to the same conclusion. anyway, as i said, once i figured out the correct way to use the controls the game was (and continues to be) incredibly fun and addictive. as anyone who may have been reading this blog may have noticed, i don’t give out high praise that often, but this game is frickin’ awesome and is a great example of what the wii is all about. i’ve been getting really bored with guitar hero-style gameplay, so this was a real breath of fresh air. the wackiness of the design and the fact that you’re frickin’ shaking your wiimotes like maracas to spanish songs and random songs like “groove is in the heart” thrown in makes this classic, totally stupid fun. as a party game this is an absolute no-brainer, and the new “dance” moves added to this edition just add to the ridiculousness of it. and on my version of miyamoto’s “wife-o-meter” (i.e. the “bf-o-meter”) this was a definite win (and i have some embarassing photos to prove it!).

this is one time i’ve been tempted to buy a game’s downloadable content. at some point i probably will, but in the meantime i A-ranked about 1/3 of the songs on the hard level. but after playing the game day after day for hours on end my arms were getting frickin’ tired; this has got to be the biggest workout i’ve gotten from playing with my wii yet (hahaha). the one complaint i have about the game is that when you make one mistake you drop a rank, so getting an A rank is sometimes artificially hard since you pretty much have to get the last section perfect with no time to recover from even one mistake. but i suppose it’s all just part of the challenge. the fact that you can do crossovers on single notes to up your points adds even more depth to the game, but the game mechanics themselves are just fun, no matter what the level of difficulty. i’ve set the game aside for now, but this is one that i’m definitely looking forward to coming back to. samba!

shake to these samba links!
- entry at wikipedia including a table comparing the different songs in the different versions
- page at metacritic. it’s noteworthy that ye olde nintendo power gave the game the highest score (a 9 out of 10) and just goes to show that yet again NP and i are on the same wavelength.
- random blog post of someone who also came to the same conclusion that i did: “… the controls are great. Early reviewers were either: a) bad at the game, b) confused or c) lazy.” i’m voting for C on that one. he suggests experimenting with the calibration option, but i didn’t try messing around with that much.
- there’s an official site here. doesn’t have much, but includes some wallpapers, screenshots, and a video previewing the first download pack.

super monkey bawlin’

i’ve been playing the original super monkey ball off and on for a while now, but i sat down and finished advanced mode and tackled expert mode … only to be completely waylaid by expert level 7. apparently this is one of the harder levels in the game, and although i was finally able to beat it in practice mode, i was so demoralized at the thought of having to beat it again and again and again that i set the game aside for now. but it should be noted that levels that i had trouble with in advanced mode became pretty easy after i played through them numerous times, so it’s likely that i’ll eventually master that level as well as the rest of the game given enough time.

aside from the painful level of difficulty there was a lot i enjoyed. first off, it’s always nice to see a new IP, and sega scored an immediate hit with their debut of the monkey ball series. the presentation has the same unique combination of stylish/cool/cute that sega has become known for. the difficulty can perhaps be attributed to sega as well, although it’s notable that amusement vision, a subsidiary of sega, also worked on the similarly painfully-difficult-but-fun-and-stylish f-zero GX, which i played a while back. this game is also known for including a slew of much-better-than-average party games, including monkey fight which i became somewhat addicted to (probably one of the few party games that i’ve gotten hooked on).

it’s also notable that this was a launch title for the gamecube, because the controls are so spot on and the graphics are pretty solid. i’m curious about how the versions on the other platforms fared, because the gamecube analog control stick proved to be nice and sensitive, although at times it felt a bit too large and thus awkward under my thumb. maybe i just have small hands. i also appreciated the fact that given enough playthroughs eventually you’ll unlock unlimited continues, making getting to the higher levels much less of a remote possibility (although to unlock everything you still have the challenge of making it through on one life or one continue). at times i felt that this game should’ve been called “a million and one ways to watch a monkey fall off of a cliff”, but in any case, i’ll definitely be coming back to this one and checking out the various sequels.

monkey bawlin’ links:
- FAQ at IGN with difficulty ratings for each level and one at gamefaqs with ASCII maps
- a monkey fight FAQ
- list of unlockables at IGN
- the game got a lot of great reviews, all acknowledging the huge difficulty. here are nintendojo’s and IGN’s.
- entry at wikipedia
- entry at metacritic

the legends of gauntlet

i’ve been really slow about playing N64 games, but i finished gauntlet legends a couple of days ago. i was actually surprised at how much i enjoyed this game. it seems one of the main complaints about the game is that it’s so easy, but after having played some more effortful games recently it was actually nice to have something completely mindless. it was also one of the few games i could not only coerce the bf to play with me once but that he enjoyed enough to play with me a second time.

i haven’t played a whole lot of hack ‘n slash games and no doubt the genre has evolved a lot since the 8-bit gauntlet days, but there was a lot i liked about this, the series’ first 3D iteration. first off, a lot of the elements of the original 8-bit gauntlet (and its sequels) that you know and love are intact, including the 4 characters (warrior, valkyrie, wizard, and archer) who are all still distinct, and the great voice samples (“i like food!” being one of the clear favorites, although we don’t get to hear my favorite line from the 8-bit days which was “wizard has shot the food!” since, thankfully, you’re not able to shoot food in this game).

in terms of additions, unlike the original game and the arcade version of legends the console versions don’t have your life ticking away every second. this of course makes the game much easier, as does the addition of turbo moves (your “turbo” meter continually recharges), a whole slew of powerups, and, most importantly, the ability to level up and buy stat upgrades (i.e. strength, speed, magic, and armor). so although the four character classes have varied starting stats and growths, over time the differences become much less apparent. the game also lets you pick the color of your character, which changes its model, and also includes animal skins of the four classes (e.g. falconess for the valkyrie) which, while not really adding anything, are kind of a nice little addition.

the game includes a world hub where you can choose any level you’ve already unlocked, and so the game becomes trivially easy since you can level up as much as you want before tackling harder levels. but even with its two harder difficulty settings (which didn’t seem that different to me when i took a cursory look at them) the game would still be pretty easy. a lot of this seems to come from the fact you can take out most enemy generators from far away before they’ve had time to spawn many enemies; in this game generators don’t spawn enemies until you get near to them, but i believe in the original 8-bit games they spawned enemies as soon as you start the stage, thus building up oceans of enemies for you to tediously plow through. and if you save the powerups you get and sell them instead of use them, you won’t have to spend much time level-grinding, if at all. i didn’t start off being very methodical about traversing the stages, so i ended up repeating a fair number of the levels because there are hidden items you have to find to beat the game (i.e. “obelisks” which allow you to enter other worlds, and “runes” which allow you to tackle the final boss) as well as optional items (e.g. the secret characters, weapons for use against the bosses). and you’ll find yourself wanting to repeat easier levels just to collect more health. without those repeats the game would’ve been more of a challenge, but the fun of the game really isn’t about the difficulty anyway.

another thing that people complain about is the graphics, which despite being N64-level didn’t bother me at all (although apparently the dreamcast version is better). the game does make use of the N64 expansion pack though. given that the screen could be full of enemies and up to 4 players, all in 3D, the sprites aren’t incredibly detailed, but they work much better than most of the screenshots would suggest. i also found the progression of the levels to be well paced: the first world contains levels that are mostly linear; the second world contains levels that are more maze-like, like the original gauntlet; the third world contains more large open field-like areas where you’ll find yourself surrounded by enemies on multiple sides, along with a fun level climbing up and down the rigging of an airship; and the fourth and final worlds are twistier and generally much less linear with more back-tracking. in the latter levels there are some areas where you’ll be a bit lost, but that generally comes more from the confusion from the graphics and areas looking too similar to one another than anything else. the automatic camera in general also works pretty well, and the music is fine although not particularly memorable. the enemies aren’t quite varied enough, but they’re serviceable. my primary complaint, and one shared by others, is the inclusion of boss battles; they’re mostly pointless, mainly because the bosses all have attacks that are completely unavoidable and unblockable.

so overall this one was a pleasant surprise and has lead me to spending a lot more digital ink on it than many other games i’ve played this year. i actually found it to be more enjoyable than the x-men legends game i played a couple of years ago, i think largely due to it having more variety and level design. there’s a remake with more levels and characters called dark legacy that came out on the gamecube that i’ll def. have to pick up at some point. and if you’re wondering, in terms of the three console versions of gauntlet legends IGN rated them in this order: dreamcast: 8.4, N64: 7.7, and PS1: 7.2. it looks like the PS1 version, while taking the hardest hit in the graphics department, has the inclusion of 4 additional hard levels after you beat the game.

you are now entering the dungeon of links!
- gamespot featured an interesting series of interviews when the game came out described thus: “Not only do these cover the current consumer titles, they also look at the evolution of Gauntlet, from the original coin-op in 1985 through the latest coin-op version – Gauntlet Legends – and onto the N64 and the PlayStation.”
- some cheats and a nice set of videos at IGN
- entry at wikipedia.org
- entry at strategywiki.org
- youtube video of first level (as the yellow wizard)
- pretty good FAQ at IGN and one at gamefaqs
- instruction manual of the PS1 version

exploring the genesis of sonic

another gaming first (this year has just been full of ‘em) was beating my first sega genesis game, sonic the hedgehog which i played via the sonic mega collection on the gamecube. as you can guess this was also my first sonic game. like super mario world (which in NA came out just two months later) i’d tried out sonic 1 in the toy stores but o/w had never actually played through it. i have to say that i’d never actually even been that interested in sonic, but i got more interested due to a friend of mine in college who was a sega fanboy and obsessed w/ him, so much so that he dressed up as him for halloween. it’s gotta be a pretty rare sight to see a black guy w/ hair dyed blue and wearing red and white shoes running around, bumping into walls and dropping change. and of course my interest took a big leap when it was announced that sonic would be joining super smash bros. brawl, and so being the completist that i am i figured to begin my closer acquaintance w/ sonic i should start at the very beginning.

my mostly unbiased opinion is that overall sonic 1 isn’t a great game. one of the things that i never understood about why people liked sonic so much is that people always talk about how fast the games are, but in fact there actually aren’t that many opportunities to let loose and really zoom through a stage, especially since a lot of the time if you zoom past something you end up having to backtrack anyway. and without the speeding ball of hedgehog gimmick the game pretty much becomes just another platformer. and even after playing through the game i’m still not into the “get hit once and lose all your rings” setup, which isn’t much of a step above ghosts ‘n goblins’ get hit twice and die MO.

there are several “moments of brilliance” in the original, though, such as the bonus stages and some pinball-esque parts w/ sonic bouncing off of bumpers, and particularly the star light zone which does a better job than most of the rest of the game of making sonic’s speediness work w/ the level design. but in general aside from some great character design and graphics and music there wasn’t a whole lot to keep me interested. being a little disappointed i read up a bit on sonic 2, which generally seems to be regarded as the best in the series and seems to do a fair amount to remedy most of the problems i felt were in the original. i actually spent some time taking a “spin” through sonic 2, and already i can tell that i’m going to like that game a lot more. so w/ that said, hopefully the sonic fanboys won’t hate me too much until i post my assessment of sonic 2 and either see the light or give up on sonic completely.

some sonic links:
- walkthrough at IGN that includes the info on how to get continues
- cheats at IGN
- recent reviews on IGN of the XBLA release and the wii VC release, the latter of which also has a good review at vc-reviews.com
- endings at vgmuseum.com and video of the good ending at youtube
- list of the xbox 360 achievements for the game
- entry at strategywiki.org including a guide to the badniks
- entry at wikipedia