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 “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

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