Why Sonic 2?

Sonic Pocket Adventure is a really awesome game, and yet no one mentions that it was developed by Dimps, granted they did good with the Sonic Advance series but for those of you who hate Dimps I'm just throwing it out there. Why? I think it's funny, although they did pick a weird choice of music for the Extra Zone, and yet it's strangely fitting.

For the record, if Sonic 2 DID put in everything they wanted to develope in the game (Lost Levels and such), as awesome as that version would have been, it would have been a bitch without a save system. Also it would have had more Zones then in S3&K, granted though 5 of the Zones would have had only 1 Act but still.

I don't think S3&K lost any kind of purity in having an epic story being told in game, after all technically they DID have cutscenes in Sonic 2 (Mainly after Wing Fortress going to Death Egg Zone). It's still and has always been the time trial score-chasing game as the series has always been, the story just added more to the game.

I think why Sonic 2 is regarded as the game it is today because of how widely available it was at the time, the popularity and hype Sega pushed Sonic 2, and just because it's a damn good game! I'll say that Sonic 2 is better then Sonic 1 on a technical level, but personally I think both games match up evenly for me, so much so that I'd pair them up together similar to how everyone pairs up S3&K. That's just me though, but I can see why most people would call it the best game in the series, other then the reasons I mentioned above. Everything in the game is more streamline, the game is faster as in the running doesn't have that speed cap Sonic 1 did, as well as the platforming segments are even faster. The Spin Dash gives players a way to go faster in a more safer way or for a faster means of attack, making the game more accessable to newer or casual players while not alienating players of the first game. The multiplayer means that you can play with or against a buddy in racing, always a plus. The music is naturally wonderful, considering the same man did the music for Sonic 1 that's no surprise. All these reasons and more make it so Why Sonic 2 is what it is to all of gaming.

But I do think that this game has it's flaws, I've mentioned them before. Such as that the first 4 Zones (Mainly EHZ) ending a little too sooner then the other zones of the game, Metropolis Zone REALLY should have been 2 Acts as it drags by the 3rd, making me wish now that Cyber City wasn't cut, and that the Special Stages' Difficult Spike is a little off. Granted I think the Special Stages are great and give a good challenge (they are the most challenging of the Genesis games), but after the first one the second one will kick your ass first time through, I'm sure this has happened to nearly everyone at some point, I think that the order of the emeralds could have been shifted a bit in order to make it more fair but that's just me, after the second stage though you get at least 2 or 3 really tough ones but my memory is a bit fuzzy on the SS as I haven't played them in awhile. There's not much for me to complain about, Sonic 2's a good game, that's about it.

Although I would recommend Sonic Pocket Adventure, it really is a good game and one of the best portable games in the series.

 

I think a big part of my love of Sonic 2 boils right down to the music. It's some of Masato Nakamura's finest work, without the slowdown that the PAL version of Sonic 1 suffered from. There's also such a variety, each song helping to flesh out the zone that it's a part of, which wasn't so much the case with Sonic 3. Hydrocity's music, while catchy, never really screamed "underwater ancient city" and could have been stuck into plenty of other zones without anyone really noticing, and I still can't figure out what exactly Launch Base's music was trying to do.

 

It did add more, but in adding more it ever-so-slightly changed the core gameplay focus. Levels became huge sprawling and detailed journeys, which were awesome, but were a step away from the tightly designed levels and style of Sonic 2.

Sonic 3K you generally play through once, and repeat play throughs are more about re-experiencing the epic journey than re-mastering the game, It's not about learning new skills or finding new pathways that shave off that extra half a second. Exploration is generally rewarded in Sonic 3K with bonuses but dead ends - there is usually only one major path through each level.

Sonic 2 you can return to again and again to re-tune and re-master you game. Each level is it's own separate entity, a unique puzzle, that's not really part of an epic story and has no QTE-esque cut scenes that hold you up on your way to the goal. If you've played through the game in a similar fashion to me, you've probably re-tuned the path you take though Chemical Plant zone about 4 to 6 times as you discover new ways to avoid the traps and take shortcuts through the level - this rarely happens in Sonic 3K, you'd be lucky to find 1 or 2 new paths.

Sonic 2 was a near perfect pinacle to the series, but has niggling imperfections and glaring omissions that highlight the game was just a little rushed and not quite finished. Sonic 3K addressed these omissions, but took things in a slightly different direction that resulted in a great game, but changed the core focus just a little too much.

The perfect Sonic game is somewhere in between, a Sonic 2.5. Sonic Pocket Adventure is probably the closest thing.

 

Sometimes I've asked, Why Sonic CD? From what I can tell, many people are just out of their god damn minds. That's why.

 

Sonic 3 & Knuckles is my favorite, but Sonic 2 is the most vanilla of the bunch (imo) and therefore the highest regarded. More people have played it and it's easier for someone who's not already a fan to get into.

It's similar to Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World - both terrific games, but World seems to be remembered more fondly and it's also the more basic of the two, even though a more dedicated Mario fan might prefer 3 for its challenge and depth.

 

The Death Egg is about to launch, the music is trying to get you to fucking "go" and stop it.

 

Yet all I want to do is dance the cha cha or the samba... or wait in an elevator.

Scream at me if you want, but this is one of the places where the PC version's music fits the level much better. It's not perfect by any stretch, but it has that "lifting off" feeling to it, and seems to have a hint of "Sky Chase" and "Flying Fortress" to it, with a very fitting underwater sound for Act 2.

 

I'm not a big fan of the music from the S&K PC version- it just sounds... odd. Maybe I'm used to the actual music composed for the proper version, but it just doesn't fit as well at all. Launch Base is awesome as Sonic is dancing about freely setting off traps and speeding through Robotnik's base to stop his ultimate machine from launching- for Robotnik and mostly Sonic, it's all one big game of win or lose. Remember, at this point it's not the first or even second time Sonic's had to run through Robotnik's machinery, so it's pretty hard to take the same stuff seriously.

Sonic 2 had a very different feel- it was the first time such a scheme had been seen in a Sonic game and the whole tone was a bit more serious. It doesn't help that Sonic 3's set on a lovely warm tropical island which makes the whole thing feel very warm and carefree.

 

If we're going to question how well suited LBZ's music is to its role in the story, I can get behind that, but only if we all also question its weird, almost jaunty colour scheme. Taking those two things in isolation, they fit each other just fine. It's when you compare LBZ to other final Zones that it starts to look and sound weird.

Of course, we can't really know whether its appearance and sound are actually because it was never meant to be a final Zone and was just shoehorned into that role in the now-cut-in-half S3 without much amendment. Or maybe they deliberately wanted to have a last stage that was a bit different. Who knows?

Big Arm is awesome, but that's the only menacing thing about it, really. More sub-bosses (as I suggested for Death Egg Zone) may have improved the feeling of panic that should accompany a last Zone to some degree, but it would still look and sound like a weird theme park without some big changes.

It's not bad, but it could be a lot more fitting.

 

There aren't very many people around these parts that are not aware Dimps made PA, and most acknowledge that Dimps was not always this flippant about the franchise. PA was pretty dang awesome, as it was almost a Sonic 2-2, and not just in the sense of style.

On the note of Dimps, Sonic Advance is also very straight up Sonic 2 in feel. It has that same "pure" Sonic feel to it, but as well as it plays and well-designed it is, it lacks soul. I can play it and enjoy the gameplay from a mechanical standpoint, but something about it lacks. For me, the reason it falls short is because of the bland art direction, the music, (tunes while good, has an over-emphasis on the baseball-style organ (I may be alone in my thoughts on this this), and it lacks the steady increase in difficulty that Sonic 2 has that gives S2 such a good pay-off.

 

Am I the only one who can't stand playing Sonic 3 with Sonic & Knuckles? I know that's a really fucking pointless argument towards the conversation here but seriously, I can Play Sonic & Knuckles over Sonic 2, but not Sonic 3 (Every level but Ice Cap pissed me off to no extent). I think that Sonic 2 is better than 3, but not Sonic & Knuckles. Sonic & Knuckles just feels alot better than Sonic 2 to me and it's levels are way better than all 3 games on the Mega Drive.

Anyways, personal rant over.

I think many people like Sonic 2 the most simply because;

A) It sold by the fucktonne with the Mega Drive.

B) It had one of the first ever international launches for a game ( With a really dumb name, "Sonic 2sday." Seriously WHO CAME UP WITH THAT?)

C) It was technically superior to Sonic 1, so people bought something because people want what's "better".

 

I would suggest that more people got to experience Sonic 2 due to the number of sales, if I recall correctly it was among the highest selling product produced by Sega and no doubt (maybe a little) that it was the best selling game of the Mega-Drive/Genesis. Overall more people got to play the game, and perhaps a great number played it as its very first Sonic game.

Not trying to be a Zebra sleeping with the Lions, but if anything out of Sonic 1/CD/2/3&Knuckles Sonic 2 has always been my least favourite out of the four. I favoured Sonic3&Knuckles it felt more of an adventure and due to my very young age it was easier to adapt to due to the save slots and the game being generally more easier and making it for me, more accessible than the previous ones.

 

Ah yes, the "Everyone is crazy except for me!" approach. I like that.

 

Why Sonic CD?

Because the good ending can be achieved in more than 1 way. You can either go through the Special Stages, or you can go to the past and hunt down the machines.

Because the level design encourages exploration and back tracking.

Because you can see how Zones were first built up by Eggman, and you can literally see how the future is shaped by your actions in the past.

 

1991 - Sonic the Hedgehog (Genesis), Sonic the Hedgehog (Game Gear/Master System)
1992 - Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Genesis), Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Game Gear/Master System)
1993 - Sonic Spinball (Genesis), Mean Bean Machine (Genesis), Sonic CD (Sega CD), Sonic Chaos (Game Gear/Master System), SegaSonic the Hedgehog (Arcade)
1994 - Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (Genesis), Sonic & Knuckles (Genesis), Sonic Drift (Game Gear), Sonic Triple Trouble (Game Gear)

Sonic 2 was the game right on the cusp of Sega flooding the market with as much Sonic as humanly possible. By the time Sonic 3 had come out, people who were not diehard fanboys were starting to get sick of blue hedgehogs. At that point comics, cartoons, toys and more were already in full-swing. It was market over-saturation.

Especially given the fact that unless you really dig deep, on a surface level, Sonic 3 is nothing more than "Sonic 2, but more". More shields, bigger levels, and so on. Nothing quite as paradigm-shifting as the spindash. Just more Sonic. And S&K was even more Sonic, almost literally unchanged from Sonic 3. It was less about personal preferences or qualitative basis and more just...

"I don't want to play Sonic games anymore."

You see the same thing happen with today's games. Too much of one thing and people just get sick of it, even if the new game is "better". Call of Duty is the obvious example, but even with less-frequent-but-still-too-frequent releases like New Super Mario Brothers. NSMBU is the 4th one of those, and despite how good or bad it executes on them, it's still a lot of the same exact ideas you've already seen before.

Sonic 2 is when Sonic was still fresh and new and exciting, full of lessons learned from the first Sonic and mere moments before his appeal was "spoiled" by a crazy marketing blitz. I personally think Sonic 3 is a better game, myself but I can see where people are coming from.

tl;dr: Sonic 2 was before Sonic lost his "indie cred".

 

I disagree that the spin-dash was "paradigm-shifting", certainly not enough to make Sonic 2 a huge jump over Sonic 1 that somehow isn't rivalled by the progression between 2 and 3, if that's the core of your argument here. In other words, and more importantly, I think it's hard to argue that Sonic 3 looks like a mere incremental upgrade when compared to Sonic 2. This isn't something I've heard before, so I'll be interested if anyone else agrees.

Right, because the addition of an entirely new playable character with different abilities, different routes, increased difficulty, and a completely differend end-game doesn't count. Tell me more about how S&K is even less significant an upgrade than Sonic 3 was!

Look, this discussion is doomed to be marred by the fact that the two games were split, a significant proportion may never have played the combined as was originally intended, S&K doesn't showcase many alternative routes for Knuckles (albeit an entirely different last third of the game), and so on.

Still, I find it hard to entertain the idea that either were an insignificant upgrade compared to their predecessors, when set against the jump between the first two games. I'd like to see what other people think, just in case your idea is totally correct and I'm a lone wacko out in the distance.

The NSMB series seems to take it to much worse extremes, though. Games literally have the same order and almost the exact same appearance of levels between iterations. Setting aside Sonic CD as a curiosity, that's not something that happens in the main trilogy.

 

You seem to have taken a weird amount of offense to what I said.

 

Yeah basically this. Particularly the way they made all the acts flow together cohesively and different paths for Knuckles - imo that did more for the series than the spin dash ever did. If I handed Sonic 2 without a manual to someone who had only played Sonic 1 ever and didn't know the spindash existed (the button input isn't exactly obvious) I could probably watch them play the entire game without the spindash. meanwhile Sonic 3K's differences are immediately apparent.

It has more of a niche status because of its split game, market saturated thing. Even now, people who aren't more than casually into retro gaming think that Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles are two games with a weird link function, and not two halves of a single game.

 

Anybody with fast fingers was already able to visit all the alternate routes before S&K's release, though. =P