Sonic 2 is a very solid platformer, although the gameplay gets stagnant during the final stages.
User Rating: 8.3 | Sonic the Hedgehog 2 GEN
I think a lot of people first played Sonic 2 when they originally purchased their Genesis. It was one of those console launch pank in games, and it was a great way to promote the system, the cool company mascot in a game that showed off just how capable the Genesis was. And in a lot of ways, Sonic 2 was groundbreaking. The sense of speed the game accomplished was incredible at the time, but aside from that, it was really very average. The story in Sonic 2 is pretty simple: you're Sonic, the lightning fast blue hedgehog, and along with your new buddy Tails, you attempt to foil the evil Dr. Robotnik (this was way before SEGA decided to always call him the ridiculous "Eggman"). As with most 16 bit platformers, there wasn't a story, which was fine. You would traverse various stages and collect golden rings. If you collected 100, you get an extra life. When you get hit by an enemy, all your rings fly out, and you must scamper around and get them back. If you run out of rings and get hit, you would die. This is a pretty interesting way of regulating health, and it's certainly better than the generic "get hit 3 times and die". Each stage was filled with colis you could jump on, loops you could run through, and power boxes that, when smashed, would give you some kind of power up (invisibilty, super speed, 10 rings). And that's pretty much what every stage, except for the casino stage, consisted of. You could tear through most stages in a couple minutes, that is, if you didn't care about rings, or the bonus stages, which were pretty boring (run around in a psuedo 3D tunnel and collect rings). At the end of every stage, you would fight some form of Dr. Robotnik. These boss battles were pretty easy, and would almost always be won by either jumping on his exposed head of under his exposed "belly". He would always be in some kind of machine, that would shoot stuff out at you in a predictable patern. Again, more of the same. As far as the looks go, Sonic 2 was certainly ahead of its time. The framerate never lagged, and that's impressive, considering how many rings could fly out of Sonic at any given time. The sound was also pretty decent, with your standard Sonic style heavy metal soundtrack. Sonic 2 holds a special place in the hearts of many old school gamers, which is fine with me. But I felt like the great core gameplay just repeated itself too much. A little variety, which was later seen in Sonic 3 and especially Sonic and Knuckles, would have helped this game alot. But as it is, Sonic 2 is still a very solid platform game. Pick it up, along with every other 16 bit Sonic game known to man, if you see Sonic Mega Collection Plus at your local game store.
