You never forget your first time, right.
Since it is the 20th anniversary and all and some of us are old enough to remember when the first Sonic came out, it's time to listen to us old people reminscece about the good old days while you youngsters nod and roll your eyes hoping we'll tire out and fall asleep. lol
Ah yes, 1991. I was 10 years old. We didn't have any internet to show us new games years in advance. The movie The Wizard showing off the first footage of SMB3 was the closest thing to an E3 show. A lot of my most beloved series I played their firsts as my first. Mario (if we're counting SMB not arcade DK as his first), Zelda, Starfox, and yes Sonic.
Like so many Gen Yers I grew up with an NES and played the hell out of Mario, Zelda and Bubble Bobble (please tell me I'm not the only one who remembers that game). And I was a Mario fanatic. My dad wouldn't let me get a new Mario game until the previous one was beaten. Had to beat SMB3 before I could get Dr. Mario the spinoff puzzle game. Had Mario toys, posters, books, watched that crappy cartoon. You name it. Remember thinking how SMB3 was hard as hell and having to buy the strategy guide to find all the stuff in all 8 worlds. I knew Mario and I had a beautiful and wonderful friendship.
And then one day I saw this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an8OHLDNHRg
Not so much the dig at Mario though I was like WTF but the whole running upside down through a loop thing and I remember going to a department store and watching a video and playing a demo (getting all the way to Marble Zone before my mom drug me away) and wanting to play it so bad and hating that I didn't own a Genesis (or SNES).
And then I made friends with a boy in my neighborhood named Matt. We didn't go to the same school because he was sent to the private Catholic school but he did have a Genesis with Sonic and I would go over there and play for hours. Back in those days when you died, if you had no continues or turned off the game, you had to go back to start. None of this fancy pants auto save crap. You kids are all too soft. Though I found it funny in the retrospective the devs talked about not having the ability to save progress in games at the time (Legend of Zelda on the NES says "hi") For some reason Sonic didn't pick up on this until #3.
I remember though being able to breeze through the first 3 zone like nothing. Sonic is great but the game wasn't exactly hard. I struggled more with SMB3 but then I hit this....
Yeah after breezing through 3 fun stages I get tossed into water, can't swim and suddenly that awful countdown music sending me into a panic. I was stuck on this level for a long time, grinding up lives in the first three worlds so I could finish this area. This is probably why Starlight Zone is so loved. It feels like a cake walk after slogging through the Labyrinth and it's music is so lovely.
Then you get to Scrapbrain and it gets tough again but then it's the last world, it needs to be. You can't blast through Scrap brain the first time through. Too much stuff is out to get you.
And then just when gamers thought they saw the end of the horrid Labyrinth zone, Sega threw this in. Scrap Brain act 3. Now with slower bubbles.
Noooooo!! Not more water and drowning. Gotta find bubbles. Gotta find bubbles!! Aaaaaaaahhhh!!!! But somehow I reached the final fight with Robotnick.
...and I was on my last life and no more continues. But that was when I learned about the nice little cheat you do at the beginning to get the stage select. At the title screen, press: Up down down down left right . You should hear a Ring chime. Now hold down A and press START.
So I went back to the final battle and then realized how easy Eggman's first battle is because you can stand on the far right and be just fine as long as you know when to dodge the electric balls. Sonic 2 did have the more epic fight. But it would be a long time before I got all the Chaos Emeralds.
Ok I think I went into enough detail there for one day, anyone want to share their earliest Sonic memory.?
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