SONIC THE HEDGEHOG
SONIC TEAM 1991
MEGA DRIVE / GENESIS
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Sega were achieving at selling their newly released Mega Drive especially in the US. Sega at this time still had no mascot to represent them. Sega needed something that meant to them as much as that fat Italian plumber meant to Nintendo. The project to create a mascot had been assigned to programmer Yuji Naka and character designer Naoto Ohshima and concluded with Sonic the Hedgehog - a blue spiky hero capable of extreme speeds - a characterisation of the Sega brand and logo. It was now time to put the newly created mascot into a game. Sonic would provide gamers with the fastest, most colourful action packed gameplay that had never been seen before. Sega hoped that their mascot featuring in a great game would sell loads and begin to solidify the Sega brand. Sonic did just that. The end result - a revolutionary 2D platformer of the highest calibre. Sonic the Hedgehog brought with it a new experience to the 2D platformer better than anything else existing and would start a legacy that would continue for the next 10 years and beyond. On June 23, 1991 Sonic The Hedgehog was released. The game marked explosive popularity both in Japan and the rest of the world, selling a record breaking 4 Million copies. |
South Island floats across the Earth. It is a idyllic setting of ancient ruins and wildlife with ultimate power stored inside the Chaos Emeralds existing in a tear in space created by the motion of the island. There are 6 Chaos Emeralds giving energy to all living things.
Dr Ivo Robotnik - an evil genius has learned of the power of these fabled gems. He sees the potential to expand his empire with the power from the Chaos Emeralds. Robotnik sets up a base on the island and begins to capture the inhabitants. Using his robotic technology he turns them into work drones.
Sonic heads for the island only to find that everything is against him; the landscape and now the inhabitants. He must locate the Chaos Emeralds, defeat Robotnik and restore his pals. The adventure begins.....
The gameplay to Sonic is really very simple. Move from the start of a level to the end in a general left to right direction. Each level in Sonic is called an act.
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Pressing the D-pad left or right makes Sonic move left or right. The longer you hold one of these directions the faster he will run, to a limit. |
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When Sonic is standing still press and hold up or down will make Sonic crouch or look up into the air. The crouch move is particularly used for evading enemies and obstacles. Holding any of these positions for a few seconds will make the screen scroll in that direction slightly for a small amount of preview. |
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By pressing down on the D-pad whilst running makes Sonic roll. |
This is called the Sonic Spin Attack and is used for destroying enemies, smashing through walls and general progress through each level. Sonic can reach some great speeds with the Spin Attack around loops, down large slopes and through tunnels.
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Wall Smashing |
Tunnel Rolling |
 Jump Attack |
Buttons AB and C on the control pad are jump. Tapping a button gives you a small leap while a stronger press will give your approx. double the height. |
Littered throughout each level are rings to be collected. These have 3 purposes; they are traded in at the end of each level for points, gain access to the Special Stage with 50 or more and protect Sonic from a hit. In addition to rings there are Special Items to be collected. These are in the form of monitors that are broken by either jump or Spin Attack to collect with the following rewards.
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gives 10 rings |
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makes Sonic invincible for a short period. You can still die though by being crushed, drowned or by falling off the screen. |
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gives a speed boost for a short amount of time |
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gives Sonic a personal shield. Protects him from 1 hit. |
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Extra Life |
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lampposts act as restart markers. Simply run past them to turn them from blue to red to activate them. |
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a scattering of rings |
death |
Each stage is populated with obstacles and enemies. Obstacles include moving platforms, breaking bridges, bottomless drops, spikes and lava flows to name but a few. The enemies are robots created from your once fluffy animal kingdom pals. Enemies can be defeated by either jumping on them or using the Sonic Spin Attack - rolling at them. Some enemies have spikes on them meaning that jumping on them will make Sonic take a hit.
When Sonic takes a hit he will loose all of his rings.
Your collection will litter across the screen for a few seconds for you to recollect before disappearing. If you are hit carrying no rings then you die. You have a time limit of 10 minutes to complete each level. At 9:59 you will receive a Time Out and loose a life.
You begin the game with 3 lives. When you run out of lives the Game Over rolls onto the screen. After that you can continue if you have any credits ( continues earned in the Special Stage ) from the first level of the zone which you are on.
The end of an act is marked with a Robotnik sign. Run past this to make it spin to stop on a picture of Sonic.
If you have 50 rings or more a giant ring will circle just above the sign. Leap into this to be transported to the Special Stage. Around the sign these are some additional points to be collected. Hidden are 3 x 100 Points, 1 x 500 points, 1 x 1000 points and 1 x 10,000 points. By jumping around Sonic will touch these and they will appear on screen. You only have a few seconds to collect the bonuses before Sonic runs off the screen.
When an act is completed you are rewarded with a Time and Ring Bonus. The size of the Time Bonus is derived by the quicker you complete the level the more points you get. The best is 50,000 points which is earned whenever a level is completed in less than 30 seconds. Ring Bonus is your rings traded in for 100 points each. An extra life is earned for every 50,000 points.
Each Zone consists of 3 acts with a confrontation with Dr Robotnik taking place at the end of Act 3. Robotnik and his contraption are usually destroyed within 8 hits. After Robotnik is defeated you must destroy a capsule releasing all of the wildlife in the area that has been captured by Robotnik. There is also no access to the Special Stages in Act 3. There are 6 s and a Final boss in the game.
ZONES |
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Green Hill Zone |
Marble Zone |
Spring Yard Zone |
Labyrinth Zone |
Starlight Zone |
Scrap Brain Zone |
Final Zone |
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Click on a name for more info |
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The Special Stage has two purposes; collecting rings for continues and extra lives and more importantly where the Chaos Emeralds are located. There are 6 Chaos Emeralds in total.
The Special Stage is a 360o rotating psychedelic maze. Sonic ricochets of the sides. There are various types of blocks:
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Rotate the maze in the opposite direction. |
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Roates the maze faster. |
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Roates the maze slower. |
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Bounce off these |
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These are static and have no function. Can be useful to jump off. |
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These surround the Choas Emeralds. A few hits from Sonic will make them dissappear. |
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Touch these to exit. |
To collect a Chaos Emerald you must make your way to the centre of the maze. The Chaos Emerald is surrounded by weaker diamonds that will disappear from a few hits from Sonic. Simply touch the Emerald to collect it and exit from the Special Stage where you receive a ring bonus. Every 50 rings earns you a continue.
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Special Stage |
Special Stage |
The outcome of the game differs slightly depending on whether you have collected all of the Chaos Emeralds or not. The perfectionists will want all of them.
When you first switch on your Mega Drive you are greeted with the ‘singing’ Sega logo, to be moved on to the ‘Sonic Team Presents’ screen and then Sonic appears in the middle of the screen waving his finger at you just know that a cool game awaits.
The simplicity of the gameplay does in now way take anything away from the game. Moving from left to right jumping on enemies sound boring but is not. Each act is fairly large and there are loads of secret little passages to find. The responsiveness of Sonic is very good also. Some obstacles in the level require you to perform a little action whether it be pushing blocks, smashing through walls or stocking up on air. These add an amount of depth to the simple gameplay by .
Sonic is moderately challenging. Some of the later levels like Labyrinth Zone and Scrap Brain Zone will definatly have you losing your rings on a fair few occasions. completing the game will not take that long to accomplish just whizzing through the levels, however, completing the game with all of the Chaos Emeralds will take longer. You will have to learn a few things about each act so that you can plan your route so that you will be able to keep your rings so that you can actually get into the special stage. Then there is the special stages themselves which will take a few attempts each as because they are essentially a maze you’ll need to find your way around without touching the goal. These points give the game quite a an amount of replay value.
The graphics in the game are of good quality. If you remember what the early Mega Drive games were like then you can see why Sonic’s graphics were able to impress. The bright colours and the detail of the sprites and animation are very good and everything scrolls fluently and solidly. The layers of parallax scrolling create a nice depth to the graphics. The Star Light Zone is a great example.
The music and sound fx in this game are excellent. The background tunes are catchy and go seemingly well with the environment of the on which they are playing. The sound fx are what have now become known as standard Sonic sound effects. The sound of collecting a ring, cracking open a monitor, Sonic jumping, Sonic spinning, they are all great sound fx that are still used in some Sonic games even today like Sonic Adventure. All sound and music are crystal clear samples.
Overall Sonic the Hedgehog is still an excellent blast today. There still remains very few platformers that have yet reached such a high standard despite the technological advances of games consoles. Game companies should take note of games like Sonic and perhaps some of the modern games maybe as good. It is easy to see why so many people went nuts about this game and why it is so much better than Mario. It had everything, great game, great graphics, great sound, great speed and a great character - Sonic the Hedgehog.
Level Select
On the title screen press up, down, left, right and you will hear a ring sound. Hold down A
and press Start for a level select and sound test.
Control Mode
At the title screen, press Up, C, Down, C, Left, C, Right. While playing, you can pause the game and use A to restart, B for slow motion, and C for frame advance.
Debug Mode
Enable Control Mode. After pressing Start to begin a game, hold A until you see Sonic. If you see a bunch of hex numbers on the top of the screen, you're in Debug Mode. To start debugging, press B, then you can select any sprite in that level and put it on the screen. To select a different sprite, press A, and to place it on the screen, press C. Note that sprite selection is different from Zone to Zone. Also, instead of displaying the time elapsed, it displays the number of sprites currently on the screen. Control Mode functions work as well.
Chaos Emeralds
Enter the level select cheat and play the Special Stage. Upon collection of a Chaos Emerald and the start of Green Hill Zone press the reset button. Repeat the process until all emeralds have been collected. You will also get loads of continues.
Marble Zone Shortcut
At the start of Act 3 you will run down a steep hill. At the bottom of this hill you will have two blocks moving up and down in the lava. The one next to the hill will lower enough for you to go underneath it. Do this and you can cut about 50% of the level out.
Scrap Brain Zone Shortcut
When you fall through the ceiling and the large chunk of building starts to slide down, move in front of this and go down the slope. This route cuts out about 70% of the level.
Click here to download the soundtrack to the game.
In 2006 Sega released a port of this game for the Gameboy Advance. You can see more details and a video on the Sonic Genesis Page.
Sonic The Hedgehog has been recently released on Xbox Live Arcade. For more information check out the Xbox Live Page.
