This is the third piece in Mama Robotnik's Sega Obscura ResetEra Series:
Sega Obscura 1 - The Sega Saturn was the best console EVER for…
Sega Obscura 2 - Sonic 1 (8-bit) is a better game than Sonic 1 (16-bit)
Sega Obscura 3 - The first "Sonic the Hedgehog 2" released hates Sonic, and hates us all
Sega Obscura 4 - The Eleven SEGA "Zeldas"
Sega Obscura 5 - The extraordinary Sega game that played the player
Sega Obscura 6 - The ambitious Sonic game from 2009 that you will never, ever get to play
Sega Obscura 7 - When Sega took on Zelda, they really went for the jugular
Sega Obscura 8 - The most consistent sequence of fuckups in the entirety of the history of video games
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last week, we explored Sonic 1 (8-bit), a capable and consistent platformer which some enjoyed more than the 16-bit Mega Drive/Genesis release. That gem of a game helped introduce famous Sonic tropes while taking the player on a great journey up the factory-mountains of South Island. It was exhilarating, challenging, but for the most part, it was also a very fair game.
It was assumed that the sequel would build on this winning formula.
This didn't happen. From its inception, Sonic 2 8-bit was not going to play by the rules.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 came out for the Sega Master System on the 16th October 1992 - over a month before its more popular 16-bit counterpart. The Master System Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was the first Sonic the Hedgehog 2 released.
Switch it on, and something becomes immediately apparent: this game was here to fuck your shit up. This game hates you, nearly as much as it hates the other Sonic games. This game is here to hurt you.
You ask Sonic 2 (8-bit) for Emerald Hill Zone? FUCK YOU HERE IS LAVA.
You ask Sonic 2 (8-bit) for Casino Night Zone? FUCK YOU HERE IS A SPIKEY WATER NIGHTMARE ZONE WITH NO AIR
You ask Sonic 2 (8-bit) for Tails? FUCK YOU TAILS IS DEAD
The game is remarkable in its complete disregard for Sonic tropes. Progression is baffling, difficulty is all over the place, and the story developments are genuinely surprising.
Here are some highlights:
Starting Surprise
This image shows the opening levels for 2D Sonics. Lush green paradise playgrounds. That is how the games always begin.
Spot the odd one out:
Sonic 2 (8-bit) starts – for no established reason – in a hellish abyss. Fiery masses are ejected from pools of lava. Rocky spikes smash down onto broken metal rails. Volcanoes surround the area. It's an evil place. The diabolical game starts as it means to continue.
Spikes Spikes Spikes
Sonic games – for the most part – use spikes sparingly. They generally prefer the bottomless pit as their death trap of choice.
Not Sonic 2 (8-bit)
Spikes on the ceiling. Spikes on the walls. Fields of spikes. Falling spikes. Valleys of spikes. Water spikes. One way pipes straight into spikes.
And the game's absolutely favourite: Spikes at the end of blind jumps.
When you hit the spikes, your rings can save you, but only momentarily. Sonic 2 (8-bit) only ever gives you a single ring back no matter how many you were carrying, and it vanishes in moments. This is not sufficient to survive the spikes that await you.
Deranged Difficulty
Sonic 2 (8-bit) is often a very difficult game. But sometimes, quite inexplicably, it isn't. The difficulty level is all over the place. Sky High Act 1 is easy – Sky High Act 2 is a nightmare. Aqua Lake 2 is horrendous, while Aqua Lake 3 is the easiest boss in the game. The second zone is one of the hardest, while the final zone is one of the easiest.
Nothing better illustrates this deranged design more than the first boss, in particular on the Game Gear release.
While the Master System iteration of the game has a challenging boss battle which involves Sonic jumping over insta-killing bouncing balls of metal, the Game Gear takes this to a point of lunacy: the bouncing balls now bounce in a random way, making the battle completely unpredictable. This, combined with the Game Gear's restricted boss-arena, mean that beating the boss is not about skill, but luck. You either get very lucky and survive, or the game kills you. Consequently, this first-boss is probably the hardest Sonic boss of all time.
Puzzling Progression
Sonic games start in the Green Hills, and generally take us through ancient ruins, bouncy casinos, and speedway industries until we reach the end – a metal colossus.
Sonic 2 8-bit has contempt for this.
We go from lava fields to stormy cliffs. We then go from sunken ruins to Green Hill(s), which is – of course – a spiky horror:
We then end up in a mountain of spinning discs, before reaching…
The Scrambled Egg zone
What is it? Some sort of abstract purple rocky structure with a starlight background, held together with neon tubes. But if you complete this bizarre realm with all six Chaos Emeralds, there is a final surprise in store.
This image shows the final zones for 2D Sonics. Metal monstrosities. That is how the games always end.
Spot the odd one out:
Sonic 2 (8-bit) ends with a beautiful crystal palace – the Crystal Egg. Within this realm, rings and 1ups are plentiful. Flying fish offer minimal resistance. The music twinkles. The final zone is completely perplexing.
Maybe it is symbolic? Sonic begins his journey in a hellscape, perhaps he ends it in heaven?
Doctor Death
Doctor Ivo Robotnik isn't a complicated man. He builds robot armies, attacks Sonic with wacky boss contraptions, and retires after a big climactic final boss. He can be seen laughing at his successes and having tantrums over his failures.
But in Sonic 2 (8-bit), something has got into the dastardly doctor.
His plan was to construct a peaceful crystal palace, which we see is adorned with crystal blocks of his own likeness. To construct this otherworldly realm, he appears to have torn apart the dimensions, resulting in the warped reality that is the Scrambled Egg. Silver Sonic – bestowed a single Chaos Emerald – appears to be the foreman of this operation.
At the end of Zone 1, Sonic is plummeting into a lava abyss, in which only certain death awaited…
Doctor Robotnik comes to his aid, saving the life of his nemesis. An unprecedented moment, in all of Sonic history.
But while the Doctor is capable of good, he is all the more capable of bad. The first boss does not challenge Sonic sufficiently, so Robotnik targets it with a propeller mechanism, punishing the metal creature by slicing it to pieces.
But the real moment of surprise is at the end. The "bad" ending is given if the player does not find all six Chaos Emeralds. They are so fiendishly hidden, in such unfair places - through false walls, in clouds so high as to be nearly off-screen, that most gamers would only see this "bad" ending.
Doctor Robotnik murders Tails. Sonic never finds the Crystal Egg, and the bored tyrant kills the child fox. Sonic stares into the stars, despondent over the death of his friend.
Maddening Mysteries
There is so much more about the game that puzzles.
Do you remember the Power Sneakers/Fast Shoes item? A series staple, Sonic grabs them for a period of boosted speed. In Sonic 2 8-bit, they exist in only one place in the game, in the depths of Aqua Lake Act 2, a level entirely made of water:
The level doesn't really let you use them – it is as if the game wishes to spite you. (They are absent from the Game Gear version entirely)
As the game is difficult with no save function, the player would need continues. There is a mechanic for these in which the completion signpost at the end of each level has a chance of appearing as a Tails icon, awarding the continue. It took the internet years to figure out how to trigger this – you have to finish a level with exactly 77 rings while not losing a single life. These continues – which were really required – were hidden behind an incredibly abstract mechanic.
All Act 3's – which are often a spike-filled trauma – have no rings. The levels are unfair instant death. The boss is instant death. There are no checkpoints, so if you die, you go right back to the start. Because FUCK YOU.
Exit stage left? Exit signposts underwater? It only happens here.
No shields because, also, FUCK YOU.
There are level gimmicks, such as a minecart (which will blind-drop you into lava), a hand-glider (extremely difficult to control, and getting it wrong drops you into a valley of spikes), weird spinning discs (if you come off at the wrong trajectory, meet the wall of spikes) and tubes (which holding down the wrong direction will take you straight into… well, you can probably work it out).
Brilliant ResetERA user Krejlooc raises more weirdness in the other thread:
Secret Birds
The Tails Abduction Zone was Originally a Level
The Mysterious Obscured Power Up
THE SONIC THAT HATES SONIC
Sonic 2 8-bit hates you. It hates Sonic. It hates Tails, and even kills the fucker.
A lot of madness has befallen the franchise, from Sonic 2006 to Shadow the Hedgehog and his machine gun. But nothing quite reached the plateau of the first release of Sonic the Hedgehog 2. To this day, I can't understand the logic or reasoning behind most of its design decisions.
Strangely though, despite all of the above, it manages to be a pretty good game. It shouldn't be, but it is. Regardless, no one could hate it - at least, not as much as it hates itself.
Sega Obscura 1 - The Sega Saturn was the best console EVER for…
Sega Obscura 2 - Sonic 1 (8-bit) is a better game than Sonic 1 (16-bit)
Sega Obscura 3 - The first "Sonic the Hedgehog 2" released hates Sonic, and hates us all
Sega Obscura 4 - The Eleven SEGA "Zeldas"
Sega Obscura 5 - The extraordinary Sega game that played the player
Sega Obscura 6 - The ambitious Sonic game from 2009 that you will never, ever get to play
Sega Obscura 7 - When Sega took on Zelda, they really went for the jugular
Sega Obscura 8 - The most consistent sequence of fuckups in the entirety of the history of video games
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last week, we explored Sonic 1 (8-bit), a capable and consistent platformer which some enjoyed more than the 16-bit Mega Drive/Genesis release. That gem of a game helped introduce famous Sonic tropes while taking the player on a great journey up the factory-mountains of South Island. It was exhilarating, challenging, but for the most part, it was also a very fair game.
It was assumed that the sequel would build on this winning formula.
This didn't happen. From its inception, Sonic 2 8-bit was not going to play by the rules.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 came out for the Sega Master System on the 16th October 1992 - over a month before its more popular 16-bit counterpart. The Master System Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was the first Sonic the Hedgehog 2 released.
Switch it on, and something becomes immediately apparent: this game was here to fuck your shit up. This game hates you, nearly as much as it hates the other Sonic games. This game is here to hurt you.
You ask Sonic 2 (8-bit) for Emerald Hill Zone? FUCK YOU HERE IS LAVA.
You ask Sonic 2 (8-bit) for Casino Night Zone? FUCK YOU HERE IS A SPIKEY WATER NIGHTMARE ZONE WITH NO AIR
You ask Sonic 2 (8-bit) for Tails? FUCK YOU TAILS IS DEAD
The game is remarkable in its complete disregard for Sonic tropes. Progression is baffling, difficulty is all over the place, and the story developments are genuinely surprising.
Here are some highlights:
Starting Surprise
This image shows the opening levels for 2D Sonics. Lush green paradise playgrounds. That is how the games always begin.
Spot the odd one out:
Sonic 2 (8-bit) starts – for no established reason – in a hellish abyss. Fiery masses are ejected from pools of lava. Rocky spikes smash down onto broken metal rails. Volcanoes surround the area. It's an evil place. The diabolical game starts as it means to continue.
Spikes Spikes Spikes
Sonic games – for the most part – use spikes sparingly. They generally prefer the bottomless pit as their death trap of choice.
Not Sonic 2 (8-bit)
Spikes on the ceiling. Spikes on the walls. Fields of spikes. Falling spikes. Valleys of spikes. Water spikes. One way pipes straight into spikes.
And the game's absolutely favourite: Spikes at the end of blind jumps.
When you hit the spikes, your rings can save you, but only momentarily. Sonic 2 (8-bit) only ever gives you a single ring back no matter how many you were carrying, and it vanishes in moments. This is not sufficient to survive the spikes that await you.
Deranged Difficulty
Sonic 2 (8-bit) is often a very difficult game. But sometimes, quite inexplicably, it isn't. The difficulty level is all over the place. Sky High Act 1 is easy – Sky High Act 2 is a nightmare. Aqua Lake 2 is horrendous, while Aqua Lake 3 is the easiest boss in the game. The second zone is one of the hardest, while the final zone is one of the easiest.
Nothing better illustrates this deranged design more than the first boss, in particular on the Game Gear release.
While the Master System iteration of the game has a challenging boss battle which involves Sonic jumping over insta-killing bouncing balls of metal, the Game Gear takes this to a point of lunacy: the bouncing balls now bounce in a random way, making the battle completely unpredictable. This, combined with the Game Gear's restricted boss-arena, mean that beating the boss is not about skill, but luck. You either get very lucky and survive, or the game kills you. Consequently, this first-boss is probably the hardest Sonic boss of all time.
Puzzling Progression
Sonic games start in the Green Hills, and generally take us through ancient ruins, bouncy casinos, and speedway industries until we reach the end – a metal colossus.
Sonic 2 8-bit has contempt for this.
We go from lava fields to stormy cliffs. We then go from sunken ruins to Green Hill(s), which is – of course – a spiky horror:
We then end up in a mountain of spinning discs, before reaching…
The Scrambled Egg zone
What is it? Some sort of abstract purple rocky structure with a starlight background, held together with neon tubes. But if you complete this bizarre realm with all six Chaos Emeralds, there is a final surprise in store.
This image shows the final zones for 2D Sonics. Metal monstrosities. That is how the games always end.
Spot the odd one out:
Sonic 2 (8-bit) ends with a beautiful crystal palace – the Crystal Egg. Within this realm, rings and 1ups are plentiful. Flying fish offer minimal resistance. The music twinkles. The final zone is completely perplexing.
Maybe it is symbolic? Sonic begins his journey in a hellscape, perhaps he ends it in heaven?
Doctor Death
Doctor Ivo Robotnik isn't a complicated man. He builds robot armies, attacks Sonic with wacky boss contraptions, and retires after a big climactic final boss. He can be seen laughing at his successes and having tantrums over his failures.
But in Sonic 2 (8-bit), something has got into the dastardly doctor.
His plan was to construct a peaceful crystal palace, which we see is adorned with crystal blocks of his own likeness. To construct this otherworldly realm, he appears to have torn apart the dimensions, resulting in the warped reality that is the Scrambled Egg. Silver Sonic – bestowed a single Chaos Emerald – appears to be the foreman of this operation.
At the end of Zone 1, Sonic is plummeting into a lava abyss, in which only certain death awaited…
Doctor Robotnik comes to his aid, saving the life of his nemesis. An unprecedented moment, in all of Sonic history.
But while the Doctor is capable of good, he is all the more capable of bad. The first boss does not challenge Sonic sufficiently, so Robotnik targets it with a propeller mechanism, punishing the metal creature by slicing it to pieces.
But the real moment of surprise is at the end. The "bad" ending is given if the player does not find all six Chaos Emeralds. They are so fiendishly hidden, in such unfair places - through false walls, in clouds so high as to be nearly off-screen, that most gamers would only see this "bad" ending.
Doctor Robotnik murders Tails. Sonic never finds the Crystal Egg, and the bored tyrant kills the child fox. Sonic stares into the stars, despondent over the death of his friend.
Maddening Mysteries
There is so much more about the game that puzzles.
Do you remember the Power Sneakers/Fast Shoes item? A series staple, Sonic grabs them for a period of boosted speed. In Sonic 2 8-bit, they exist in only one place in the game, in the depths of Aqua Lake Act 2, a level entirely made of water:
The level doesn't really let you use them – it is as if the game wishes to spite you. (They are absent from the Game Gear version entirely)
As the game is difficult with no save function, the player would need continues. There is a mechanic for these in which the completion signpost at the end of each level has a chance of appearing as a Tails icon, awarding the continue. It took the internet years to figure out how to trigger this – you have to finish a level with exactly 77 rings while not losing a single life. These continues – which were really required – were hidden behind an incredibly abstract mechanic.
All Act 3's – which are often a spike-filled trauma – have no rings. The levels are unfair instant death. The boss is instant death. There are no checkpoints, so if you die, you go right back to the start. Because FUCK YOU.
Exit stage left? Exit signposts underwater? It only happens here.
No shields because, also, FUCK YOU.
There are level gimmicks, such as a minecart (which will blind-drop you into lava), a hand-glider (extremely difficult to control, and getting it wrong drops you into a valley of spikes), weird spinning discs (if you come off at the wrong trajectory, meet the wall of spikes) and tubes (which holding down the wrong direction will take you straight into… well, you can probably work it out).
Brilliant ResetERA user Krejlooc raises more weirdness in the other thread:
Secret Birds
The Tails Abduction Zone was Originally a Level
The Mysterious Obscured Power Up
THE SONIC THAT HATES SONIC
Sonic 2 8-bit hates you. It hates Sonic. It hates Tails, and even kills the fucker.
A lot of madness has befallen the franchise, from Sonic 2006 to Shadow the Hedgehog and his machine gun. But nothing quite reached the plateau of the first release of Sonic the Hedgehog 2. To this day, I can't understand the logic or reasoning behind most of its design decisions.
Strangely though, despite all of the above, it manages to be a pretty good game. It shouldn't be, but it is. Regardless, no one could hate it - at least, not as much as it hates itself.
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