Mo' chaos emeralds, mo' chaos emeralds, mo' chaos emeralds
Sonic CD is a game for the Sega CD, or Mega CD depending on where you live, featuring everyone's favourite blue hedgehog. It's also the first apperance of Metal Sonic and Amy Rose, two of those Sonic side characters everyone loves to hate. At least it doesn't have Big the Cat. Tails is suspiciously absent, one has to wonder if seeing Sonic in the shower traumatised him for good.
The Sega CD is a device with some beefed up capabilities and Sonic CD certainly makes use of them. The added storage space allows for better and more varied sprite animation, more variation in scenery, as well as quality music tracks. The only drawback is the odd looping of music that occurs when a track has to restart from the CD. As was common with mid 90s games, If you put the CD in a CD player you can listen to the soundtrack separately.
There's a plot here about time travel and Amy and Metal Sonic and whatever but fuck it, I don't care about storylines in Sonic. And neither should you. If you've ever written or edited a wikipedia article on Sonic the hedgehog you're part of the problem.
The game is probably the best representation of all that's right and wrong about the Sonic formula. The sense of speed is fun, the colourful graphics are great to look at, and actually haven't dated much at all, but the problems remain: unpredictable instant death traps, and sections of frustratingly unresponsive platforming when the game's moving at slower speeds, as well as a general lack of character control.
The coolest part about Sonic CD is the tech side of things, seeing that the Sega CD was capable of in games that don't require looking at a stamp-sized FMV for hours. How did we put up with that?
Anyway Sonic CD is probably the best Sonic game out there. If anything, playing it made me wish Sega would make another console already.
