Sonic the Hedgehog

Many of you reading this review grew up with video games. You played them, you beat them, you worshipped them; they were not just a hobby, but a passion. Inside of these games were the characters themselves, working as empty vehicles to place yourself into the experience. Or better yet, these characters might have had personalities all of their own, and you got to feel like you were next to them, along for the ride. Or even better, these characters could be so fun and interesting that they’ve managed to stick around to this day. In fact, strange enough as it is to say, these characters can begin to feel like family.

If I had to pin down Sonic the Hedgehog as one family member, it would be your cool cousin. Everyone had that cousin: the one who would get into trouble when you were kids, and take you along with him; the one who wasn’t perfect but was still there when you needed him; the one you grew apart from in high school as the trouble he got into was less innocent; the one who eventually developed a fondness for crack cocaine and methamphetamines as his parents neglected his wellbeing; and the one who tried to go cold turkey and succeeded for a couple of years but now you’re not sure how he’s doing and if he’s going to be able to keep it up because his future is so uncertain.

Sonic has had an interesting life, filled with equal parts promise and disappointment. Most gamers can name at least one Sonic game they really enjoy, even if it’s been over 25 years since it was released; likewise most Sonic fans can name at least one Sonic game that was absolutely horrible. But where did the promise end and the disappointment begin? Or should we face a reality that some people have been saying for years now, which is the possibility that Sonic was never great and never showed any promise in the first place?

Starting with this first game in the series, it is both easy and difficult to understand where the latter sentiment comes from. For the truth of the matters is that Sonic’s 1991 debut on the Sega Genesis both demonstrated the brilliance that Sonic was capable of, but also shows early signs of Sonic Team’s inability to recognize and care about the flaws in their own games, preferring instead to rush them out and hope that their players’ critical eyes had not fully-developed yet. Despite Sonic the Hedgehog’s issues (and they are not small), this is still a really fun game that people today can still enjoy, and there’s even a bit of genius to the game’s design concepts.

When the player starts the game, they are greeted to the very first stage, possibly one of the greatest levels in all of 2-D video gaming: Green Hills Zone. Green Hills Zone is a lush and beautiful stage of rolling hills, waterfalls, and flowers a bloom. But underneath this attractive surface lies the secret to Sonic’s success, a design philosophy I simply refer to as ‘Reward and Punishment.’

See, head developer of Sonic, Yuji Naka, recognized a flaw in other 2-D platformers of the time. When you died in Mario, you lost a life. When you lost all of your lives, you received the game over screen and were sent back to the very beginning of the game. This meant that the player would play through the first few levels of the game over, and over, and over again. Players would get bored of these earlier levels and thus try and speed through them as quickly as possible. But of course, these levels were not designed with this play style in mind. You could only go through a Mario level so quickly due to its linearity, and players would begin to get annoyed with having to play through these earlier levels again and again. And thus, Green Hills Zone was born, a level designed to be difficult for players new to the game, but a cakewalk for those who had grown to understand its mechanics and design.

This is accomplished through two mechanisms: speed and verticality. Intrinsic to the game’s design are physics and velocity, whereby the player has to understand both in order to land their jumps properly. Every jump will feel different, as there are many elements to consider: is sonic moving when he jumped or is he stationary?; was Sonic going downhill or uphill?; was the platform moving or not?; all of these matter, unlike Mario, whose jumps all felt identical to each other. In some respects, this means Sonic has a higher learning curve than Mario just to even control him, and it makes slower platforming a more challenging endeavor. In fact, we as players are incentivized to avoid slower platforming since Sonic’s physics are less predictable than usual. When moving quickly, Sonic’s physics are more predictable. Also, little spectacles are thrown in that reward us for going fast, such as loop-de-loops and ramps that Sonic can launch off of. These are the little things that make Sonic as cool as he is, but at this stage of the series’ development, they still had to be earned. There were no speed boosts and there was no spin dash, just the player’s ability to maintain momentum. Therefore, gotta go fast!

Green Hills understands this and employs the use of verticality to the level. To simplify it: good players who understand the game’s physics and mechanics and have a general idea of the level’s structure will be able to stay on the high ground, allowing them to maintain speed and avoid most of the deadly obstacles in Sonic’s way; the worst thing that will happen is that they fall to a lower level. On the flip side, newer players who don’t quite understand how the game plays or the level’s layout will find themselves on the lower levels, subject to harsher obstacles and slower gameplay. Sure, they can try to stay on top as well, but generally they won’t be able to, as they do not quite understand the game enough. It’s sort of like a Metroid game, where the player goes through an area for the first time having to deal with all of the enemies and obstacles, but later when they get the cool power up they can waltz through that same room with ease. The difference here is that there is no magic power up that allows these levels to become a breeze: it’s the player’s learned skill that allows for it. This is quite empowering and keeps the start of the game from becoming stale. No matter how many times you are forced to play through this first stage, it is still fun. It is, quite simply, masterful design.

But of course, what goes up must come down, and in very few games does it ever come down harder than in Sonic the Hedgehog. Green Hills Zone is followed by its antithesis, Marble Zone. While Green Hills Zone emphasized skill, speed, and nonlinearity, Marble Zone forces the player to be patient and its overall design is strikingly unoriginal and linear, especially when placed immediately after Green Hills Zone. To be blunt, this was a huge mistake, one that for a lot of players cripples this game. I know too many people who have never played this game past the Marble Zone because they simply lost interest. That’s not to say that Marble is a bad stage, because it’s actually a fine example of traditional 2-D platforming, but to place it as the second stage in the game is like driving a Ferrari at 200 miles an hour only to be brought to a sudden stop by a slab of concrete. Sure, some players are able to recover and get back behind the wheel, but many others will fly right through the windshield and never care to try again.

Gone is the concept of ‘Reward and Punishment’, and in its place we have standard, slow platforming. In fact, not even just slow platforming: there are sections of Marble Zone that are literally you standing in place, jumping every ten seconds or so to avoid an obstacle. Again, it’s not bad per say, but it does not belong in this game, especially given the physics. When you need a running start to jump off of a block the size of the player, there’s a problem. And even when you become really good at the game, there isn’t a whole lot of room for improvement in this stage, as it is so linear. It makes the first level of the game feel like false advertising. The only way to get through Marble Zone quicker is to explore and find hidden pathways in the walls, but this is once again antithetical to what was taught to the player in Green Hills. Sure, there were hidden secrets in that level too, but they were easier to find and they never felt like a requirement. Here, finding these secrets feels like an expectation set upon the player by the developer.

It’s a shame that Sonic Team was foolish enough to make Marble Zone the second level, as after Marble is over, the levels pretty much pick up where Green Hills Zone left off. Spring Zone is slower and harder than Green Hills, but it resurrects the same philosophies of “Reward and Punishment’ and verticality, while Labyrinth Zone feels more like Marble Zone, but thanks to its nonlinearity, is actually an interesting and fun level to play through. But it is hard. Like, really hard. It is mostly underwater, and Sonic can run out of breath. Also, the water effects change his physics, so you have to relearn how to jump before becoming competent at completing the level, not to mention needing to know when to stop for a breath. It’s fun, but challenging.

And then there’s Star Light Zone, a ‘Hold-right-until-the-level-ends’ walk-in-the-park that, while a fun and visceral ride, should not be the second-to-last level of the game. After the pain of Labyrinth Zone, it’s almost insulting to be given Star Light Zone to devour, only to be followed up with the final zone in the game, Scrap Brain Zone, a perfect melding of speed, platforming, and exploration that also happens to be the game’s hardest level.

And this all sums up to Sonic the Hedgehog’s greatest flaw: poor pacing, both in terms of introducing varieties of gameplay and in terms of difficulty. It would have made a lot more sense to follow up Green Hills Zone with Star Light Zone, and put Marble Zone after Spring Zone. The steady increase in difficulty would have made sense, and players would have been taught the value of caution in Marble Zone right before Labyrinth Zone and Scrap Brain Zone, levels that actually require caution, rather than before Star Light Zone and Spring Zone where the lessons learned in Marble Zone were not needed. Also, with this new ordering, the slog that is Marble Zone would have been more tolerable, as somebody who has played through half of the game would be more invested in finishing it. Not to mention that Spring Yard Zone’s slightly slower pace would have helped ease players into Marble Zone (have I used the word “Zone” enough in this paragraph?).

I do want to stress again though: Marble Zone is not bad in and of itself. In fact, all of the levels are quite good, some of them really brilliant, it’s just that they’re in an order that doesn’t make sense. And while that may sound like a nitpick, it really isn’t, at least to me. Pacing is vital to ensuring that players enjoy a game from start to finish. It’s why people tend to not like hub worlds in action games (I’ll get to Sonic Adventure eventually), and why they praise driving sequences in first-person-shooters: they’re a way of breaking up the pace. Sonic the Hedgehog is shy of being a great game due to its lackluster pacing, but what it doesn’t have in quality pacing, it makes up for in heart and great individual level design. Not to mention its stellar art direction and soundtrack. Sonic the Hedgehog may not be timeless, but it’s still a really fun and challenging game that deserves to be played through from start to finish (or at least past Marble Zone.)