Having fond memories of the original Sonic the Hedgehog on the Mega Drive, all those years ago, I was pleased when a new Sonic game was released for the PS2 last year. Upon learning of it, I got out my walker and hobbled down to the mall, but when I got to the game store I was shocked by what I saw. The driving games were all about illegal street races instead of Formula1 racing, the kids were all excited about a new game where the object was to have sex with prostitutes and kill them afterward, there wasn't a point and click adventure game to be seen and there was more shelf space devoted to anime box sets than to PC games. I complained about all this to the salesgirl but she didn't seem interested. “Why aren't I being served by a man?” I asked, “Back in my day, we would have been too scared to go into the games shop if we saw a girl in there, but now they actually employ women here!” After I made a complaint to the manager I was out of there and back home to enjoy my new game, Sonic Heroes.
And what a big load of crap it was. Maybe it's just my cataracts and arthritis, but the controls were almost impossible to use properly, a very bad flaw considering that the level design is based on a 'small island surrounded by a bottomless pit' philosophy. Even if you battle with it long enough to get half-way competent and progress through a few levels, you will be subjected to an inane annoying plot derived from the dire anime spin-off tv series. The story of the original Sonic was along the lines of 'you're a blue hedgehog and you have to beat the crap out of some poor ginga bastard in a flying machine'. That was all the plot we got and that was all we needed, back in the old days! Nowadays Sonic has an evil twin and a pink girlfriend hedgehog. After honestly trying to appreciate the damn thing, I wrote it off as a waste of $120 and chucked it in the corner, muttering “The kids today and the rap music...”
Fortunately, this year they released the Sonic Mega Collection Plus, all the original Mega Drive and Master System Sonic games ported to the PS2. Absolutely no changes have been made to them, right down to preserving the bugs and slowdowns. They have however added a save/load option, which is good for those of us without the time to return to the competence levels of our 12-hour gaming binge early teenage years. For some reason the saves and loads take an especially long time, but that's the only flaw in an otherwise nicely put together package.
As for the games themselves, they're all just as good as I remember. (Except for Sonic3d Blast, which I never played the first time around deservedly and is almost as big a load of rubbish as Sonic Heroes.) I had a brief go at the Master System games, but looking at the primitive graphics felt like poking needles in my eyes compared to the lush goodness of the Mega Drive's 16bit power. Now I can finally sit back and enjoy my senescence without being exposed to the scary outside world and the disrespectful youth.
1 comment:
Sonic 1 from the Master System is a classic. Though admittedly it must look like shit now.
12 hour games binges indeed, as well as the pause button located on the machine not the controler. Ah sweet nostalgia.
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