Sonic The Hedgehog Master System Review

All the way back in July, I made a blog entry about buying a copy of Sonic The Hedgehog for the Master System off of eBay, wherein I promised to review the game upon it's arrival. Somehow, it slipped my mind, and I'm just now getting to it. So, here goes. Sonic on the Master System.

To talk about the Master System Sonic, I have to compare it to its 16-bit older brother. The biggest comparison I can make (aside from the graphical downgrade) is that the Master System Sonic is more of a traditional platformer than the Genesis version. Yeah, I just said that Sonic isn't a traditional platformer. Sure, it's a defining series in the genre, but it has less emphasis on platforming as it does on "GOTTA GO FAST! FASTER! FASTER! GET THE RINGS! OH CRAP, I HIT SPIKES AND I'M DEAD." That's pretty much the Sonic experience. I'm glossing over the fact that the levels are, for the most part, very well designed around the premise of going fast as hell.

Yeah, except for that one. There are a few levels, such as the infamous Marble Zone (for some reason, it's usually the second set of levels in the game), that grind the games to a screeching halt and make you do some, in my opinion, very tedious platforming in a game that should be about GOING FAST! GOTTA GO FAST LIKE A BLUE COKED UP SPEEDY GONZALES!



I'd like to point out that I really do like the original Sonic games. I just see the flaws in them as well.

That long diatribe had a point. Sonic on the Master System is less about speed, and more about traditional platforming. There's still an element of speed in the game, but the game is less brute force speed and more precision. If you play this like the Genesis Sonic, you're probably not going to do as well as you would if you were playing it with Mario in mind, at least a little bit.

The game's also, surprisingly, not a direct backwards port of the Genesis version, which is a plus. Not because I dislike the Genesis version - in fact, the Genesis version of the original Sonic is one of my favorite games of the 16-bit era. I like this because the Master System version is actually its own game. It has some stages in common with the Genesis version - Green Hill Zone, Labyrinth Zone and Scrap Brain Zone. But it has three original stages as well, Bridge Zone, Jungle Zone and Sky Base Zone.

It's also worth noting that the Green Hill Zone is quite a bit different from the one in its Genesis counterpart in terms of level design.

It's one of the best Sonic games I've ever played, and the first truly great game I've stumbled across for the Master System. Check it out.

If you want to buy your own copy of this game: It's also available on the Wii Virtual Console. I'm not sure if that's the Master System or Game Gear version, but the Game Gear version is apparently more or less the same game with only a few differences. The Game Gear version seems to go for a very low price, and it's probably one of the more common games on the Game Gear. I certainly lucked out getting my complete in box copy for $13 including shipping from England, and it's unlikely that you'd get one for as cheap as that. According to Pricecharting.com the market value is $15 for a loose copy. That's probably not counting international shipping. Occasionally, some idiot buys one for a few hundred, because of the rarity of the American release of the game, but it's not worth nearly that much.

I also want to bring some attention to the game's stellar soundtrack. The Master System wasn't known for it's sound processor to say the least, but they really made the best of it for this game. Here's the theme to the Bridge Zone. It was apparently later sampled by a Janet Jackson song (for some reason) and as Tails's theme in Sonic Adventure. It really is a great piece of 8-bit music.

-update!-

A friend of mine commented on Facebook about the platforming elements being prominent in the original games. I think I might have gone through my opinion on the original games a bit too quickly without really putting a shred of thought into it, which I do sometimes when I'm trying to get something out of the way quickly, which is absolutely what I was doing. I figure I might as well elaborate on what I should have said. To do that, I'm just going to copy and paste most of the response I gave to him, because what I said there is a lot closer to my actual opinion instead of "GOTTA WRITE FAST! GOTTA GET IT DONE SO I CAN TALK ABOUT WHAT I WANTED TO TALK ABOUT! I'M THE SONIC THE HEDGEHOG OF WRITING!"

"In the Green Hill Zone, it's all about speed. Marble Hill Zone is one of the more tedious and slow moving bits of platforming I've seen in a game, and those levels being back to back is really jarring. I just didn't want to spend too much time critiquing the original game. My point was that the Master System Sonic focuses a lot less on speed than the first Sonic game, which was at the time of it's release, the only other Sonic game out there. I also honestly prefer the Master System version, as much as I love the original on the Genesis. Even though I hate Marble Zone with a passion."

Also, to an extent, the Master System Sonic sort of makes the original Genesis Sonic feel a lot more like that entire blue Speedy Gonzales on coke thing I described by comparison.