Like Sonic the Hedgehog’s Gameworld, this is on an educational system based on the Mega Drive called the Pico.

Tails and the Music Maker isn’t so much a game you play from start to finish, but a collection of minigames and activities. The first page features a simple platformer game, across three short levels of a Green Hill Zone that turns more blue for each level. At the top of the screen are instructions for Tails to stop, tip-toe, jump or run. Tails will have to go slow to dodge coconuts and jump to make it over gaps (although if you fall, a spring will launch you back out. Also on this page is a simple game of musical chairs, played against frogs on lily pads.

Page 2 features a pinball game, where hitting instrument icons will cause the sound. Hitting the bell at the top seems to end the game. There’s also a minigame where you have to draw circles around notes. Page 3 features an extremely slow Arkanoid clone where you bounce tails around to break blocks of music.

Page 4 features a matching game. Click on an instrument and it will play the sound of another, click on the right one and they’ll vanish. This one doesn’t work well at all as the sounds don’t sound anything like each instrument, so instead you have to learn the tune played by each instrument. You can also play along (a few notes at a time) to a few nursery rhymes.

The final page features a simple drawing studio. You can click on colours on the book and draw whatever you choose, and add Sonic and Tails from the book as well. You can also visit a music studio and listen to the sounds of each instrument (the same as the ones from the previous game that don’t sound like the instrument) or to the nursery rhymes.

As an “edutainment” title, Tails and the Music Maker seems to be completely lacking on the “educational” side of things. The Pico seems like it’s aimed at slightly older children, whereas the functions of this game – at least the music-related ones – seem similar to most light up electronic keyboard toys that you can get for kids around the age of 1-2, and provide a more tactile feedback. And those ones usually have additional functions to teach colours, numbers and shapes.

Have any of yall had a game that was like incredibly elusive but interesting? one of those games that you know of, but for one way or another, can't actually play. That was this game for me. I had heard of it decades ago on the sonic central website's game catalog (no idea why that website was so comprehensive to the point where they added pico games, but props to em), and I was intrigued just by the title and low res jpeg of the title screen alone. "Tails and the music maker"? The game kinda has that "Mario's time machine" kind of vibe where if you don't know what it is, it sounds like it could be an interesting game, but once you do more research on it, you realize its a lame edutainment game. Add that to the fact that unlike marios time machine, tails and the music maker is on the weird-ass hardware that is the sega pico, and you have an irritatingly unplayable piece of sonic history. Unlike sonic gameworld, the other sega pico title in the sonic series, tails and the music maker was focused a lot more on "education", in a way. You do a bunch of weird minigames, and the pages in the book cart are the same things as the actual image on the game screen, which leaves me to wonder what the point of the book is to begin with, and each page is just another lukewarm minigame that tries to teach kids about music. Something like sonic gameworld gets a pass because that game wasn't trying to be some shoehorned educational experience, but instead just a little minigame collection for kids. This game bogs down the minigames to make them music themed, and ends up making this edutainment game neither educational nor entertaining. They could have made an interesting music making program using the sega picos weird custom sound chip to teach kids how to make music, but instead they made this disappointment. I wasn't expecting the world from this game, I knew I was getting myself into some braindead children's media, but compared to sonic gameworld, this is night and day and thoroughly disappointing.