I feel like around the release of Sonic Boom, the question of what is the worst Sonic game started to be relitigated. Though 2006's Sonic the Hedgehog has many challengers, it remains undefeated, but this is a dull and easy answer that rarely satisfies anymore. People are sick of hearing about Sonic 2006, there's little left to be wrung from its mummified corpse, yet the desire remains to find something that can be approached with the same animus. People want to hate, and that's why the question even gets posed in the first place - it's a thinly veiled attempt to stoke negative discussion for the sake of it.

Anyway, Sonic Blast is a solid runner-up and I am not above rolling in the muck.

Now you know me, I'm a big fan of Donkey Kong Country. Ape love Silicon Graphics, digitized sprites make ape happy. I will never in a trillion years understand why Aspect thought to apply the same graphical style to a Game Gear game. Sure, it gives it arguably more fidelity than anything else on the system, but the limitations of the Game Gear - its inability to allow for fluid animation or richness of color - causes all that detail to go to waste. This game is hideous, and worse, the massive scale of the sprites results in the worst case of screen crunch out of the entire 8-bit Sonic the Hedgehog catalog. I've said before that this is a problem in all of the Game Gear Sonics, and yet the hedgehog's final outing on the system double downs on this flaw like it's a feature.

Poor level design and lousy controls pile on to ensure there's no redeeming quality to this game. Sonic's behavior with surfaces is inconsistent. Only a modicum of momentum is needed to clear loops, whereas sloped surfaces cause his spin dash to catch. Not for nothing, the first three zones allow you to circumvent any wonkiness by simply jumping and flinging Sonic forward, because they're so open that you don't really need to actually interact with anything like you might in a better designed game. Blue Marine, Sonic Blast's requisite water level, is where the game starts expecting you to play on its terms, which is probably why you'll spend about 1/3 of your playthrough slogging your way through water trying to figure out pipe mazes - something the Game Gear games are weirdly preoccupied with!

Aspect also worked on Sonic Triple Trouble and Sonic Chaos, and while neither of those are spectacular, they might as well be Sonic 3 & Knuckles when stacked up against Blast. It's almost hard to believe the same company had a hand in all three, but they worked on Tails Adventure, too.

At least I had the benefit of not souring my formative Sonic years playing this thing. I don't think I was even aware of it until a friend lent me his Game Gear in high school, and I question what kind of coverage it even got at the time, as the most I could find from English publications was a single blurb in the November 1996 issue of GamePro. Framing the feature as a "Sega comeback" and leading with coverage on Sonic Blast, Sonic 3D Blast, and Sonic X-treme (which they do accurately predict would be further off than 1997) is pretty funny thanks to the gift of hindsight. Knuckles is also referred to here as "the twin-tailed fox." What a blunder! Not very professional of the GamePros, if you ask me.

Sonic Blast was new to me in 2004, in that tight window between Sonic Heroes and Sonic 2006, where I could comfortably say it was "the worst one." What a time to be experiencing some Sonic the damn Hedgehog. Thanks to its rerelease in Sonic Origins, now you can, too. (Author's note: Do not.)

After spitting so many insults at Sonic 2 GG I eventually remembered that this game existed. The last time I actually played it I only gave it about ten seconds of playtime maybe, until I switched to another game after laughing for a bit and not giving it the time of day. But I seriously needed to know if I was gonna hate it more, was my animosity misguided?

In terms of the visuals...I'll just say that the effects of DKC popularity are heavily felt here. To be honest, I think Sonic himself looks okay...at least when he's not moving. His actual animations are goddamn awful, he walks like he has no elbows or knees like he's some shitty robot from an early low budget sci-fi flick. To say it aged poorly would be a bit of an understatement, and it doesn't help when I'm playing the game blown up on my TV and not on the Game Gear making it look far worse.

His control is bad, it feels like he's got major dump truck ass going on and it took me a bit to get used to his feel especially after how loosey goosey Sonic 2 GG was. The level design...isn't terrible, until you hit the horrifically confusing tediousness that is Blue Marine. Jesus tapdancing christ, it takes a serious amount of fucking skill to one up Aqua Lake Zone from 2 GG. "Yeah boys, lets make a puzzle out of underwater stages. What a fantastic idea!" If the guy responsible dies I'm not feeling anything for him.

Whether this is worse than 2 GG I think is a matter of what makes you more miserable first. This game took until Blue Marine to bring me to my knees, and that's off a near-blind playthrough. If I played 2 GG blind I'd be destroyed at the first boss or the hang glider stages. Both games are absolutely dreadful, and I'm not gonna judge if you hate one or the other more.

Why do you only lose ten rings from taking a hit? That's just strange. Did aliens make this game?

I decided to beat this game in my backlog because it was supposed to be super short and I wanted to see if I could beat it in an hour.

This game is, put simply, flaming garbage. The only thing it gets right is that it does in fact function and allow you to control a blue hedgehog named Sonic. The bare minimum requirement. Pretty much everything else is a failure. A big one is the level design! The levels are often quite bare and end up very much "nothing" levels, leading the first three zones to be romps with no difficulty and little direction, the first level was beaten in like a minute without me even trying. Green Hill Zone is one of the saddest Green Hill Zones you'll see, Yellow Desert Zone is a desert zone but it's only real gimmick is "spikes exist", Red Volcano Zone ISN'T EVEN RED but while it has tricky platforming sections this is an area where the level design really rears its first issue. Put simply, the game doesn't properly put danger in areas such as the lava platforming sections, the end result is that death is nigh impossible and cheese is ease. I ended up just jumping repeatedly and grabbing a ring, good Sonic games don't make this so easy.

But then we get to Blue Marine Zone and seriously who DESIGNED this? You move SO. SO. SLOW. Slow enough that when I showed my friends I had to add the disclaimer "no, it isn't lagging, you just move that slow". And both of the first two acts are one way pipe mazes with air blowing to force you to do VERY specific actions to continue. The platforming isn't precise, you don't get to go fast, Sonic looks like he is clipping into the pipes entering them half the time, it's an absolutely miserable experience that ensures the game won't come close to escaping the lowest rungs. The final level of Silver Castle Zone (I do like that name admittedly) is 70% teleporter maze which is mostly just boring? It isn't like there's a realistic time limit to race against, so it is mostly just trial and error especially because most of it is low on enemies and you have rings anyway. Putting the enemies in some tight corridors does show this game has some rather...iffy hit detection on normal enemies, though!

Bosses are all bad. Very simple patterns that do not evolve during the fight, honestly like half of them basically use the same pattern, the fact Sonic in this game loses only 10 rings at a time means you have to get hit a LOT to die against them, they only have a single attack, and one of them is underwater with slug speed and it makes me want to scream. There is a post-final boss you can get by collecting every Chaos Emerald Shard, but I didn't do that and have no desire to go back and try to do so. The third acts are all leads up to them and are almost all non-existent, which is fine, but I do want to know why Yellow Desert Zone's had to be an annoying vertical level just so you can grab rings.

Graphically, it's not great but could be worse, it is really obviously aping from Donkey Kong Country with the pre-rendered look. But compared to those games the sacrifice in animation quality is obvious, and it really lacks proper composition of levels. The DKC games put a lot of thought into what their graphics would look like when rendered as 3D sprites and so how the world was composed, really go read about the game's design it is pretty intense, while it is really obvious here that a very basic Sonic look was just thrown into pre-rendered style. Red Volcano Zone looks good, but I'd say the other levels range from mediocre at best (Green Hill Zones) to actively disgusting (Blue Marine Zone). Also something about whenever Sonic goes on a loop, which is very rare in this game, feels off to me. Overall, I would say it is somewhat below average. The music in this game basically dribbled out of my brain as soon as I turned it off, which is rare for a Sonic game.

Frankly, this game was overall an embarrassing performance and there's no excuse for it, in the 2D Platformer landscape all 3 Super Mario Land games had already come out on the Game Boy brick edition and I've heard both Sonic: Triple Trouble and Sonic Chaos on the Game Gear are much better games. It's failure all the way down and I don't think there was a single point I was actively enjoying myself. And while not relevant to the game's quality I really just wanna end by saying: Sega, WHY did you release Sonic Blast and Sonic 3D Blast in the same week with extremely similar cover art when neither game had anything to do with each other? Please...

Eu me forcei a completar esse quando criança por algum motivo louco, porque hoje eu não suporto 5 minutos desse jogo
O controle é extremamente duro, os gráficos que eles tentaram fazer pré-renderizados ficaram horríveis num aparelho 8-bit (quem diria) e as fases são cada vez mais confusas, quanto mais você joga
Até hoje não sei como tive a paciência de passar a fase de água que tem canos que te tiram total do caminho se você sequer chega perto de um errado

Não é nem engraçado, não perca tempo com esse jogo

Do you remember those generic 2D platformers you'd see on the Apple app store that were only made because people wanted a Mario game on their iPhone? You know, stuff like Lep's World or Ultra Dario. Well, imagine taking those games, slapping Sonic over the main character, putting it on a Game Gear, and calling it a day.

The level designs are extremely short with nothing interesting, and occasionally have irritating mechanics. The graphics and music have not aged well in the slightest. It's all just been eviscerated by the passage of time, but even that's not much of an excuse, as there were way more fun 2D handheld platformers years before this one. (For example, Super Mario Land 2 or Wario Land)

But the most damning thing is that other than the character designs which were ripped from other games, there's nothing distinctly "Sonic" about it. Other bad Sonic games have had genuinely good elements, but this game has NOTHING. There is absolutely no reason to ever play it. There's nothing in the levels that take advantage of Sonic's traditionally fast speed and the music and level themes are all extremely forgettable. And all the things I just mentioned were done way better even in the FIRST Sonic game. A truly worthless experience.

Uma ofensa a qualquer jogo do Sonic já criado.

De longe é o pior jogo do Sonic que eu já joguei em toda minha vida. O jogo sofre em absolutamente tudo: fases e design de inimigos ruins, gráficos HORRÍVEIS e controles extremamente lentos (Aqui temos um recorde do SONIC MAIS LERDO E LENTO DA HISTÓRIA!!!).

A única coisa boa no game é sua trilha sonora, mas o jogo é tão ruim que até isso fica ofuscado.

(ÓDIO ETERNO A FASE DE ÁGUA NESSE JOGO QUE O LEVEL DESIGN NÃO FAZ NENHUM SENTIDO!!!)

PRÓS:
- Trilha sonora.

CONTRA:
- Level design grotesco.
- Gráficos HORRÍVEIS.
- Sonic mais lento da história de todos os jogos do Sonic.

Sonic Blast foi o último jogo do Sonic para o Game Gear e usa gráficos renderizados, depois a TecToy fez um Port para o Master System, mas será que esses jogos são bons ? É o que vamos ver !

Começando pelos gráficos... Então, o jogo usa modelos renderizados estilo Donkey Kong Country, mas ao contrário do Donkey Kong, no Sonic Blast ficou muito feio ! O modelo do Sonic e Knuckles são coisas do inferno, os cenários são super simples e nada marcantes, seria muito melhor se tudo fosse Sprite, a Aspect teve uma péssima decisão em fazer gráficos com modelos renderizados para o GAME GEAR.

A trilha sonora nesse jogo é bem genérica, ela não é PÉSSIMA, mas definitivamente não é marcante, a melhorzinha na minha opinião é a da Red Volcano e a música dos créditos, o resto é só mediano pra ruim.

O Level Design é muito ruim, as fases são super curtas, sem graça e super fáceis na GIGANTESCA maioria, a ÚNICA excessão é a Blue Marine ou como gosto de chamar Blue Hell, ela é simplesmente insuportável, o Level Design é ridículo de ruim, a mecânica das correntezas é extremamente irritante no Ato 1 e no fim do Ato 2 você simplesmente não sabe aonde ir para terminar a fase, a Silver Castle é mais decoreba com aqueles portais, mas de resto, o jogo é bem tranquilo e fácil.

As zonas em si possuem um conceito super interessante mas na prática não tem graça, temos a Green Hill, Yellow Desert, Red Volcano, Blue Marine e Silver Castle, gosto bastante que a temática das zonas são as cores, todas as zonas possuem uma cor principal nos três Atos, mas o problema é que como o jogo foi feito para o Game Gear, eles não conseguiram fazer zonas marcantes, a Silver Castle por exemplo poderia ser a Scrap Brain, ela não lembra nada um castelo, acho uma pena que elas nunca mais voltaram com excessão da Green Hill.

Os controles são a melhor coisa do jogo, quando a gente não está dentro da água claro, mas controlar o Sonic e o Knuckles até que é bom, o Sonic pode fazer Spindash e até mesmo fazer um pulo duplo, o Knuckles além do Spindash ele pode escalar e planar, fora isso, eles são bem parecidos e não muda muita coisa no jogo.

Os Special Stages estão nesse jogo e são super fáceis e sem graça, primeiro que são 5 pedaços da Esmeralda Mestre, você só pode pegar os pedaços no Ato 2 através de um anel especial, no Ato 1 os Special Stages só servem como bônus, os Special Stages em si são super fáceis mas se você perder, você é obrigado a jogar o jogo inteiro, já que não pode recuperar o pedaço que você perdeu, seria muito melhor se você podesse pegar qualquer pedaço em qualquer Ato do jogo, segundo que o Special Stage em si é pegar 50 anéis enquanto Sonic anda automaticamente e precisa desviar de Boosters (pelo menos pra mim eles mais atrapalham do que ajudam), usar as molas e etc.

Os chefes são ok, eles cumprem o papel deles, também são fáceis, mas não são ruins, exceto o verdadeiro chefe final, ele é bem ruim já que a Hitbox é super estranha e não fica muito claro como derrotar ele, mas pelo menos o jogo dá 99 anéis.

E por fim, a versão do Master System, como eu disse antes, foi a TecToy que fez ela e ficou bem ruim, a diferença principal é a resolução que obviamente é maior no Master System, agora você pode ver mais coisas da fase, assim o jogo fica mais fácil ainda, mas em momentos como os Special Stages e nas transições de fases, a resolução simplesmente cai, ou seja, a TecToy não fez um bom trabalho.

No fim Sonic Blast é uma porcaria, de longe um dos piores jogos do Sonic e mais um motivo de eu achar a era Game Gear a pior época do Sonic, a versão do Master System por incrível que pareça é bem rara de achar pelo fato de ser exclusiva do Brasil, eu chamo isso de comprar cocô dourado, é a mesma sensação.

Here's a motherfuck of a game i forgot to log on here . This is probably the ugliest sonic game ever made bar none and while its short as hell i still could not pull through ultimately because not only was i so sick of looking at it but the level design is so ass even for the game gear entries' standards, somehow the tubes are even more fucking irritating than before and that was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back i guess, that must have been like zone 4/5 . I don't care i have no interest in getting it finished

Here's a funny thing i noticed, whenever you beat a boss they dont add in eggman escaping the explosion so every time it appears as if he fucking perished lmao

I hope Sonic Blast (1996) runs for president in 2024

As a child, I had Sonic Mega Collection Plus on both PC and PS2, and only played through Sonic Blast's first zone before deciding the game was ugly, felt awful to play, and was overall just boring to play. Today, looking for a few short titles to knock off the backlog before the end of the year, I booted up that same copy of Mega Collection Plus, finally sitting down and dedicating some time out of my meaningless, currently NEET, life, to get it off of the backlog for good.

After having finished it, I regret my decision and can easily say that my stance on this being one of the absolute worst Sonic games, in spite of only playing for roughly 5 minutes, was entirely justified, because holy shit this is genuinely every bit as "Bottom 10 Sonic games" material as 7 year old me saw it as. Almost hilariously unremarkable in its first 3 zones, and then its final 2 shoot you in the kneecaps with insane design choices.

This game is often overlooked when talking about Sonic's offerings on the Game Gear and, as I learned over the past 2 hours, for good reason. The short answer is that this game isn't good, but why is that so? Well, this review shall explain why.

The story is nearly nonexistent. Basically, Dr. Robotnik has brought back the Death Egg and shattered the Master Emerald into 5 fragments. It is up to Sonic and Knuckles (making his second and only playable appearance on the Game Gear) to rebuild the Master Emerald and stop Robotnik once again. Basically, it's a poor man's version of Sonic and Knuckles' standalone version.

This game is extremely short, so I'll be covering each zone separately and bring up my grievances as they become relevant. However, there's one thing I really like about this game, the choice in characters. Now choosing between Sonic and Knuckles is nothing new. It's been done before and done since, but the way that it's handled here is sort of like Megaman and Bass, but handled correctly. Sonic can run, jump, and spin dash normally. That's all he can do, but Knuckles can also climb and glide. The developers noticed this, and didn't want to make the game a breeze with Knuckles (the later levels aren't easier for Knuckles, but it's the thought that counts), so they designed levels around Knuckles' moveset, just like Megaman and Bass with Bass. However, unlike Megaman and Bass, Sonic was given an extra move, so that a playthrough with Sonic wouldn't be astronomically harder. He was given a double jump. This changes the choice in characters from, "Which one will make the game easier?" to "Which moveset do I want to use?" and I actually like that.

Now on into the zones.

Green Hill is a pleasant zone. It's easy to blaze through, and aside from some bad shuttle loop physics, the zone's actually quite pleasant. It's capped off by a somewhat easy boss. The one problem with the zone (and the whole game) is that the game is ugly as sin. This game came out alongside Sonic 3D Blast on the Genesis/Mega Drive, which was trying to replicate Donkey Kong Country's success by using pre-rendered graphics. 3D Blast looks okay, which makes sense. DKC was in 16 bit and could handle pre-rendered graphics just fine, so 3D Blast would logically be able to handle them well. However, Blast is 8 bit, and the graphical capabilities of the Game Gear just make it look sloppy. Enemies and Robotnik's machines look alright, but Sonic and Knuckles look kind of bad, and the stages look really bad. The graphics could be much worse, but they still aren't remotely close to good.

Yellow Desert Zone is like Green Hill. There's nothing offensive about it, and it's a solid jaunt. The boss is a step up in difficulty, but I think it's more enjoyable than the previous boss.

Now here's where things get bad. Red Volcano Zone has lava floors, floating platforms you constantly have to jump on to move, rising platforms that spring you up, but not far enough to really reach anything, steam geysers that complement tight spaces perfectly, and (I'll come back to this one later), enemies that have large hurtboxes and small hitboxes. The gimmicks here aren't terrible in a vacuum, but when combined with enemies and horrendously tight spaces, this zone just sucks. The most egregious part has to be the boss. It's not super hard. It has very tight vulnerability windows, but that's not the issue. The issue comes with now it moves. The boss pops onto the screen by hopping up, alternating between the right and left sides. This isn't telegraphed at all, and will catch you off guard if you aren't paying attention. It's a cheap shot and will get some hits on you because the boss didn't play fair.

Blue Marine is the worst level in the game. It's a water stage that's scarce with air bubbles. Combine this with glacial, sluggish water physics and you'll be glad the labyrinthine tubes move you around so quickly. This level's a slog that's made stressful because of the threat of drowning. The worst part is the boss, which takes this problem and cranks it up to 100. You have to hit the cockpit of Robotnik's machine like all the others, but you don't have enough time to get in every hit before death. Even worse, there are no air bubbles around. What do you do then? You have to make Robotnik shoot at your feet. The laser should miss you and create an air bubble. The problem is that this is in no way conveyed to the player. When the machine pauses to take a shot, it's vulnerable, so you probably want to hit it at that moment. The blaster fires forward then, even though you're above the boss. I remember thinking, "It seems this blaster only shoots forward." It isn't conveyed that it can shoot down. I only thought you could take damage due to landing on a stray laser, getting hit by one my mistiming a jump, or by getting hit by a stupidly large hurtbox. This crucial information that makes the boss possible is obscured because of how you already expect to fight the boss, and that's bad design.

The final full act is Silver Castle. I hate this level. It's filled with teleporters and no real landmarks, making the zone very disorienting. There are also minor traps and spike walls that chase you that aren't so bad (except for when the game glitches out and freezes you in the spike wall segments until you get hit). However, the worst part of this level are the enemies. They aren't terrible. One tries to make contact damage with you, one bounces up and down and tries to catch you under it, and one shoots at you, but the worst feature of this game rears its ugly head here. The hit detection is god-awful. I've hinted at this already, but it's terrible here. Time after time after time I kept jumping onto enemies, thinking I'd kill them, only for me to take damage. You have to be extremely precise or you're going to gamble whether you get hurt or not when you take damage. However, it's impossible to be precise when your sprite is so large. All the enemies in the game are smaller than Sonic/Knuckles, which doesn't help with the shoddy hit detection. The only enemies this doesn't affect are the very small ones at the beginning of the game. All of the other enemies and all of the bosses (save for one I'll mention in a second) suffer from this problem. If the game had a larger screen resolution and the sprites could be a normal size, this could be so much better.

The boss of Silver Castle though is really fun. Instead of hitting Robotnik's machine directly (there's an invisible ceiling between the two of you, you're stuck on a wheel that controls a reflective panel. Robotnik will shoot lasers at two mirrors on the sides of the screen. They reflect at you and you'd have to jump over them. You have to use the reflective panel to reflect the lasers back. The shots are telegraphed in a way fitting of a DS platformer, and the fight is overall pretty fun.

Now before I talk about the true final boss, I'll mention the special stages. They're extremely simple, with you running across a checkered field picking up rings. Act 1's has a 1UP as its prize, while Act 2's has a chaos emerald. You have 5 emeralds to collect, and 5 chances to get them. You have to be perfect. Overall though, the stages aren't anything noteworthy. They just exist and are mediocre.

The final boss sucks. The premise is really cool, with stopping the upper half of the boss from moving (as well as making it vulnerable) by jumping onto the lower half. I like it. However, it's extremely infuriating due to the hit detection. The upper half is guarded by two spikes on top. You have to make an ungodly precise jump between the spikes to have a chance at hitting the very short vulnerability window. More often than not, you will get hurt. You start the fight with 99 rings, and will most likely need every single one. The only thing making this more manageable is that you lose 10 rings at a time, with 5 up for reclaiming. So you can last longer than normally, but the game's BS will still make you see many a lost life.

This game starts off okay, but a majority of it is bad and caked with problems. While I'm glad I played this and made the 4 bucks I spent on it be worth something, the game is not one I want to revisit unless I really feel like hating myself.

2/10 This game is only worth picking up if you want to feel disappointed or you hate yourself.

Sonic Blast is just unremarkably bad. The graphics are an ugly mish-mash of nasty crunched 3D effect sprites and recycled assets from different games with clashing artstyles, the levels are very basic in design made up from very simple square shapes and tubes, and the controls/physics/momentum just all feel weird and bad. It plays like kinda like an NES bootleg platformer but laughably easy. Once again the Chaos Emeralds are a stupid treasure hunt except this time if you fail the special stage you have to restart the entire game to try again because the big ring won't respawn, I did about four laps of the game before just giving up. Music was a whole load of nothing, forgettable but not grating. Look!

Am I the only one that doesn't think this game is horrible? It's definitely the weakest out of the 8-bit 2D sonic games for sure, but I don't think it's very poorly constructed. I think a lot of people just see the pre-rendered chunky 8-bit graphics and then write the game off then and there. It is definitely a basic sonic game, but I think you could probably do worse if you wanted to play a 2D platformer on the game gear. Definitely give it a shot if you've played the other 8-bit sonics and maybe see that the game isn't as bad as everyone might be making it out to be. Either that or I'm just insane, I guess.