Thought it was a bootleg cabinet, but no, it's the real deal, and DEFINITELY a difficult game. Sonic and friends (particularly Mighty and Ray, the lesser-known characters of the franchise) escape an Island run by Dr. Eggman filled with traps. And it is INCREDIBLY dangerous. You get tons of scripted fakeout events where they fall, get hit, and experience other sorts of peril and danger. It's all in the name. And its alluring rapid-fire nature of the game will keep you dropping tokens in because it's just so damn easy to die, but you're still having a fun time. If you keep on paying, you can keep on playing and the game will continue to advance so long as you keep hitting the right buttons. However, its insane difficulty will bankrupt you.

We made it to Wild Water Ways before we ran out of money. Had a blast though. I played it about a week later with another friend at another arcade (with freeplay) and got to the last level - which is an obstacle-free timed escape. I made it out in time - Sonic didn't. 😆

Great animations and hilarious scripted events, insane difficulty, and sucky controls. If you're paying, you wouldn't be remiss to think you shouldn't spend the equivalent of $10-15 in tokens to beat the game.

Attempting to seriously review every game I've played #4:
SegaSonic the Hedgehog is a somewhat obscure Japan-only arcade game that was played with a trackball. For quite a while this game wasn't playable at all unless you had an original machine, but thankfully now MAME and FBNeo both support it.

The biggest issue with this game is the controls. I'm sure it works fine on an actual trackball, but unfortunately unless you have one you're going to be pretty limited. It's very difficult to be precise since analog sticks really aren't well suited to slowing down. I played this on Steam Deck and I wish FBNeo had an option for mouse to trackball emulation since then I would be able to use the trackpad to at least approximate the feeling of a trackball. Be prepared to find yourself slamming into walls and falling off of ledges a lot. The coyote frames, which are really coyote seconds, are appreciated as a way to mitigate this, but it's still very awkward to deal with since moving back away from ledges doesn't seem to work consistently, and not being able to jump when your character is in the air means that precise platforming is pretty difficult. Though the only level that really asks that of you is Wild Water Ways, which despite its creativity is easily the worst level in the game as a result.

But, if you can get past the control issues, this is a really great game. There's a crazy amount of detail in every level and all the characters have super expressive animations, it really feels like a playable cartoon (or anime), and not in the Dragon's Lair way. Unlike a certain other isometric Sonic game, this game never really uses its third dimension other than in brief set pieces and for visual flair, which is absolutely preferable. Unfortunately that doesn't really fix the fact that positioning your character in a 3D environment is still pretty difficult without depth, and I did find myself having some moments where I genuinely didn't know where they were physically.

I'm pretty mixed on the soundtrack in this game. I think the compositions are great, but the instrumentation ends up sounding a bit flat and samey, and does grate on you after a while. Special mention has to go to the Trap Tower theme though, and especially its remix from Sonic Mania.

Overall a great arcade game, and if you can get the controls working then I'd recommend it. I hope to see an official re-release of this with controls that are specially configured to work well with an analog stick, but unfortunately I doubt that's very likely to happen.

Poor Sonic. Poor, poor Sonic... You ever just play one of those games where it's supposed to be lighthearted, but your main character is going through so much shit, you just feel bad for them? SegaSonic instilled that response of pity from me.

Sonic is not having fun here. In spite of being the fastest thing alive, a cage catches up to him and sends him into an island where literally everything is trying to kill him. Sonic is not going like "whoo-hoo!" and "yeeah!" in this game, he is screaming and panicing his whole way through. Sonic makes a depressed face everytime you clear a stage, because you didn't get the 1-up bonus for the 3rd time in a row. There's a chance that Sonic might die in an explosion within the last 20 seconds of the game, and this is treated as an ending. I mean, this really is just the worst day Sonic's ever had. Somebody help this man.

As for me, am I having fun? Eh, I mean... it's certainly about as action-packed as an Arcade game should be to hold your attention. Unfortunately, I do not have a trackball to make use of as the game's intended controller, all I had once upon a time was a keyboard. And that is so obviously not the way to play, it's too sensitive and imprecise.

I think what baffles me the most is that SegaSonic was supposed to be part of the Gems Collection on the Gamecube, but they couldn't port it "because of the controls." Was it not possible to change them to something more suited to a controller stick? Then again, SEGA was never great at preservation, I can't imagine they had the source code for this either...

Anyway, the whole thing is a smorgasboard of chase scenes. There's no enemies to fight, no bosses to take down, and the ring collectibles that are there don't do shit unless you collect a whole lot of them, and I'm not exactly in a position to do that. SegaSonic the Hedgehog is a visually impressive series of setpieces which I come back to every 2-4 years or so, but mechanically compelling it is not. It's pure popcorn. Unrelated to SegaSonic Popcorn Shop.

Oh, and who the fuck are these other two guys

An interesting experiment for early Sonic, what with the trackball and the isometric perspective. You'd think the goal would be to whip that trackball around, but you actually have to make a lot of precise motions throughout the levels. Really the only bits where you can go ham are the few odd vertical climbs and the escape sequence in Eggman's Tower - and even then, you need to be ready to pivot quickly.

Speaking of the escape sequence, boy is that dastardly. It's a cool enough capstone to the adventure, but to reduce an entire playthrough to your ability to navigate a 20-second escape sequence is a HUGE slap in the face for an arcade game. I dunno, most of the time when you suddenly end up with a bad ending as a result of not being able to pull off a given challenge, I get the point the game is making, even in the arcade. But it just seems mean here. I had to play through the game a full FOUR times before I finally pulled off a successful escape.

I don't think there are any differences between the three characters, but Ray ended up my easy favorite. Something about how extra his animation is on the monkey bars, or how he sounds like a child compared to Sonic and Mighty. Also yeah, Ray and Mighty are sort of odd ducks here. I get why Knuckles isn't here, but no Tails? Had to get that Mighty design out somewhere? Ah well, they'd pay it off in 25 years.

They got Sonic, Ray, and Mighty on RICO charges and sent them to Robotnik's prison island!

SegaSonic the Hedgehog has been a long-standing blind spot for me. The trackball controls makes it rather difficult to map in MAME, and obviously I'm never going to find a real cabinet to play it on. However, I've made the completely insane commitment to play every Sonic the Hedgehog game, and so I spent way too much time screwing out with MAME's input options to find something that worked. "You can set the trackball's movements to your mouse," uh-huh, I sure can and it feels awful! I ultimately configured the game to play with the arrow keys, which also sucks but hey, it got the job done.

SegaSonic - the real unbastardized version, that is - lets players spin the trackball to guide Sonic, Ray, or Mighty through hellish obstacle courses, usually while being chased by some sort of deadly trap or object. I have to imagine this all works fine on a real cabinet, and I bet it's pretty fun to play. Via emulation, everything feels incredibly clumsy and you'll be happy you can just mash 5 to feed more quarters to the machine. More coins for the coin god, because me and the boys are taking over this jail. They don't serve chili dogs in the cafeteria and the library has been closed for the last three months, these conditions are inhumane. Actually, is this a jail? You get locked up in the intro, so I always assumed this was Robotnik punishing Sonic, and by extension: ME, for my crimes (I enjoy Labyrinth Zone and I pronounce it high-draw-city.)

The struggle of screwing around with controller mappings and the hurdles it creates aside, I really like SegaSonic for its presentation. Just a great looking game, wonderful soundtrack, too. The action never stops, from the moment Sonic busts out you'll be careening from one disaster to the next, and some of the set pieces are really good. I'd love if Sega found some way to make this more accessible, but since doing such things no longer conforms to their MO, SegaSonic is something you're not likely to come across unless you scrounge around in MAME romsets, and that's really not the ideal way to play this anyway. Watch a video of this one.

So far for the duration of time that I have been on this website, I have talked about a handful of the good Sonic games, some of them that many consider to be some of the greatest of all time not just in the series, but of all time. Even if I haven’t been extremely positive about a particular game in this series so far, it hasn’t really been too negative either, just more so indifferent about the kind of game that it was (cough, Spinball, cough). But you know what, I think it is about time that I stop being nice to this spikey cracked-out rat, and it’s finally time I start being mean to him and his series. It was only inevitable, because as many Sonic fans know, for all of the good Sonic games that were available from this series, there are five more shitty ones just around the corner. However, I don’t feel like picking on one of the obvious targets like Sonic Drift or Sonic Labyrinth… not right now, anyway. Instead, I wanna go after another forgotten title in the series that most Sonic fans aren’t aware of: SegaSonic the Hedgehog.

This was a Sonic game that was released pretty early in the series’ lifespan exclusively in Japan for the arcades, and one that I have been wanting to try out for a very long time. I do remember playing on the actual machine of the game at one point whenever I went to the Galloping Ghost Arcade (which by the way, if you haven’t been there, do yourself a favor and go there ASAP, because it is the best modern arcade I have ever been to. Tell them that Mega sent ya), and from what I remembered, I liked it enough, even if I was annoyed by some certain aspects about the game. It has been a long time since I played it there, so I decided to check it out on the Mame emulator, and once I did play it, I came to a very stunning revelation… it fucking sucks! Granted, there are plenty of admirable qualities that the game has, and I do like a lot of the things it is trying out, but it manages to trip and fall right on its face when it comes to its execution, and becomes an annoying chore to sit through.

The story is pretty damn average, where Dr. Robotnik kidnaps not only Sonic, but also newcomers Mighty the Armadillo and Ray the Flying Squirrel, and entraps them on an island, so it is up to the three of them to escape before Robotnik can take them out, which is a fine enough premise that I can get behind, because from everything else the game has, the story would be the least of my concern. The graphics are really damn good, having plenty of cartoony and wonderful animations for all of the characters, accompanied by wonderful environments, which make the game much more fun to look at then play, the music is pretty good, having plenty of great tracks for all of the levels, which also made the game much more fun to listen to then to play, the control is… well, I’ll get into that later, and the gameplay is somewhat inventive for the series, and I do like what they try with it, but not only could it have been done a lot better, but… sigh, goddammit…

The game is a 3D platformer of some kind, where you take control of either Sonic, Mighty, or Ray, go through a set of seven treacherous, yet very short levels, run through at the speed of sound while avoiding certain death at every turn from gaps, obstacles, or otherwise, jump around and break things when you need to so you can proceed forward and avoid death, and stop playing the game, go find a cabinet of Sonic the Fighters, and play that instead so that you can enjoy life. For what we got here, again, a lot of it is very interesting on paper, and I do like a lot of the things that are going on here, but the way that it was presented makes it way more frustrating to play then anything else, and by the end of the game, I was giving Sonic and co. the middle finger in response to their collective thumbs up.

I wouldn’t even necessarily call this game a “platformer” per se, even if there are platforming elements seen throughout, because it is more so a long, multi-segmented obstacle course. For every single level, you will primarily just be running down a bunch of long paths, avoiding whatever obstacles come your way, grab whatever rings you can, and hoping to reach the end. There are no enemies to fight, no bosses to take on, no additional collectables or power-ups to get, nothing. It is just one straight shot from the start to the end, and hey, that can be pretty fun at times. The constant energy the game gives off really does make going through some of these much more enjoyable, which is also helped by the colorful graphics, animations, and the new characters Mighty and Ray, who were pretty neat to finally see in action…. you know, before they would be thrown into the vault for the foreseeable future, only being let back out on a few occasions.

However, then you actually try playing the game for yourself, and you find it is an aggravating trainwreck for most of the journey. For most of the game, you are constantly being chased or hounded by something, whether it be falling spikes from the ceiling, a wave of lava, a falling bridge or whatever, so you have to constantly keep running forward at all times, which is pretty hard to do considering all the different traps and obstacles that you only have a split-second to avoid, and needless to say, you won’t be avoiding most of them. A lot of the problems with the obstacles can be attributed to the game itself most of the time, but then this gets into the one thing that is probably the game’s biggest setback… the control.

Unlike most Sonic games, this game uses a trackball controller, where you will be constantly spinning the ball around to make Sonic and co. go in a specific direction, while also having a separate button to use to jump, and once again, in theory, this COULD work… but then you think about it more and see it in action, and you find out that isn’t necessarily the case. Given how fast Sonic is, you will be zipping around the areas you go through so goddamn much, and given how most of these areas have pits everywhere, you will have a hard time keeping track of yourself most of the time without falling off a ledge, especially in some of the later levels with very precarious bits. Of course, a lot of that is attributed to me using the arrow keys to control this game, but even back when I was playing this in the arcade, I remember struggling with it, since Sonic himself is a little too fast, and also, may I remind you, you have to CONSTANTLY be moving because something will always be hounding your ass!

Overall, despite the wonderful presentation and charm that is oozing out of every corner of this game, when you go to play it yourself, it then proves that under that lovely coat of paint is something that is just unbearably annoying, having very little variety in what you do throughout all the stages, being unforgiving with many of its obstacles, and having a control scheme that just doesn’t work out in the player’s favor. I would only recommend this for those of you who are huge Sonic fans, and you haven’t had the chance to play it for yourself, because if you haven’t, then by all means, give it a shot. You may just end up loving it, but as for me, I would much rather watch it then play it ever again. Also, what kind of name is SegaSonic the Hedgehog, anyway? We all know that Sega made Sonic, you don’t need to remind us of that. What’s next, are they gonna make SegaShinobi, or SegaChuChu Rocket, or SegaHouse of the Dead?......... also, rip Mighty and Ray, because they are probably never gonna be coming back after Sonic Mania Plus.

Game #549

Being real, unless you’re emulating, you’re probably not playing this. It’s hard to write a review of a game you’ve only played through emulation, using a controller that is nothing like the roller ball the original arcade machine sported. But it doesn’t mean it can’t be appreciated in some fashion.

SegaSonic stars Sonic, Mighty the Armadillo and Ray the Flying Squirrel as they attempt to escape from Dr Robotnicks base. The animation quality is absolutely incredible, this game is just so much fun to watch in motion, and it brings these characters to life in a totally unique way.

All the game requires you to do is run and jump through the stages, and there’s only 6 levels but using an emulator you are just gonna die a lot because replicating the controls is basically impossible. So I can’t really comment on the difficulty or control because I’m not doing it properly.

But the stages all have unique obstacles, it’s full of non stop energy and nothing goes on too long. Playing this game may be difficult, but just watching it is sure to bring a smile to your face.

The soundtrack is also amazing, especially trap tower which has been remixed a few times since this game and rightly so it’s great.

One day I hope this gets released, because it doesn’t deserve to just be stuck on arcades forever.

I wasn’t able to play this in the fully intended method: this is a Japanese-only arcade game that uses a trackball. The closest I could get is using an analogue stick to emulate a trackpad. This makes it much easier to move at full speed as you just hold instead of having to constantly roll a ball, but at the same time it’s a lot more difficult to control your speed. I would love to be able to try this out with a proper trackball, but they seem to be more expensive than I thought they would be.

SegaSonic the Hedgehog is an isometric platformer made for coin-operated arcades. This means it’s a short game, where each life costs you money. To account for this, Sonic has a health bar that drops when you get hit, or when you fall down gaps (you instantly respawn with less health), so it’s not as strict as it could be. To get a higher score, you have to collect as many rings as possible, with Dr Robotnik laughing at you if you don’t get enough. Enemies also drop rings, so if you want to get to the end you can avoid most of them, but will get a low score.
In SegaSonic the Hedgehog, Sonic (along with Mighty and Ray if you play with more players) is constantly being chased by traps, giant fireballs, collapsing paths. At the start, these shock Sonic as he’s screaming constantly, but he seems to get used as the game moves on. You have to keep moving constantly. It’s a very fast paced game but even with the emulated stick, it felt very precise to move. If you run into an edge, Sonic stops on the edge for a brief second before falling, giving you a chance to move back onto the path.

The game also looks absolutely beautiful. The blocky design is incredibly detailed, and the levels all have a magnificent look to them. Every moment is a marvel to look at, with some stunning animation to look at as well.

I would love for SegaSonic the Hedgehog to get a re-release, and I feel that Sega could get an analogue stick to work better than emulating a trackball works. It’s something that more people should get a chance to play. I suspect playing with a trackball is better, as you will get the excitement from requiring a lot of physical effort for moving faster, but it’s still a nice game to play in the non-ideal way, and is short and sweet.

Ah, Segasonic. This is a title I’ve always wanted to try out but never really got to do so, at least until now. Considering how it’s basically impossible as this arcade system was a 1993 (afaik) Japan exclusive arcade system and was not really available to access in the US, I had to resort to emulation for this one using MAME. Setting it up was a bit of a confusing hassle but the game worked fine otherwise. My biggest gripe are the controls, mainly because I don’t really have any good alternatives for a tracking ball. I just ended up using a controller. It worked fine enough but the controls in this game are ridiculously finicky and overly sensitive. I don’t really know how they compare to the trackball and if it’s much better on original hardware but I had to make do for now; still, didn’t really make playing through this game impossible by any means, just way more irritating than it probably could’ve been compared to using original hardware, but I guess I’ll never know. If anyone played this game using the original arcade hardware with the trackball I’d love to hear your experiences compared to controller emulation.

In any case, the main goal of this arcade experience is simple: reach the goal while collecting rings to stay alive. Rings overall can give you more wiggle room when you fall down a pit and can restore your HP little by little if you get hit, and collecting enough gets you a bonus at the end of a stage. SegaSonic even allows up to 3 people to play together simultaneously (though obviously I went solo for this one), this game being the very first introduction to Ray the Flying Squirrel and Mighty the Armadillo. The main level design consists mostly of linear obstacle course dodging in an isometric format (like 3D Blast but with actual gameplay), frantically dodging traps and pitfalls that pop up with little warning given the limited camera visibility. It’s a very fast paced and twitchy experience that, while fun, mostly just has the end goal of wanting to suck the quarters from your pocket. It’s pretty unforgiving and trial and error in nature; the levels themselves are only one act with no boss encounters to be seen anywhere so the game is really short, but the hazards that constantly spring up are enough to fill the level with quite a few ball busting moments (the ending sequence has a section where if you don’t make it to the end in time, you’re forced to restart the entire game. No continues allowed. Pretty harsh if you ask me). Some of the later levels are pretty bad with stop and go spike trap hazards and there’s not a whole lot of variety as most levels basically consist of “run away from the thing chasing you” repeatedly but for what it is it’s…fine, I guess. Not really something I would want to come back to. Music isn’t super memorable either, though I gotta say the sprite work and animation in this game is absolutely phenomenal. This game looks so gorgeous in motion and the character expressions and little animation quirks are a huge visual treat, it’s definitely this game’s biggest strength. The voice samples in this game on the other hand are extraordinarily annoying. I swear to god, take a shot every time you hear Sonic scream at the top of his lungs, you will barely be able to function properly by the time your session with the game has finished. I dunno what made SegaSonic think I would want to listen to the constant barrage of Sonic going ”WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!” every waking second but it would be borderline comical if it weren’t so irritating.

Also I dunno how anyone else feels about this subject, but I don’t really like how Sonic is portrayed here. He gets captured bizarrely easily and he’s more of a cartoony “lab rat” kind of character trying to escape this giant death trap maze being tossed and flung around in every direction. Idk, I much prefer when he’s as the typical free spirit superpowered hedgehog we usually see take down Eggman with ease, but again, this is a one off Arcade experience. Story isn’t really the strong point here, and that’s fine I suppose, just a weird nitpick I had. Game’s fine. Nothing special but glad I got to experience it. There’s no reason why this isn’t more readily available in Sonic collections, I feel SEGA could easily make this work with a bit of retooling and reintroduce it to a new audience.

Marking as completed even if we lost cus we were like, at the exit when we ran out of time.

Extremely janky and the controls are 8 directions, which with a trackball is very hard to line up properly lol. Robotnik smiling before each stage is so good, same w the character portraits.

Played on a real cab, 3p.

Infelizmente não pude considerar zerado graças a contagem regressiva no final da ultima fase, que se tu tiver a má sorte de perder, literalmente volta pra primeira fase. Mas enfim, não vou dar nota por que.... eu não deveria estar jogando.

Diferente da franquia inteira, SegaSonic the Hedgehog (que porra de nome é es-) não foi feito pra se jogar em um controle comum, e sua maquina de arcade (onde foi originalmente e EXCLUSIVAMENTE lançado) não usa um direcional ou um analogico convencional. Então do que experimentei, foi apenas um gostinho de como deve ser jogar isso em toda sua glória.

E confesso, foi divertido, correr muito rapido por fases mais rapidas ainda foi uma tarefa legal e desestressante. Fazer uma run com 3 pessoas nisso, na mesma sala, na mesma maquina de arcade, deve ser muito bom.

E parece que o jogo quer exatamente isso mesmo, mas infelizmente, hoje em dia não da pra desfrutar o suficiente desse jogo. Só ficamos com um gostinho pequeno mas interessante na boca.

Honestly not that great of a game. Music, animations and graphics are great, and it looks good in motion. Which is probably what has given it such prestige amongst the fan base.

The gameplay is nothing to write home about, just a series of linear obstacle courses with some sort of harzard chasing you to keep you moving. For the most part it is an easy game, apart from some cheap moments in later stages.

This may ruffle some feathers but it is probably for the best that this hasn't seen a rerelease on any of the various Sonic collections over the years.

I played this on a real machine at Galloping Ghost.
I only played this game once and never again since. Gameplay is ok, but gets very difficult near the end, especially with the bad depth perception. The controls were awful. Likely due to a dirty trackball. The escape sequence is also an instant f*ck you game over if you don't escape in time.
(Please don't take this review too seriously. I didn't spend much time on it because there were 500+ other games there I wanted to try)