Ok, this game ticked me off. It didn't do anything like unforgiveable, but I got all the Chaos Emeralds...and the final zone didn't pop. There's only 6 special stages so I was expecting the last one to be plot, but I guess not. And I am NOT REPLAYING these special stages. They seriously make this game go from a fun romp that bridges the Classic and Modern games to HELL WHERE YOU WILL BE SAVE STATING OVER AND OVER AND OVER. Neo Geo Half Pipes are the worst. Do not go for full completion here, just play it. Because stage wise? It's fun! Kinda a retread of Sonic 2 plot wise with Knuckles also being here with a boss fight I liked. His sprite art was also great. It all is here, the characters have their classic proportions, but the colored eyes. It's cool. Eggman even changes outfits midway through. It's a shame this game isn't canon though, due to it kinda being in legal limbo between SNK and Sega. I view it as a cool bridge between the classic and modern games. Definitely worth a play for history’s sake.

i can't tell how much the concentrated cruelty i experienced was just because sonic 2 was like that [haven't played in ages, can't tell] or because of screen crunch. probably moreso the latter mixed with the secret third thing of new dr. suess logic. get the 7th emerald by making sure to bump it off the final boss even after the torture of the downscaled special stages? you have to step on tiny atomic explosions to reach eggman? applying sonic 1's special stage access method to a game that doesn't have three acts in a zone, in a game that otherwise is just Mini Sonic 2?? oh brother.

I remember watching a review where someone said the Game Gear Sonic games were good enough to warrant a playthrough, and I couldn't agree. 8bit Sonic 1 and 2 were pretty forgettable to me, despite some original levels and gimmicks. They just didn't feel very good to play at all.
But Pocket Adventure? That's a different story.

Sure, the NGPC is a 16bit handheld, but you could fool me into thinking this is actually a well made 8bit Sonic game. It looks great, really. Sounds great too, although the music choices for certain zones were kind of weird. (Hydrocity playing in Chemical plant...?)

But actually controlling Sonic is what makes this game the only "early handheld" game in the series that's really worth checking out. Great sense of speed, tons of air time by spindashing+jumping off a slope, it all just feels right.

Oh, and no Oil Ocean Zone, so this is the definitive way to play Sonic 2. /s

By far one of the most niche Sonic games that’s never been released on anything else, Sonic Pocket Adventure is essentially a twist on Sonic 2, with music from Sonic 3. Stages may have different names, but they are in essence, levels from Sonic 2 with some slight design changes.

Sonic controls like he does in the Genesis games, so not complaints there, though he is the only playable character outside of multiplayer.

The only real differences are the bosses and the special stages. Bosses are all original contraptions and I love how Dr Eggmans look transitions from the Classic style to the Adventure Style by the end of the game. There’s an added Super Sonic fight if you’re able to get the all emeralds, but that’s pretty hard when the special stages are really hard versions of the half pipe. You also only get 1 attempt at an emerald per zone and exactly enough attempts to get them all. It’s stupid, and you can’t even use Super Sonic outside of the final boss.

That aside I love how this game looks, and there’s some extra content in puzzle pieces to collect if you fancy it.

This is an absolutely fun and fine Sonic game, it’s just not much in originality.

At this point, I've exhausted so much of the Sonic franchise that all I have left are the more obscure stuff to truly sink my teeth into. SegaSonic will probably allude me until I can finagle my way through setting up MAME on my Steam Deck, but aside from that, all I had left until recently are the Boom trilogy, 8-Bit Sonic 2, Free Riders, UnWiished, Knuckles' Chaotix, actually finishing Secret Rings, and Sonic Pocket Adventure. Not the most stellar lineup, but I've been chipping away the last few weeks. So, after Knuckles' Chaotix provided me with one of the worst 2D Sonic experiences I've had in a minute, I think only a few words can sum up my feelings after completing Sonic Pocket Adventure.

"Finally, some good fucking 2D Sonic."

You're not getting much out of Sonic Pocket Adventure that you haven't already seen or heard before; it's pretty heavily leaning on Sonic 2's zone themes with bits of Sonic 1's in there, and mostly uses remixes of Sonic 3's OST as far as its sights and sounds are concerned. Definitely wish some of the music was chosen better; the Sonic 3 bonus stages get used as regular level themes, and the final boss is the Sky Sanctuary theme. The OST as a whole is just remixes of pretty great tracks already, so there isn't much to complain about besides their useage and the bitcrushed nature of them, but it's worth taking a note that your eyes and ears aren't getting much new here. Whole game definitely pops visually, though, as expected from SNK at the time. Really colourful, and I adore the unique sprite set that Sonic has.

There's also the unfortunate Dimpsisms seen throughout; things like sudden bottomless pits, pretty special stage problems pretaining both to overly slippery controls and overly specific entrance conditions, you can unfortunately see a few of the seeds from some of the more aggrivating quirks of the Advance and Rush games being planted here. Game also has a bit of weird hitbox fuckery with things on the crushers, shoutout to them killing me while moving upwards while I was just touching the side of them from the ground, that's cool.

But for Dimps' first attempt at 2D Sonic, in what's meant to be something akin to a Mega Man Xtreme sort of "small scale rehash on a handheld" type of deal? It's pretty damn good! Absolutely love the spritework, the physics are pretty spot on, and there's enough unique content between the game's level design and boss fights to warrent checking out, unlike what it possibly could've been if it really went down the Mega Man Xtreme route and just felt like a truncated mishmash of Sonic 1 and 2's level designs and bosses wholesale. A really great time, hoping this one day leaves the NGPC hell and gets a wider rerelease!

You know, they had a really good chance to put this in that second Neo Geo collection on Switch, we could've had a box art with Sonic and Mega Man on it, but we truly live in an unjust and cruel society...

A Sonic adventure that was made for the Neo Geo Pocket, this game is essentially another 8-bit version of Sonic 2 (with a couple of elements from Sonic 1) like the Master System/Game Gear version of Sonic 2, except that the Neo Geo Pocket was a much more advanced console, resulting in a far better conversion.

The Zones in Pocket Adventure are based on levels from Sonic 2, but renamed slightly (Cosmic Casino Zone instead of Casino Night Zone, for example), with a few taking some graphic design from Green Hill Zone and Scrap Brain Zone from Sonic 1. While the themes are the same, and the layouts are loosely based on the originals, to me these felt like “new” levels in terms of how they played, making it feel more like a remix of Sonic 2 more than a port.

The gameplay in this is also great, feeling close to the original Mega Drive games in terms of physics and speed. It’s a ton of fun to play and I think this one definitely deserves a re-release as it’s well worth playing, even if it is derivative of Sonic 2.

Uma surpresa agradável, basicamente uma saladinha de vários elementos dos jogos do ouriço, com seu level design majoritariamente retirado de Sonic 2. O que mais chama atenção é ver o mascote da Sega ganhando um título exclusivo em um portátil da SNK, essa cruza exótica já prende o suficiente a atenção dos mais fãs como eu, e comigo amando Sonic 2 claramente acabei curtindo bastante este jogo também

Depois de uma série de tentativas da Sega de trazer o Sonic para o seu console 8 bits ou seu portátil, aqui finalmente vemos isso feito com considerável maestria. Visual fantástico, física sólida, controles bastante competentes e mesmo com todas as fases sendo reaproveitadas, todas elas possuem notável diferenciação em level design. Não me importo com retakes desde que possuam o mínimo de originalidade, e mesmo que tenham jogado no seguro por aqui, foi tudo bem divertidinho de se jogar

Além de nunca perder um bom ritmo, vários bosses são originais e os que não são ainda são muito bacanas de se ver no jogo, como o Knuckles reprisando seu papel em Sonic 3. Pode não ser uma experiência essencial nem destacável, mas tendo me tirado uns sorrisinhos já me sinto bastante confortado