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.)

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

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!

It has a Double Jump, so I have to give it +1 star.

That said, this game is a hate crime to the eyes, but I did have more fun with it compared to 8-Bit S1 and 8-Bit S2, somehow lmao

Mandatory "Brasil número um do mundo ☝️☝️☝️☝️", considering the Master System port.

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.

For a 4 dollar eshop game I think Sonic Blast is not that bad, I don't even think it was that bad for a handheld platformer of the time; the controls are a bit chunky and the camera is REALLY zoomed in, but it's a pretty average platformer, only held back by not being as good as better Sonic games on the same system.

I enjoyed the game, Zone 4 Blue Marine, that level was trash (like the worst Ecco the Dolphin level with sluggish controls and a really zoomed in camera), but besides that the levels are all pretty breezy and some of the bosses are pretty fun.

It's fine, good for a quick 40 minute playthrough.