This game fills a very strange role in the franchise's Game Gear outings. It seems that the effort put into this title is much lower than the two before it, in terms of scope and art direction at least. The game improves on many aspects of its predecessors though, having shorter levels with less challenging level design overall to accommodate for the system's screen and battery limitations, making the game a lot more playable. The change to the Chaos Emeralds is also welcome, as well as a playable Tails. While this game is by no means perfect, it is a fun, short romp that I can absolutely say is more fun than Game Gear Sonic 2.

Played the Sonic Origins version

Sonic the Hedgehog Chaos is an original title for the Sega Game Gear and dear god it is not fun. By the time of this review, I have not played Sonic 1 & 2 on the Game Gear and apparently, they are worse than this game and it honestly scares me.
To be fair this game isn't horrible, it's just a very poor original (Chase Eggman like always) Sonic game where the stage are either "Hold left and randomly jump till the end" or "Watch out giant falling gap you have to do bad platforming".
What makes this game terrible to play is the small screen, it's just like Super Mario Bros Deluxe on the Gameboy Color where the game is really zoomed in because the console isn't powerful to show more on such a tiny screen, this really just turn Sonic into a platformer about blind jumps.

Other than the boring stages you get some new unique bosses which are either the easiest fight ever since a bunch of them can be cheesed by cornering them and jumping on their head over and over or just the most irritating boss of all time that makes you want to kiss the creator of save states.

Overall a very nothing Sonic game, it does nothing new, nothing good, nothing note worthy, it's just Sonic Chaos with a confusing name for whoever played it after Sonic Adventure, it's just Sonic causing chaos and not Sonic having a ball with Chaos.

Gonna make the same warning I did for 8-bit Sonic 2: Don't play the Game Gear version, it has screen crunch. You should preferably deal with the Master System version being 50FPS instead, but it's better than having tunnel vision.

Sonic Chaos feels like an overcompensation of the difficulty of Sonic 2, the previous Master System title. In the blink of an eye, we've went from what may be the hardest Sonic game, to the easiest one. The levels shower you with more rings than you need, and generally last about 30-40 seconds each. Bing, bam, boom, and you've reached the credits in a little over 25 minutes. After the struggle that was Sonic 2 on the Master System, this game being such a breeze definitely instilled some feelings of whiplash.

While easy difficulty is not necessarily reflective of the quality of a game, what makes Chaos as average as it is, is the lack of complexity and thinking that comes with this difficulty. Levels can be very easily charged through by holding right and doing an occasional jump, with little in the way of interesting mechanics or optional routes that encourage you to figure out a way to. It's not that Chaos plays badly, I mean, it's a completely servicable platforming game that you might have some fun with, but this fun is so one-note, so completely mindless, and over in so little time, that the game fails to make a lasting impression.

Also, it may be unfinished?? The level design already gives you the impression that Chaos was rushed the hell out of, but adding to that, you have Tails as a second playable character. He can fly! He couldn't do that in the 16-bit Sonic 2, so that's cool! But for some reason, he can't use the Rocket Shoes powerup, nor is he able to access the Chaos Emeralds, thus locking him out of the good ending. Not that there's much of a "good ending" to be had here, all that's there is a very slightly different ending screen. It's not like getting the emeralds is any harder than the main game, but much like the rest of the game, all of it feels pointless. Sonic Chaos is pointless. Inoffensive. And pointless. That's the gist of it.

Sonic Chaos is quite possibly the easiest Sonic game. The levels are short, and there aren’t many obstacles. In a way, this is good, as it’s a stark contrast to the many obstacles you couldn’t see in the Master System version of Sonic 2. That said, there are still a lot of blind jumps, it’s just that in Sonic Chaos, they usually lead somewhere.

Other than being easy, Sonic Chaos doesn’t really try anything new or different. It features two Green Hill Zones – one called Turquoise Hill (that looks exactly the same) and Mecha Green Hill, which is a decent twist on the level.

Sonic Chaos is a fairly safe Sonic game, it doesn’t doing anything bad, but is very unremarkable overall.

Um CAOS de tão ruim!!

De longe o mais fácil e mais chato jogo do Sonic que já joguei em toda minha vida.

Sonic Chaos talvez tenha o pior level design de todos os jogos de Sonic. Absolutamente nada faz muito sentido ou é de fato divertido no jogo. As vidas são ganhas facilmente, o jogo é extremamente easy e nem os chefes representam perigo ou são no mínimo desafiadores.

(De longe a maior idiotice do jogo é a velocidade final quando se passa pela conhecida plaquinha no fim das fases, mostrando em quantos km/h o ouriço passou????????????)

Um dos jogos do ouriço para ser esquecido.

PRÓS:
- Gráficos bonitos.

CONTRAS:
- Level design grotesco (Sonic super lerdo em slow motion).
- Fácil demais.

With how disappointing the 8-bit Sonic games have been, I was fully expecting Sonic Chaos to be yet another morning spent careening into enemies and hazards that were impossible to anticipate, power-chugging a NOS, and shrugging it off as another 2/5. Perhaps because my expectations were so low, I actually wound up enjoying my time with Sonic Chaos, even despite skipping the Master System version to play the cropped down Game Gear release instead. Look, this isn't on Sonic Gems Collection, I wasn't actually beholden to this like I was with Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (I could've approached this like I did for Sonic 1!) but for some reason I just made the choice to play it like that and I don't know why. I'm a strange creature.

I will likely go back and play the Master System version soon just to correct this mistake, but despite suffering from many of the same flaws as the other Game Gear Sonics (horrible screen crunch primarily), the level design in Chaos feels altogether more cohesive and oriented around building a satisfying sense of speed. Sonic the Hedgehog - like its Genesis counterpart - has a stronger focus on platforming that can feel dodgy at times, and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is lousy with pits, spikes, and gimmicks that don't feel good. The bar wasn't exactly set high, but to Sonic Chaos' credit, it passed it.

They also gave Sonic rocket AND spring sneakers, it's like an apology for this nerd getting his shoes stole.

I intended to follow this game up with the fan made 16-bit remake, which I saw several years ago and thought looked very promising. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like there's been much beyond the 2018 SAGE demo, and besides some assurances the project was still active a few years ago, I mostly pulled up threads of people asking what happened to it. Regardless of what's ultimately happened to the project, the demo is well worth checking out and serves as a great proof of concept for what a Genesis/Mania-style remake could be. Considering the reception of the Triple Trouble remake, I certainly hope that someone eventually gives Sonic Chaos the same treatment.

I also played this game in the same smoke-filled home that I spent so much time in playing Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Game Gear) and Destruction Derby, so it's got that stink on it. But nostalgia is hardly a factor here when I also preferred this game to Sonic 2 back in the day. It's just better put together, even if it might not avoid every pitfall of the Game Gear Sonics.

I remembered this being very fun when I was a kid, but I think it's just kind of mid now. I was interested in how the special stages worked, but I got kind of frustrated with having to collect and hold onto so many rings when there are seemingly no shields to be found. Get hit? kill yourself. You have to start over. And even then, when you get to the special stage, it could just be some stupid pipe maze that's too fast to actually react to. I got to the special stage in almost every level and still did not get all the emeralds because of those stupid fucking pipe mazes.

Otherwise, the game is still painfully mid. The general gameplay is fine, but it's not exciting or really anything worth mentioning. You get to play as tails, but there's not much here besides that. It's not horrible, but it's not great either.

5/10

Sonic Chaos (or Sonic & Tails) is a laughably easy game, but generally fine enough. Short enough to get through in a half hour it's somewhat forgettable but innocent and charming enough. Going for all emeralds as Sonic sees every stage turned into a treasure hunt for rings, regurgitating some of those Sonic CD problems, split up by whacky little special stage trials which makes the game feel more like a minigame collection than a platformer. The game, much like it's soundtrack, is inoffensive but forgetable.