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...
"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...