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.