(This is the 88th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
After going my entire life without having played a singular Sonic title, I have now played Sonic the Hedgehog 1, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and now have even beaten my first ever Sonic game, Sonic CD. Sonic CD initially released on September 23, 1993 for the, you guessed it (I think), Sega CD. It got ported over to Windows and later to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, but it is also available in its original form through the Sonic Gems Collection for the Game Cube and PlayStation 2 (which is where I played this) and in remastered shape as part of the Sonic Origins compilation that released in 2022.
Sonic CD was developed to showcase the capabilities of the Sega CD add-on for the Sega Genesis. Sonic CD would end up being the best-selling game for the add-on, selling over 1.5 million copies. It was supposed to be an enhanced port of Sonic the Hedgehog 2, but developed into its own thing over time, giving us the debut of Metal Sonic and Amy Rose, as well as the "time warp" feature.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 4/10
A short story in the manual explains the setting for this game. Sonic has a conversation with a "Princess Sally", a character I never heard of and one that apparently never appears in any Sonic game, but is rather introduced in comic books and animated series starting in 1993. She asks Sonic where he is going. Sonic would goo to Never Lake to visit 'the Little Planet'. "The one with the special stones that alter time", Sally says. Sonic mentions how the Little Planet appears of Never Lake on the last month of every year, so Sonic will check it out.
When they arrive there, something is off, as tall trees and bright flowers are replaced with nothingness. As they try to understand what is going on, Princess Sally is kidnapped by Dr. Robotnik and his newest creation, 'Metal Sonic'. Dr. Robotnik is looking to capture all time stones to manipulate time and take over the world and as per usual, it's Sonic's job to stop him.
So, in this game, there are two endings, a good and a bad ending. Each level you visit has three zones and the first two zones can be altered by going to its past and future to destroy 'transporters'. Depending on whether you do this or not, the third zone will either be a "good future" or a "bad future", which is indicated by a change in the song and in scenery, with good futures set in thriving nature and bad futures set in a metallic, dystopian style. If you turn all 3rd zones into good futures, you unlock the good ending. Otherwise, you get the bad ending, like me.
There isn't much 'story' in this game beyond this, but I was surprised with the amount of effort that went into making three distinct versions of each zone of a level and giving us two separate endings as a result. The story is not told through words at any point, but the scenery and the change of tone in the soundtrack do tell a story of their own which represents the actions you take, or don't, which is pretty nice.
GAMEPLAY | 13/20
Sonic CD plays pretty much the same as Sonic 1 and 2, though due to the small features added in 2, I'd say it plays like the middle-version between the two based on the features it has. There isn't really much I can say here that I haven't already said about the first two Sonic games. If you have played those already, you will know exactly what to expect. If you haven't, you probably know how Sonic games look like anyway. As always, you run through levels with three distinct zones, fight a boss on the 3rd zone and try to reach the finish line in large levels with many open and secret areas to access to make progress.
The unique aspect of this game is the Time Warp feature. You can travel to the Past and Future of a zone to destroy certain transporters to create a Good Future in each level's Zone 3 to unlock the Good Ending at the end. This is done by running through a sign saying "Past" or "Future" and then holding a certain speed will running to initiate a "warp". This is certainly a unique feature and while I didn't get Good Futures in most levels, this offers a nice additional challenge for everyone looking to do as much as possible on each zone.
Another way to get Good Futures on every third zone is to collect all "Time Stones", which replace Chaos Emeralds in this game. This means there is no Super Sonic in this game. I haven't been good enough to ever get him in Sonic 1 and 2, so it's not a big loss for me personally, but worth pointing out. To get all Time Stones, you need to finish levels with more than 50 rings each, which lets you enter a special stage where you have to destroy six UFOs within a certain time limit.
While I enjoyed all of this for the most part, I have the same issues with this game that I had with Sonic 1 and 2, and probably on an even bigger scale here. This game focuses more on exploration within given levels than the other two Sonic games on the Genesis, which means it has a bigger focus on having you slow down and look for different paths on each zone. While exploring paths is optional, this does translate over to each level as a whole, as they are pretty massive in this game and can get pretty complex. This plays into one of my complaints with these Sonic games that I mentioned previously.
Sonic has super-speed as his special ability. Unfortunately, a lot of the times this ability plays like its more of a tease, as there are a lot of obstacles that stop you from gaining top speed for more than a couple seconds. While this makes sense from a game design perspective to add challenge to these games, I feel like Sonic's speed offers more disadvantage than fun to me due to this. Whenever I'm on a straight path, I'm thinking I'll take off and get some top speed going, only to have an enemy pop into screen out of nowhere and making it impossible for me to avoid it in time, which leads me into a 2-second animation of hitting the enemy and losing all my rings. Same goes for gaining speed to fly into the air, which too many times leads to me landing on a platform with an enemy on it, which I fall on top of to lose my rings again. Simultaneously, these games have a lot of areas that force you to pick up momentum near a slope to get up there, which takes a couple seconds each time, there are non-stop obstacles which you run into that stop you dead in your track and there isn't a lot of platforming challenge for me here other than exploring and trying to avoid damaging situations that your speeds puts you into. This leads me to take it slower sometimes, which makes me want to play a Mario game instead.
I understand I'm possibly odd for having this type of criticism, but I think it has more to do with me not being the biggest fan of how these Sonic games are designed rather than me thinking that it is actually objectively bad design. Though I do have to say, running at Sonic's speeds to have enemies appear that give you 0.2 seconds to react is not something that I think is that good.
That said, I do appreciate how large the levels are and how, no matter where you go, there is (almost) always a way forward to the finish line. And finally, while I have some subjective complaints, I can conclude this by saying that if you enjoy Sonic's 2D platforming gameplay, you will enjoy Sonic CD in that aspect as well.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
Well do I have stuff to explain here. Sonic CD is in a pretty unusual spot because it does not have one, but two soundtrakcs. The first soundtrack is used in Japan and PAL regions, while the second is exclusively to NA. Why? I don't know if there is an official reason, but I think it is assumed that the American marketing team at Sega thought that American gamers wouldn't react well to the original soundtrack, which is why they composed their own.
Funnily enough, there are many people who heavily dislike the NA version of the soundtrack and who love the JP version. Not just retrospectively, but even at and around the time of its release. I didn't know about the two separate soundtracks, so I only originally rated this game based on the American soundtrack.
Listening to it, I was pretty surprised at its tone. Instead of the usual up-beat sounds of the other Sonic games, this one sounded a lot more ominous and like it wanted to accentuate the danger that Dr. Robotnik was presenting. It sounded more mature I suppose, or at least as if it was intended for more mature audiences than you would think played this game in the majority. For the most part, I didn't actually mind this. There are plenty of tracks here that are enjoyable to listen to and create a pretty nice atmosphere you can actually chill to. Then there are downright scary ones that I can't believe made it into the game, like the Game Over track and especially the track used for boss fights. I can't imagine being a ten year old back in 1993 playing this for the first time.
After playing this game, I listened to the OST again on YouTube like I always do, and while reading the comments discovered that there was a Japanese version as well. Listening to it, you can immediately tell how much more upbeat it is. Each track is different to the US version, I don't think there are any that were re-used, and the tone of the boss fight most notably is very different. Do I think each track in the Japanese version is better? Actually, I don't. While the lows of the US soundtrack are truly god awful, it's still a good soundtrack overall, and I don't mind that the composers went for more atmosphere than funk at times. I think I prefere the Japanese version overall however.
At the end of the day, I think it's cool that there are two full soundtracks that Sonic fans got with one game, though if you are one of the kids who got traumatized back in the day, you probably feel differently.
There are some pretty iconic themes here as well, such as Sonic Boom and the Japanese Special Stage Theme. Finally, since I haven't mentioned it yet, the Past, Present and Future versions of each zone have their own tracks, which means the total length of both OSTs is absurdly long for this game.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10
Sonic CD is not a huge graphical jump over Sonic the Hedgehog 2 despite being released for the Sega CD add-on, which I would have expected to offer a little bit more visually. That said, Sonic CD is one of the better looking games for its time regardless.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 8/10
Atmospherically, the game suits a Sonic game quite well based on its visuals. What this game does differently though is lean away from the upbeat Sonic style at times to give you a more dystopian glance at the Sonic universe through its bad futures. This is still done in a sort-of funky way through Japan's soundtrack, but you're placed into a downright horrific horror moment through the US soundtrack at times.
CONTENT | 8/10
The game doesn't take too long to beat. It has 7 levels and pretty easy boss fights. Each level is pretty massive though, so you can pad your playtime easily by exploring them more thoroughly. On top of that, looking for those transporters in past and future parts of the zones will add a lot of playtime on top of that, and these versions of the zones also offer different environments on top of that, so the sheer amount of content in this game is pretty wild for a video game from 1993.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 7/10
As mentioned, levels are divided into 3 zones and the first two zones are designed three times for the past, present and future, which means there is absurd amounts of work that went into them here. On top of that, levels are truly massive, with tons of paths to explore that will make multiple playthroughs feel fresher than is usual for platformers and even for the first 16-bit Sonic games. Levels are also themed distinctly as always, though I wasn't blown away by any theme here like I was in Sonic 2 and some designs were also copied over from that game. Also, does every first level in a Sonic game start in a green environment? Just noticed that.
Levels being massive is great, but visually, the sheer amount of stuff going on in each visually is just overwhelming sometimes and makes for a messy presentation at times. It's also easy to get lost later on, which I thought was an odd wrinkle to put into a game like this.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 8/10
The Sonic team did a great job of keeping this Sonic game feel fresh despite the fact that it's another 2D platforming adventure. The Time Warp mechanic is not only unique to Sonic, but a unique mechanic in general, which I enjoyed to dabble with and which offer a lot of optional ways to tackle this game for each player.
REPLAYABILITY | 4/5
A ton of replay value here because of the 3 versions per zone that you can explore to your heart's content, because of the Time Stones you can collect optionally and because of two different endings. I don't count the two separate soundtracks in my ranking but for those interested, you can play the game's JP/PAL and NA versions as well to get a different feel each time while playing through the otherwise same levels.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times, though there can be some slowdown here and there depending on which version you play.
OVERALL | 74/100
I've heard mixed opinions about this game online, but I think this is my favorite Sonic game out of the three that released on the Genesis / Sega CD so far. The Time Warp mechanic definitely spices things up, the moment you meet Metal Sonic was pretty scary and memorable, the soundtrack defied expectations for both good and bad reasons and levels are massive, which made for a pretty good Sonic game overall in my opinion.
After going my entire life without having played a singular Sonic title, I have now played Sonic the Hedgehog 1, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and now have even beaten my first ever Sonic game, Sonic CD. Sonic CD initially released on September 23, 1993 for the, you guessed it (I think), Sega CD. It got ported over to Windows and later to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, but it is also available in its original form through the Sonic Gems Collection for the Game Cube and PlayStation 2 (which is where I played this) and in remastered shape as part of the Sonic Origins compilation that released in 2022.
Sonic CD was developed to showcase the capabilities of the Sega CD add-on for the Sega Genesis. Sonic CD would end up being the best-selling game for the add-on, selling over 1.5 million copies. It was supposed to be an enhanced port of Sonic the Hedgehog 2, but developed into its own thing over time, giving us the debut of Metal Sonic and Amy Rose, as well as the "time warp" feature.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 4/10
A short story in the manual explains the setting for this game. Sonic has a conversation with a "Princess Sally", a character I never heard of and one that apparently never appears in any Sonic game, but is rather introduced in comic books and animated series starting in 1993. She asks Sonic where he is going. Sonic would goo to Never Lake to visit 'the Little Planet'. "The one with the special stones that alter time", Sally says. Sonic mentions how the Little Planet appears of Never Lake on the last month of every year, so Sonic will check it out.
When they arrive there, something is off, as tall trees and bright flowers are replaced with nothingness. As they try to understand what is going on, Princess Sally is kidnapped by Dr. Robotnik and his newest creation, 'Metal Sonic'. Dr. Robotnik is looking to capture all time stones to manipulate time and take over the world and as per usual, it's Sonic's job to stop him.
So, in this game, there are two endings, a good and a bad ending. Each level you visit has three zones and the first two zones can be altered by going to its past and future to destroy 'transporters'. Depending on whether you do this or not, the third zone will either be a "good future" or a "bad future", which is indicated by a change in the song and in scenery, with good futures set in thriving nature and bad futures set in a metallic, dystopian style. If you turn all 3rd zones into good futures, you unlock the good ending. Otherwise, you get the bad ending, like me.
There isn't much 'story' in this game beyond this, but I was surprised with the amount of effort that went into making three distinct versions of each zone of a level and giving us two separate endings as a result. The story is not told through words at any point, but the scenery and the change of tone in the soundtrack do tell a story of their own which represents the actions you take, or don't, which is pretty nice.
GAMEPLAY | 13/20
Sonic CD plays pretty much the same as Sonic 1 and 2, though due to the small features added in 2, I'd say it plays like the middle-version between the two based on the features it has. There isn't really much I can say here that I haven't already said about the first two Sonic games. If you have played those already, you will know exactly what to expect. If you haven't, you probably know how Sonic games look like anyway. As always, you run through levels with three distinct zones, fight a boss on the 3rd zone and try to reach the finish line in large levels with many open and secret areas to access to make progress.
The unique aspect of this game is the Time Warp feature. You can travel to the Past and Future of a zone to destroy certain transporters to create a Good Future in each level's Zone 3 to unlock the Good Ending at the end. This is done by running through a sign saying "Past" or "Future" and then holding a certain speed will running to initiate a "warp". This is certainly a unique feature and while I didn't get Good Futures in most levels, this offers a nice additional challenge for everyone looking to do as much as possible on each zone.
Another way to get Good Futures on every third zone is to collect all "Time Stones", which replace Chaos Emeralds in this game. This means there is no Super Sonic in this game. I haven't been good enough to ever get him in Sonic 1 and 2, so it's not a big loss for me personally, but worth pointing out. To get all Time Stones, you need to finish levels with more than 50 rings each, which lets you enter a special stage where you have to destroy six UFOs within a certain time limit.
While I enjoyed all of this for the most part, I have the same issues with this game that I had with Sonic 1 and 2, and probably on an even bigger scale here. This game focuses more on exploration within given levels than the other two Sonic games on the Genesis, which means it has a bigger focus on having you slow down and look for different paths on each zone. While exploring paths is optional, this does translate over to each level as a whole, as they are pretty massive in this game and can get pretty complex. This plays into one of my complaints with these Sonic games that I mentioned previously.
Sonic has super-speed as his special ability. Unfortunately, a lot of the times this ability plays like its more of a tease, as there are a lot of obstacles that stop you from gaining top speed for more than a couple seconds. While this makes sense from a game design perspective to add challenge to these games, I feel like Sonic's speed offers more disadvantage than fun to me due to this. Whenever I'm on a straight path, I'm thinking I'll take off and get some top speed going, only to have an enemy pop into screen out of nowhere and making it impossible for me to avoid it in time, which leads me into a 2-second animation of hitting the enemy and losing all my rings. Same goes for gaining speed to fly into the air, which too many times leads to me landing on a platform with an enemy on it, which I fall on top of to lose my rings again. Simultaneously, these games have a lot of areas that force you to pick up momentum near a slope to get up there, which takes a couple seconds each time, there are non-stop obstacles which you run into that stop you dead in your track and there isn't a lot of platforming challenge for me here other than exploring and trying to avoid damaging situations that your speeds puts you into. This leads me to take it slower sometimes, which makes me want to play a Mario game instead.
I understand I'm possibly odd for having this type of criticism, but I think it has more to do with me not being the biggest fan of how these Sonic games are designed rather than me thinking that it is actually objectively bad design. Though I do have to say, running at Sonic's speeds to have enemies appear that give you 0.2 seconds to react is not something that I think is that good.
That said, I do appreciate how large the levels are and how, no matter where you go, there is (almost) always a way forward to the finish line. And finally, while I have some subjective complaints, I can conclude this by saying that if you enjoy Sonic's 2D platforming gameplay, you will enjoy Sonic CD in that aspect as well.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
Well do I have stuff to explain here. Sonic CD is in a pretty unusual spot because it does not have one, but two soundtrakcs. The first soundtrack is used in Japan and PAL regions, while the second is exclusively to NA. Why? I don't know if there is an official reason, but I think it is assumed that the American marketing team at Sega thought that American gamers wouldn't react well to the original soundtrack, which is why they composed their own.
Funnily enough, there are many people who heavily dislike the NA version of the soundtrack and who love the JP version. Not just retrospectively, but even at and around the time of its release. I didn't know about the two separate soundtracks, so I only originally rated this game based on the American soundtrack.
Listening to it, I was pretty surprised at its tone. Instead of the usual up-beat sounds of the other Sonic games, this one sounded a lot more ominous and like it wanted to accentuate the danger that Dr. Robotnik was presenting. It sounded more mature I suppose, or at least as if it was intended for more mature audiences than you would think played this game in the majority. For the most part, I didn't actually mind this. There are plenty of tracks here that are enjoyable to listen to and create a pretty nice atmosphere you can actually chill to. Then there are downright scary ones that I can't believe made it into the game, like the Game Over track and especially the track used for boss fights. I can't imagine being a ten year old back in 1993 playing this for the first time.
After playing this game, I listened to the OST again on YouTube like I always do, and while reading the comments discovered that there was a Japanese version as well. Listening to it, you can immediately tell how much more upbeat it is. Each track is different to the US version, I don't think there are any that were re-used, and the tone of the boss fight most notably is very different. Do I think each track in the Japanese version is better? Actually, I don't. While the lows of the US soundtrack are truly god awful, it's still a good soundtrack overall, and I don't mind that the composers went for more atmosphere than funk at times. I think I prefere the Japanese version overall however.
At the end of the day, I think it's cool that there are two full soundtracks that Sonic fans got with one game, though if you are one of the kids who got traumatized back in the day, you probably feel differently.
There are some pretty iconic themes here as well, such as Sonic Boom and the Japanese Special Stage Theme. Finally, since I haven't mentioned it yet, the Past, Present and Future versions of each zone have their own tracks, which means the total length of both OSTs is absurdly long for this game.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10
Sonic CD is not a huge graphical jump over Sonic the Hedgehog 2 despite being released for the Sega CD add-on, which I would have expected to offer a little bit more visually. That said, Sonic CD is one of the better looking games for its time regardless.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 8/10
Atmospherically, the game suits a Sonic game quite well based on its visuals. What this game does differently though is lean away from the upbeat Sonic style at times to give you a more dystopian glance at the Sonic universe through its bad futures. This is still done in a sort-of funky way through Japan's soundtrack, but you're placed into a downright horrific horror moment through the US soundtrack at times.
CONTENT | 8/10
The game doesn't take too long to beat. It has 7 levels and pretty easy boss fights. Each level is pretty massive though, so you can pad your playtime easily by exploring them more thoroughly. On top of that, looking for those transporters in past and future parts of the zones will add a lot of playtime on top of that, and these versions of the zones also offer different environments on top of that, so the sheer amount of content in this game is pretty wild for a video game from 1993.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 7/10
As mentioned, levels are divided into 3 zones and the first two zones are designed three times for the past, present and future, which means there is absurd amounts of work that went into them here. On top of that, levels are truly massive, with tons of paths to explore that will make multiple playthroughs feel fresher than is usual for platformers and even for the first 16-bit Sonic games. Levels are also themed distinctly as always, though I wasn't blown away by any theme here like I was in Sonic 2 and some designs were also copied over from that game. Also, does every first level in a Sonic game start in a green environment? Just noticed that.
Levels being massive is great, but visually, the sheer amount of stuff going on in each visually is just overwhelming sometimes and makes for a messy presentation at times. It's also easy to get lost later on, which I thought was an odd wrinkle to put into a game like this.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 8/10
The Sonic team did a great job of keeping this Sonic game feel fresh despite the fact that it's another 2D platforming adventure. The Time Warp mechanic is not only unique to Sonic, but a unique mechanic in general, which I enjoyed to dabble with and which offer a lot of optional ways to tackle this game for each player.
REPLAYABILITY | 4/5
A ton of replay value here because of the 3 versions per zone that you can explore to your heart's content, because of the Time Stones you can collect optionally and because of two different endings. I don't count the two separate soundtracks in my ranking but for those interested, you can play the game's JP/PAL and NA versions as well to get a different feel each time while playing through the otherwise same levels.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times, though there can be some slowdown here and there depending on which version you play.
OVERALL | 74/100
I've heard mixed opinions about this game online, but I think this is my favorite Sonic game out of the three that released on the Genesis / Sega CD so far. The Time Warp mechanic definitely spices things up, the moment you meet Metal Sonic was pretty scary and memorable, the soundtrack defied expectations for both good and bad reasons and levels are massive, which made for a pretty good Sonic game overall in my opinion.