You guys it has been SO LONG since I’ve been able to play the Sega Saturn version of Sonic 3D Blast!! I’ve played the Genesis version a BUNCH of times because it’s readily available in all kinds of compilations of classic Sonic games, but the clearly superior Saturn version hasn’t gotten any rerelease love for whatever reason! And I had heard that porting Saturn games was super difficult and usually unsatisfying (laggy input, sound issues, etc), but my fiancx decided to give it a try and found an emulator that worked so well!! So I was finally able to replay this game! I cannot tell you how excited I was! The last time I played it was literally on a Sega Saturn! So that should give you an idea of how long it’s been.
So, aside from the obvious drastically better graphics and soundtrack (though those really can’t be overstated!), the biggest difference in the Saturn version is the special stages. These are fully rendered 3D versions of the Sonic 2 special stages, the half-pipe ones. They throw in things like winding twists and spirals, jumps onto raised platforms, boosters... tl;dr they RULE! Especially once you get to the last few with their TRANSPARENT FLOORS??? One of which is in the sky, the other of which is IN SPACE??? Seriously, these things blew my mind as a kid!!
Speaking of the special stages, I’m not sure why Knuckles and I are just kinda hanging out to take Sonic to the Special Stages? Wouldn’t we be helping more than that? I know it’s just a gameplay mechanic thing, and I am glad the game gave us something to do, but idk, it just doesn’t sit right with me!
Anyway, as much as I love this game this is another one that doesn’t really give me strong kinfeels and where there isn’t much story to dig into, so let’s just talk about all the zones in paragraph form rather than in longer separate sections..
Green Grove Zone is your typical Green Hill-esque starting zone, it’s a pretty great introduction to the game’s mechanics and a nice, familiar setting to have to start out with. It gives you a very forgiving introduction to the pattern of the gameplay. Those mechanics being you bash five Badniks per area and deposit the rescued Flickies into the Goal Ring to proceed to the next segment of the zone (usually there are around three of those segments). Not too bad! The boss for this zone is a pretty appropriately simple boss to start out with, basically just trying to drop a big spike ball on Sonic. It’s a good introduction to what a boss can look like in 3D!
As is often the case with classic Sonic games (which this is adjacent to if not outright a member of), the second zone is where the game starts to mix things up a little! Rusty Ruins Zone has all kinds of ancient-looking traps befitting the setting, and there are a lot of segments that Sonic has to navigate while in a pirouette-like spin that help him smash through some obstacles but makes it really tricky to move and especially to get past traps! It’s a pretty neat challenge to face early on in the game. The boss for this one is a Sandopolis-esque boss where Robotnik takes over an ancient statue and uses it to attack Sonic. I noticed that the Genesis version was actually drastically easier to defeat for whatever reason, possibly something to do with the controls or more complicated visuals? Regardless, still a pretty decent concept for a boss.
Spring Stadium Zone is next, and I gotta admit, these are the kind of zones that I just usually don’t find especially inspiring. The whole casino/carnival/etc theme is just not my favorite. I’m not saying they’re bad or anything, I just find them pretty consistently hitting that level of, “Yeah, they’re fine.” I don’t often find myself being overly impressed with them. And that was the case here, too. The boss is at least alright in this one. Usually it’s something overly complicated but here he’s just trying to crush you with rapidly-moving robot hands. Nice and simple. Not a lot to write home about, though.
Things improve in a hurry with Diamond Dust Zone, and wow, Sonic games pretty much always knock ice levels out of the park, and this is no exception. It’s one of the best zones in the game gameplay-wise, integrating all kinds of obstacles and Badniks that make all kinds of sense for the setting, and the soundtrack (especially the Saturn version) just RULES. A very moody zone that was one of the foremost in my mind when I reminisced about this game. And the boss for this is pretty terrific, too, it’s basically just the Egg-O-Matic dropping exploding snowmen and surrounded by a moving ring of freezing gas pods. Look, they just really nailed this one!
Speaking of settings this series always nails, next is a volcano setting, and HECK YEAH this zone rules. Having these two zones back to back is kind of just unfair to the rest of the game. The soundtrack in the Saturn version is incredible, and the theming is again just pitch perfect. The only downside is the boss here is just not all that inspiring? I really think they could’ve done better with it. But otherwise, they really knocked it out of the park with this zone.
Gene Gadget Zone gets us into Robotnik’s base a bit, and it does a pretty admirable job. I do feel like there’s one Flicky that’s hard to find in a way that’s kind of frustrating more than challenging (that distinction is one I’ll revisit later), but on the whole I like what this zone throws at you. Electric zappy floors, turrets, transport tubes, fans... there are some obstacles that I don’t love (the inclines with the moving platforms), but on the whole this isn’t bad. Not the best thing the game throws at you by any stretch of the imagination, but not half bad. And the boss is a conveyor belt boss, which I think I’ve mentioned is a concept I’m a pretty big fan of! It just makes a lot of sense, and it’s a little surprising it doesn’t pop up more often.
The last proper zone is Panic Puppet Zone, and it’s quite a bit different than what came before! In Act 1. rather than rescuing Flickies from Badniks, you rescue Flickies from prison tubes that haven’t been roboticized yet! And there’s only five total, but they take a while to find because the single segment of the act is much longer and more complicated, fully justifying itself as an entire act by itself. Act 2 doesn’t have any Flickies at all! Just a ton of things trying to kill you. And you just have to fight your way through the act to get to the boss! There aren’t that many rings, and it’s genuinely tough! A refreshing change of pace for the game, and a genuinely impressive one at that. All of it leading to Sonic penetrating the very inner sanctum of Robotnik’s base in a giant Robotnik statue. (I gotta give him one thing: dude is consistent.)
The boss for this one is pretty great! (Which is good, because he’s the final boss if you haven’t collected all the Chaos Emeralds). There are three different phases of this boss fight, all taking place in a very cramped area with Robotnik in the center inside an impenetrable tube. The first phase sees him deploy arms that try to crush you, the second part uses flamethrowers, and the third shoots bouncing balls of energy that you have to avoid. It’s not the trickiest boss once you get used to its pattern, but it’s still pretty impressive and makes a satisfying final boss if you haven’t collected all the Emeralds.
If you have collected all the Emeralds, you proceed to the rather straightforwardly named last “zone” (it’s just a boss fight, like Final Zone in Sonic 1): The Final Fight. While this is hardly the most impressive final boss of the series, it’s a pretty fitting one for Sonic 3D Blast specifically. What we have here is a five-stage fight against a giant egg-shaped robot/ship/thingy with Robotnik’s face on it because of course it has Robotnik’s face on it. He can’t not. Anyway, it has five different attachments that you have to rotate through twice to defeat him: hands that shoot lasers at you, a flamethrower, hands that crush you, missile launchers, and a gun that shoots bouncing ball projectiles. None of them are super hard or anything, but it still feels like an appropriately epic showdown and it’s a pretty good culmination of everything you’ve faced up until this point.
So, yeah! That’s Sonic 3D Blast! It was a blast (... I’m not sorry) to finally play the Saturn version again after all these years, and I also played the Genesis version for comparison’s sake, so yeah. Can confidently say there’s not really anything to recommend in the Genesis version over the Saturn version. Just play the Saturn version if you can!
I guess a complaint could be made that for the most part the game is super easy, but I only really find that annoying if it’s repetitive and I don’t think this is! I think there’s enough variety to keep things interesting even if it’s not the most challenging thing in the world. My only real complaint is that some of the obstacles are more frustrating than they are challenging, but that’s honestly pretty understandable given how early this was in 3D gaming? There were a lot of growing pains that had to happen. And there’s really no shame in that, when it gets right down to it.
This game--especially the Saturn version--really hasn’t lost its charm. I’m not about to put it in the upper tier of Sonic games, but it was well worth my time to revisit it. And it’s always gonna hold a soft spot in my heart for the possibilities this era of gaming opened up for me, even if I started out with the “wrong” system. I loved my Saturn even if I didn’t have very many games for it. It’s nice to reclaim this part of my childhood now.
So, yeah! Let’s rank some stuff! I’ll rank both versions of the soundtrack, but for the zones I’ll just rank the 32-bit versions because they’re far and away the best and the 16-bit zones aren’t really different enough to warrant separate entries. I will rank both soundtracks, though, because they’re super different.
Zones
1. Diamond Dust Zone (A-Rank)
2. Volcano Valley Zone (A-Rank)
3. Panic Puppet Zone (A-Rank)
4. Green Grove Zone (B-Rank)
5. Rusty Ruins Zone (B-Rank)
6. Gene Gadget Zone (B-Rank)
7. Spring Stadium Zone (C-Rank)
Bosses
1. Panic Puppet Zone (B-Rank)
2. The Final Fight (B-Rank)
3. Diamond Dust Zone (B-Rank)
4. Green Grove Zone (B-Rank)
5. Gene Gadget Zone (B-Rank)
6. Rusty Ruins Zone (C-Rank)
7. Spring Stadium Zone (C-Rank)
8. Volcano Valley Zone (C-Rank)
Soundtrack
Volcano Valley Zone Act 1, 32-bit (S-Rank)
Volcano Valley Zone Act 2, 32-bit (S-Rank)
Diamond Dust Zone, Act 2, 32-bit (S-Rank)
Diamond Dust Zone, Act 1, 32-bit (S-Rank)
Panic Puppet Zone Act 1, 16-bit (S-Rank)
Volcano Valley Zone Act 1, 16-bit (A-Rank)
Volcano Valley Zone Act 2, 16-bit (A-Rank)
Boss 2, 16-bit (A-Rank)
Boss, 32-bit (A-Rank)
Panic Puppet Zone Act 1, 32-bit (A-Rank)
Panic Puppet Zone Act 1, 32-bit (A-Rank)
Green Grove Zone Act 1, 32-bit (A-Rank)
Rusty Ruins Zone Act 2, 32-bit (A-Rank)
Rusty Ruins Zone Act 1, 32-bit (A-Rank)
Green Grove Zone Act 2, 32-bit (A-Rank)
Panic Puppet Zone Act 2, 16-bit (A-Rank)
Gene Gadget Zone Act 2, 32-bit (A-Rank)
Gene Gadget Zone Act 1, 16-bit (A-Rank)
Gene Gadget Zone Act 2, 16-bit (A-Rank)
Diamond Dust Zone Act 1, 16-bit (B-Rank)
Diamond Dust Zone Act 2, 16-bit (B-Rank)
Gene Gadget Zone Act 1, 32-bit (B-Rank)
Rusty Ruins Zone Act 2, 16-bit (B-Rank)
Rusty Ruins Zone Act 1, 16-bit (B-Rank)
The Final Fight, 32-bit (B-Rank)
Special Stage, 32-bit (B-Rank)
Boss 1, 16-bit (B-Rank)
Green Grove Zone Act 2, 16-bit (B-Rank)
Green Grove Zone Act 1, 16-bit (B-Rank)
You’re My Hero, 32-bit Sonic 3D Blast (B-Rank)
Spring Stadium Zone Act 2, 32-bit (B-Rank)
Spring Stadium Zone Act 1, 32-bit (C-Rank)
The Final Fight, 16-bit (C-Rank)
Special Stage, 16-bit (C-Rank)
Staff Roll, 16-bit (C-Rank)
Ending, 16-bit (C-Rank)
Spring Stadium Zone Act 2, 16-bit (C-Rank)
Spring Stadium Zone Act 1, 16-bit (C-Rank)
So, aside from the obvious drastically better graphics and soundtrack (though those really can’t be overstated!), the biggest difference in the Saturn version is the special stages. These are fully rendered 3D versions of the Sonic 2 special stages, the half-pipe ones. They throw in things like winding twists and spirals, jumps onto raised platforms, boosters... tl;dr they RULE! Especially once you get to the last few with their TRANSPARENT FLOORS??? One of which is in the sky, the other of which is IN SPACE??? Seriously, these things blew my mind as a kid!!
Speaking of the special stages, I’m not sure why Knuckles and I are just kinda hanging out to take Sonic to the Special Stages? Wouldn’t we be helping more than that? I know it’s just a gameplay mechanic thing, and I am glad the game gave us something to do, but idk, it just doesn’t sit right with me!
Anyway, as much as I love this game this is another one that doesn’t really give me strong kinfeels and where there isn’t much story to dig into, so let’s just talk about all the zones in paragraph form rather than in longer separate sections..
Green Grove Zone is your typical Green Hill-esque starting zone, it’s a pretty great introduction to the game’s mechanics and a nice, familiar setting to have to start out with. It gives you a very forgiving introduction to the pattern of the gameplay. Those mechanics being you bash five Badniks per area and deposit the rescued Flickies into the Goal Ring to proceed to the next segment of the zone (usually there are around three of those segments). Not too bad! The boss for this zone is a pretty appropriately simple boss to start out with, basically just trying to drop a big spike ball on Sonic. It’s a good introduction to what a boss can look like in 3D!
As is often the case with classic Sonic games (which this is adjacent to if not outright a member of), the second zone is where the game starts to mix things up a little! Rusty Ruins Zone has all kinds of ancient-looking traps befitting the setting, and there are a lot of segments that Sonic has to navigate while in a pirouette-like spin that help him smash through some obstacles but makes it really tricky to move and especially to get past traps! It’s a pretty neat challenge to face early on in the game. The boss for this one is a Sandopolis-esque boss where Robotnik takes over an ancient statue and uses it to attack Sonic. I noticed that the Genesis version was actually drastically easier to defeat for whatever reason, possibly something to do with the controls or more complicated visuals? Regardless, still a pretty decent concept for a boss.
Spring Stadium Zone is next, and I gotta admit, these are the kind of zones that I just usually don’t find especially inspiring. The whole casino/carnival/etc theme is just not my favorite. I’m not saying they’re bad or anything, I just find them pretty consistently hitting that level of, “Yeah, they’re fine.” I don’t often find myself being overly impressed with them. And that was the case here, too. The boss is at least alright in this one. Usually it’s something overly complicated but here he’s just trying to crush you with rapidly-moving robot hands. Nice and simple. Not a lot to write home about, though.
Things improve in a hurry with Diamond Dust Zone, and wow, Sonic games pretty much always knock ice levels out of the park, and this is no exception. It’s one of the best zones in the game gameplay-wise, integrating all kinds of obstacles and Badniks that make all kinds of sense for the setting, and the soundtrack (especially the Saturn version) just RULES. A very moody zone that was one of the foremost in my mind when I reminisced about this game. And the boss for this is pretty terrific, too, it’s basically just the Egg-O-Matic dropping exploding snowmen and surrounded by a moving ring of freezing gas pods. Look, they just really nailed this one!
Speaking of settings this series always nails, next is a volcano setting, and HECK YEAH this zone rules. Having these two zones back to back is kind of just unfair to the rest of the game. The soundtrack in the Saturn version is incredible, and the theming is again just pitch perfect. The only downside is the boss here is just not all that inspiring? I really think they could’ve done better with it. But otherwise, they really knocked it out of the park with this zone.
Gene Gadget Zone gets us into Robotnik’s base a bit, and it does a pretty admirable job. I do feel like there’s one Flicky that’s hard to find in a way that’s kind of frustrating more than challenging (that distinction is one I’ll revisit later), but on the whole I like what this zone throws at you. Electric zappy floors, turrets, transport tubes, fans... there are some obstacles that I don’t love (the inclines with the moving platforms), but on the whole this isn’t bad. Not the best thing the game throws at you by any stretch of the imagination, but not half bad. And the boss is a conveyor belt boss, which I think I’ve mentioned is a concept I’m a pretty big fan of! It just makes a lot of sense, and it’s a little surprising it doesn’t pop up more often.
The last proper zone is Panic Puppet Zone, and it’s quite a bit different than what came before! In Act 1. rather than rescuing Flickies from Badniks, you rescue Flickies from prison tubes that haven’t been roboticized yet! And there’s only five total, but they take a while to find because the single segment of the act is much longer and more complicated, fully justifying itself as an entire act by itself. Act 2 doesn’t have any Flickies at all! Just a ton of things trying to kill you. And you just have to fight your way through the act to get to the boss! There aren’t that many rings, and it’s genuinely tough! A refreshing change of pace for the game, and a genuinely impressive one at that. All of it leading to Sonic penetrating the very inner sanctum of Robotnik’s base in a giant Robotnik statue. (I gotta give him one thing: dude is consistent.)
The boss for this one is pretty great! (Which is good, because he’s the final boss if you haven’t collected all the Chaos Emeralds). There are three different phases of this boss fight, all taking place in a very cramped area with Robotnik in the center inside an impenetrable tube. The first phase sees him deploy arms that try to crush you, the second part uses flamethrowers, and the third shoots bouncing balls of energy that you have to avoid. It’s not the trickiest boss once you get used to its pattern, but it’s still pretty impressive and makes a satisfying final boss if you haven’t collected all the Emeralds.
If you have collected all the Emeralds, you proceed to the rather straightforwardly named last “zone” (it’s just a boss fight, like Final Zone in Sonic 1): The Final Fight. While this is hardly the most impressive final boss of the series, it’s a pretty fitting one for Sonic 3D Blast specifically. What we have here is a five-stage fight against a giant egg-shaped robot/ship/thingy with Robotnik’s face on it because of course it has Robotnik’s face on it. He can’t not. Anyway, it has five different attachments that you have to rotate through twice to defeat him: hands that shoot lasers at you, a flamethrower, hands that crush you, missile launchers, and a gun that shoots bouncing ball projectiles. None of them are super hard or anything, but it still feels like an appropriately epic showdown and it’s a pretty good culmination of everything you’ve faced up until this point.
So, yeah! That’s Sonic 3D Blast! It was a blast (... I’m not sorry) to finally play the Saturn version again after all these years, and I also played the Genesis version for comparison’s sake, so yeah. Can confidently say there’s not really anything to recommend in the Genesis version over the Saturn version. Just play the Saturn version if you can!
I guess a complaint could be made that for the most part the game is super easy, but I only really find that annoying if it’s repetitive and I don’t think this is! I think there’s enough variety to keep things interesting even if it’s not the most challenging thing in the world. My only real complaint is that some of the obstacles are more frustrating than they are challenging, but that’s honestly pretty understandable given how early this was in 3D gaming? There were a lot of growing pains that had to happen. And there’s really no shame in that, when it gets right down to it.
This game--especially the Saturn version--really hasn’t lost its charm. I’m not about to put it in the upper tier of Sonic games, but it was well worth my time to revisit it. And it’s always gonna hold a soft spot in my heart for the possibilities this era of gaming opened up for me, even if I started out with the “wrong” system. I loved my Saturn even if I didn’t have very many games for it. It’s nice to reclaim this part of my childhood now.
So, yeah! Let’s rank some stuff! I’ll rank both versions of the soundtrack, but for the zones I’ll just rank the 32-bit versions because they’re far and away the best and the 16-bit zones aren’t really different enough to warrant separate entries. I will rank both soundtracks, though, because they’re super different.
Zones
1. Diamond Dust Zone (A-Rank)
2. Volcano Valley Zone (A-Rank)
3. Panic Puppet Zone (A-Rank)
4. Green Grove Zone (B-Rank)
5. Rusty Ruins Zone (B-Rank)
6. Gene Gadget Zone (B-Rank)
7. Spring Stadium Zone (C-Rank)
Bosses
1. Panic Puppet Zone (B-Rank)
2. The Final Fight (B-Rank)
3. Diamond Dust Zone (B-Rank)
4. Green Grove Zone (B-Rank)
5. Gene Gadget Zone (B-Rank)
6. Rusty Ruins Zone (C-Rank)
7. Spring Stadium Zone (C-Rank)
8. Volcano Valley Zone (C-Rank)
Soundtrack
Volcano Valley Zone Act 1, 32-bit (S-Rank)
Volcano Valley Zone Act 2, 32-bit (S-Rank)
Diamond Dust Zone, Act 2, 32-bit (S-Rank)
Diamond Dust Zone, Act 1, 32-bit (S-Rank)
Panic Puppet Zone Act 1, 16-bit (S-Rank)
Volcano Valley Zone Act 1, 16-bit (A-Rank)
Volcano Valley Zone Act 2, 16-bit (A-Rank)
Boss 2, 16-bit (A-Rank)
Boss, 32-bit (A-Rank)
Panic Puppet Zone Act 1, 32-bit (A-Rank)
Panic Puppet Zone Act 1, 32-bit (A-Rank)
Green Grove Zone Act 1, 32-bit (A-Rank)
Rusty Ruins Zone Act 2, 32-bit (A-Rank)
Rusty Ruins Zone Act 1, 32-bit (A-Rank)
Green Grove Zone Act 2, 32-bit (A-Rank)
Panic Puppet Zone Act 2, 16-bit (A-Rank)
Gene Gadget Zone Act 2, 32-bit (A-Rank)
Gene Gadget Zone Act 1, 16-bit (A-Rank)
Gene Gadget Zone Act 2, 16-bit (A-Rank)
Diamond Dust Zone Act 1, 16-bit (B-Rank)
Diamond Dust Zone Act 2, 16-bit (B-Rank)
Gene Gadget Zone Act 1, 32-bit (B-Rank)
Rusty Ruins Zone Act 2, 16-bit (B-Rank)
Rusty Ruins Zone Act 1, 16-bit (B-Rank)
The Final Fight, 32-bit (B-Rank)
Special Stage, 32-bit (B-Rank)
Boss 1, 16-bit (B-Rank)
Green Grove Zone Act 2, 16-bit (B-Rank)
Green Grove Zone Act 1, 16-bit (B-Rank)
You’re My Hero, 32-bit Sonic 3D Blast (B-Rank)
Spring Stadium Zone Act 2, 32-bit (B-Rank)
Spring Stadium Zone Act 1, 32-bit (C-Rank)
The Final Fight, 16-bit (C-Rank)
Special Stage, 16-bit (C-Rank)
Staff Roll, 16-bit (C-Rank)
Ending, 16-bit (C-Rank)
Spring Stadium Zone Act 2, 16-bit (C-Rank)
Spring Stadium Zone Act 1, 16-bit (C-Rank)