Sonic Series: Sonic CD
This is the third part of my series on the Mega Drive (and Mega CD) main series Sonic games! I recommend going through in order as each article builds upon what I’ve written previously. Start here with my analysis of the original Sonic the Hedgehog.
With part of the Sonic 1 team heading out to the US to work on Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Naoto Oshima (character designer for Sonic 1, creator of Sonic) heads another team in Japan for the same purpose: a Sonic sequel. This time, for the Mega CD — an add-on being developed to directly rival the PC Engine CD, with the same hook of games with full motion video and CD music.
AESTHETICS
With the exception of two outstanding hand-drawn animated scenes made by Toei Animation (thanks to the aforementioned full motion video capabilities), Sonic CD’s graphics follows the first game’s footsteps — quite closely, as Sonic’s sprites are mostly the same, and so are most of its levels’ themes: Palmtree Panic, Collision Chaos, Tidal Tempest, Stardust Speedway and Metallic Madness are parallels to Green Hill, Spring Yard, Labyrinth, Starlight and Scrap Brain, respectively. Ground tiles with repeating geometric patterns are used abundantly in many levels, mimicking those of Green Hill Zone. The environments are generally really interesting to look at, and despite being really busy with details and ornaments, they feel cohesive due to following a strong color scheme. Some versions of some levels (more on that later) can look gaudy though, and the game uses a lot of very saturated colors and blinking lights, both of which are very hard on photosensitive players — especially combined with how fast Sonic can move.
Musically, it’s very different than the first game. Being a Mega CD game, the audio is streamed like any music CD, meaning the music can basically sound like anything the composers want instead of being restricted by chiptune. Rather than hiring a notable artist like Sonic 1 and 2 did, the Sonic CD team decided to do it in-house, with SEGA composers Masafumi Ogata and Naofumi Hataya.
I really, really love Sonic CD’s original soundtrack. It really brings the entire game to life, combining catchy and memorable melodies with many layers of drums, kicks, snares, vocal samples, instruments and synths. A lot of the instrumentation here may sound really familiar to fans of NiGHTS into Dreams, as Hataya was the main composer of both games.
It seems that Hataya and Ogata decided to go all out in composing for a big game that didn’t come with the harsh restrictions of chiptune, especially since their prior work was composing for the audio-limited Master System. Composing so many songs for one game and making them all sound this amazing is a feat that many game composers can’t live up to.
That’s why it’s a bit unfair to Spencer Nielsen, composer of the American version of Sonic CD. SEGA of America’s then-new development division wanted to use Sonic CD to prove their composers’ skills and to ensure the music reflected the musical sensibilities of 90s American audiences, instead of a soundtrack inspired by popular western music in Japan.
Some early American reviewers were furious at the soundtrack change as they perceived the Japanese version’s music to be better and more fitting. This is an opinion I share, but I’m glad this happened, now that playing Sonic CD with whichever soundtrack is cheap and easily accessible. The more music the better, and some tracks in the American version like the main theme, Sonic Boom, are big favorites of mine.
Interestingly, because Sonic CD was being developed parallel to Sonic 2 and the two teams communicated, you see a lot of similar ideas in both games. Their execution is completely different though, since neither team could directly see the other’s progress — which is why Sonic CD’s Spin-Dash feels so different than every other Sonic game’s.
An idea that was toyed briefly by Hirokazu Yasuhara when developing Sonic 2 and became a key part of Sonic CD was time travel.
TIME TRAVEL
Sonic CD is unique from any other Sonic game in its central mechanic: Time travelling. Each level has two alternate layouts: Past and Future. To time travel, you hit a Past or Future signpost and reach a certain speed, which will put you in a semi-invulnerable sparkling state. If you don’t slow down too much for a few seconds, you’re warped in time to an alternate version of the level, on the exact same spot you were.
While Sonic 1 and Sonic 2 use level layout knowledge from multiple playthroughs as a way to beat levels faster and more efficiently, Sonic CD uses it so the player discovers new safe ways to time travel reliably. Earlier Zones like Palmtree Panic and Collision Chaos have plenty of perfectly safe places to time travel, but later levels may require you to route your time travelling yourself.
This is the strength of Sonic CD’s levels and what sets the game apart from any other— levels are playgrounds for the player to experiment on and find Rube Goldberg machines “hidden” in their layouts so they may time travel. While Sonic 1 and 2 are about using momentum to go forward, Sonic CD is about using speed to explore in all directions.
Though, 7 Zones, each with 2 acts with 3 time variants (Past, Present and Future) plus 7 “boss stages”, means there are 49 different levels in the game. That’s a huge undertaking, especially having to account for multiple paths, backtracking, and players warping in from other times. This was obviously too much, as there are some small, weird spots in a few levels — Like unreachable items and trails of rings, that suggest a lack of finish.
Sonic CD has two very different goals in its level design— Each level is both an obstacle course from point A to B, while also welcoming free exploration and backtracking for time travel. These goals can often be at odds, meaning some levels are too boring and easy to play linearly (like Quartz Quadrant), while others are way too annoying to explore (like Wacky Workbench 1).
When its level design shines though, it truly shines. With experience, already fun Sonic levels transform into sloping playgrounds you can manipulate to shoot yourself anywhere you want. I feel the failure of some Sonic CD levels can be attributed to a haphazard approach to level design, instead of its hybrid approach being impossible to implement well.
Time travelling feels like an attempt to add another dimension to the multiple path level design of Sonic. The different time zones can feel aimless though — Green Hill’s level tiers have a tangible and easily understood hierarchy to them, whereas there’s no clear difference in difficulty or reward between Past, Present and Future. The strength of the different time zones is merely contextual — The visuals of a nightmarishly dystopic Future implies there might be something you can do in the other times to change that, creating a sense of mystery and wonder with a lot of staying power.
After playing Sonic CD for some time, players might figure out that in the Past, there’s a machine that controls Dr.Eggman’s robots in the level (represented in the other times as a mysterious broken machine, seen below). Destroying it automatically destroys all robots in the level and turns the level’s Future into a Good Future. In a Good Future, there are no enemies anywhere, and the visuals and music are calm and paradisial. The level layout data is the same than the Bad Future’s though, which means even Good Future levels can sometimes have some weird small traps. Getting the Good Future in every level is the way to the good ending in Sonic CD.
Bad Futures are interesting because it helps characterize Dr.Eggman and his goals. It’s literally a glimpse into a world under his rule, a cool and somber idea that we don’t see much in other games. In his world, not only does nature suffer, but all of his creations too: all of his implementations are poorly maintained, rusty, and broken — including his robots, some of which are so worn down that they can’t even attack you.
This poses a lot of interesting questions about Dr.Eggman’s character: does he just consume all of these different ecosystems and abandons them? Or, are the Bad Futures mistakes, and he can’t see that his ideas of a roboticized world are unsustainable?
Adding to this, something really interesting happens in Stardust Speedway: The level is rusty and broken down in the Bad Future, but there’s a giant, pristine statue/building of Dr.Eggman right in the middle of it, intact. Is Dr.Eggman just an egocentric megalomaniac? Are all the other Zones’ resources being drained and his own creations cannibalized for the sustaining of his own image? Are machines his goals, or just his tools?
These are interesting thoughts the game raises, but Sonic CD doesn’t play as much with its changing environments as you’d like. There’s very little sense of an evolving or progressing environment with the different time zones in a level, just a primitive, dystopian or utopian spin on it depending on the time zone variant.
I must note that Sonic CD addresses a few things I’ve criticized before: The “rolling jump” is gone, the camera pans slightly ahead of Sonic when you’re running so you can better see what’s coming ahead, and its Spin-Dash relies on time charged rather than button-mashing. With the exception of how the Spin-Dash cancels your charge entirely if you let go too early, which is really frustrating, I see all these changes as positive.
THE PART OF THE ARTICLE THAT I HAVE TO MENTION WHITEHEAD’S VERSION OF THE GAME
I mentioned previously that it’s very cheap and accessible to play Sonic CD nowadays, and that’s because of the 2011 re-releases of Sonic CD. Made by the same team as the Sonic 1 and 2 mobile versions — praised previously by me as arguably the best versions of the games, the 2011 version of Sonic CD does a lot for the original game: It plays more accurately to the other Mega Drive Sonic games (Yuji Naka was busy with Sonic 2, so Sonic CD was programmed by someone else, and it shows), is widescreen, has a soundtrack selection, improved soundtracks, and some improved graphics that are especially noticeable and appreciated in the Special Stages.
SPECIAL STAGE
Sonic CD’s Special Stages take advantage of the Mega CD’s graphic rotation and scaling capabilities, the same as those that allowed the Super Nintendo to have games like F-Zero and Super Mario Kart. The original version of is choppy, but the remake’s Special Stages runs at 60 frames per second, plus much smoother graphic rotation and scaling.
Even with the performance issues of the original, Sonic CD’s Special Stages are my favorite of the series. They don’t really break the pacing too much like the other games’ Special Stages, and they feel more connected to the way Sonic plays in the main game— it’s about jumping to destroy enemies, and you can beat it really fast once you know how.
It helps that the way to access them is at the end of the level rather than interrupting a stage, and that Sonic CD’s more exploration-friendly levels ensure carrying 50 Rings to the goal isn’t as frustrating as it can be in the first game.
Still, even if they don’t break the pacing much, they break something else: Beating all Special Stages automatically makes every Zone a Good Future, and gives you the good ending. This severely undercuts the time travel mechanic, as many players may never find out about the other way of doing Good Futures and miss the entire point of time travelling — unless they rationalize that the earliest you can beat all Special Stages is halfway through the game, and that earlier stages must have a Good Future that’s accessible some other way.
BOSSES
Sonic CD’s bosses are also fairly unique in their design. While the previous games’ were about hitting Dr.Eggman’s newest contraption over and over — with a secret easier and more effective way to do so, each Sonic CD boss is a completely different beast. Sonic CD bosses are often about figuring out how to reach or hit them at all, sometimes victory being instantly awarded once you do.
This is a nice solution to the repetition of hitting a boss over and over again, and makes each boss encounter a novelty compared to the last one. Much like the rest of the game though, the execution of these boss battles can sometimes feel clunky, like there’s something missing.
CONCLUSION
Sonic CD is a clunky game. The level layouts can feel careless and even downright nonsensical at spots (mostly in alternate time zones), and a lot of it feels a couple coats of polish away from how it was supposed to truly be. Corroborating to this, Naoto Oshima felt it was really important that Time Travel in Sonic CD were instantaneous, but instead there’s a seconds-long loading sequence. Imagine how high level play of Sonic CD would look like if time travel had no loading, or any lag at all — chaining time travels to spend more time invulnerable, routing how to effectively do these chains and what version of the level you should warp to at specific moments to beat levels as fast as possible. It could be that many other ideas, and even the general vision for the game, had to be similarly cut back. The 2011 version adds some polish, but it’s also faithful to the original game, keeping most of the game’s elements — and issues — intact.
Despite the many debilitating issues of Sonic CD, it’s still one of my personal favorite games. Another game with a similar kind of level design just doesn’t exist, and as you invest in it out of curiosity and interest, your understanding of the game greatly expands. Getting acquainted with the levels more and more, understanding time travel, being aware of a Good Future, discovering hidden machines in the Past, locating every single one of them, finding out more efficient and quicker ways to destroy the machine and rush to the end of the level… There’s just so much for an invested player to dig into.
Despite Sonic CD being a game with big, rough edges, it deeply cares about very small details. The fact that every enemy has a broken variant, even if the difference is minuscule, the many unique bits of level design that you can only find in a specific time zone of a specific level, etc. Every time I play Sonic CD, I find something new about it, even if it’s small. All of this together makes playing Sonic CD like you’re unveiling and understanding more of this world and how to traverse in it every time you play, even more so than any other Sonic game. The execution might feel aimless and leave something to be desired, but that’s exactly why I don’t want this game to be dismissed. I would love to see iterations of the ideas of Sonic CD, I want to see more platformers that completely break the mold.
