Sonic the Hedgehog / YMMV

Anti-Climax Boss: The final boss. It is a fairly challenging, if tedious, final boss, and the lack of rings doesn't help, but it's not a particularly exciting battle—you're just locked in a room where Eggman tries to crush you to death with pistons, and then sends electric sparks flying after you. Fortunately, the game lets you deliver a final blow to Eggman while he's escaping with just the right timing.
Awesome Art: The game's graphics helped sell the console's graphical capabilities, even putting contemporaries from the graphically superior SNES to shame. They also have aged surprisingly well for a 1991 game, still looking pretty vibrant to this day.
Awesome Music: The beginning of a series-wide tradition, Masato Nakamura starts the series off with a bang in the soundtrack department. Vote for your favorite here.
Awesome Video Game Levels:
- Green Hill Zone. The first experience of Sonic for those who have been with him from the very beginning. It would stick in many fans' minds for the impressive scenery, the ability to just run forward at blazing speed, the crumbling terrain, and especially the moment where Sonic spins into a pipe and suddenly gets launched high up into the air. As such, it's an icon of the series that has been repeatedly homaged, if not reappeared in future games.
- Star Light Zone for being the other level to really showcase the speed.
Breather Level:
- While not without its share of hazards and traps, Spring Yard Zone is a mostly laidback and non-difficult level that is relatively fast paced when compared to the zone that preceded it and especially compared to the zone that follows.
- Star Light Zone's greatest hazard is the long gaps and the sparse checkpoints, but there isn't much else to complain about compared to its preceding level, Labyrinth Zone, and is much faster-paced. It's also right before Scrap Brain Zone, the final Zone in the game with the expected difficulty of a final level.
- For whatever reason, the final Special Stage is easy as hell, probably the second easiest next to the first one^note.
Catharsis Factor: While not rendering it entirely trivial, Tails in re-releases makes the infamous Labyrinth Zone boss a lot easier, between his flight and ability to dog-paddle.
Dancing Bear: The game was sold on and became popular for two aspects. One, it was a blistering fast game for its time, allegedly thanks to the brazenly marketed "Blast Processing" abilities of the Sega Genesis. To a lesser extent, it was also for having a mild streak of edge to it that was lacking from the more vanilla Super Mario World and Sega's own previous Mario wannabe, Alex Kidd, while still having the lighthearted cartoon appeal lacking from Sega's other arcade ports and more mature games for their console.
Demonic Spiders:
- The infamous Caterkiller from Marble Zone has a bit of mild Hitbox Dissonance^note and can only be killed by being hit on the head, lest they shoot their spiky body parts everywhere. And even then, you can still take damage from hitting them on the head or rolling into them.
- The Roller enemies in Spring Yard Zone, which move incredibly fast and appear seemingly out of nowhere, and can only be destroyed when they uncurl for a few seconds.
- Orbinauts. In Labyrinth Zone, they're placed in cramped spots usually guarding air bubbles like in Act 2 and you have to wait for them to launch every spikeball off (or you can just walk off screen and return to get rid of most of them safely). The variation that appears in Star Light Zone never shoots them off and they sometimes block paths to the point that they have to be run into. They can only be killed with a very well-timed and aimed-jump or invincibility (through Mercy Invincibility or the power-up box).
- Walking Bombs in Star Light Zone can't even be killed with invincibility, as Sonic only goes through them. In most cases, you have to use Mercy Invincibility or in Scrap Brain Zone, get a running start to jump cleanly over them.
Fan Nickname:
- The "Checker Wrecker" for the very first boss fight in the series, that being the Eggmobile with a wrecking ball attached to it, which was the name given for it in the Archie comics, but nowhere else. Plus, it sounds much catchier than the boss's canon name of Egg Mobile-H, which was only given in the Japanese guide of Sonic Advance.
- The odd behavior of spikes in the original revision of this game, in which they ignore Mercy Invincibility and instantly kill Sonic if he touches another obstacle during the rebound, is referred as the "spike bug" even though it's long been determined to have been intentional.
First Installment Wins:
- Not so much critically in the case of the Genesis — virtually everyone will agree that Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is superior to the first game in every department, with Sonic 3 & Knuckles and Sonic CD also benefiting from refined gameplay — but it's still the top-selling title for the Genesis and probably the Sonic game most well-remembered by non-gamers (though again, with close competition from Sonic 2).
- Played straight with Green Hill Zone, which remains the most famous setting in the entire franchise, to the point that almost every other Sonic game contains a Green Hill equivalent (usually as the first level.)
Franchise Original Sin: See the franchise page.
Genre Turning Point: This game helped define part of the culture of The '90s by creating the Mascot with Attitude through the titular character's more overt and expressive personality, and showing just how dynamic gameplay in a platformer could be through the use of momentum-based physics, branching pathways, and even livelier level geometry. In the process, it created the Console Wars between Sega and Nintendo.
Goddamned Bats: Burrowbots in Labyrinth Zone and Act 3 of Scrap Brain Zone are hidden in the ground except for their drill noses, so an impatient player may easily get blindsided by them as they leap into the air.
Goddamned Boss:
- The Labyrinth Zone boss can be quite intense, given it's heavily dependent upon timing - both in your jumps and the movement of spears emerging from the walls - and how much air Sonic has left, in addition to having to chase Eggman up through an incredibly small pathway. It's this, along with the overall difficulty of the zone, that contributed to the rearrangement of the stages.
- The final fight has you playing a round of whack-a-mole against Eggman. Two out of four pistons will move and you must guess which one the doctor is hiding in. It can be quite troublesome when doing a speedrun, especially when the two middle pistons pattern comes up.
Good Bad Bugs:
- In the original version, once you finished a level, if you were airborne while offscreen as the "level complete" score tallies came up, the game wouldn't take control away from you. This not only means you can continually jump past the goal post to rack up bonus points, you can also jump back into a Giant Ring you may have accidentally missed.
- Some of the physics glitches in the infamous Game Boy Advance port, Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis, can be exploited. In particular, if Sonic gets on top of one of the "R" bumpers in the Special Stages then the stage will rock back and forth endlessly, which can be useful for getting your bearings.
- In the 2013 remake, it's possible to get Knuckles and Tails together via glitching.
- In some versions (including the original) if you run to the left as soon as the orbinauts in the Labyrinth Zone start launching their spikeballs at you until they are offscreen all of their spikeballs will have mysteriously disappeared, leaving the orbinaut completely vulnerable.
Harsher in Hindsight: The GBA version was made for Sonic's 15th anniversary. Unfortunately, the final product ended up being a Porting Disaster due to the porting team's baffling decision to use an earlier Java mobile port as the basis instead of using the original Genesis version's source code. Not helping matters is Simon "Stealth" Thomley would later port Green Hill Zone as proof that the game could work just fine on the handheld, which would eventually lead to him working on the Sonic 1 mobile port.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- Despite being a game sold on its speed, experts (such as this YouTuber) consider this entry nearly impossible to speedrun.
- A Japanese commercial features Sonic destroying an ersatz Death Star with Eggman's face on it. Fast forward to Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and a Death Star ersatz, the Death Egg, would prominently appear.
- One scrapped concept was to give Sonic a human Love Interest. Given the reception toward Sonic's relationship with the human Princess Elise in Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), Sega was probably right to go with their initial hunch and drop the idea here.
Hype Backlash: While the classic era Sonic games tend to hold a Sacred Cow status, and it's still a widely beloved game, modern reviews of Sonic 1 tend to put it under much more scrutiny than in its heydey, especially in comparison to its more polished sequels. The game has many obvious flaws that get overlooked due to nostalgia, namely the pacing and difficulty, the sometimes questionable level design, and the unrefined and basic game mechanics.
Most Wonderful Sound:
- The choral "SEGAAAAAA" at the opening of the game. It's reached memetic levels due to how soothing and cool it sounds.
- The opening bars to Labyrinth Zone may not seem this way at first, but they're always the first thing you hear after the drowning music if you manage to save yourself from drowning. It sounds like a musical version of a sigh of relief. Similarly, the "wo-WA!" noise Sonic makes as he breathes the bubble is one of the most beloved sounds in gaming.
- The "level complete" music, as well as the "cha-ching" sound effect at the end that amplifies its greatness.
Narm Charm: The Spring Yard Zone theme recycles the instrument used for the ring sound, which is a sleigh bell sample that was one of the instrument samples in the YM2612 chip that the Genesis houses, but still manages to be captivating despite this.
Nightmare Fuel:
- The infamous drowning music, which would become a recurring jingle in most games in the franchise with bodies of water that don't act as automatic Bottomless Pits. And since Labyrinth Zone is considered the hardest of the water levels in the series, you can expect to hear this a lot.
- Scrap Brain Zone is where the game's lighter, softer side vanishes into an industrial nightmare of No OSHA Compliance with fire, electricity, and giant buzz saws being common elements. The music matches the mood with its energetic, but panicking tone.
Nintendo Hard: Compared to most other games in the series, this game is quite difficult. It revolves around the player's ability to gain and control Sonic's momentum well enough to avoid or overcome various obstacles, many of which can kill Sonic instantly regardless of rings. The momentum can be surprisingly hard to get because his moves are very limited compared to the various speed-boosting skills he has in later games like the Spin Dash, Super Peel-Out, and Drop Dash. Additionally, the Special Stages play very differently than the rest of the game and are deliberately confusing to the eyes and difficult to navigate.
- Also, on Sonic Origins, when you clear any of the four included games, this one included, you will unlock an all-new feature called Mirror Mode, which will take Nintendo Hard to a whole new level; it does this by reversing the level layout so that you go from right to left (and left to right in areas where you would originally go from right to left). The enemies, spike placements and obstacles are as they were on the regular game, but with this Mirror Mode, you'll really have to be on your toes, even in the Special Stages. Fortunately, you have unlimited tries to get it right, but even so, Mirror Mode gives any experienced player a whole new challenge to get used to.
Obvious Beta: Not so obvious when looked at on its own, but compared to some later versions, the original release mostly sold worldwide can be seen as unfinished, as it is missing a few of the graphical effects (most notably the auto-scrolling clouds in Green Hill Zone and the water ripples in Labyrinth Zone and Scrap Brain Zone), and the level select still uses an unfinalized level order. Certain later non-cartridge versions even rub out the spike "bug" and add Spin Dashing. The fact that the game was unfinished becomes more egregious in the leaked prototype.
Older Than They Think: A lot of people think that the famous "SEGA!" jingle debuted in this game. In actuality, it first appeared in Japanese Sega commercials in the 1980s. Even an instrumental version of the jingle played in the Sega Master System bootup screen.
Once Original, Now Common: This game was huge when it first came out, spawning one of the biggest video game names ever and elevating Sega to the same level as Nintendo, thanks to its heavily-marketed speed and the perceived edginess of the Mascot with Attitude titular character who was the Trope Maker. It was also heavily copied with many similar characters being introduced and the gaming industry getting more mature and fast-paced, with later Sonic games evolving to keep up. In light of this, a modern-day gamer might consider this game's speed to be nothing special, or possibly even slow, and the Mascot with Attitude Dancing Bear probably won't have an effect anymore. It also doesn't help that it lacks the series' iconic Spin Dash or Super Sonic. There's a reason why every re-release or remaster since adds the Spin Dash in retroactively and why Sega's reluctant to re-release it in its unaltered original form or acknowledge anything past its legendary Green Hill Zone.
Polished Port:
- The Sonic Jam port of the game includes the option to use the Spin Dash of later titles, a Time Attack mode and difficulty options that alter the layout of the game. The sound quality, composed of CD audio sound clips, isn't quite 100% accurate to the original, though avoids being too much of an aggravation. This also means the music plays at the correct speed on PAL televisions, unlike the original game.
- The 2013 iOS and Android re-release was handled by Christian "The Taxman" Whitehead, who worked on the enhanced re-release of Sonic CD before it, in collaboration with Stealth. This version of the game features true widescreen support, the ability to play as Tails (and have him follow Sonic) and Knuckles, and a couple of other features new to this version of the game such as a Debug Mode that can give a variety of options other than bending the rules.
- The 2018 Sega Ages re-release of Sonic 1, while not as lavish as the 2013 remaster, not only offers a solid emulation of the original game, complete with the choice of the international, Japanese and even Mega Play arcade versions, but also has a helping of extra challenges, an easy mode in the form of Ring Keep mode, and the option to use the Spin Dash and the Drop Dash ability introduced in Mania. Also like the Sonic Jam version, it is PAL optimised. Finally, this version features save states, unlike the Retro Engine remaster.
- The Sonic Origins release of the 2013 mobile ports add some great newer features such as the Drop Dash from Sonic Mania, make Tails and Knuckles playable from the start, and even add Amy as a playable character with the release of Sonic Origins Plus. While it is not a perfect release, it is much better playing with an actual controller than mobile touchscreens, and it is much easier to set up than the unofficial source ports of the 2013 mobile release. The PC version even has extensive modding support to polish up the remaining problems of the Sonic Origins ports that were not fixed through patches or the Plus update.
Porting Disaster:
- The emulation of the game on the Sega Dreamcast's Sega Smash Pack: Volume 1 compilation is marred by butchered audio. The emulation used in Sonic Mega Collection also suffers from sound inaccuracies, but to a much lesser degree.
- The GBA port, Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis, is near universally considered to be not only the worst version of the game, but one of the worst ports in gaming history due to it's insane Screen Crunch, enormous quantity of bugs, heavy amounts of lag, a butchered soundtrack, and a suite of other problems that make the game almost completely unplayable.
Scrappy Mechanic:
- The "spike bug" for those used to playing the sequels and later versions of the game, which lack this behavior. In the original version of the game, Sonic isn't granted Mercy Invincibility when he touches some spikes. As such, if he touches another obstacle during the rebound, like some more spikes, he'll immediately die.
- In this game, access to the Special Stage requires the player to make it to the end of an Act with 50 rings and then jump into the Giant Ring that appears just after the goal. Aside from the fact that this means that you can only make one attempt per Act, if you run at the goal at full speed and miss the Giant Ring, you won't be able to backtrack fast enough to jump into it before the goal stops spinning and control is taken away from the player, squandering that attempt. Fortunately, later games made Special Stage conditions far more lenient.
- Furthermore, Special Stages only appear at the end of Act 1 and 2 of the first five zones, meaning that if you fail to get an Emerald on those stages more than four times, you're locked out of the good ending. Subsequent entries would give players far more opportunities to collect all the Chaos Emeralds.
- The Special Stages themselves are among the most unfair levels in the entire series: Sonic is stuck as a ball in a rotating maze where he can only jump and has limited control on the direction he's jumping (see the following example for further explanations) and where it's extremely easy to throw yourself in the nearest Exit, making your aforementioned efforts pointless. If the game locks you in the Emerald's room to avoid you from making the road in reverse, you still have to break its barriers without going in the Exit by accident.
- The 2013 Taxman & Stealth remaster makes the rotation of the Special Stages a smooth 60 frames per second, which makes the already disorienting movement of the stages even hard to keep track of.
- The Roll Jump Lock mechanic, which carried over to Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Normally Sonic has some amount of limited aerial control when he jumps, unless you rolled beforehand, in which case you completely lose all ability to control your mid-air movement and just sail forwards against your will. It's intended to make Sonic feel more like an actual rolling ball, and the level design encourages quite a few rolls (and Spin Dashes in later releases count as rolls), but you'll be left helpless if you realize you're hurtling for spikes or a pit.
- In Labyrinth Zone, air bubbles spawn less frequently than in future games, which can lead to players drowning while waiting for one to come up.
Self-Imposed Challenge: Beating every level without touching a single ring. The challenge is popular enough to where a ROM hack, OMG The Red Rings, was designed around it. Another ROM hack includes the infamous Omochao who pauses the game to inform you of when you collected a ring or interact with objects in any way, and the goal is to avoid setting it off as much as possible since each time, the pause gets longer.
Signature Scene: Sonic popping up and finger wagging while smirking at the player in the title screen is one of the most famous intros in all of gaming. It's replicated in the title screen of Sonic the Hedgehog 4 and referenced in Sonic's sole cutscene in Super Smash Bros. Brawl's story mode.
Squick: Sonic was originally going to have a human girlfriend named Madonna, clearly inspired by the musician of the same name. This concept art◊ shows him covered in her lipstick (which, judging by his expression, he doesn't seem too pleased about).
Suspiciously Similar Song:
- The Spring Yard Zone theme sounds an awful lot like "Every Little Step" by Bobby Brown.
- The Star Light Zone theme begins almost identically to "Love Won't Wait" by Bobby Caldwell.
- Scrap Brain Zone takes many visual cues from Blade Runner, and the theme fittingly sounds like the ending theme Vangelis wrote for the movie.
- The Final Zone theme sounds similar to Duran Duran's "Planet Earth".
That One Boss: Labyrinth Zone's boss is an odd beast - Eggman runs away up a shaft filled with spears and fire-spitting gargoyles, and you don't need to hit him eight times to win. In fact, doing so is almost impossible. The problem is that said shaft fills up with water, and there are no air bubbles to use if you let it catch up with Sonic (or get knocked back into it by a trap, potentially all the way to the bottom - at which point You Are Already Dead). Also, there are no rings between the final checkpoint and the end - so your only protection is a shield before the boss and whatever rings you brought with you. And woe be to those who die and have only the shield to protect them for the boss. Thankfully, Eggman evidently didn't bother to come up with a plan B in case you actually made it to the top, as he just flies off without putting up even the slightest resistance.
That One Level:
- Marble Zone is disliked for being a slower stage that follows up the fast and speedy Green Hill Zone. Plus, the number of booby traps, lava, and crushers can make navigating it difficult, especially for the impatient. Even when you become well versed in the stage, it can still be a tedious experience with the slow-paced gimmicks that are antithetical to Sonic's main draw of high-speed.
- Labyrinth Zone. It's a water level, which means you're playing as a slow Sonic in constant danger of drowning for most of it. Then there's the Goddamned Bats in the form of Burrowbots and Orbinauts that can make life miserable, especially if you had the misfortune of failing to get all the Chaos Emeralds beforehand. To top it off, it ends with That One Boss. Oh, and it's also your introduction to one of the most infamously terrifying pieces of music in the series, and since it plays when you're about to drown, you're gonna be hearing it a lot in this tough water level.
  - Labyrinth Zone may be hard enough in the original, but it gets much worse in the disastrous GBA port. You have to deal with all of the same difficulty design in the original in addition to the technical issues of the botched port. Screen Crunch, poor controls, poor physics, and lag are put on full display in this level when it comes to making the game harder. The end result makes Labyrinth Zone in the GBA port nearly impossible to beat.
- Scrap Brain Zone Act 1 - 2 suffers similar problems to Marble Zone with its focus on traditional platforming and diversion from Sonic's fast-paced gameplay. There are many One-Hit Kill mechanics, obnoxious enemy placement, and they are just generally nerve-wracking with how hostile the environment is.
- Scrap Brain Zone Act 3 is a Palette Swap of Labyrinth Zone, so all the problems with that level are present and accounted for. In fact, it's even tougher because the air bubble pockets are more spread out, and you have to wait longer for the bubbles to come out. It's also a Marathon Level unless you take the shortcut at the start, which makes it almost a non-issue.
- Special Stage 3 can be this, since while it's easy to reach the Chaos Emerald in one fell swoop, it's just as easy to rocket straight into Goal blocks, potentially with unwanted assistance from bumpers.
Tough Act to Follow: Sega's idea of getting Sonic 1 on Switch was to include it in M2's SEGA AGES series of Sega Genesis ports. While by all accounts a very solid port (as is usual of M2, regarded by many as one of the best retro porting teams in the business) that includes multiple versions of the game, even the Mega Play version, as well as adding the Drop Dash from Sonic Mania, there are many who are disappointed that it's not Taxman & Stealth's version that's used on smartphones and that it lacks a lot of the content and touch ups present in that version. This mentality continued when Sonic 2 was ported the same way.
Underused Game Mechanic: The Sega Ages re-release has a strangely esoteric Time Attack mode that's only for Green Hill Zone Act 1.

YMMV / Sonic the Hedgehog

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