YMMV / Sonic the Hedgehog 2

The following tropes apply to the 16-bit Genesis/Mega Drive Sonic the Hedgehog 2. The equivalent page for the 8-bit game also called Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is here. For tropes related to the 2022 film, go here.

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• Awesome Music: A returning Masato Nakamura strikes gold again with the Genesis version.
• Awesome Video Game Levels:
  • Chemical Plant Zone is a common favorite, due to being one of the fastest levels in the Genesis games. It's in Sonic Generations, Sonic Mania and Sonic Forces for a reason! The other favorite is Casino Night Zone, which codified the Casino Park style level for both the series and for subsequent games. It was in the 3DS version of Generations instead.
  • Hidden Palace Zone in the remaster, mostly for the novelty of finally getting to play one of the most famous Dummied Out levels in gaming history.
• Breather Level:
  • Casino Night Zone has lots of opportunities to collect rings, making it a good level for picking up Chaos Emeralds. However, it does have its instant death squishing hazards and a formidable boss.
  • Sky Chase Zone, an easy and relaxed level with lovely, gentle music as you fly through the sky. It helps that it comes after after three increasingly difficult levels, including the horror that is the Metropolis Zone.
• Broken Base: Whether the Hidden Palace Zone in the remaster should've used the Dummied Out track instead of Mystic Cave Zone's 2-player music. Some feel that Hidden Palace deserves its own track, while others consider its theme to be Soundtrack Dissonance. The Mystic Cave Zone 2 Player music was always Hidden Palace's music in the beta, but the unused level in the final uses the unused song.
• Catharsis Factor: If you ever struggled with the Death Egg Robot, Amy in the Origins Plus remaster completely demolishes it, with her Hammer Attack letting her get hits in more frequently. The Boss Rush version of the fight even gives you rings, allowing for more reckless and faster takedowns.
• Contested Sequel: Some fans nowadays believe Sonic CD is a more faithful follow-up to the first game because of its slower, platform-oriented level design and artstyle. It’s not helped by the development team for Sonic 1 being split between CD and 2.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • All the badniks in Metropolis Zone are Goddamned Bats, but the mantis-like Slicer badniks are a step into being even rougher. Shellcrackers can be avoided by jumping over the large claw. While Asterons explode at the worst of times, they have spikes that fly out straight in a star pattern and thus can be avoided. Slicer's claws, however, are quite large, have the annoying ability to home in on Sonic, and are usually placed right in trial-and-error spots. Needless to say, they will get you at least once unless you are Super Sonic. Small wonder why many considered it the most hated badnik in the game, if not the most hated badnik in the Genesis-era Sonic the Hedgehog games.
  • Aquis in Oil Ocean Zone isn't much better. The moment it appears on screen, it will immediately ambush Sonic by spitting two difficult-to-avoid projectiles at him in rapid succession with very little time to react. Not at all helped by the fact that they often hang out in areas where it's impossible to see them coming unless you know they're there from previous playthroughs.
• Disappointing Last Level: The Death Egg. All the effort to reach it, and the final level is just two boss fights with no rings, meaning you are forced into Trial-and-Error Gameplay until you get their tricky patterns down. Depending on how many lives and continues you have left, this could potentially force you to start the entire game over again.
• Even Better Sequel: Widely considered to be a massive improvement over the already good Sonic the Hedgehog, for being longer and more varied, improving the level design to accommodate speed, and introducing series staples like Tails, the Spin Dash, and Super Sonic. It's frequently a contender for the best "classic-era" Sonic game and one of the best titles in the whole series.
• Fan Nickname:
  • "The Drill Car" for the game's opening boss, Egg Drillster (a.k.a. Drill Eggman or Egg Mobile-D), a truck with a drill attached to its front. As a result of its inclusion in M.U.G.E.N, it's also referred to as the "Stupid Little Drill Tank".
  • "The Unholy Trio" for the Metropolis Zone badniks, due to all of them being considered uniquely tough and part of the reason the zone is so difficult.
    • They've also been called Scyther, Kingler, and Staryu.
  • "Silver Sonic" for the Sonic robot fought in Death Egg Zone. Its common Japanese name is "Mecha Sonic", but this creates confusion with the distinct robot in Sonic & Knuckles that shares the same name. "Silver Sonic" is taken from the 8-bit Sonic 2 manual (which actually describes yet another distinct bot from that version of the game) and was used in the Archie comics. Incidentally, both Sonic 2 robots were also referred to as "Robo-Sonic" in the Sonic The Hedgehog 1 & 2 SEGA's Official Player's Guide, which may have been the basis for the 16-bit version's appearance as "Robo Sonic" in the Sonic Dimensions DLC of LEGO Dimensions.
• Fanon: A common fan theory is that Mecha Sonic was either a Flawed Prototype for Metal Sonic (going by the assumption that Sonic CD takes place at some point after Sonic 2) or, going by the other fan conception that Sonic CD is an Interquel between the first game and Sonic 2, that Mecha Sonic was a hastily cobbled together replacement for Metal Sonic after he was abandoned upon defeat at Stardust Speedway. Worth noting is that Judy Totoya, Tails's creator and the game's illustrator, refers to Mecha Sonic as a "Prototype Anti-Sonic Unit" in a commemorative 2022 artwork, considering him a Mighty Glacier in comparison to Metal Sonic.
• Franchise Original Sin: Examples for this game can be seen on the series page.
• Game-Breaker:
  • If you plug in the second controller, Tails can be used to defeat Eggman's machines easily because of his invincibility. This, however, does not become an option after Metropolis Zone, meaning you can't cheese the last few bosses this way.
  • Amy (in Origins) has a much easier time against the Death Egg Robot than the other characters, able to hit it at nearly any point thanks to her Hammer Attack's wide hitbox.
• Genre Turning Point: While the gameplay by itself wasn't as disruptive for the industry as much as it was an improvement upon its predecessor, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was a turning point in how video games were released, marketed, and perceived in the entertainment industry at large. Up until the early 90s, most video games didn't have strict release dates, often trickling out to retailers over the course of a month or two. With Sonic 2, Sega instead created a huge marketing push around a definite release date of Tuesday, November 24th, 1992, which they dubbed "Sonic 2sday", generating enormous amounts of hype from people who couldn't wait to purchase the game on that day. While this huge launch presented logistical challenges to Sega and retailers, it paid off when Sonic 2 became one of the fastest selling video games up to that point, with many comparing the launch to that of a new album from a major artist or a blockbuster film. It set a standard for definitive release dates for video games going forward, and helped propel video games into becoming an important branch of the entertainment industry.
• Goddamned Bats: A few enemies stand out (such as the firefly Flasher enemies in Mystic Cave and the Aquis seahorses in Oil Ocean), but the biggest set of these live in Metropolis Zone. Asterons, suicidal starfish bots that shoot spikes when they blow up, Slicers, praying mantises that throw their pincers like a boomerang (not at all helped by their cheap placement), and Shellcrackers, crabs with huge fists that always seem to be positioned in awkward places. One of the main reasons why Metropolis is That One Level.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • Sonic can't be hurt by the otherwise nasty Water Eggman/Egg Poison boss in Chemical Plant Zone if he kneels, making it much easier to defeat. Interestingly, this doesn't work if you play as Tails. Also in Chemical Plant, there's one point where Sonic can go so fast that he can outrun the screen.
  • "Super Tails": Use the debug code, enable some means of getting all seven Chaos Emeralds (either code or genuinely) and transform, then generate a Teleport monitor and jump on it, letting you play as Tails with the properties of Super Sonic. His jump height is still too low to be really useful, and it goes away if he falls into a pit or gets crushed, though.
  • With objects that launch you (such as the see-saws in Hill Top Zone) if you Spin Dash before you get launched, it will carry over and you'll shoot forward as soon as you hit the ground. This became an Ascended Glitch in Sonic Mania with the introduction of the Drop Dash. This video of Sonic 2 Retro Remix plays it to hilarious extents.
  • The "Hyper Sonic glitch" from Oil Ocean Zone Act 2: launching out of the turbines, taking damage, and falling into a cannon causes Sonic to retain the boosted acceleration until he touches another cannon. Combining it with Super Sonic wrecks the speed cap entirely.
  • You can retain control during the results screen if you're off-screen and airbone as the signpost stops spinning. Unfortunately, the remaster fixed this to prevent the associated game-breaking glitch of Super Sonic getting stuck in midair if this is done.
• Growing the Beard: This is the game where the Sonic games really solidified their personality and style, and it features dozens of iconic elements that would be frequently revisited over the course of the series. These include the introduction of Tails, the introduction of the Death Egg, more complex level design (and the solidification of the "upper and lower paths" structure that almost every 2D Sonic game since has followed), tons of new badniks and a heaping helping of Best Level Ever. Simply put, almost every notable feature about the Sonic franchise originates or is improved by this game, causing it to be one of his most important games.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • It looks like it says Sonic F on the side of the Tornado, doesn't it?
  • There is a certain glitch in where if Sonic is charging up a spin dash and is lauched upwards, Sonic will retain his spindash particle and, if released mid-air, Sonic spindashes once he touches the ground, fast forward to 2018 and we have the "Drop Dash".
• It Was His Sled: Hidden Palace Zone in the remaster is intended to be a surprise to players, but it's pretty much impossible to discuss this in any Sonic community without someone spoiling it.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Every re-release made after the Android remaster has had a Tough Act to Follow due to being straight ports of the original game with minor additions, rather than retaining anything from the expanded remaster that had yet to see any non-mobile ports. The Origins compilation would finally bring the remaster's additions to PC and consoles, albeit marred by some technical issues due to the compilation's rushed development.
• Memetic Loser: Drill Eggman (aka Egg Mobile-D)/Egg Drillster is widely mocked for being regarded as one of the easiest bosses in the entire series.
• Nausea Fuel: The iconic half-pipe Special Stages are often called "Puke Zone" for its crude and poorly aged imitation of 3D. The framerate is very low, making the stages look like they're put under a strobe light, and the sudden twists and turns make the effect even more disorienting. Several players often complain of eyestrain and motion sickness when playing these stages. Thankfully, the remaster ditches the old version and makes them true polygonal stages, making them much smoother.
• Once Original, Now Common: The pseudo-3D appearance of the half-pipe Special Stages was quite impressive back in 1992. However, as later iterations of the half-pipe became actually 3D (including the remade special stages in the iOS/Android port), they don't look anywhere near as impressive anymore and their flaws have become a lot more apparent nowadays.
• Polished Port:
  • The iOS/Android versions has Knuckles integrated in without needing Sonic & Knuckles, the ability to fly and swim while playing as Tails, a Boss Rush mode, an extended vs. mode, a Time Attack mode, an updated soundtrack, and both a finished version and a secret beta version of Hidden Palace. The game also has a couple new visual effects (most evidently the Special Stage, which is now genuine 3D and has a very smooth framerate). This is due to being built on a new, custom engine designed to port classic Sonic games. This remaster was finally ported over to consoles via Sonic Origins and despite a few new glitches, it maintains nearly all the same new features and polish as well as a couple new ones like Drop Dash for Sonic and a Mirror Mode.
  • Similar to the Sonic the Hedgehog rerelease, the SEGA AGES version isn't nearly on the same caliber as the Android remaster, but is still an enjoyable package, having flawless emulation while adding Drop Dash, Ring Keep Mode, save states (the latter two being a major help in Death Egg Zone) and rumble feature as well as including the Sonic and Knuckles lock-on rendition to play as Knuckles.
• Porting Disaster: The PlayStation 3 version of the game has glitches happen far more often, such as removing hitboxes for some walls that, while you normally wouldn't run into, have springs.
• Recurring Fanon Character: There is an infamous glitch that would turn Sonic green with a black mark on his face. The character, nicknamed Ashura by the community, would become popular enough to receive some fan works with him acting as an Evil Counterpart of Sonic, and eventually inspired Ian Flynn to turn Anti-Sonic into a green hedgehog named Scourge in Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) — and later, create a green Oddball Doppelgänger in Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW) named Surge the Tenrec.
• Sacred Cow: This game and Sonic 3 & Knuckles are considered the high point of the series by many fans.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • When leaving a Special Stage, you lose all your rings, which can be frustrating for those who want to get all 7 Emeralds early on, and also for when you exit a Special Stage from a pre-boss checkpoint, as boss arenas often have no rings. While the original version of Knuckles in Sonic 2 has it where Knuckles' ring count when he touches a checkpoint is restored even after he loses a life, this is not retained in the iOS/Android port. In the 3DS and Switch ports, this can be alleviated if you turn on Ring Keep mode, as you will always re-enter the Act with 10 rings.
  • Having Tails tag along in the Special Stages can be frustrating if the CPU is controlling him, as it slightly increases the number of rings needed to pass each checkpoint; Tails technically helps collect rings, but he moves on a delay to Sonic and can easily lose the ones he collects by taking damage. Even worse, sometimes he may get in front of Sonic if you hit a bomb, leading to him collecting all the rings and not you, and he'll most likely smack himself into a bomb and lose them all.
  • If Tails is tagging along in underwater stages, he can steal air bubbles, oftentimes causing you to drown.
  • Changing to Sonic's super form is triggered by jumping... and nothing else. And since this is a Platform Game, you will be jumping a lot. This forces you to turn into Super Sonic once you have 50 rings even if you aren't good at controlling him or otherwise want to avoid activating it. Thankfully, in the mobile remaster, it's instead triggered by pressing the jump button again in midair. The Sonic Origins version makes it even better by pressing a separate button while in midair to activate it like in Sonic Mania.
  • In a 2-player game, if the item box setting is on "All Kinds [of] Items", then breaking an item box will give you one of several different items, which may include a teleport that swaps both players and, most irritatingly, a Robotnik, inflciting damage as if you touched an enemy. And yes, the Robotnik item will kill you if you have no rings. And of course, you have no way of knowing what's in the box until you break it. Meaning you can break an item box hoping to get something good out of it, but then die because the RNG doesn't like you today.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: Beating the game without using the Spin Dash is a common speedrunner challenge.
• Signature Scene:
  • The part in Chemical Plant Zone Act 2 where the player needs to escape a narrow shaft before it fills up with Mega Mack is infamous for being one of the first instances of Nightmare Fuel in the series. It was even referenced in the 30th Anniversary Symphony.
  • This game's memorable ending was revisited in a few other Sonic games.
• Tear Jerker: The unused track for the Dummied Out Hidden Palace Zone (track 10 in the Sound Test). Somehow it is very sad, and almost sounds like the music for the bad ending of the game (if it had one).
• That One Boss:
  • While not terribly difficult, Catcher Eggman/Catch Eggman (aka Egg Claw) at the end of Casino Night Zone is pretty tricky. Not only is hitting him very hard due to the layout of the room being reminiscent of a pinball machine, but due to how fast you'll likely be careening around the room, it isn't terribly uncommon to run into one of the mines he occasionally drops. Oh, and if you get caught underneath him while on the flippers, he'll lunge into you for unavoidable damage. With all these factors in consideration, it can be hard to beat him with all your rings still intact by the end. Aggravating all this is that this is the Zone where you can earn hundreds of rings if you can get lucky with the slots, so unless you are playing the M2 ports for 3DS and Switch in Ring Keep mode, expect Robotnik to throw your 300+ rings in the trash. The easiest way to beat the boss is to avoid using the flippers altogether, stand on either side of the arena, wait for Robotnik to stop to drop a mine, and then spin dash up the side and hit him that way. However, this method consumes a lot more time — and you might not have a lot of it if you spent a lot of time playing slots.
  • Drill Eggman II/Egg Driller, the boss of Mystic Cave Zone, causes stalactites that are rather hard to avoid to rain down from the ceiling. Even so, it's not overly challenging if you have rings... but if you activate the checkpoint directly preceding the boss fight and then either die to the boss or enter a Special Stage from that checkpoint, you'll be forced to do the fight without any rings, as the ledge above the checkpoint will be just out of your reach.
  • Flying Eggman (aka Egg Bouncer), the boss of Metropolis Zone, which is That One Level, so you've probably lost most of your rings before you reach him. You have a very narrow window to hit him due to the clones rapidly orbiting around him, and mistiming your jump means you take damage. At least the battle becomes easier as you destroy the clones. In the Origins Plus remaster, Amy's Hammer Attack trivializes the boss even further.
  • For Barrier Eggman (aka Laser Prison), the boss of Wing Fortress Zone, you have to watch out for randomly moving spike platforms and a laser all at once, with limited space to move around. Dodging the laser is easy enough, but avoiding taking damage from the spike platforms isn't so easy. The platforms' movement patterns are difficult to memorize, and you have to jump on them to reach the laser and get a hit. Have fun if you manage to lose all your rings.
  • The final boss, the Death Egg Robot, while not extremely difficult strategy wise, can be a bit difficult due to its very particular collision, combined with the fact that you do not get ANY rings whatsoever. Due to its spike armoured arms, trying to jump into its weak point is hard besides its landing recoil, at which point you have to quickly avoid it firing its arms a great distance at you. Even worse, if you hit him from the wrong angle, you can sometimes fall inside him instead of bounce off, killing you. You can also damage him by hitting him in the back above the flame on his jetpack, though getting behind him can be dangerous as he'll shoot out mines if he lands and boxes you in too close to the edge of the screen. Knuckles' stunted jump height means this boss is a huge Difficulty Spike for him after most of the game being much easier as him as you can only damage the boss when he lands and cannot damage him from the rear at all. However with the addition of Amy in Origins Plus, this boss becomes a joke with well-timed Hammer Attacks.
• That One Level:
  • Chemical Plant Zone Act 2. You know it's a wake-up call when Sonic Team themselves (or at least, the members who developed the Sonic Gems Collection) had trouble with this level. Aside from being a water level (with no air bubbles), there's one segment where you must climb up a series of rotating stair blocks as water rises. You can potentially get crushed by said blocks while climbing, or worse yet, fall back down into the water and have to do the whole thing all over again. If the latter occurs, you're more or less toast due to the aforementioned lack of air bubbles. Thankfully there's an alternate route that allows you to bypass that segment completely.
  • Aquatic Ruin Zone can force you into long stretches of water, has small and hard-to-see arrow traps, and the first truly annoying enemies in the game. Grounders often burst out of walls and are hard to see coming at high speeds until it's too late, while Whisps are small, attack in groups and are a nightmare if you're flying as Tails. (As in his fly state, he only has a vertical hurtbox via his tails, and Whisps are agile enough to weave around it)
  • Mystic Cave Zone, since most objects in the Zone are traps of some sort, and the enemies are either hidden or small enough to overlook. It also has an inescapable spike pit in Act 2 (made worse if you happen to be Super with hundreds of rings). This was fixed in the remaster, as the spike pit is replaced with a transition to a new level.
  • Oil Ocean Zone starts the Difficulty Spike of the endgame thanks to its clunky layout. The Aquis and Octus badniks that shoot at you are extremely hard to avoid, making the whole level a bit of a headache if you're trying to retain your rings. Aquis in particular will often ambush you from out of nowhere.
  • Metropolis Zone, mostly due to the enemies there being the toughest Badniks in the game, and some are even placed poorly in the level (such as one of the Slicers being at the top of a yellow triangle spring wall you have to bounce up to, making it hard to avoid the boomerang blades and avoid running into the Slicer at the top of it). It is also the longest Zone in the entire game, bearing three Acts instead of the standard two.
  • The Special Stages can be this, since they require Trial-and-Error Gameplay more often than not so a player can memorize the placement of rings and bombs. It's even worse if one plays as Sonic and Tails, since the ring goals are higher, and it's possible for Tails to get in front of Sonic if he gets hit, and if the game is controlling him, you're screwed unless you can manage to get back in front of him, since he'll steal all the rings up ahead and then inevitably lose them.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: While the 2013 remaster has received considerable acclaim, some fans have taken it to task for adding in elements that they deride as gimmicks (such as including the elemental shields from Sonic 3), using a slightly modified version of the Simon Wai prototype's Hidden Palace Zone rather than trying to recreate the speculated original vision of it being where Sonic learns how to access his Super Form after collecting all seven Chaos Emeralds, and not using Track 10 for Hidden Palace.
• Tough Act to Follow: The 2013 remaster became the gold standard of Sonic 2 ports due to the wide range of features it added, as well as throwing in Hidden Palace Zone as the icing on the cake. As a result, the SEGA AGES port for Switch ended up being panned by many fans for missing a lot of these features and not being done by the same Taxman-Stealth partnership, despite being an otherwise solid port by M2, a studio with an excellent reputation for Sega and shmup ports, that backports in the Drop Dash and retains the option to play as Knuckles. It would take almost a decade for the remaster's additions to come to non-mobile platforms with the Origins compilation.
• Underused Game Mechanic:
  • Tails' iconic ability to fly is used solely as a means for the CPU to catch up with Sonic onscreen in this game. Many players were dumbfounded by the fact they couldn't use flying when playing as Tails themselves. Curiously of all the official releases of Sonic 2, only the 2013 remaster rectifies this by backporting his Sonic 3 mechanics. Not even the Jam and SEGA AGES versions, which add a ton of other quality of life improvements, bother to fix this (the SEGA AGES version even seems conscious of this and to avoid making Tails a Joke Character, instead disables Sonic's Drop Dash in multiplayer).
  • The two player split screen function is a more programming-necessitated example. Only three levels are available in VS race mode, the three that are most compatible in this mode. The beta version had split screen available the entire game, though also demonstrates the mass difficulties the other levels have compressing to two screens, often producing glitchy unplayable messes. The 2013 remaster cuts out split screen altogether in favour of one-screen online play, allowing it to have twice as many levels available in VS mode. When it was ported to Origins however, split screen was reinstated, albeit now fixed to work on the same amount.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The 2013 remade version of the game makes the Special Stages true 3D instead of just pseudo-3D (though objects like bombs, rings, and the characters are still sprites), giving it a much smoother and fluid look compared to the Genesis original. Using a code, a secret eighth stage can be played and features a corkscrew effect on the half-pipe that is unlike anything on the Genesis version's stages.

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