Before becoming an irrational Nintendo fanboy, I was, alarmingly, a Sonic fanboy. And while the series has been in a pretty dire spot for some time now, the original games on the Sega Mega Drive* are some of my favourites. However, at the time I did not have either a Sega Master System or Game Gear, I am less familiar with the 8 bit Sonic games. Sonic Chaos is one of these games I had not yet played, coming out the year between Sonic 2 and Sonic 3.
Compilations of Sonic Games have come out throughout the years, with most games available in collections released on the PlayStation 2 and other consoles of the 6th generation. Specifically Sonic Mega Collection Plus has Sonic Chaos included in its library of games. However, when I finally opened the case, there was a problem:
I am unsure what happened to cause such a distressing level of damage to the disc, although some discs appear to have been made by something that was rotating, so my suspicion is it was in use in a PlayStation as it was knocked onto the ground.
As you may expect, this level of destruction resulted in a disc that was completely unable to be used. Now I could have left it there, but I'd already decided I'd be playing it for this blog that literally DOZENS of people read when I force them to, so I couldn't back out! Fortunately, with my Kirby playthrough extended I had time to find a second disc.
So was Sonic Chaos worth buying this collection twice? Or should I have considered the destruction of the first disc justification to remove Sonic Chaos from my list of unplayed games for this project, handily avoiding having to play a frustrating and broken game?
Foreshadowing is a narrative device in which suggestions or warnings about events to come are dropped or planted.**
As a Game Gear/Master System game, Sonic Chaos is naturally going to be limited when compared to contemporary Master System Sonic games of the day. This is due to the smaller screen, more limited colour palette, less powerful processor and simpler sound capabilities.
The game suffers some slowdown, which I am normally more forgiving of than most. At no point did slowdown impede my progress. What does cause significant problems, however, was how quickly and easily dropped rings completely despawn. In Sonic games, as long as Sonic is carrying any rings, he will not die when taking damage. When Sonic takes damage, he will drop any rings he is carrying, giving you an opportunity to collect some of them and be able to take any additional hits. In Sonic Chaos, Sonic drops only a few rings (while the held count drops to 0 regardless of how many were held). Further, in most circumstances, only 1 or 2 can be collected as the rest simply disappear. And occasionally, they all do!
In most Sonic games, to make running into spike traps and bottomless pits a little less likely, the screen will pan ahead to ensure you can see as far as possible. On the GameGear's nearly square screen (160x144) this is ever more important! The game however only pans about half the distance it could. There's no reason Sonic's sprite couldn't be right next to the side of the screen the player is running from! This makes running into pits far more likely. In addition to this, Sonic Chaos seems to suffer an increase in lag when the characters are moving fast, resulting in multiple deaths where the jump button was absolutely pressed in time, but Sonic or Tails simply ran right off the edge. I even tested this by playing a completely different game on this collection, and the lag was completely absent.
Level design in Sonic Chaos is also a point of contention. As an easy comparison, here are the maps from the first levels of Sonic 2, first on the Mega Drive, and secondly on the Game Gear.
So less complex and smaller levels should be expected. But surely Sonic Chaos levels are at least as large as those from Sonic 2, right?
Nope! Sonic Chaos features extremely small levels, all easily finished within a minute on even the first try. Across the 6 zones in the game, there is also very little difference in map design, with the later levels mostly just introducing more and more obnoxious bottomless pits. Each zone has 1 specific gimmick, for instance the corkscrew in Turquise Hill, but these do not have any major impact on level design. As an example, here is a map from the 4th zone, Mecha Green Hill Zone.
In addition to level design, enemy design in Sonic Chaos is also very limited. Most badnik designs are recycled across multiple zones, which was not something previous sonic games had done, instead featuring unique enemies for each zone.
My 1 hour of this game consisted of 2 playthroughs, one with Sonic and then a second attempt with Tails. I kept research to a minimum for my Sonic playthrough, and eventually ran out of continues at the end of the 4th Zone, after bashing my head against the end zone boss. I had been surprised that to this point, I had not found a single special stage, nor any sign of Chaos emeralds (which in the previous game were tucked away cleverly). Since I had 35 minutes left, I thought I'd look into how to access special stages for a second run. And boy, did that make me mad.
So before I get into the specifics of my anger, let me ask you a question: what is Sonic about? There's a few different schools of thought on this, either that moving fast is in an of itself what Sonic is about, or that speed is instead a reward for a mastery of the level layout, where the fastest speeds are achieved. Regardless, speed is an essential component.
To access the special stages in Sonic Chaos, Sonic must collect 100 rings scattered around the level, which then takes him to the special stage where the chaos emerald can be earned. However, with the small size of each level, 100 rings is not something you are going to achieve in a normal playthrough where speed is any part of the equation. You will need to slowly and methodically explore upper and lower sections of each level, taking care never to take damage because, of course, that will drop the count to zero.
This is completely antithetical to anything Sonic games are meant to be about. And because Sonic is DESIGNED to move at high speeds, even in this very game, it's not even well suited here!
With this in mind, I started my Tails playthrough. The advantage Tails has over Sonic is that he can fly, which will make collecting rings easier. And with the new goal in mind, I collected 100 rings in the first level. While collecting 100 rings resulted in an extra life, nothing happened. Although the ring counter did reset to zero, meaning I was vulnerable to instant death until I collected more!
Unsure of what had gone wrong, I nethertheless moved on to the second act of Turquoise Hill. And again, after collecting 100 rings: nothing. Quickly pausing the game to read more in depth, I nearly burst a blood vessel: Tails cannot collect Chaos emeralds.
THE CHARACTER BEST EQUIPED TO COLLECT RINGS AND THUS THE CHAOS EMERALDS IS NOT ABLE TO DO SO.
With 30 minutes left on the clock, I decided to continue with Tails rather than start a third playthrough just to try out the special stages. And having learned a few lessons about the weird lag and flying over some particularly nasty sections, I managed to get all the way to the final boss.
The final two zones are actually the most visually impressive in the entire game. The fifth zone, Aqua Planet Zone, is easily the best in the whole game. The backgrounds is animated, with fast moving storm clouds tearing across the highest point. The lower sections are submerged, making it the only zone with underwater sections.
And then comes the final zone, Electric Egg zone. This zone is surprisingly colourful, and has a circuit board aesthetic, which is very suitable for a world created by Robotnik.
However, this level features some frankly unfair design choices: pipes that lead directly into pits, explosive enemies that blend into the background, and indestructible laser turrets designed to hit you as you run underneath if you don't slow down. Again, punished for going as fast as possible. In a Sonic game.
As I approached the Final boss, I was more than ready for this to be over. And unfortunately, both the boss and level leading up to it are miserable. There is only one opportunity to collect rings, which require either nailing an extremely difficult jump (made more complicated by the lag), or very slowly backtracking. Of each attempt to beat the final boss, half resulted in failure to even reach the boss fight due to a lag-inflicted fall into a bottomless pit. The boss itself has a very small vulnerable spot, with the rest not only being invulnerable, but also bouncing Sonic or Tails away. As well as shooting lasers forwards, an energy ball bounces around the screen which is difficult to avoid when unpredictably bouncing around.
After over 30 attempts, I was never able to land more than 15 hits on Robotnik, which itself is far more than is normally required in a Sonic game. When the final life was lost, rather than being upset, I welcomed the freedom of being done.
With Sonic Chaos being such a disappointment, as I was looking around for images for this blog, I was intrigued to find information about a fan project to remake Sonic Chaos with the aesthetic of a Mega Drive game:
To close out, I present a list of other problems that weren't bad enough to warrant any deep discussion. Let us all enter the...
- Tails flight controls are far less versatile when compared to Sonic 3. Rather than tapping jump to ascend, you enter flight mode and then can move in the cardinal directions at a frustratingly slow speed. However, it's a grievance only as it was the first time Tails was actually able to fly when controlled by the player.
- If the player loses a life when the counter is at "1", it's GAME OVER. Every other Sonic game will still have one more life, with GAME OVER when losing a life when the counter is at "0".
- The Japanese name, "Sonic and Tails" is a much better name than "Sonic Chaos".
- As it was with Sonic 2 on game gear, the boss encounters are just larger versions of standard badniks, which are far less inventive when compared to the typical Robotnik fights in the megadrive games.
- It's bad enough that we have "Turquise Hill Zone" as an obvious throwback to "Green Hill Zone", but to also include "Mecha Green Hill Zone" is just too much SEGA. Even in 1993 SEGA couldn't move on.
- The 4th zone boss is far easier on the Master System version as the layout is entirely different. One of the movement patterns has it dropping down into a spike pit not present in the gamegear version, making jumping over it's defences to attack the vulnerable top far more difficult in this version.
- And finally, SEGA, why do you always release the GameGear version of the 8 bit games in these collections rather than the Master System ones? They are always the worst version. Do you not have a Master System emulator?
*Otherwise known as the Sega Genesis for those of you who had better framerates but far worse colours.
**I am aware I stole this bit from HBomberguy. But if you aren't, go watch his very normal and short video about a funny sound.
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