Microspeed!!

 



Sometimes smaller can mean better!

I’m not the biggest fan of the original Sonic 1. I don’t think it’s a bad game perchance, but I don’t really find myself coming back to it often, especially compared to the other Genesis titles. When Sonic 1 released though, it didn’t just release as a genesis game, it also released as a master system/game gear game. Now, usually when there’s an 8 bit version of a 16 bit game, it’s usually a lot worse then the 16 bit just due to the lack of resources. It’s also usually done by a smaller team and the effort usually isn’t as high. Going into this, I expected the same, but I actually came out a little surprised by how fun this little adventure was!

From an outsider’s perspective, Sonic 8-bit just seems like a less powerful 16 bit version, but it’s actually a lot different than you’d expect. Only 3 zones return here, being Green Hill, Labyrinth, and Scrap Brain, so already half the game is super unique. In terms of new zones we have Bridge Zone, which is okay but the 2nd act is an autoscroller which holds it back a lot. There’s Jungle Zone which features a lot of vertical movement with you running across logs and vines, leading to a pretty exhilarating and tense experience. Finally you have Sky Base zone, which is easily the hardest zone in the game, having you travel across storm clouds on precarious platforms, dodging lighting strikes as you pray you don’t slip off into the endless abyss. It leads to a good amount of variety zone wise, and the only one I really disliked was Labyrinth, since it was somehow worse then the 16 bit counterpart due to the way slower water physics in this one. In terms of control, Sonic feels pretty great here. He isn’t as fast as he normally is, but the level design is a lot simpler to compensate for it, and he feels a bit tighter when jumping in this one, leading to a much better feeling of precision platforming. The 3 act structure still remains here, though the act 3s are just the bosses this time around, you’re not even given rings, so they go by a lot faster than they usually do. Not like rings don’t matter as much here, you lose them all upon being hit, and you aren’t even allowed to collect them after, making some parts a bit tenser than they should be. You can’t even collect past 100 rings this time, your counter resets to 0 whenever that happens, so I would find myself avoiding that amount in order to stand a better chance of survival. Stages are smaller this time, you can beat most in a minute and a half, and the game is over in like 40 minutes. Special Stages are still here, but they’re just for extra lives and continue this time. There's no real point doing them unless you care about points basically, I was ok without them. Emeralds still remain though, with them just kinda being scattered around in random spots throughout the stage. None of them are really too taxing to get, but you only get one shot at each, unlike the multiple opportunities you get in the 16 bit variation. Really, it’s just way simpler than Sonic 1 with a couple of changes here that make it a much tighter experience, it genuinely surprised me the difference here.

I was pretty surprised at how much fun Sonic 8 was! It’s nothing too crazy, it’s a rather simple 8 bit version of the blue blur, but for what it is, I had a pretty great time, and I can see myself playing this again whenever I’m bored. I may not be the biggest fan of the original, but for this one, it’s pretty great, and it’s nice to see that this had a lot more care put into it then most 8-bit ports tend to have.