Retro Gaming

[Dirty Duck]

Glad you made this thread Jass as just before you did I nearly posted in gaming general to ask if anyone has/had a Sega Saturn. I'm a big Sonic fan and where there was never really a Sonic game for the Saturn (besides the port of Sonic 3D Blast, where the objective version is now the Mega Drive due to the original dev, the founder of Travellers Tales, unofficially patching his own game a few years ago. Gonna copy and paste my review of that at the bottom of this post cause why not*) I never really paid it much heed. But I never played Nights into Dreams by Sonic team and recently I've become more interested in it, Sonic Team deciding to make a new IP instead of immediately making a proper 3D Sonic game is pretty bold. Plus there's an exclusive Christmas version on the Saturn so obviously that is a must for festive gaming.

But tbh getting a Mega Drive or GameCube again is a higher priority for me. I own all of the Sonic Mega Drive games as I bought them when I was a teen in the 2010s, but my holy grail item is to get the Sega CD and 32x expansions for it and to play Sonic CD and Knuckles Chaotix-one of the best and one of the strangest Sonic games, respectively-on the original hardware. That's no small feat as both peripherals and both games are reasonably rare.

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Spoiler:

It’s definitely not the most fun Sonic game to play but for a first foray into 3D it gets a lot right. The music and visuals still feel like the Classic Era (which is a fun novelty in a post-Modern Sonic world)-Sonic's model has a lot of charm and character and the Green Hill-esque chequered floor was likely a big help for players back in the day who maybe weren't used to traversing a three-dimensional space (which can have its moments of awkwardness in this game, for sure). The game’s style is very endearing and hits that pseudo-3D sweet spot just right, with a soundtrack which makes exceptional use of the Mega Drive’s sound chip (Rusty Ruins is especially good, and the Special Stage theme has a riff that inexplicably sounds like the Super Mario Bros 2 Character Select music…?).

I had a lot of love for Flicky (1991) as a kid so seeing them feature and the basic gameplay loop mirror that game (by having you save 5 flickies from inside of badniks who then follow behind you in a sweet little row) was a nice change from just reaching the goal and takes advantage of the potential for exploration that the new isometric levels grant. Providing a gameplay purpose for the animals inside the badniks is a great concept; Panic Puppet Zone's enemies do not contain flickies as they are trapped inside glass containers instead, presumably meaning this is the facility where they are turned into badniks-a nice piece of storytelling through level design. However, while the flickies are a big part of the game's identity they wind up being a source of frustration in gameplay as getting hit has them all fly off in every direction. This isn’t that bad for the earlier levels as you just round them up again but in later levels it's not uncommon for a few annoying flickies to fly over hazardous terrain. When this happens there's not much to be done besides wait for them, as getting hurt by said terrain will only lose your flickies yet again. It’s like having 5 rings that you have to re-collect every time you’re hit but they all have unique movement patterns to make getting them again ever so slightly harder.

The special stages are incredibly easy given that they’re the only part of the gameplay that players on release would have been used to from previous Sonic games as they’re your basic auto-run collect rings affair. Not very memorable. Knuckles and Tails serve as the entry point to these stages though which is a nice excuse to see them in 3D.

Eggman’s boss battles are all decent and have a good amount of variety. One complaint is they seem to take a lot of hits to kill and don’t necessarily change up throughout the fight, making them drag slightly. The final boss does have several stages to it which does help it feel a bit more exciting, but this is the only thing that makes it feel especially grandiose compared to the bosses before it. I would have liked to have seen the flickies incorporated somehow given their integral nature to the rest of the game, but it’s a fine final boss regardless.

Overall it’s a fun game with good ideas and the issues it does have seem to stem from the fledgling nature of what it was trying to do rather than a lack of care or poor design. I find it really touching that Jon Burton took the time to make this director’s cut. It wouldn’t be unfair to expect a developer who has spent most of his career developing for a multitude of IPs belonging to companies besides his own to feel jaded or dismissive of an oft-forgotten Sonic entry but Burton clearly has a fondness and respect for this little game he played a part in 30 years ago. The changes he made really enhanced this experience and I hope one day I can look back and feel as proud to have been a part of something as Jon Burton seems to feel about being a part of Sonic 3D Blast.

Also: bring back the old Traveller’s Tales logo!