"The worst Sonic game ever"

Sonic CD is an udder travesty and doesn't deserve to bear the Sonic name. Filled with sloppy controls, terrible graphics, and messy, confusing levels, Sonic CD is the worst Sonic game ever made, and one of the worst 2D platformers ever.

First of all, the graphics in Sonic CD are total garbage. It sickens me that on a system as powerful as the Sega CD that we get games looking like this. Most of the time, you can barely see what's going on in the background because the colors are so tacky and the levels are so poorly designed, and for God's sake, they used the Sonic sprite from Sonic 1 (not to mention a whole slew of other graphics from it as well)! It looks like a first generation Genesis game, not a Sega CD game, and to add injury to insult, the game slows down like crazy whenever you get hit. There are some bright spots to the graphics, however; the title screen looks beautiful, and the future levels occasionally aren't so ugly that you can't bear to look at them anymore.

Gameplay wise, Sonic CD plays like any other Sonic game, but with major problems. First of all, as mentioned above, there's terrible slowdown in the game. For a game that looks worse than Sonic 1 and is running on the Sega CD, that's simply not acceptable. Also, control is awful. While the game controls are just like in Sonic 2, Sonic's control feels 'off', and his spin move is useless, since it's slow and takes about three seconds to charge before you can do it. Not that it matters much - the levels practically just make you hold down right and watch Sonic run through the flippers and travel through time while giving you very little actual control. The cinematic Sonic indeed.

However, Sonic CD does offer some innovation in the gameplay; while playing, you can sometimes travel back and forth between the past and the future. While this idea could have been really cool and interesting, Sega once again messed up, and simply used it as a cheap gimmick to sell their game. There's barely any difference between past and future, except for a palette change and the occasional graphic change, the levels are about the same.

Sonic CD does have one redeeming feature - the music is fantastic. The sound quality is simply superb, and the compositions are excellent as well. There's nothing better than hearing Eggman's menacing laugh as you beat the pulp out of him in one of the game's boss battles.

Still, this can't make up for the terrible quality of this game. Shame on you, Sega.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 03/11/02, Updated 03/11/02