"When is a Sonic game, not a Sonic game?"

I'd always wanted to play Sonic CD. I remember hearing about it from some Sega magazine I had collected, seeing the screenshots, drooling over the bosses. I wanted to buy a Sega CD purely for this game.

It's almost 10 years later now and I finally manage to get hold of a copy of the classic Sega CD version. So was it worth the wait?

Not really...

Sonic CD just doesn't 'feel' like a Sonic game. Sure it has your classic Botniks, your end of level boss, your powerups and rings, but they're undermined by the sluggish, slow controls, poor sprite scrolling and confusing levels.

There were a lot of points throughout playing the game that made me sit back and wonder just how rushed this development team were to get a Sega CD based Sonic game out the door. Most of the levels have areas that don't even look finished and tested, let alone act tested.

Most of the levels are poorly designed and confusing. Backdrops and objects sometimes feel randomly placed to fill empty spaces of level. The time travel aspect of the game serves no real purpose as they usually only result in palette or sprite changes to a level.

The music is decent, but nothing special. The developers utilized the Sega CD's ability to play CD tracks as background music, which results in higher quality soundtracks. However, I feel that the key ingredient in 'Sonic' style music is its simple, synthesized sound, which the CD tracks fail to deliver. The sound is similar to other Sonic games, although several have been slightly changed.

The game features a new animated style intro. However, it just doesn't seem to fit in with the rest of the game, and looks tacky due to the Sega CD's scaling and letterboxing. The actual graphics on the game are decent, though color is not used as wisely as it was in previous (and future) sonic games.

Sonic CD is fairly original, but this only helps to hinder the game. It removes many classic Sonic features (botniks exploding into animals, consistent and clear levels, etc.) and adds many badly implemented new features (crouch spinning, time travel, etc).

The replayability factor in this game is about the same as most other Sonic games I've played. The time travel does increase it somewhat, but not significantly enough to make someone want to play the game over and over. I'm pretty happy with the small charge I paid to buy this game now, but had I bought it back when it was first released for $50, I'd have been disappointed.

Overall the game is decent enough as a Sega game, but fails to live up to the expectations of a Sega Sonic game. Although I can recommend picking up a cheap copy for the PC, I can't recommend purchasing a Sega CD and a copy of Sonic CD just to play it.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 04/18/03, Updated 04/18/03