Back in 1993, most people were still content enough with ‘Sonic 2′ and not lucky enough to own a ‘Mega-CD’ (or Sega-CD in the states) to realise that Sega dropped another installment of the Sonic franchise called (inventively!) ‘Sonic CD’. It boasted the best graphics of any of the 16-bit Sonic the Hedgehog games, and in my opinion, the best gameplay too. Certainly the most memorable thing about this game though, is the intro. It’s like a one and a half minute Sonic anime, and thanks to the joys of youtube, you can check it out for yourselves.

The story behind the game is a pretty standard Sonic affair… For one month out of every year, a tiny planet appears in the skies above Never Lake. The mysterious “Little Planet” holds seven gems that control the passage of time, bending the barriers between past and future. Intrigued by the unusual power of these stones, Dr. Robotnik descends upon Little Planet and hatches a new scheme to take it over. Luckily, our hero catches wind of his plans and makes it his duty to beat Robotnik to the Time Stones. But alas things are never easy for blue hedgehogs, as Robotnik has captured Sonics bitch, Amy Rose, and if Sonic ever wants the poon again, he will have to save her too! This game was the first appearance of Amy Rose, Sonic’s pink hedgehog girlfriend, and also the first game starring ‘Metal Sonic’, an evil robotic version of Sonic that Robotnik created to foil Sonic’s every plan.

This game has one major difference from the rest of the Sonic series… Time travel… In each level you can travel to a future version of the level and one set in the past. I order to do this, you have to hit a ‘future’ or ‘past’ sign post at full speed (88ph?) and keep running for a few seconds without being interrupted, then Sonic will be transported to the new version of the level. The ‘past’ versions of the levels are much more vibrant and lush than the normal versions, but most of the enemies also become more powerful and alert, whereas the future versions of the levels are run down and polluted, with the enemies damaged and destroyed already. There is a reason for this, because hidden in the past version of every level is one of Robotnik’s monster generating machines, if Sonic can find and destroy this, then he changes the future version of the level into a lush, populated land. In addition to the monster generator, there is a hologram of Metal Sonic crushing one of the cute little animals on every level, destroying these holograms and the monster generator (or collecting all of the ‘time stones’) on every level unlocks the good ending to the game fail to do this and Robotnik will still have the last laugh. Other than this it really is just another Sonic game, albeit a missive one thanks to there being 3 versions of every stage.

The special stage in Sonic CD consists of a 3D flat surface, where you have to seek and destroy six purple UFOs flying around. The UFOs move around quite erratically, making them very hard to hit. Your reward for destroying all 6 UFOs is a time stone. There is quite a debate as to where this game falls in the Sonic time line, but my thoughts are that it is set between Sonic 1 and Sonic 2, as the game was delayed massively in development, and was intended to be a launch game for the Mega-CD in 1992, the year Sonic 2 released. Plus, there is no Tails (thank god!).

I really do think that this is my favorite Sonic game, it had crisp graphics, excellent music (for a Sonic game) and had excellent gameplay, and with around 60 levels in total thanks to the time travel aspect, it took a fair time to complete… But at least you could save your game unlike Sonic 1 & 2!

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