Game Discussion of the Week: Sonic the Hedgehog 2

My favorite is still the first one, but the second one is a great sequel, just like the third, at the time it probably felt that the games were simply getting better, and I do love all the new mechanics on each new one, it was all ground breaking stuff, and it looked awesome.

I have not nostalgia for these games because I didn't grew up with them, but I knew about them, and when I finally discovered them on the PlayStation 2 with the Sonic Mega Collection Plus, I realized how much I was missing.

The first game is more my style of game, more meticulous in obstacle placing, and more logical, but the other adventures were also great, including this one, all of them 10 out of 10. Sonic Team members were definitely at their prime.

Balder How can you say that Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is the most important Sonic game when you haven't even played any of the other 2D ones? That's just ignorant.

Not a fan of the Mega Drive game but love the Master System/Game Gear game.

The glitches, horrible enemy placement/level design, Tails not being able to fly and atrocious mandatory-for-good-ending special stages the Mega Drive game is plagued by makes it my least favorite of the main series Mega Drive games by far (Spinball is still much worse though).

I love how you actually use the main levels to search for the emeralds in the MS/GG game, encouraging treasure hunting and exploration of the levels, which is my favorite type of gameplay in the series, and how the bonus stages are exactly that, bonus stages, to get more rings and extra lives from, nothing else, not mandatory, just a bonus, the way it's supposed to be.

Not sure what score to give when the single score covers two games with such polar opposite qualities. An average middleground? Only score one? If so, which one, the one I like or the one I don't like? I can't decide!

Either way, S2 on MS/GG is a 5/5 and S2 on MD gets a very generous 2,5/5 because the visuals are still good overall, I like the mountain level later in the game and the 2-player split-screen is okay despite the awful stretched visuals, had they only been corrected it would've been better, but it's still playable as is and at least the rest of the game doesn't look like that.

I remember you posting some time back saying that the only 2D Sonic game that you've played is Sonic the Hedgehog 2. 

Anyway, I don't think it's fair to objectively label any one particular 2D Sonic Team game as the best of its kind. For example, vanilla Sonic 3 is by far my favorite 2D Sonic game by several million lightyears (it's also Cervantes favorite, too), but I wouldn't say it's the most "important" title. Sonic 1-3 are all equally important. Sonic 2 fixed all of Sonic 1's mistakes, and Sonic 3 improved upon Sonic 2 in every single way possible, but both Sonic 2 and 3 are built upon everything that the original Sonic the Hedgehog laid down. Hence, they are all equally important. Get me?

Alright. It's just that you have a track record for owning a shit-ton of games but only having played a fraction of them.

Take my advice: unless you're a collector, don't buy games in lots. I made the mistake of doing that in the past and ended up with dozens of games that I never got around to playing because I had no interest in playing them.