The future ain’t what it used to be.
Here in the present, we are looking at Sonic CD. Sonic CD is the chronological sequel to Sonic the Hedgehog that was released shortly after Sonic the Hedgehog 2. It started its existence as a port of Sonic 2 for the brand-new Sega CD hardware, but evolved during development into something wholly unique in the Sonic the Hedgehog canon. But, as a result of being tied to finnicky hardware and not being rereleased nearly as often as its contemporaries, Sonic CD has become something of the black sheep of the 2-D Sonic family. While some claim Sonic CD is the pinnacle of 16(ish)-bit platformers, many more shuffle Sonic CD into the “don’t bother” pile with the Master System games and Knuckles Chaotix. In short, a lot of professed Sonic fans will tell you not to waste your time.
And that is a shame, because Sonic CD is all about time. Superficially, Sonic CD’s plot and setting are based on a magical island where the past, present, and future are a little bit more accessible than elsewhere on Mobius, and this grants the hedgehog and his most hated scientist buddy the opportunity to wage war across different epochs. Most worlds start in a pleasant present, but Sonic can easily travel to the future to see a world where Robotnik has conquered the (little) planet, or zoom back to the past to repel the egg army before it ever got going. And how does one save the world from the past? Well, it requires searching over the whole of the current zone, and finding/destroying two of Eggman’s “traps” (the animal/plant containment unit is understandable, but a projector of Metal Sonic somehow changing the shape of destiny raises questions). And the important part of that? The searching. Whereas general “secrets” have always been a part of the Sonic formula, Sonic CD dedicatedly hides two “essential” secrets in two distinct locations in every zone. This is not a situation wherein you simply push against every wall to find a giant ring transporter or two, this is an open invitation to learn the maps of these zones, and devote yourself to finding their specific minutiae. This is a “gotta go fast” Sonic the Hedgehog title, but the player is also all but told they will be more successful if they take their time.
But all is not lost if you absolutely want to play a Sonic the Hedgehog game like a hyperactive omnivore. There are two routes to the good ending: you can either explore every level and find (/destroy) every collectible, or you can conquer the special stages at the end of each level, and obtain all the Time Stones. Apparently claiming the Time Stones guarantees that Eggman will never find these precious rocks, and this will create the same eternally happy ending for everyone on Little Planet. And regardless of method, how do you know you obtained said happy ending? Well, you will see a happy little message at the end of every zone like so…
And fun fact? I am pretty sure that message triggered some kind of PTSD in my soul.
Mainly because I finally put my library back together after a year (home improvements! Oh boy!), I have been reading some “classic” comics recently. It has been mostly stuff from the 90’s heyday of the immediate aftermath of the likes of Grant Morrison, Alan Moore, and Neil Gaiman setting the funny papers ablaze a few years earlier. And the amusing thing about reading comics from this nebulous 90’s-or-so era? There are always excuses to peek at the far-off future of a few decades down the line, and it is not uncommon for their future to be literally now. 2015 or 2020 seems to be the exact point that a lot of authors of the time settled on for “the future”, and, while it is always fun to mock a random writer’s attempts at guessing the trends of the future (where is my jetpack fuetcha, you monsters?!), there is another pervasive trend in predicting the future: it is bad. And that is okay! Because these are fictional works starring heroes and heroines trying to make the world a better place. It is only natural that they would witness a “bad future” so they can be reminded what they are fighting for and/or against. A good future is bad! It’s boring! A future where your girlfriend has been transformed into a snake monster, and your best friend is missing all the fun appendages gives you something to struggle against. Are these the shadows of the things that will be, or are they shadows of things that may be, only? Keep reading to find out!
But there is a bit of an issue with the persistent use of the “bad future” trope. As someone currently living in the revolutionary future of 2022, I can confirm that we never saw half this “bad” coming. There is an international plague, and the biggest reason it spreads is the economy would be really inconvenienced if Sneezin’ Harold didn’t come in today to properly stock the Chex Mix. Our politicians are not necessarily overly corrupt ghouls, but they are almost universally old enough to base their decisions on opinions formed roughly around the fall of disco. And let’s not overlook the fact that an entire generation seems to have been brainwashed by online services initially created for the purpose of distributing silly cat pictures. Which generation am I talking about? Could be a few choices there! And the scary thing about all this? I wouldn’t even call this present-future bad. It’s not like we have to worry about dictators with alien, orange skin ascending to illegitimate power or something. Things can’t be all that bad! Nobody I know has cybernetic arms!
And it kind of scares me that we could be living in the exact bad future we have been warned of by fiction going back the last hundred years… and we just… got used to it? Sonic CD has a clear bad future: it is the future where Dr. Robotnik has conquered the planet. But do the happy little animals that have not been robotocized in that “future” still go about their daily lives? Are they still doing the same things they have always done, just with a few more badniks around? Sonic can save Amy Rose and “beat the game” without ever once creating a good future. Does that mean Sonic is okay with all of this? Just so long as the people close to him are safe, Sonic is totally cool with whatever the future brings? That is very zen of you, you monster.
Bah! I’m overanalyzing a game about a hedgehog trying to stop a robot hedgehog from kidnapping a pink hedgehog. To the best of anyone’s knowledge, Sonic CD was never intended as a social commentary on the world that would exist three decades after its release. These are just the musings of a writer that has experience an unusual amount of trauma in the last few years (and months and weeks and days). Things feel bad, and you are now reading these anxieties given written flesh and marginally viable metaphors. No badniks are currently littering the streets.
But there is something we can learn from Sonic CD. Sonic might not have to create good futures, but he can, and it just takes a little effort. Maybe it is through careful exploration, maybe through conquering special stages, but Sonic does have the ability to change the course of history. And we do, too. Are we living in a bad future? Maybe. But there is still more future ahead of us, and we can change that. Bad things have happened. Horrible decisions have been made. But it is not all over yet, and we can still put in the effort, and fish out whatever Time Stones are going to fix the mess.
You can make a good future (at least in zone 2).
FGC #633 Sonic CD
System: Would you believe this was initially available on the Sega CD? It’s true! It seems there was also a standalone port on Playstation 3, Xbox 360, and PC around 2011, and it was part of the Sonic Gems Collection on Playstation 2 and Gamecube. It most recently was available as part of the Sonic Origins compilation on Playstation 4/5, Xbox X/S, and Nintendo Switch (no slash).- Number of players: If there is a two player racing mode or something here, we are not acknowledging it.
- Port O Call: As you have likely guessed, most screenshots in this article are from the Sonic Origins version of Sonic CD. What has changed from the original release? I have no idea! I mean, it is widescreen, there is no such thing as “lives”, there is the “drop dash”, you can retry special stages repeatedly; we all know those changes are in there. But the little things? Other than the fact that they dropped Sonic’s “I’m out of here” voice, I have no clue about the little things that have been changed. Let’s assume the fact that I played this a lot more intently than the Sonic Gems version is a simple matter of the ergonomics of the Nintendo Switch, and not because they made sweeping changes.
- Favorite Boss: The Egg Conveyer is a deadly treadmill meant to trap Sonic in an endless loop of running… but the weakness of the Egg Conveyer is the very treadmill Sonic will inevitably run upon. So, basically, Robotnik built a machine that is weak to its own purpose. This is why you always fail, Ivo.
- Favorite Zone: Stardust Speedway joins Sonic the Hedgehog’s Star Light Zone as another star-themed zone that is my absolute favorite. And, hey, I dislike Tidal Tempest as much as Labyrinth Zone! This really should have been the “first” sequel to Sonic the Hedgehog!
- Goggle Bob Fact: I played through Sonic CD once before, but apparently it did not stick in my mind, as I totally forgot Sonic Mania’s Metallic Madness first appeared as the final zone of Sonic CD. I thought the shrink ray and “tetris spikes” were original to Mania!
- Watch it, Buddy: In honor of the release of Sonic Origins, BEAT was going to play Sonic 3 & Knuckles on the stream. But he get held up for a week, so I was forced to play Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) instead. I am not going to play that again for the FGC, so here is the stream:
Please enjoy watching how long it takes for me to get a ball in a hole. - Did you know? Every bad future theme on the Japanese soundtrack has lyrics/singing except Tidal Tempest. I do not know why bad futures gets vocal tracks, and what Tidal Tempest did to avoid such a fate, but here we are.
- Would I play again: Count me as someone who finds Sonic CD to be more of a forgotten gem than a stain on Sonic’s good name. That said, I would still probably play one of the Sega Genesis CD-less titles first. Maybe I will get to this one again on its inevitable next rerelease.
What’s next? Random ROB has chosen… Martial Champion! Never heard of it? I’m not surprised! Come back next week, and learn something new! Please look forward to it!
Can we talk about how important it is when numbers go up?
But don’t worry, this isn’t just a straight Mario race for the prize, Super Mario Bros. 35 offers a variety of new quality of life improvements to separate itself from simply wiring 35 different versions of Nesticle together. The most important new feature in Super Mario Bros. 35 is how it allows you to be a jerk to your friends and neighbors. Whenever one of Mario’s enemies is defeated in SMB35, it is “sent” to another player as a relentless, undead version of its already menacing self. This means that World 1-1 may wind up crowded with 30 continuous goombas, or, if your opponent is particularly unfriendly, seven different pairs of Hammer Bros. And, lest you think these zombie opponents are little more than their usual, 35-year-old selves, some of these ghost creatures have new behaviors, like those previously mentioned Hammer Bros. tearing turtle ass through the stage if you dare attempt to sneak by their stationed positions. And Bowser! Big, bad Bowser can appear in any stage, and his fireballs can be a nuisance in even the most submerged of levels. And, lest you think you can perform some manner of pacifist run, so everyone can just be content with the koopa troopas they already have, the timer of Super Mario Bros. 35 has been tweaked so you must commit turtle murder to accrue enough seconds to finish even the first level. Mario’s more elegant moves can be performed to earn extra time (like bowling a buzzy beetle through a strike’s worth of goombas), but, worst comes to worst, you can just fireball everything that shows up in Mario’s periphery. And thus are those poor creatures sent “at” other players, and the circle of death continues…
And it will likely not surprise a single person to hear me extoll the virtues of such a game. Yes, gentle reader, I enjoy Super Mario Bros. 35. It is the experience I have been chasing for the last 35 years. It is Super Mario Bros., yes, but it is also a new undertaking every time. I have memorized the ins and outs of 1-1, but this is the first time it has included an army of bloopers (at least that I can remember, shut-up, nerds, if I’m wrong). And, yes, SMB35 provides a number of good vibes because I consistently put myself in the top ten, and definitely have scored the top ranking on more than one occasion. Does this mean I am a Super Mario Bros. champion? No. It simply means that I am likely better than everyone reading this article, and you peons better line up to lick clean my sneakers that have unfortunately been muddied by my deigning to meet you plebes halfway. There need be no Super Mario All-Stars, I am the only Super Mario All-Star this world needs. Super Mario Bros. 35 compliments my 
And, despite my stellar rankings in Mario, I have no idea how to unlock further levels. I mean, sometimes new levels are unlocked… but why? Was it because I chose to have Mario think about later stages at the start? Was it because other players choose Mario’s thoughts in a manner that agreed with mine? Did I level up? Did I play against someone with a higher level? Was it unlocked by play time? Or the time it took for me to score a victory? Was it unlocked as a consolation prize after I came so close to actually winning? Was it because I wished to the right Mario gods during this particular run (I hear 
But Super Mario Bros.! Now there was a game where you knew where you stood! You have to rescue a princess, and she’s at the end of world 8. Everything before that? Clearly labeled and categorized. You know you’re heading to another castle after every rescued Toad. World 2-2 isn’t a punishment, it’s just the next stepping stone between World 1 and World 3. The skies didn’t get black because you did something wrong, this spot is just a little dark. And there simply could not be the Super Mario 2-D staple/innovation of Warp Zones without this measured development. You know you have to reach World 8, and you can use these hidden warp pipes to get there. It’s going to save so much time!
Just play the gig man: One thing that Super Mario Bros. 35 has taught us is that there is no universe where the starman theme was ever meant to be played in its “sped up” incarnation. That is audible cancer, and I hope it is patched out and replaced with, I don’t know, 
Behold the future of Sonic the Hedgehog that never was.
Knuckles’ Chaotix began life as a “for real” Sonic the Hedgehog game titled Sonic Crackers. The original pitch was for a Sega Genesis game that featured Sonic and Tails tethered together by a magical ring. In time, this concept grew into a 32X game featuring the recently introduced Knuckles and his own band of animal sidekicks. The title then mushroomed into something featuring seven playable characters (five if you only count characters that are actually useful), five brand new zones, and another appearance by everyone’s favorite Metal Sonic. But, through it all, it maintained the “tethered ring” gameplay, and, thus, created a whole new way to play a Sonic game.
In what would prove to be a prescient move, KC completely eliminates the lives counter, and offers infinite tries for its fifteen levels. Which sounds great… except the game manages to be completely toothless, so every level is overly long and far too uninteresting. It seems like some zones have three, maybe four badniks total. And none of the stages have interesting gimmicks at all, so they all blend together into a single mass of tedious almost immediately. But the bosses are kind of appealing! So it’s another shame there are only six spread across fifteen otherwise boring stages. And, while there aren’t any lives, there aren’t any checkpoints, either, so a loss against a boss means repeating an entire (already tedious) level all over again.
So, for some reason, Knuckles’ Chaotix was an enormous failure. It was the only Sonic-esque software on the 32X, and some might even argue that Knuckles’ Letdown was a significant reason the 32X couldn’t maintain support for even a year. And, with the fall of Knuckles, so too did the idea of a Sonic the Hedgehog exploring the depths of its two player mode also fold. There were some great concepts that could have been further explored by a successor to Knuckles’ Chaotix, but they all sunk on this echidna’s ship, and have been lost forever beneath a sea of indifference.
Other weirdness: The other reason to collect rings is to power a screen clearing special attack that costs ten rings. This is never useful, as there are never enough evil robots around to warrant a screen clearing attack, left alone one that costs precious rings. But you might hit the activation button anyway, and, if you do so with zero rings, you can actually accumulate a ring debt. Name another Sonic the Hedgehog title where you can have -10 rings.
“DLC” has become something of a dirty word of late. Actually, that’s a lie. DLC has always been a dirty word. The mere concept that a videogame producer would choose to “double dip” and charge the poor player for further experiences when sixty buckaroos have already been spent is repulsive to a certain vocal subset of the population. And, honestly, that kind of thinking could be understandable. After all, gaming went through a solid couple of decades before a game ever requested a little more scratch to keep the lights on, and it’s not like Super Metroid ever needed a season pass to be more of a masterpiece. DLC, almost at its core, sounds like a scam, and people are right to be resistant to any profit model that asks for more and more from the consumer.