Oh good, my first article on here is Sonic the Hedgehog themed. We’re off to a great start, aren’t we? I’ve already banged on about why I love Sonic and the like, so let’s cut to the chase; June 1993 saw the release of Sonic’s first foray into arcades outside his cameo in Rad Mobile courtesy of AM3, and that was SEGASonic Arcade. I have no idea why SEGA is incorporated into Sonic’s name for this outing, nor do I care; point is, the game’s remained somewhat elusive over the years since SEGA hasn’t really bothered giving us a way to play it legally. SEGASonic used a trackball as it’s method of controlling Sonic, which isn’t exactly fun to emulate with modern controllers; indeed, this is why it never showed up on the Sonic Gems Collection, as was apparently intended. Saying that, after dabbling about with the ROM settings in MAME a bit, I did actually manage to make the game at least playable with an Xbox 360 controller, and so I could finally experience this thing in a way at least slightly closer to how SEGA intended than with the default emulator settings.
Once you’ve coughed up the cash to play (or hit the 5 key a couple of times, in my case), the game gives you a choice of three characters. Sonic, Tails and Knuckles, right? Nope; here we have Sonic, Mighty the Armadillo and Ray the Flying Squirrel. The latter two were pretty much designed for this game (though Mighty took inspiration from a rejected design for Sonic), and as such they almost never showed up in an active role ever again. Mighty was slightly better off, appearing in Knuckles Chaotix for the failed SEGA 32X, but other than a cameo in SEGA’s Gale Racer (the SEGA Saturn port of Rad Mobile) and Sonic Generations, they’re just another two on the pile of disused Sonic characters. Every character plays the same anyways, so moving on. I of course chose Sonic, and got booted into a nice cutscene in which the fastest thing alive to too slow to avoid being captured by a giant mech. Off to a great start. You’re then dumped into a prison, with the weakest bars ever produced; handy, since there’s a huge wall of spikes headed in your direction. Once you’re out, it’s a case of getting outside; at which point Sonic gets Hydrocity Zone Act 2’d and sent to his first destination on the creatively named Eggman Island. So from here, it’s typical progression; beat the stages, reach Eggman, etc. However, this game does a fair bit differently from the standard Sonic fare. For starters, SEGASonic Arcade is an isometric game, as opposed to all of Sonic previous efforts up until this point being 2D platformers. This is where the trackball setup comes into play, as it’s how you move Sonic around in the “3D” space. This is actually similar to Sonic 3D Blast, and to be honest it works just as well; that is to say, not amazingly. Again, having to rig an analog stick to the trackball controls is already iffy, but even with a trackball I can’t see some of the stuff this game throws at you, particularly in the bottomless pit department, being much fun. The collision can also feel a bit off a times, which leads to some annoying moments later on. The true peak of the slightly shoddy control comes from the penultimate level, “Wild Waterway,” which features small moving platforms that you have to hop across to reach the goal. Trying to land on these things is a near impossibility, and I honestly can’t imagine a trackball making things that much easier.
Another aspect of the levels is that they all unsurprisingly incorporate some kind of way of forcing you to progress; in the ice level, giant icicles from from the sky to crush you, in the level “Trap Tower,” there are death traps chasing you at all times, and so forth. This constant chase mechanic does keep the pace and excitement value going, which is appreciated. SEGASonic’s also a rather short game; there’s only seven levels, most of which only last a minute or so, and there’s only one encounter in the game that could be considered a boss fight of some sort; even when Sonic reaches Eggman, there is no final battle, but rather a self-destruct sequence that’s actually pretty damn strict in terms of timing. Still, at the very least this means the game doesn’t overstay itself, and so doesn’t become repetitive. There are quite a few notable things surrounding SEGASonic. For one, this game featured the first ever voiced portrayal of Sonic! Sonic is voiced here by Takeshi Kusao, who later starred in roles such as Trunks in Dragon Ball Z. Ray is voiced by Hinako Yoshino and has an incredibly annoying voice, and Yūsuke Numata is Mighty. There’s only a few bits of speech for each character; in fact, doing most of the talking is Dr Eggman, voiced by Masaharu Satō (who is apparently reprising his role as the egg-shaped scientist due to the passing of Chikao Ōtsuka).
Musically, the game’s actually got quite a good soundtrack, with the theme of “Trap Tower” being especially catchy. The music inbetween levels is also pretty nifty, but that’s probably just memorable due to the amount of times you’ll be hearing it in a playthrough. I’ve also got to praise the visuals, which are well animated, colourful, and full of expression and detail. Worth noting is that a prototype ROM of the game actually made its way into circulation on the net, and it’s actually considerably different; it was clearly intended as a demo, since the final few levels aren’t playable and only Sonic can be controlled (in single player at least). Anyway, in some respects it’s actually better than the final version. The first level is completely different, and the other levels have various level design changes, and in particular the transitions between levels are far less static and actually show Sonic travel to the next level as Eggman watches on his screen; much more interesting than the final product. The level order is also completely different; in this prototype, Trap Tower is the second level, whereas it’s the fourth in the final version. The voice clips used here are also quite different, as are the cutscene graphics, and Sonic can’t really jump; instead, he does a weird hovering spin dash… thing. In many ways though, this hover is more precise than the final game’s jump, and so it slightly bugs me they changed it. Interesting to note is that the flyers produced to promote the game use screenshots from the prototype, as can be immediately told from the screenshots used on it; Trap Tower is labelled as the second level on the flyer, as in this build of the game. It’s an interesting novelty overall, and it’s interesting to see how significantly aspects of the game changed before release.
Speaking of unused stuff, sprites for the incarnation of Robotnik seen in the American Sonic comics and Saturday Morning cartoon were found in the game’s files, suggesting a localised version was on the cards; it just never happened, sadly. To wrap things up, overall SEGASonic is an interesting take on Sonic unlike that of what had come before it; it’s somewhat similar to the situation behind Zelda II, as Sonic was still a rather new property, and this was just one avenue explored with it. It didn’t really stick, unless you count Sonic 3D, but either way I recommend you give it a look, for curiosity’s sake. Unless you like paying for arcade boards of extremely rare games, then you’re stuck to emulating for now, but it’s worth it for at least one playthrough.
Tracker_TD 