Imperfect Game: Sonic CD

Hello and welcome to Imperfect Game, less of a review blog and more of a personal journal of what I think of any game I played and today am covering Sonic CD; the steam PC port of the game. The story is the usual stop Robotnik from ruining nature with his industrial stain. The levels range from the usual green-colored first zone to the industrial factories that usually come in a Sonic game’s later levels. I love the symbolism of nature vs. industry going on in classic Sonic games.

Now the game wastes no time (apart from an opening anime cutscene) in getting the player straight to the action, the first level is called Palmtree Panic and it has a nice tropical forest vibe going for it. It played like any other first Sonic level apart from having these huge ramp things with some kind of spinning plus sign on them. While Collision Chaos had strong and vibrant colors going for it.

You got your classic spin dash and spin jumps but new to this entry is the ability to time travel, in my first two playthroughs I’ve yet to fully understand why you can do this. Sure it’s neat to have a cool time travel power on paper but there doesn’t seem to be much use in this feature other than to change the visuals of a level. Plus in order to use it you have to have spaces around to go full speed but doing just that is a bit difficult in classic Sonic games where it’s more leaning on the platforming challenge. Upon looking up the game Sonic CD on Wikipedia I found that you are supposed to go to the past to kill a transporter thing and then come back to the future to see a special version of the stage known as a good future. Personally, I couldn’t be asked to even try and do that as I didn’t even understand the basic usage of time travel but now that I know it’s just another way to lockout the good ending in a Sonic game that already has their collectible “Not-Chaos-Emeralds-but-totally-Chaos-Emeralds” officially known as the time stones Though I have used time travel and have gotten as far as to destroy the Transporter-thing in the past before getting bored and stuck trying to return to the future, there is no way a casual like myself was ever going to get the gold future in any stage but I can respect those who would go out of their way to do this herculean task.

On the visual side, everything looks good but I feel it lacks some of that classic Sonic charm that the original trilogy had. Even the Stardust Speedway is a bit dull in terms of visuals. The best-looking zones are the Palmtree and Collision Chaos while the rest falls into more bland designs. The Music is another neat topic about Sonic CD, there are two soundtracks in the Steam version to choose from; One Japanese and the other American. I personally thought that the American soundtrack had better fit the overall levels and gameplay of Sonic CD (apart for the boss theme which sounds like a horror theme) while the Japanese soundtrack had a whole bunch of voices that I guess were doing rapping stuff for their soundtrack. Oddly enough after a bit of thinking I think that weird funky music vibe the Japanese soundtrack had is overall better for me.

As for the gameplay and level design, I say it gets a pass, for the most part, now I am by no means an expert on any levels of Sonic games let alone Classic Sonic games but I have a bit of a grievance with Wacky Workbench Zone for its stupid checkerboard floors that launch you straight the roof and forces you to slowly and carefully jump floating platforms down without triggering another launch. The stage this happens on also has shocking hazards in a diamond shape but those traps hardly did any to slow me down or hurt me so it was really just a huge waste of time. As for the rest of the levels I say they are all decent levels with their own gimmick like in Quartz Quadrant Zone it has conveyor belts that can be switched from left to right via a switch you run past, nothing to write home about but good enough for a complete game.

Then you have the bosses, well are a bit of a pushover if you know how to abuse invincibility frames after taking damage. For the first one was this weird boxer-looking mech? I had to abuse invincibility frames to beat it which was easy enough for a new player to accidentally do as once you land a hit on the first boss it becomes much easier to hit. My Least favorite boss was just a dumb pinball game section, why I don’t like it? Simply put you have to just hope the bumpers launch Sonic or Tails to the right place and break a bunch of glass orbs that block the way. There was a neat underwater boss that has Robotnik make use of air bubbles usually used to give Sonic air underwater as a big bubble shield. But it was a bit simplistic, it felt more at home in the first level of the game than as a zone 3 boss.

Overall I had a decent amount of fun with Sonic CD, however, it was quite a bit short for me, short enough to complete nearly three playthroughs at the time of writing this review. For the price of about five dollars, I couldn’t deny that I had some enjoyment from playing Sonic CD, and even if it has its flaws in the form of easy bosses and one annoying level I can at least say that Sonic CD is worth picking up if you're looking for a beginner-friendly Classic Sonic game with the added bonus of two anime cutscenes or its on sale.