Sonic The Hedgehog CD, or Sonic CD for short, developed by Sonic Team and was published by Sega and was released in 1993 for the Sega CD. This game was developed around the same time Sonic The Hedgehog 2 was being developed. In fact, it was going to be part of Sonic 2, but I guess because of the Sega CD being released, they decided to make a separate game that would make use of the add-on itself. This resulted in making the only game worth getting for the add-on because the Sega CD tanked and tanked hard, but Sonic CD still lived to see another day.

1) Story

Sonic goes to the Never Lake where Little Planet arrives on the last month of every year (on Christmas?). But Sonic finds out that the planet has been tethered to a mountain and has been turned into a mechanized ball of metal. It seems that Dr. Robotnik has taken Little Planet to turn it into a fortress. So, Sonic has to let the Little Planet escape by becoming a time traveler, defeat Metal Sonic and rescue Amy Rose, both characters have their first appearances in this game, and then defeat Dr. Robotnik…again.

2) Gameplay

So the game is a Sonic game…heh. You still run fast and all but here are the new features. For some reason, the Spin Dash has been butchered, but we now have a much effective Super Peel Out, in fact, it’s much faster than the Spin Dash. We also now have a time travel system. There are sign posts with Past and Future, pass through one of them, try and go fast for a while and go to that said time period. Same stage, different time. Though only the boss battles are set in the future.

Yeah, this is the first Sonic game in which exploring is a huge factor, though this can be a problem, because if you’re a Sonic gamer where you want to go fast, like me, the game ends up being very short and you’re not getting your moneys worth, whereas the opposite happens when you go exploring. So I pretended to be good and play this game through the Sonic Gems Collection port to prove my point, I mainly explored the levels to collect 50 rings, so I can get to the special stage. The exploration isn’t that bad, you get to see more of what the stages have to offer and give you a chance to see what you can do with them.

Palmtree Panic: Another version of Green Hill, but take the palm trees, ground and flowers and detail them to the highest. We have massive rocky mountains in the background and they’re also waterfalls as well, though there are waterfalls in the foreground. Now I talked about the present, in the past, it’s pre-historic, the colors are much dimmer and the mountains are now purple. The good future is a bright utopian safe-haven, where there are pipes to control water, nice-looking mechanical trees and flowers are abundant. The bad future is a wasteland with the river being literal cancer, and anything metal in the foreground is corroded.

Collision Chaos: And this is where it becomes difficult to describe because at this point, it gets evermore wacky. This level is a drug trip, along with psychedelic colors, pink everywhere and has bumpers and flippers. In other words, this is your pinball level…on crack. Oh, Amy Rose gets kidnapped by Metal Sonic so you have to rescue the girl you don’t care about and just doing out of goodwill. The past is less of an eyesore, it’s another pre-historic area but still looks unique thanks to it’s detail. It’s similar to the past version of Palmtree Panic in terms of the foreground. I guess the good future takes the best of the past and a little bit of the present and add some bright colors and it looks…well, it’s also a bit too much going on to easily comprehend. But hey, there’s a city in the background and they look nice. The bad future takes the past and present and makes it gloomy, but the bright colors try to battle the gloomy world.

Tidal Tempest: So this level is a remake of Labyrinth Zone, though it’s less stress-inducing. We have the usual underwater elements, but we have stone pillars, some strange plants and a strange foreground consisting of yellow and orange polka dots. The background also has volcanoes which is something you don’t always see in a water level. The past is now set in a cave and the colors are dimmer, there’s much more plant life and the foreground has many stone paths, I really like this one. The good future has this laboratory atmosphere, where plants are being taken care of and anything stone is smooth, the whole world is bright and clean. The bad future is the good future but now a disaster. It’s dark, rusty and the water is cancer, and you can jump in it. How Sonic is still alive after all these years is a complete and utter mystery.

Quartz Quadrant: It’s basically a mine, an underground cavern to be exact, where crystals have been dug up and there’s conveyor belts to move the crystals…or you. There’s also the outside where we have a forest, with it’s swirling mountains and waterfall, it’s quite beautiful. The past is a swampy looking cave with green liquid as it’s river. A lot of the foreground is wooden and outside has a normal river in the background and even has what looks like a city. For the good and bad future…again, there’s a bit too much to describe again.

Wacky Workbench: This is the mechanical level as everything you’d see in a fantasy factory is here and accounted for. The past is less mechanical, but judging from the cranes, it looks like it’s building the factory of the present, that’s a cool attention to detail. The good future is basically a children’s factory, bright, cheery, colorful, and nice sense of wonder and it’s a massive eyesore. The bad future looks as if the factory-style world has been abandoned after the resources have been drained.

Stardust Speedway: It’s Star Light Zone, took cocaine and has the most odd level design in the entire game. There is a city in the background, with many bright stars in the sky. The foreground is near golden with brass instruments because...why not?! It makes no sense to me. The past is much less of an eyesore as the overall design is simple, with the background having Roman buildings and lovely plant life in the foreground with vines and berries. The good future is CITIES, CARNIVALS, ALL GLORIOUS with a highly detailed purple foreground, but still a bit much. The bad future is near miserable with a red atmosphere with thunder bolts jolting from the sky. But with Act 3, we now battle Metal Sonic by racing him, and it’s not a bad boss, it’s unique and can be challenging when you play it for the first time.

Metallic Madness: This is pretty much Dr. Robotnik’s evil lair and it shows. But I don’t know, it doesn’t exactly make sense when time travel is in center stage. I guess in the past this could have been a place of it’s own, maybe before Robotnik took over it, and then in the Good Future takes what Robotnik left after Sonic defeats him and makes sure that it takes care of the whole planet. But then there’s the bad future where everything Robotnik’s evil lair is a wasteland, then why would Robotnik leave his lair abandoned, it’s not really clear on what he’s going to do…UUUHH, this was hard. Also the final boss is underwhelming.

3) Special Stages

Now this is where the Time Stones come into play, since in order to get the good ending, you can collect the Time Stones by going to the past and find a machine, destroy it and automatically create a good future with that zone. Like in Sonic 1, you can collect 50 rings or more, keep them without getting hit and go through a giant ring where you’ll access a special stage. The special stages are incredibly trippy. It’s a 3D world (using the Sega CD’s capabilities) in which you have to simply bop UFOs, bop them all to get the Time Stones. But there are many obstacles, heck, even the water will quickly drain the amount of time taken to break the UFOs. I actually like these special stages, much better than Sonic 1 & 2…well I mean the special stages are great in the remastered version, because the original version is horrendous gameplay-wise due to the chuggy frame-rate and you put more pressure on the controller to move to your preferred area, and what’s thy the remastered port does it right. I’d recommend destroying the machines however to avoid possible stress, but if you like exploration in a Sonic game, then this will be great for you. There's only one thing I hate about these special stages... Because you are collecting Time Stones and there's no Chaos Emeralds in this game, you won't get the ability to play as Super Sonic.

4) Music

For the music, here’s the thing. There's one soundtrack for Japan & Europe, and a different one for the USA. I prefer the USA soundtrack...yeah, I said it! I love "Sonic Boom", though it is extremely cheesy. Also, I love the how every level is delivered musically in the US soundtrack...even though I have mainly listened to that soundtrack only when it comes to this game. I heard some of what the Japanese soundtrack had to offer, but I think it doesn't come close to the US version. That's just my opinion.

5) Overall

Sonic CD, whilst is pretty good, it has flaws, though less flaws than Sonic 1. The gameplay is great and even the exploration can vary from fun to ‘eh’, but the level design can be a bit too much, it’s just not to my taste. I appreciate what the game does differently but I’m the type of Sonic gamer who likes the best of speed mechanics and exploration and I don’t think it blends in all that well. I like it but it’s not perfect, but on the bright side, it’s the best Sega CD game by default. With that said though, the remastered version is fantastic and I enjoy that version, along with the Sonic Gems Collection port. I’d recommend both!

Rating: 3.5 / 5