Well... it's one way to celebrate Sonic's 15th anniversary....
In a few words, this is a port of the original Sonic the Hedgehog genesis game. In a few more words, this is a disastrous port of the original Sonic the Hedgehog genesis game. It's so bad I'll start with the good, namely, a save feature that let's you start on Act 1 of any zone you have previously unlocked, and it also features two game modes: Original and Anniversary, the latter letting you use the Spin-dash introduced with Sonic 2, which is a pretty neat novelty. And that's where the good things about this god-forsaken cart end.
Here's the thing, before you can even select either Original or Anniversary you'll be greeted by a horrible conversion of Sonic's theme song. The GBA is infamous for its subpar sound chip, but this game shows just how bad it can get. I'm not fan of how the Genesis sounded, as music and sounds in that console sound very... metallic, but every piece of music in this port sounds garbled or distorted, some tune are downright grating. Grabbing many gold rings in one go may even force the game to skip the ring-grabbing sound. The game sounds like a bad bootleg, but it gets worse....
Let's say that you remember the sound slider on your console, so you push that bad boy all the way to the bottom... You start the game in either mode and then you'll notice the dreaded SCREEN CRUNCH. One big problem with GBA ports was the console's small screen, so many games had to cut part of the screen. I never felt like it was too much of an issue, at least with the ports I played, but it's particularly bad in this game because Sonic is fast and you can barely see what's ahead of you. Not only will enemies take you by surprise, you'll have a hard time figuring out if you should jump forwards or if you should try to see how to progress next because there simply isn't enough screen. I'm no Sonic expert, but when I played the game a few years ago, giving it a honest try for the first time, I actually liked it. The size of the screen actually hurts this game badly, as the level design, which was originally pretty good, doesn't fit the screen.
But maybe you know the game by heart, maybe you can play the game with your eyes closed because you know every motion and button input as if it was your second nature. Joke's on you, because this game has the worst framerate I've ever experienced on the console. There's slowdown galore, and even while just running every few seconds it feels like the game freezes for like half a second, or as if something tugs at Sonic. Stages with water, like the labyrinth zone are nigh unplayable, as the framerate seems to hit the low 10s. Seems Blast Processing was real after all.
I can count the times I played the original Sonic on my two hands, and even so I could tell that the physics are off. The game feels as choppy as a real bootleg game, because there's something odd about how Sonic transitions between certain animations, for example, you can tell that there's something off when you land from a jump on uneven ground, like Sonic shouldn't have interacted with the environment like that. At least it can be unintentionally funny at times, like being pushed backwards while Sonic tries to run forward, for a ridiculously lengthy amount of time, friction works in mysterious ways in this port.
Is it so bad it's good? Sometimes, but it's mostly just bad. That said, it's such a bad port of such a popular game that I feel like that justifies owning the game. I mean, how can a port this terrible not be one of the centerpieces of somebody's game collection? Yeah, I'm damn glad I own this terrible, terrible port, because now my standards have been lowered so I feel like I'll be able to enjoy mediocre games just a little bit more. Thank you, Sonic.
1.5
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