Stardust Speedway 014 - Sonic 1 (Post Mortum Game Report)

Well; I have finished my research on the first Sonic title this afternoon and I have got several pages of relevent infomation that will come in handy for my dissertation; but as well as this I am going to write a Post Mortum Report about the game and tell you a few interesting elements that I have found during my playthrough and also what I have interpeted from the game itself.

Platform: Xbox 360
Completion Time: 1 Hour 22 Minutes (Using the Xnox 360's save function so that I can go back to essential levels in the future for future reference)
Total Score from Playthrough: 145,350
Chaos Emerelds Gained: Three

*Now I have to note that I have played the title on the Xbox 360; I would have liked to play the game on the original platform (The Mega Drive/Genesis) but I could not find all the essential cables and my copy of the game itself so I thought this would be a good substitute insted.

Initial Thoughts Of Sonic 1

Well going into my several hundereth runthrough of the title; I thought it would only take me a few hours at least to get through; but before I have only played the game to complete it in the quickest time and collect all of the chaos emerelds, but this would be the first time that I have played the game for analysis only, So I suppose that why it would take so long to complete a runthrough.

Interesting Points Discovered

1. Money in the Bank on some level. Analysing the layout of the game itself; I have discovered that a few of the levels have been created as filer levels only to connect the more important levels with the rest of the game without disrupting the flow of the fast gameplay. I have broken down the levels using this formula as follows and a reason why

Relevent Levels

Green Hill Zone - The Beggining Level of the game so would be an important level, but also there are more rings on this level than any other in the game as is 125 rings just on the first level alone.

Labarynth Zone - The mid-point of the game and a very difficult level for Sonic as most of the level is submerged under water and as Sonic cannot swim (according to the games design document and instruction manual) makes the gameplay very difficult as one wrong move can instantly kill Sonic. Also this is the only level where you don't fight against Dr Robotnik, but you race against him to escape the level.

Scrap Brain Zone and Final Zone - One very large and extreamly complex level, suited to the home of Dr Robotnik. This level is actually spread over two levels with the final zone taking place at the end of the Scrap Brain Zone. Also Dr Robotnik pulls out one last trick and places you straight back into the Labarynth Zone within Act 3.

Filler Levels

Marble Zone
Spring Yard Zone
Star Light Zone

I feel this levels are only for filler because the player doesn't have any real threat against Sonic and if played correctly can be used to rack up the scores and gain several chaos emerelds without having to do much work.

2. Loss of Rings = BIG SIGN. I did notice one thing that was very interesting which was if Sonic gathers up a large ammount of rings above the ammount of 50, they will scatter over the screen in the shape of a large ring, which is a sort of signal to the player that they have lost their rings and they will need more rings in order to play through; more experienced players would not need rings but they would collect them to increase their score at the end of the level.

3. Badnik Multiplyer. If you do the timing correctly and in the right level (Spring Yard Zone is particulary good for this) when Sonic destroys the badniks and destroys another one straight away, their score for destroying them will double up everytime which is easy points in the long run of the game.

4. Missing Emereld - Reward 1 Life. As the player goes through the game; they can collect some or all of the Chaos Emerelds, but there are only six in the game while in every other Sonic game after Sonic 1 have seven to resemble the colours of the rainbow (and what do you find at the bottom of the rainbow?) it does state that Dr Kintobor (Dr Robotnik after an accident in his laboratory with Sonic) was working on the seventh emereld; but if he can create large pieces of machinery and turn animals into robots; what is stopping him creating the seventh?

5. Aladdin's Cave down in Spring Yard. In every nook and cranny of the levels; there are several different places that Sonic can access that hold lots of treasure like extra rings, extra lives and item boxes that will help him throughout the level and there aremor eof these throughout the game (if you know where to look) giving the player more chances to gather more scores

Concluding Thoughts

I didn't think that there wasn't much about this game that I didn't know about as it has been out for almost 18 years; but one you play them enough and stop to notice what is around them; there are a lot of items and relevent points than be brought up for discussion and more chances to rack up the points and now I will never play this game in a different way again