Sonic The Hedgehog is the first platformer game featuring Sega's most infamous mascot: Sonic. The Hedgehog, FYI. It came out in 1991 for Sega Genesis, made to become the next big thing. Developed by soon-to-be Sonic Team division, formed out of members of Sega of Japan, of course. 4 Megabit ROM cartridge, some of which got wasted away by high-quality “Sega” choir sample.
There also were 8-bit versions that came out later that were pretty much different games. And this game also seen few re-releases, as both emulation or ports. The best ever version is the one on iPhone, made by Taxman.
It would become a pack-in title for Sega Genesis, replacing Altered Beast.
The game that you have here is nothing more than emulation of Sega Genesis version. It's “Revision 01”, which is a bit fixed up release, the latest original one. It tweaked stuff a bit, adding more paralax layers for clouds in Green Hill zone, ripples for underwater areas and so on. Nope, spike bug where the spikes ignore invincibility-due-to-recently-being-hit is still present.
Now, technical part about Sega's emulation here:
The Sega Classic games that you purchase on Steam count as DLCs for "Sega Mega Drive & Genesis Classics" game that should appear in your library.
It has Bedroom HUB which is the one with many features yet lags for many and Simply Launcher which lacks Workshop and Online but at least it works just fine for everybody.
However, Simple Launcher has it's fair share of glitches as well. It can crash. And it does the second time you go to main menu, so always quit after saving there so it doesn't crash when you want to save next time!
Emulation itself, mostly sound, isn't that good but it does it's job. Also, yes, emulator supports quick saves.
As alternative, you can use external emulator to run games that you purchased. Sega kindly placed in all games that you purchased in "uncompressed ROMs" folder that program itself doesn't use, just change file extension to ".bin" or so. The file for this one being "SONIC_W.68K".
I also demand you to read digital manual of this game first. You can find it here on store page or go to "manuals" folder of game root and open "STH1_PC_MG_EFIGS.pdf".
The premise of the first Sonic game is simple. You got South Island, which drifts over sea due to mysterious power of six Chaos Emeralds. You got Eggman, known as Robotnik in western manuals, who captured every animal into robots. And you got Sonic, blue blur with attitude, who blew game reviewers minds back then due to his very-attitude two-frames-long idle animation of foot-tapping.
Featuring Flicky from Flicky video game, yay!
Sonic brought new concept into the genre and was outstanding game. The game was marketed as having the fastest character around. But you will not notice it in this one, it's slower-paced than later Sonic games. This one has much more emphasis on rolling and general physics. And this is what makes this game great as a platformer. The slopes will impact your speed and you may need to gain some speed before attempting to move up the slope. No spin-dash for you in this game! Sonic can roll, being hedgehog. He can only damage enemies when he is rolling, whether by jumping or on the ground.
So have an important protip: press Down while moving to roll.
You should use ground rolling more often than in other Sonic games. To roll under some obstacles, for example. Or hit the robot that has spikes on it. You will even notice that you will speed up even more when rolling down the slope. Yep, the max speed cap is higher when you are rolling. Not to mentioning that you will destroy robots while doing so, sooo.
Another unique thing is ring health system that Sonic franchise kept ever since. You collect rings and as long as you have a any rings you can take a hit without dying. All the rings will scatter off you when you take hit (though the maximum amount that game spawns out of you is 20, otherwise Genesis would have died painfully) and you have to grab them again before they disappear. A great system for a platformer, even if Sonic franchise been around for so long that people don't think much of it anymore. You also get extra life when you get 100 rings. That, or you can get extra life in this revision if you get 50000 points and so on.
And if you get 50 rings and get to the end of any of the first two acts of each zone aside from the last zone (there are 6 zones and 3 acts per zone) you will be able to enter special stage where you can get chaos emerald. You need 6 of them to get a good ending. Not that it's much different from normal, just more flower. If anything, it's more worth getting into special stage is because getting 50 rings gives you a whole continue.
Special Stage itself isn't much. It's a rotating maze and you can barely any control over Sonic aside from jumping. Not the greatest in Sonic franchise, but fair and enjoyable. If anything, it's how you have limited tries to do it through a single run is what keeps me excited.
And yep, going fast. Sega would later use Blast Processor term for console, as something that allows it to handle Sonic games. Of course fast moving sprites and background isn't something that only Genesis could pull off. Just check out how fast the unreleased Bio Force Ape game on NES moves at times. Blast Processor is just a way of saying “faster processor than SNES” and reference to high-speed DMA controller. And who knows what that means.
By the way, I am not sure if it's related to what I said or just faster processor, but if you take a look at mentioned Bio Force Ape game again, you will notice that during speed section the layout of rooms seem to repeat constantly for a while, yea. Probably so NES doesn't have to load anything. I also heard that Sonic engine on Genesis only allowed to load 2 or so new tiles per frame, while you are running forward in level? Not sure, it was something I once read long time ago and couldn't find it again now. I am saying this only to show you what you should be looking for, really.
But hey, no slowdowns!
And yep, graphics and music are really great, especially for 1991. Colorful. Melodical. Has abstract style. It sure features many cities in background for a natural island where animals live. Level design is great, having few places where rolling does wonders. Underwater level isn't as bad as many say, it's actually fun at making you worry. But nothing unfair.
That, and this game set level design standart for a Sonic franchise where levels often have few routes for you to take and the top one tend to be the easiest one. And it's fun to use a different route that you have never taken before. They were also quite big for it's time. And have a lot of secrets as well!
The only bad things in this game are bosses. These were weak for a Sonic game. Just Robotnik with whatever weak gimmick over his flying mobile, always taking 8 hits to destroy and being predictable and repetitive. Like, just having a spike under the machine. So yea, for bosses, I prefer other Sonic games. But I find Sonic 1 to the best for normal stages.
