Sonic 1 is the first game in the Sonic the hedgehog series. It hasn’t aged well in the level design department but it has a few good bits to at least play it for a bit.
Let’s quickly talk about the history of this before anything else. The Sega company wanted to compete with the Super Nintendo entertainment system and by extension, Mario. Sonic was made as a faster, momentum based platformer compared to the more all rounder platformer games that Mario had. The Marketing of SEGA’s 3rd console, the SEGA Genesis went that Sonic is cool and fast compared to Mario being lame and slow. Sonic 1 made people buy the SEGA Genesis.
Now to the actual game, Sonic 1 controls pretty well but because this is his first game, he doesn’t have things that would later become standard in later games. Sonic can roll and run fast, rolling has no limit on speed while regular movement has a limit on speed. The zones(stages) are given 3 acts compared to the later games having 2 acts. The zones require the players to replay them in order to get a better understanding and go fast because Sonic himself doesn’t go fast in an instant.
The first zone Green hill zone is pretty good and a great zone to replay. It uses Sonic’s capabilities to good effect. It has a low path and a high path, the low path having obstacles and less goodies like the Shield box and the ring box while the high path has more goodies but the player has to have skill to stay on it. It has the perfect blend of platforming and speed.
Marble zone is pretty bad and the complete opposite of what Green hill zone was going for. Marble zone has one path and goodies are at detours of the path. It also doesn’t utilize Sonic’s capabilities, instead using his ability to push blocks onto buttons. This level also has things that hit the player that the player cannot see.
Spring Yard zone is an okay zone, it has a focus on platforming, it brings back the speed. The gimmick of this zone being springs and slow moving blocks is an uninteresting gimmick however.
Labyrinth zone is the worst zone in this game. The gimmick of being underwater just makes Sonic slow and delayed and he has to get a bubble to stop himself from drowning. It also has enemies that are hidden from the player which combined with the slow controls in water. This zone is just terrible.
Starlight Zone is probably the closest it gets to Green Hill zone in terms of having a good mix of speed and platforming. Its gimmick of fans pushing Sonic and seesaws launching Sonic high is a pretty alright gimmick. The zone has these bombs with legs enemy that it loves to use a lot.
Scrap Brain Zone is a standard final level. Act 1 has a focus of platforming with a bit of speed, the best act of this zone as it has platforms on a rail that spin at the bottom portion of the rail. Act 2 has the janky spinning wheel that has to be landed on the upper half of it for Sonic to go on. The teleport maze doesn’t really add much other than an annoyance. Act 3 is Labyrinth Zone act 4 in everything but name, it’s terrible.
Final Zone is just the final boss area, the crushing pillars that the villain of the game Dr. Eggman controls are okay. In fact, all the bosses are just okay, they get the job done, just mostly uninteresting. The Special stages are the stages where the collectibles are for getting the good ending, the bad ending is eggman juggling the amount of chaos emeralds you didn’t get. 6 Chaos emeralds in these special stages, they are okay, the spinning makes things a bit annoying but with practice, it’s okay.
Overall Sonic 1 is okay, while Green hill zone sets the standard for what 2D sonic games would be, it fails to reach the peak that this game set with Green Hill zone and some of them just don’t feel like what a Sonic level should be. The reward for beating the special stages is lame. You can play it if you are curious to see where Sonic as a series started.
