Assertion: Sonic 1 (8-bit) is a better game than Sonic 1 (16-bit). Contains GIFs.
- Thread starter Mama Robotnik
- Start date
Yes, Sonic wouldn't have existed nowadays.
Sonic would have never got as big if it were a Mario clone.
The SMS vrersion was only released in Brazil yeah, but the game released worldwide on the Game Gear. (Called G-Sonic in Japan).
Sonic Blast is also on 3DS Virtual Console but it sucks compared to Sonic 1 anyway,
For everyone mentioning not having heard of 8-bit Sonic before, there are some 8-bit Sega threads here if you want to delve more into a neat area of gaming you missed out on.
https://www.resetera.com/threads/sega-master-system-ot-3d-before-it-was-cool.1673/
https://www.resetera.com/threads/bitmap-books-sega®-master-system-a-visual-compendium.31858/
https://www.resetera.com/threads/what-would-you-include-in-a-sega-master-system-classic.69814/
https://www.resetera.com/threads/sega-mark-iii-master-system-appreciation-thread.14728/
https://www.resetera.com/threads/sega-game-gear-appreciation-thread.74806/
For everyone mentioning not having heard of 8-bit Sonic before, there are some 8-bit Sega threads here if you want to delve more into a neat area of gaming you missed out on.
https://www.resetera.com/threads/sega-master-system-ot-3d-before-it-was-cool.1673/
https://www.resetera.com/threads/bitmap-books-sega®-master-system-a-visual-compendium.31858/
https://www.resetera.com/threads/what-would-you-include-in-a-sega-master-system-classic.69814/
https://www.resetera.com/threads/sega-mark-iii-master-system-appreciation-thread.14728/
https://www.resetera.com/threads/sega-game-gear-appreciation-thread.74806/
My Master System came with this installed on it.
I love it so much, way better than Sonic 1 Genesis.
I love it so much, way better than Sonic 1 Genesis.
God, that emerald was a pain in the ass to find. I think I found it by sheer luck back in the day.
Same here. The MS version is much better.
I remember finding those birds as a kid. Utterly bizarre secret.
As for OP, while the 8-bit games are good, they are no match for the vastly superior MD games.
So basically Sonic once existed as a more coherent product than what we usually have? Cause a world map, the chaos emeralds being in level secrets, and a tighter focus on precision while also retaining the speed aspect sounds like the Sonic I would get into more than the Sonic that exists. Maybe its why I have Sonic Advance 2&3 as my series high points.
I will appreciate that this is more thought out than a hot take, but even as someone who's enjoyed Game Gear Sonic, I can't sincerely say it surpasses any of the mainline Genesis Sonics.
If I may counterpoint on some things said in the thread:
1) Platforming being a weaker me-too of Mario is not a good thing. What makes Sonic good is what makes it stand out from Mario, and Game Gear Sonic has less of it than what the Genesis games do. In fact, it's platforming is among the most barebones and basic a game can get. Nearly every jump is more or less a Mega Man-style "go into a walk and then jump" style jump, except with none of the challenge associated with Mega Man via also needing to shoot. Furthermore, the utter demand for slow precision platforming comes at the expense of ANY of the speed mechanics having any payoff - there is literally NO POINT in GG/SMS Sonic where going fast actually feels like something you want to do for it's own sake, for the thrill of it. And it's very rarely functionally useful in the game, either.
2) Chaos Emeralds being hidden in the levels is stupid Squaresoft-Strategy-Guide-Selling-Strats bullocks. Even before it got as ridiculous as Sonic 2 Game Gear's, the emeralds were hidden in locations that were not only hard to find and hard to see, but required a strict platforming challenge where screwing up either had you lose a life or permanently miss your chance to get the emerald for the entire rest of the run, locking you out of the best ending. The Emeralds are hidden to such an extent that a casual player may never see one and may not even know they exist. And even IF you can find one or two, just dumping them in a spot in the level makes it hard to discern their importance - you don't even see the name of the gems when you obtain them, and while you get a nice jingle for collecting them it's not really much different from collecting a big bonus point gem in Bubble Bobble or a gem in Adventure Island or whatnot.
(Sonic 3 mitigated this mostly by having loads of possible locations to get emeralds and a post-game save where you can farm for them from the same spot, if you're gonna ask what I think of how that game handled it.)
3) Every single boss being a certain one-hit kill? No, just no. GG/SMS Sonic 1 doesn't let you collect lives like candy bars, so a life lost is a harsh penalty for a boss encounter you're going into for the first time and just started learning the strategies on. And this isn't like the other Sonic games where you can pick up rings you collect - a ring is just one extra hit you can take. And on top of that, nearly ANYTHING to do that wasn't "hit Robotnik" killed you - even GG/SMS Sonic 2 wasn't THAT cruel (IE Performing Seal in Aqua Lake, and Silver Sonic) and that otherwise takes everything wrong with GG Sonic 1 and ups the ante on it!
If I may counterpoint on some things said in the thread:
1) Platforming being a weaker me-too of Mario is not a good thing. What makes Sonic good is what makes it stand out from Mario, and Game Gear Sonic has less of it than what the Genesis games do. In fact, it's platforming is among the most barebones and basic a game can get. Nearly every jump is more or less a Mega Man-style "go into a walk and then jump" style jump, except with none of the challenge associated with Mega Man via also needing to shoot. Furthermore, the utter demand for slow precision platforming comes at the expense of ANY of the speed mechanics having any payoff - there is literally NO POINT in GG/SMS Sonic where going fast actually feels like something you want to do for it's own sake, for the thrill of it. And it's very rarely functionally useful in the game, either.
2) Chaos Emeralds being hidden in the levels is stupid Squaresoft-Strategy-Guide-Selling-Strats bullocks. Even before it got as ridiculous as Sonic 2 Game Gear's, the emeralds were hidden in locations that were not only hard to find and hard to see, but required a strict platforming challenge where screwing up either had you lose a life or permanently miss your chance to get the emerald for the entire rest of the run, locking you out of the best ending. The Emeralds are hidden to such an extent that a casual player may never see one and may not even know they exist. And even IF you can find one or two, just dumping them in a spot in the level makes it hard to discern their importance - you don't even see the name of the gems when you obtain them, and while you get a nice jingle for collecting them it's not really much different from collecting a big bonus point gem in Bubble Bobble or a gem in Adventure Island or whatnot.
(Sonic 3 mitigated this mostly by having loads of possible locations to get emeralds and a post-game save where you can farm for them from the same spot, if you're gonna ask what I think of how that game handled it.)
3) Every single boss being a certain one-hit kill? No, just no. GG/SMS Sonic 1 doesn't let you collect lives like candy bars, so a life lost is a harsh penalty for a boss encounter you're going into for the first time and just started learning the strategies on. And this isn't like the other Sonic games where you can pick up rings you collect - a ring is just one extra hit you can take. And on top of that, nearly ANYTHING to do that wasn't "hit Robotnik" killed you - even GG/SMS Sonic 2 wasn't THAT cruel (IE Performing Seal in Aqua Lake, and Silver Sonic) and that otherwise takes everything wrong with GG Sonic 1 and ups the ante on it!
I can see where OP is coming from. I actually played this one before the Genesis Sonic so in many ways it was my first experience with the blue hedgehog, and remains fondly in my heart because of this.
The Bridge Zone theme is awesome!
The Bridge Zone theme is awesome!
OP
OP
Thanks for the awesome responses. I was expecting this to have been a controversial opinion, so I'm really intrigued that quite a number of people agreed with the view!
I also appreciate the nature of the discourse – a lot of nice messages agreeing with the way I presented my argument even if the conclusion was disagreed with. This is something that people can reasonably disagree on.
A point to add – all of the points in the OP were in relation to the Sega Master System version of Sonic 1. I personally find the limited screen space on the Game Gear to be much more difficult to broach.
One thing that I'm really, really happy with, is that many of the readers of the thread didn't know this gem of a platformer existed at all – I'm glad to have brought it to your attention!
Yes I agree – I think the Game Gear doesn't bring out the best in this great platformer.
Some really interesting observations there!
Also very interesting, I didn't know some of these differences.
I'd love more recognition of the Master System music and levels in contemporary releases!
This was something I always wanted. Coming from Sonic 1 on the Master System, the 16-bit game feels slightly incomplete. The vital elements were (1) another green zone – Jungle or Bridge; (2) Secrets in levels; and (3) The grand finale in the Sky Base. I'd love to see a consolidated Sonic 1 that brought in these missing elements.
I also appreciate the nature of the discourse – a lot of nice messages agreeing with the way I presented my argument even if the conclusion was disagreed with. This is something that people can reasonably disagree on.
A point to add – all of the points in the OP were in relation to the Sega Master System version of Sonic 1. I personally find the limited screen space on the Game Gear to be much more difficult to broach.
One thing that I'm really, really happy with, is that many of the readers of the thread didn't know this gem of a platformer existed at all – I'm glad to have brought it to your attention!
Yes I agree – I think the Game Gear doesn't bring out the best in this great platformer.
Some really interesting observations there!
Also very interesting, I didn't know some of these differences.
I'd love more recognition of the Master System music and levels in contemporary releases!
This was something I always wanted. Coming from Sonic 1 on the Master System, the 16-bit game feels slightly incomplete. The vital elements were (1) another green zone – Jungle or Bridge; (2) Secrets in levels; and (3) The grand finale in the Sky Base. I'd love to see a consolidated Sonic 1 that brought in these missing elements.
OP
OP
It is very, very, very likely (as in, I'm 99.99% sure of this, I'm just waiting for a specific dump to come out (which has been found) to be able to present as absolute proof) that the 8-bit Sonic 1 port is based off of a very early version of Sonic 1 for the Genesis. What is very likely to have happened is that, once Sonic Team had stopped iterating on core gameplay and level tropes (i.e. after their initial CES appearance with the non-interactive demo), they likely had a meeting with Ancient to get on the same page then didn't communicate after. Between that period where Sonic Team met with Ancient to present what they thought Sonic 1 would be, and when Sonic 1 on the Genesis ultimately released, a number of changes occured that didn't get reflected in the 8-bit port.
So when you look at the 8-bit version of Sonic 1, you are looking at pretty much a split timeline of development. Lots of things in the 8-bit Sonic 1 port resemble parts of the unseen prototypes of the 16-bit version of Sonic 1. A repost of an old topic with a little bit more info:
First - Bridge Zone contains the Yadorin badnik. We know that this badnik was originally supposed to be in Marble Zone. Similarly, Sky Base Zone contains both Bomb, and the special version of Unidus from Labryinth Zone which does not shoot it's spikes - both enemies from Star Light Zone. Now, the special stage in Sonic SMS doesn't contain any badniks, but Spring Yard Zone in Sonic MD recycles most of it's badniks save for Arma.
Second - The Special Stage in Sonic SMS is largely useless. It exists only to give continues. In Sonic MD, the special stage is there to give you chaos emeralds, but since there are emeralds in the stages in Sonic SMS, it renders the Special Stage unnecessary. Now, the Special Stage contains a lot of unique gimmicks which are similar to Spring Yard Zone - most noticeably the bumpers. These appear only in the special stages in Sonic SMS. My personal belief is that they were originally coded for spring yard zone, and reused later for unknown reasons.
Third - the art of the zones are very similar to existing zones, as are their tropes. Bridge Zone obviously is the most different, but a simple change in the palette makes the zone look a lot like Marble Zone:
Bridge Zone and Marble Zone also share similar objects, such as this platform:
Perhaps more obvious is the similarities between the special stage and spring yard zone:
Obviously the Special Stage features what is largely considered the defining feature of Spring Yard Zone - the bumpers. But at first glance it seems to share little else in common with the final Spring Yard Zone. The background is completely different, especially... until you compare it to sparkling zone:
Suddenly the two zones look remarkably similar, especially the background, which features the same dark shade of blue and sparkling stars.
Lastly, we have Sky Base Zone, which borrows a lot from Star Light Zone's industrial highway motif. First, you'll notice that SLZ's yellow-and-black caution color scheme is copied a lot:
That yellow-on-black design is used quite a bit in both stages. The main pattern in the level - industrial squares with lots of rebarbs sticking out, is also used in both zones:
It's a bit harder to see because of the flashing palette in act 1 of Sky Base Zone, but the structures are incredibly similar. Even random objects in the background are similar, like these glowing lights and cones:
Now, even though it's included, I've always felt that labyrinth Zone's background in Sonic SMS was similar to Labyrinth Zone's background in the Sonic beta, with lots of black and smoothly blended sections of background:
Fouth - Sonic sings in the ending, and the title screen is black. This is the most obvious similarity, since we know both were a staple of early versions of the game. Magazine scans have shown that early versions of Sonic MD had a title screen similar to Sonic SMS:
and, more interesting, we know that at one point very late in development, Sonic MD had a robust sound test mode featuring a fully animated band. Concept art shows that Sonic was the singer, and we know this was removed extremely late in development to make room for the "sega" soundbyte:
Sonic SMS's ending shows Sonic, fully animated, "singing" the end theme song. I've said many times, I believe this is the last remaining piece of that soundtest mode:
This is a stunning post, thank you. I never, ever considered what you have evidenced here, but my god does it all make sense. The link between the Star Light and Sky Base Act 1 tilesets really blew my mind. The special stages too, this is really revelatory. Brilliant, brilliant stuff!
There is more, too, I just hit the main beats. You can see other indications that the 8-bit version of Sonic 1 is based off of early Sonic 16-bit discussions, like the spirte of Sonic singing at the end is Sky blue, which matches the JPN Sega logo. Sonic was originally sky blue specifically to match the color of the JPN sega logo, but he wound up clashing with backgrounds in the game, so later in development they changed his color to Cobalt to match the US Sega logo.
The color of Sonic at the end of the 8-bit version of Sonic 1 is reflecting a very early design for Sonic.
Also really interesting!
As you can tell from the posts, the game is quite well regarded, though most gamers would still say that the 16-bit version is the better of the games, I think both should be experienced.
All really fair points. I think this is something that people can reasonably have different opinions on. I love the platforming elements of this lovely little game!
Thanks for that, really happy you liked it!
Really interesting links, thank you!
OP
OP
Yes, I'd love to see where these ideas could have taken the franchise. Sonic 1 8-bit is great, but later games in the series feel nothing like it.
For me, definitely definitely the Master System version. The extra screen space really makes it.
That's a really interesting way of describing it!
Definitely a fair perspective. I think this is something people can definitely reasonably disagree on according to their tastes.
What about the Sky Base Zone? This level is one of my favourite Sonic levels of all time, it really leads the game to end on a high.
Definitely!
I think Sonic can be different things as long as it is done well. Most times, anything outside of the core formula falls flat on its face. But this lovely little platformer is a great game.
Definitely!
I loved the 8Bit Sonics, but i won't say they are better than their 16bit counterparts. They are just différents.
Just like Castle of illusion is different.
In Sonic 2 8bit, vehicles were not a very good idea.
Also in Sonic 16bit, best zone is Marble zone
PS : OP you learnt me something today, i didn't know that Ancint made thèses games.
Just like Castle of illusion is different.
In Sonic 2 8bit, vehicles were not a very good idea.
Also in Sonic 16bit, best zone is Marble zone
PS : OP you learnt me something today, i didn't know that Ancint made thèses games.
OP
OP
I think it's such a different type of Sonic game that people can certainly have a preference towards it's platforming style.
It's interesting how opinions can differ on this - I always felt that Bridge Zone was so much more fun than Marble Zone. I think Marble is interesting but for some reason I don't look forward to it on playthrough.
oh! I never realized of those differences, I played the Master system 2 version of sonic when I was 10 or so and I liked a lot. I tried many times after other sonic games and they never clicked. I was so disappointed on sonic mania (not because is bad, but because I realise I don't like this kind of gameplay).
Now that makes sense, I have always been a Mario person.
Now that makes sense, I have always been a Mario person.
OP
OP
While that is a fair perspective to have, I feel that Sonic 8-bit has different qualities that make it special.
It's interesting that in my view, the best 2D Mario's were always better than the best 2D Sonics. Sonic 8-bit might be the closest middle ground between the two franchise approaches.
Also, if I recall accurately they have no discernible effect on your speed, either because you're underwater or they're just functionless.
That was weird seeing my old Youtube avatar pop up. Sorry about the "commentary"!
This second emerald can be acquired using the hang glider and a LOT of effort/luck. I know because I had the game as a kid and this is how I got it back then.
Really late to this (read this from the Mama Robotnik topic on Sonic 2 8-bit), and it's probably obvious to you anyway, but it seems to me like the other two patterns were last-minute additions to the GameGear version, since the balls don't actually land on (or even touch!) the boss in these, they just bounce past it and it takes damage. :D
Whoever thought "we should make the first boss fight, one with instakill mechanics that's already much harder than in Master System due to the super limited screen space, even harder!" is hopefully bound for a one-way ride to developer hell.
I loved this game on Game Gear! I played through it a couple years ago on the 3DS and was surprised by how well it held up.
It also has some of the best 8bit music of all time.
It also has some of the best 8bit music of all time.
I missed this thread last week! I completely agree with all of the points in the OP. I remember playing Megadrive S1 years after I played MS S1, and I always felt it was inferior. The visuals were far greater, but that was all... The journey in MS S1 is really cool, finding the emeralds through exploration is more rewarding than doing the lame MD S1 special zones (which MS S1 also had, and unique ones at it), and the final stretch of the game is a lot more epic than the boring, standard one in MD S1. The zones are more original and pleasing to my taste as well.
Also, it was great when I realised that by finding every extra life (one per level), you get an extra one before the final boss fight.
Also, it was great when I realised that by finding every extra life (one per level), you get an extra one before the final boss fight.
OP
OP
WAIT WHAT?
I have the vaguest of memories as a child of sometimes, an extra life being present on Sky Base Act 3, and other times it was not. I never realised that this was the reason!
Lol I didn't know that until now. I though it was random or something.
I may be biased because I grew up with Master System and Sonic 1 was my favorite game back then, but I completely agree with OP and I think he´s done an awesome job expressing why this version may be better for some people. 16 bit Sonic never grabbed me in the same way the first MS game did, specially thanks to 2 aspects OP commented:
- Platforming is better thanks to there being a clear path through the level which allowed the designers to make more meaningful challenge progression. 16bit Sonic always felt a bit unfocused to me, like the levels lacked structure. This is something even Sonic Mania suffers from, I guess I just don´t like 16bit Sonic level-design.
- Exploration and secrets are much better. There being only 100 rings, one hidden 1-UP and one Emerald per level and all of them being collectable in a single run made me look everywhere for secrets and strive to get every ring, while in the 16bit games I always feel like I´m missing stuff when I inevitably have to choose a path through the level from all the available ones. Also, I can´t remember any other game where I needed to look up and down like in Sonic 1, making those abbilities incredibly useful and fun to use, unlike other games where they weren´t really justified.
As someone who grew up with a Master System and played 8-bit Sonic before 16-bit, I wholeheartedly agree. And it isn't just the nostalgia talking, because I also owned Sonic 2 on Master System before the Mega Drive games and that game is woeful.
I'd go as far as to say all the 8-bit Sonic games are mediocre-to-terrible, apart from Sonic 1 which is great. Isn't it the only one developed by Ancient?
I'd go as far as to say all the 8-bit Sonic games are mediocre-to-terrible, apart from Sonic 1 which is great. Isn't it the only one developed by Ancient?
Agreed! These threads made me impulse-buy Sonic Mania and I'm not enjoying it very much. I like the twists in the classic zones and it tries to interconnect them, but not very successfully IMO. I'm in the second to last zone and it's been almost a chore to play through.
Sonic 3 & Knuckles is easily the only 16 bit game that actually tries to be an actual adventure with zone transitions that make sense. It's still far away from the feeling you describe in Sonic 1, where the platforming is meaningful and there's a point to item placement. It's like Sega never wanted Sonic games to be about exploration, but just obstacle-filled fast platforming... which creates a very uneven experience IMO.