Sonic CD Review

Sonic CD (PS3/Xbox 360)
Developed By: SEGA, Christian Whitehead
Published By: SEGA
Date of Release: December 14, 2011 (XBLA) December 20, 2011 (PSN)
Price: $4.99/400MSP

20 years. Two decades. A fifth of a century. That is how long it has been since SEGA released the first Sonic The Hedgehog game for the Sega Genesis in 1991. And now that our spikey blue friend has reached such a momentous milestone, SEGA is helping him celebrate in style with the re-release of Sonic CD. At first glance you may scoff at the bargain price, thinking that it's just a haphazardly ported cash grab. However such thinking could not be farther from the truth!




The 2011 revival of Sonic CD was masterminded by a genius freelance coder named Christian Whitehead. He originally pitched the idea of a Sonic CD port using his amazing Retro Engine, and SEGA signed him on after seeing a demo version. As a result we have the amazingly polished work which is on the review table today. Sonic CD is an absolutely marvelous pixel-perfect port of the original, with enough time traveling extras to fill a DeLorean. Let's start with the soundtrack, shall we? Players immediately have the option to switch between the Japanese and USA versions of the soundtrack, with only a small disappointment in the loss of the Japanese theme song's lyrics, due to licensing issues. However the rest of the amazing soundtracks are there in full force, sounding every bit as good as they did 20 years ago.




Another new addition is the choice between the original Sonic CD spindash, and the famous one from Sonic The Hedgehog 2. Choosing the latter will slightly alter the game's physics, making it feel more like playing Sonic 2. Like the music, the spindash feature can be toggled at any time in the main menu. And now for the graphics! Not only does Sonic CD have the original graphical style intact, it's been expanded into full widescreen, with 3 detail options to choose from! You can choose the original pixelated retro glory, a bilinear type smoothing filter, and an HD upscaler that gives you the crisp edges and smooth sprites from the other two modes.
And if all that isn't enough, you can now play as Tails after you finish the main game!




Playing as Tails is kind of like a cheat mode, as you have access to every single inch of the map, and you can take all kinds of shortcuts. It definitely gives players a chance to explore the levels, and find things that they never would have seen otherwise. Add to that the addition of Trophies and Acheivements, and Sonic fans really have the whole package here. Now honestly, what are you still doing here? Get over to the PSN or XBLA and buy this thing!