The 25 Year Old Love Letter

Sonic the Hedgehog started with a star-studded series for the Mega-Drive, now beloved classics; but his success in 2D was followed by a tortuously long downfall during and after the transition to 3D. But I’m not here to dwell on the painful history this time, but rather shine an optimistic spotlight on an absolutely incredible creation made by (mainly) two fans of the classics.

With good reason, many had reached the conclusion that a good 3D Sonic game was an impossibility; an unattainable dream always out of reach. SEGA had failed to accomplish this vision in over two decades of iterations. But the fans hadn’t forgotten what the developers had, what made the gameplay timeless. The momentum based physics of the classic games.

Your ability to CONSISTENTLY speed around the world and discover all the areas and its secrets is down to your finesse and skill as a player. Your speed directly plays into what you’re able to do with the environment, you can’t just casually walk up slopes anymore. This one mechanic is so intoxicatingly satisfying it can hold the weight of the game on its own.

When you earn your own speed, it’s inherently rewarding to see how long you can keep it going and what crazy things it can allow you to do. For instance, in the screenshot above the last thing I expected was to sprint along the wall before turning right and flying over the edge back onto land while maintaining that speed. The freedom of movement in Utopia is incredible.

Being able to: turn in mid-air, jump off ramps at speed to alter the angle, turn into a ball to roll down inclines or up hills, charging a huge burst of speed, a mid-air dash that also locks onto enemies, bouncing on enemies manually to get a horizontal speed boost and probably more I’m forgetting! This alone is fantastic but thanks to the 3D world, they present so many unique ways to use them all, it’s wonderful.

Being able to finally fulfil my wish of running around one of these in 3D myself instead of those horrible, zoomed out slogfests in SEGA’s 3D games was a childhood dream realised. It’s a testament to the amazing camera work. As I said earlier, by keeping you in the centre of the screen, you don’t get disorientated even with the world whizzing around you.

The terrifying thing is how good this is. For what’s basically, as the devs said, a proof of concept demo, it plays SO well. If these are the scraps, I can hardly imagine how good a full game based on this project could be. SEGA should pick these guys up in a heartbeat if they have any brain cells… Though, to be honest, that’s the bit I’m worried about. Just… Please, SEGA.

Preferably, we won’t have to wait another two decades for a development. But I’m more than content playing this in the meantime, after all it’s Miles better than anything we’ve got in years. If you’d like to give it a shot yourself, download the demo! (1) (2) Ohh… And the music… That music was the goddamn 16-bit cherry on top. The visuals and music go hand-in-hand, remastered but happily reminiscing on its roots. It’s perfect.

 

Oh, and if you come to a screaming halt from max speed you light the floor on fire.

I thought that was a funny touch.