About once a year for the past eight years we’ve needed a screenshot of Sonic CD, usually to illustrate some poorly-thought-out panel to do with that year’s new Sonic game. But we can never find any. Even the advent of Google’s image search didn’t help, with nothing of use coming up at all under Sonic CD.
UNTIL NOW!
We’ve just taken loads! The next time we need a screenshot of Sonic CD — probably after E3 when we’ll be writing a poorly-thought-out panel on the history of Sonic games because all those new ones have been announced — all we’ll have to do is visit our very own web site and do a right-click-save-as.
If you ever need a screenshot of Sonic CD (you will!), here is where you should come too. Indeed, if you have just come here after looking specifically for a screenshot of Sonic CD, our work has been done. This is reminding us of how the internet used to be full of nice people that were nice to each other in 1996.
FREE DISTRIBUTION!
Anyone can use these, even GamesTM or Edge — we’re all friends when Sonic’s involved! We are the Games Press of Sonic CD!
Don’t use the rubbish ones Sega issued at E3, use these! (click for bigger):
Sonic CD really is as great as you’ve heard people say on the internet.
The people you’ve heard saying it sucks on the internet are really wrong, and have probably never played it.
And if they have played it, chances are they played it on a rubbish emulator which doesn’t let the music work AND they would’ve played it using a PC keyboard. We’re not ones to put words into Sonic Team’s mouth, but we SEVERELY DOUBT it meant Sonic CD to be played with no sound and on a keyboard and on a monitor that makes it look jerky.
The music is the best music any Sonic game has ever had, even better than Sonic R (sorry Richard Jacques, but this is the truth). The ‘Metallic Madness’ theme has a vocoder voice of Dr Robotnik saying “Sonic, dead or alive, is M-M-M-MINE!” — and THAT’S why everyone says the PAL and Japanese versions of Sonic CD have the best music.
Sometime soon, like maybe next week, we’ll put up a Bittorrent file of the soundtrack MP3s. It’s about time we learned how to seed torrents.
Oh, and see those rings? The ones in the scenery? That’s not a glitch, it means you have to travel back or forwards in time to a differently designed version of that level to collect them.
Each level has lamp posts marked ‘future’ and ‘past’. Each zone has a past, present and future version of it, all looking different and with a different layout. Seeing them all is a big challenge (for a Sonic game).
You travel to the past and destroy this machine that’s hidden somewhere, creating a happy future where the level is all colourful and full of little bunnies hopping around. The Good Future music is remixed with children going “Yay!” in the background too. It is so lovely and nice.
This time-travelling thing adds longevity and replay value that no other Sonic game has had.
This and Final Fight CD made us glad we spent 250 pounds on a Mega CD, which was half a month’s wages for us in 1993. And see those red and white bumpers? They make a fantastic early-1990s ‘house’ chord sound when you hit them.
The past levels look different and have bongo-driven music, the present levels all look like nice Sonic levels, and the future ones are either grey with techno music (bad future) or green with cheery music (good future).
THIS is how beautiful the Good Future levels are! The first time we saw one of them a wave of some sort of emotion swept over us. It was a strange mixture of happiness and longing that’s hard to explain, because we’re not used to feeling emotion thanks to being raised by computers in an abandoned branch of Dixons.
Some of the enemies do look like it was developed in the US by THQ or Dimps, but trust us — it doesn’t play like that.
The bonus round was done in “Mode 7”-style 3D, which was impressive at the time. Now it’s not very good and does feel like it could’ve been developed somewhere in the West by a third-party developer, such as THQ or Dimps.
But the rest of the game is super. It’s colourful and lovely, with music that matches the mood brilliantly. And look! It’s a big one of those things from Sonic 1! Be careful, Sonic!!
Oh yeah, in the five years we didn’t play it we convinced ourselves it was better than Sonic 2, but it isn’t. It’s about as good as Sonic 1, which makes it the joint-second-best Sonic game ever.
Just narrowly ahead of Sonic Heroes.
That last one was a joke.
Oh, sorry — 56k WARNING! Should’ve put that somewhere nearer the start, really. Anyway, we’re rambling and won’t be able to sleep tonight for thinking about Sonic AGAIN. Time to stop.
Sonic CD — we {{{hugs}}} you and you ROCKS, blood!
