When I was a kid, I wanted a fucking Sega more than anything. But I already had a Nintendo, and my parents would not fall for that shit. By the time I was old enough to buy my own games, I hadn't developed a taste for Sega shit and stuck to Nintendo and PlayStation. So I missed out all things Sega through the entire 90's. I still regret this, and have played catch-up by gobbling old Sega Genesis, Saturn, and Dreamcast stuff up slowly over the years. I have a list (just rerelease Panzer Dragoon Saga and Skies of Arcadia so I can move on with my life, you fucking cowards).

Sonic is, of course, the poster-child for Sega. And I wanted Sonic so so fucking bad I would draw him in my notebook next to the Ninja Turtles.

I'm here to tell you that Sonic the Hedgehog fucking sucks. While every single Mario game has stood the test of time, playing old Sonic games is like punching yourself in the balls.

Let's start with Sonic's main gimmick: speed. Sonic runs fast. That's his thing. So the whole game is about just blazing through levels and perfecting timed jumps and obstacles and shit right? Wrong. The whole game is about blazing for about 5 seconds until a spike pops up out of the ground and fucking kills you. The whole speed thing is a lie. You have to play this entire like you're trying to not wake up your uncle who, when startled, spirals into vietnam flashbacks. You can go fast, but every time its like "not today fucker", here's a bumper that stops your momentum and sends you backwards. Now I have to slowly walk up to this bumper, jump over it, and start running again.

The level design is absolutely not straight-forward. Each map is humongous and inexplicably vertical. You do a lot fo climbing in this game, only to be send back down to the peasant part of the level because a fucking bee popped up on screen. But you're not even rewarded for jumping to the upper tiers, there is nothing up there and you won't complete the level any faster. And fuck Jumping in this game. Since the game wants you to feel fast, Sonic is just slippery as shit. Like I get when you're running and you skid to a stop you gotta feel like you're sliding. But when you have to make a very precise, deliberate, jump (and you have to do this a lot), you do not want to feel like the ground is made of ice all the time. And do not get me started on the fucking water levels. Sonic can only breath under water for a while before the game chokes your ass out, in a level ENTIRELY FILLED WITH WATER. Gotta go fast I guess. The only merit this game has is the five seconds of bliss where you're running like the wind before that monkey throws a coconut at you from off screen.

You know what, I used to be able to complete Donkey Kong Country in like an hour by running through each level as fast as I could. I had each enemy and jump memorized, and it was extremely satisfying being able to speedrun that shit on a Saturday morning. It had tight controls and well planned level design. That's what I want Sonic to be, but it's not. It's shit.

So I'm actually glad I didn't get to play this when I was a kid.