Sonic the Hedgehog for the Master System is a game I feel a very close connection to. Although not my first game, it is the first one I remember playing extensively, and one I would revisit many times in my life. It feels like I have always known the stage layouts, the traps, the enemies, the bosses, the emerald locations. In fact I kinda wish I could remember my first impressions of it! Even the title screen with its copyright date of 1991, just one year before my birth, made this feel special. It is no wonder I became a Sonic fan.
For quite a few years, this along with Sonic the Hedgehog 2 for the Master System and the Sonic SatAM cartoon were my only exposure to the franchise.
There are many differences between this and the Mega Drive version to the extent that they are really two different games, albeit with the same story. For example, the only stages common to both are Green Hill, Labyrinth and Scrap brain, and even then the stage layouts are completely redone. The Chaos Emeralds are found hidden in the stages instead of being awarded at the end of the Special Stages. When you are hit, despite losing all your rings, only one is shown leaving your body and it is impossible to recover it. There are also some minor differences, the capsules found after the boss fights hold less animal and they exit one at a time, the badniks don't release animals as they are destroyed, when you end a stage with the shield you get to keep it for the next one, among many others.
In this game there is a single 1-up hidden in each stage, no more no less. For this playthrough I got them all, something I had never done before.
So you turn the console on and are greeted by Sonic doing his trademark finger wagging. From here if you don't press any buttons for a while a little demo is shown of the first stage. Sonic runs to the right until he finds a Crabmeat, runs into it losing his rings, then does it again and loses a life. I used to shout at the screen telling Sonic to just jump at the guy and thought the person who recorded this demo was a really bad player. Now I see they were just testing the collision detection or something like that.
Before each stage you're shown a map of South Island with the path you'll be taking marked in it. It is a nice touch which adds a sense of progression to the game.
Green Hill
Green Hill comes back, certainly not for the last time. This zone is a pretty one, full of totems and flowers, some of which you can see growing and "ungrowing" in the background.
Although not as much as in the Mega Drive version, there are still a couple possible different approaches here. My grandfather liked to go through these stages as fast as possible, amassing many points due to the remaining time at the end. I on the other hand liked to meticulously collect everything. I guess Sonic was never really about the speed to me.
When you start act 2 if you run to the right you'll stumble and fall in a hole. I always found that kind of lame and tried to jump early as to avoid the stumbling spot and fall with dignity.
There is a bug I have discovered all by myself which I've never seen documented anywhere else, I'm very proud of it. I call it the champagne bug. After you fall at the beginning of the stage and go to the right you'll find a spring pointed towards the left. Jump on it and as as soon as you touch it jump again. If you do it right you'll get stuck in the wall. Jump another time and you'll quickly rise like champagne froth, hence its name.
(Turns out this bug is featured in a 2010 video :-\ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCdrGAkAzh8)
This zone's boss is very easy, he'll cruise the top of the screen from side to side a couple of times, lower himself, then dash to the other side and repeat. Hitting him when he is high is possible, but I can't do it reliably. It used to take until the third time he came down for me to defeat him, now I only need two.
When I was little I used to sing "Dectei homenen da nave" along with the boss theme, which sounds close to "Detectei o homem da nave", that is, "I detected the ship man", where the ship is the vehicle Robotnik used. Before I knew his name, that is exactly what I called him - Homem da Nave, The Ship Man.
Bridge
I used to have trouble getting this zone's emerald. It is below ground next to a bridge whose logs fall off, so you have to get on the log, wait just a little bit and jump on the platform where the emerald is. I needed several tries before doing it right, sometimes I used up all the logs that were close enough and had to restart the level to try again.
By the way, we used to call the Chaos Emeralds in this game diamonds because they are all a transparent grayish color. We did call them emeralds in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 for the Master System, where they are each one color as usual.
Act 2 has an auto scrolling screen which you have to keep up with. This was the last part of the game I learned to get through by myself. My mom had to beat it for me so I could get on with the other levels.
When I say each stage in this game has a hidden 1-up, that includes act 3 of each zone, the boss stages. They're usually small, with not even a ring on sight, but if you search you'll find the extra life. In the Bridge act 3, for example, you need to head left, not right, at the beginning and the 1-up will be there. Hiding things at the start of the level like this is a neat little trick Sonic the Hedgehog taught me which has come in handy in games like Mega Man X2.
Jungle
Jungle, the zone that looks like it is made out of chocolate. The act 1 1-up is located in front of a waterfall where there are spots with foam in which you can stand. Only in this playthrough I noticed the platforms visible behind the waterfall; the idea is the foam forms when the water falls on them.
Act 2 comes and the word is going up, the screen never lowers, only rises, and if you touch the bottom you die, even if there used to be stuff down there. There is a spot where you have the choice of either going left or right; I always went left but I chose right this time to see what was there as I didn't remember it. Turns out going right is only good for missing a 10 ring monitor.
If you go right at the beginning of act 3 there is a 1-up hidden underwater; after that there is an endless abyss. It has always mystified me - I thought surely there should be something after that and tried in vain to jump over and reach it.
The boss here is though. You are in a U shaped vine where it keeps releasing bombs each time from one end which explode after a while. The bombs roll from side to side, so you have to keep jumping over them, which is difficult when the space is small and there are usually two at the same time. To get to the arena you have to climb over some vines, and I used to just keep dying on the boss and having to climb those vines again. Such was my dread that it seemed to take forever to get to the top, even if the path was quite short. And when I finally beat him, the jump from the vine to the platform where the end of the stage is was very tense, one mistake and I could fall to my death and have to do it all over again.
I finally figured a (more or less) safe pattern in which I kept myself mostly on the left side of the vine and hit Robotnik when he descended there. Nowadays, though, it is more fun to go wild and try to get him on both sides.
Labyrinth
Just as I thought, it is easier to drown in this game than in the Mega Drive one. When you are close to losing your breath a countdown appears over your head and while I often get close to zero in a couple of places here, in the 16-bit version there are usually bubble spots not far apart from each other.
In this zone there is moss hanging from the ceiling everywhere. To me it has always resembled an upside down castle.
At the beginning of act 2 there is a Burrobot. As far as I know it is the only place it appears in the entire game. As it is underwater, you can't see its colors - I was always curious to know how it would look like on land...
Among the 1-ups I didn't use to catch are the ones in acts 2 and 3 of Labyrinth Zone. The latter is particularly devious, I have been told not to attempt it as it wasn't practical, and now that I've done it I see why. It is a tight path full of spikes coming from the floor and the ceiling, took me seven tries to traverse it.
Here is another boss I used to patiently wait and hit only when he was on the left side that now I'm more comfortable risking a little bit, though it is not quite as hard as the previous one.
As Labyrinth is your last chance of going through the Special Stages, let's talk about them now.
Special Stages
At the end of acts 1 and 2 in each zone is a panel that at first is showing a question mark. When you touch it it'll fly into the air, going higher the faster you were, and come back to the ground showing something else. It is fun coming through the panel with full speed and when it is close to landing, jumping so it will bounce when you hit the ground. The things the panel can show afterwards are:
- Robotnik's face: You get nothing. It appears if you haven't cleared the conditions for any of the other ones.
- Sonic's face: The rarest of them. Gives you a 1-up. Appears if you have an amount of rings that varies from stage to stage.
- Ring: Gives you ten rings. Appears if you have 0, 10, 20, 30 or 40 rings. Not available on Scrap Brain nor act 1 of Sky Base.
- Exclamation mark: Takes you to the Special Stage. Appears if you have 50 or more rings. Not available after Labyrinth.
(source for a couple details I didn't know: http://info.sonicretro.org/Sonic_the_Hedgehog_%288-bit%29)
If you want to get to a Special Stage (or Céu - which means Sky or Heaven - as we called it because of the starry background) you'll want to be careful not to go over 99 rings, as while you'll get a 1-up, the count will go back to zero.
This game's Special Stages are very cool. You'll try to collect rings, a continue and sometimes a 1-up while bouncing from springs, pillars, bumpers and flippers under a strict 1 minute timer. I didn't feel my playthrough was quite complete if I didn't go through all of them. There are four stages that will repeat after you go through the last one with additional moving obstacles we used to call "sabão" - that is, "soap".
The first stage is very straightforward. Just go up to get the continue then go to the end, a little bit to the right of where you started.
The second stage is the only one you begin on the ground.
I like to get the continue here coming from the left then falling between the two bumpers, I call this place "the basket" (as in, a basketball one).
Getting this 1-up is tricky. I sometimes get stuck between the bumper and the spring and can't get to the end in time.
In the third stage you're simply going left to right but there are springs pointed to the left that will slow you down if you're not careful.
The fourth stage is fun, you're falling down but there are bumpers and flippers to keep you up, just like in a pinball table.
Well, I have a lot to say about this game and this post is getting rather long, so I will see you next time.
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