I felt like playing some good old fashion 2d side scroller today that had some speed, of course naturally that meant I went straight for my Sonic Mega Collection. But seeing how there are a few games I haven’t really played on the collection I decided to go for Sonic 3d blast. My brother had played it several times and I had play it once or twice so I decided to give an actual go at it. Well this is probably one of the worst Sonic games I have ever played, 2nd only to Sonic R. And not surprisingly Travelers Tales logo appears at the beginning of this one to.

Story.
Your Sonic the blue blur and your visiting your friends the flicky‘s, magic birds that can travel across entire dimensions. Unfortunately Robotinick has found out about the flicky’s power and his imprisoned them into robots. Your goal is to rescue the robotized birds by stomping on them and then lead them to a large power ring and rescue them.

Graphics.
The high point of the game is the graphics. While it does say 3d blast that isn’t true, the Sega Genisis was a 2d system. Rather they put the camera on a top down view and tilted at an angle. Thus giving it a bit of depth to the game play. The characters have been molded around this and it gives a somewhat 3d effect. The only problem though is how barren the playing fields look though, there’s just checkered squares all over the place and no trees our other things that might actually keep you in line in where you are in the stage. The result is that it’s easy to get lost in a stage, unfortunately this isn’t 3d blasts only problems.

Sound.
The sound isn’t that great in this game either, it’s the typical over digitized music that I have heard on a lot of the Genesis game. The music it self isn’t that great either and pales in comparison to a lot of the other sonic games that where available on the genesis and available on the mega collection.

Gameplay.
The gameplay is based on another Sega game named Flicky (the game is an unlockable on the mega collection) where you take a blue bird and rescue yellow birds and lead them back to an elevator before you get attack by cats. The game takes that and puts the blue hedgehog in the role of the blue bird. And instead of dodging cats you have to defeat the robots to get the birds. The problem is that Flicky is only fun for about the first 10 minutes or so and this game doesn’t to much to really solve the problem.

After you stomp on a robot the flicky starts following you if you take it back to a big power ring you can get rid of it. If you bring back a whole lot of them then you can get some big bonus points. But if you get while flicky’s are following you they’ll scatter along with the power rings that Sonic can also collect. Then you have to recollect them again. There’s nothing worse then loosing one of the birds like this and searching the entire stage to get it back. When all the flicky’s in an area are collected the power rings disappear and Sonic will be transported to another area to do the same thing.

Also Tails and Knuckels are in each stage to take you to a bonus stage where a chaos emerald can be collected if you can give them enough power rings. Don’t know the difference between the 2 has far has bonus stages, Sega just put them there just so they could have them in the game.

So what’s bad about the game if the you can’t find your way through the stage do to bare graphics, or the boring find the flicky’s thing doesn’t bore you to tear then the controls will defiantly get you down. The controls on this game just suck a big one. There to lose getting Sonic to move around anywhere is hard work, and since there is a lack of enemies due to the flicky theme there are now booby traps you have to avoid instead. With the controls this loose and being that hard to control sonic especially when you get him moving it’s almost impossible to get past these booby traps. In the end you die and get frustrated and quit about the 2nd area like I usually do. If you get to Zone 2 then you have more resistance to being board and frustrated to tears then I do because that is where I quit.

Final Recommendation.
If you have Sonic Mega Collection then you should give Sonic 3d blast a try to see how bad Sonic can be. If you own a genesis and are looking for a Sonic game stay away from this one. It’s bad really really bad the controls are awful, the flicky things are dull, and it’s just to easy to get lost in the stages.

Recommended: No