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Sonic CD

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Sonic the Hedgehog CD
File:Sonic CD Title.gif
Developer(s)Sega, Sonic Team
Publisher(s)Sega
Designer(s)Naoto Ohshima (director), Kazuyuki Hoshino, Takumi Miyake (Design), Matsuhide Mizoguchi (programming)
Platform(s)Sega Mega-CD
(PC)
GameCube (as part of Sonic Gems Collection)
PlayStation 2 (as part of Sonic Gems Collection)
Release





Genre(s)Platformer
Mode(s)Single player

Sonic the Hedgehog CD (ソニック・ザ・ヘッジホッグCD, Sonikku za Hejjihoggu Shīdī), or simply Sonic CD, is a platform game in the Sonic the Hedgehog series, developed and published by Sega. It marked the first official appearance of both Metal Sonic and Amy Rose. It was released for the Sega Mega-CD in Japan on September 23, 1993, in Europe in October, 1993, and finally for the Sega CD in North America on November 19, 1993. The game was ported to PC CD-ROM in 1996.

Storyline

For one month out of every year, a tiny planet appears in the skies above Never Lake. The mysterious "Little Planet" holds seven gems that control the passage of time, bending the barriers between past and future. Intrigued by the unusual power of these stones, Dr. Eggman descends upon Little Planet and hatches a new scheme to take it over.

Fortunately, Sonic the Hedgehog has caught wind of Robotnik's plot and resolves to beat him to the Time Gems at all costs. However, to complicate matters Dr. Eggman has kidnapped the young hedgehog Amy Rose, and uses her to bait Sonic and keep him off his trail. To that end, he deploys his most sophisticated and diabolical machine to date: a robot duplicate of the hedgehog hero, designed to match Sonic's every move and even surpass his own namesake's speed.

Gameplay

The main innovation of this chapter in the Sonic series is the manner in which the player can travel to 3 different versions of each level, each a different time period of the same location. This is accomplished by speed posts scattered around the level, bearing the labels "Past", and "Future". After running through one of these posts, the player has to run at top speed for a few seconds without stopping to travel into the respective time period. Because these teleports are relative, there are no "Past" signs in the Past, and no "Future" signs in the Future; that is, warping to the past in the future returns the player to the "present" time. Each stage has three "Acts" (Although they are called "Zones" in this game, see below), the third of which always takes place in the future.

The different time zones have slightly different layouts and sprite placements, as well as significant changes in the level art and palette. In addition, the robots within a level fall into a state of disrepair as time passes; in the present, some machines have become worn down while in the future all of them have. This affects the speed and attacking ability of the robots; some of them become completely ineffective, while others do not significantly change.

The appearance of the future changes depending on the actions of the player in the past. Hidden within the past of every level, there is a robot generating machine. If this is destroyed within a zone or all seven time stones are already collected, all of Dr. Eggman's robots will be destroyed in the past. Should the player warp into the future, it is a "Good Future" in which there are no enemies and fewer hazards. If the machine is not destroyed, the warp will lead the player into the "Bad Future" in which Dr. Eggman's robots run rampant, there are more hazards (though due to wear on some of the enemies, not always as many as in the past), and heavy pollution has harmed the level.

The third zone always takes place in the future and is mainly a short run up to the boss. Most boss battles are more elaborate than those in the other Sonic games, and typically require fewer hits than the usual 6 or 8. These boss battles, however, require more effort to actually hit Robotnik; one battle takes place on a makeshift pinball table and requires the player to use flippers to get up to Robotnik. Two battles do not involve hitting Robotnik to damage him; one takes place on a giant treadmill where the objective is to wear out Robotnik's machine by running on it, and the other is a race against Metal Sonic. The appearance of the third zone depends on the player's actions in the other two; if the player has achieved a Good Future in the other two zones (or all the time stones are collected), this zone will be a Good Future as well. However, if only one or neither stage has been made into a Good Future, the third zone will be a Bad Future. If all the third zones have Good Futures, the player is able to see the good ending.

As in Sonic the Hedgehog, special stages can be accessed at the end of each zone if the player has collected, and is holding on to at least 50 rings. A giant ring will float above the finishing sign which Sonic can jump through to enter the special stage. They consist of a three-dimensional, flat surface. To complete a stage and collect the Time Stone reward, the player must seek and destroy six purple UFOs flying around the stage. If a UFO is destroyed, it gives a prize of either a super ring (have gold markings and give progressively larger bonuses starting with 20 rings when destroyed in series) or speed sneakers (have grey markings and temporarily boost speed). The stage, unlike the pseudo-3D stages seen in Sonic 2 or Sonic 3 which are built in a manner similar to OutRun or Lotus Turbo Challenge, uses the scaling and rotation capabilities of the system. Collecting the seven time stones, only possible in the special stage, automatically guarantees that the player will reach the good ending even if one of the previously completed zones did not have a Good Future, and that all futures of upcoming zones will be good as well.

Sonic CD was the first Sonic game to use a backup save, using the internal Sega CD memory or a backup RAM cartridge. The game saves after the end of each third zone (after which, a new level begins) and records the best times of the player in the time attack mode.

Development

After the release of Sonic the Hedgehog, Lead Programmer Yuji Naka had grown dissatisfied with the rigid corporate policies at Sega, so he moved to the United States to work with the Sega Technical Institute. Incidentally, a large number of the original design team of Sonic also left for the U.S., to help instruct the American developers. With half of Sonic Team and two of its most important creators present, the Sega Technical Institute eventually got the job to develop Sonic the Hedgehog.

Meanwhile in Japan, Sonic CD was handled by a separate development team, headed by Sonic creator Naoto Ohshima. Initially, as revealed in interviews and magazine clippings, Sonic CD, and Sonic 2 for the Mega Drive/Genesis, Master System and Game Gear were all supposed to be the same game. However, during development, Sonic CD evolved into a vastly different type of game. Eventually, the gameplay of Sonic 2 would be favoured for the future games, but this explains why the theme and handling of Sonic CD are different.

Audio

The US and Japanese versions feature two different soundtracks, with the European release sharing the Japanese soundtrack. The Japanese soundtrack was composed by Naofumi Hataya & Masafumi Ogata, and featured songs by Keiko Utoku. The songs were entitled "Sonic - You Can Do Anything" (composed by Masafumi Ogata) and "Cosmic Eternity - Believe In Yourself" (composed by Naofumi Hataya).

The US version was delayed a few months to have a new soundtrack composed by Spencer Nilsen, who did other Sega CD soundtracks as well as some early Sega Saturn soundtracks. All the music except for the "Past" tunes (which were not Redbook audio but used the Sega CD's PCM channels) was replaced, and new themes were composed. The new theme was "Sonic Boom", performed by Pastiche (Sandy Cressman, Jenny Meltzer and Becky West). Both the opening and ending had similar lyrics but different instrumentation. This is credited as the "Special Edition for North America" soundtrack. These songs were later released on the limited edition Sonic Boom CD.

It is interesting to note, that the last development version of Sonic CD (after the Japanese release) which was run on American NTSC systems, contained the Japanese soundtrack completely intact, indicating that at one point in localization, the soundtrack wasn't considered for revision. However, when it came time to release, the soundtrack was completely replaced [1] [2].

Ports

Sonic CD was ported to PC CD-ROM in 1996, marking Sonic's debut on the PC under the Sega PC brand. This version was released in Japan on August 9, 1996, in North America in August 26, 1996, and in Europe in October 3, 1996. Among the most noteworthy changes of this version was the fact that the entire FMV animated intro and ending sequence is available for this version. The Mega-CD version only had a truncated version of the intro and ending sequence. The Japanese version of the game had its manual translated from the US version, and all versions had the US soundtrack, with the "Past" tunes converted to normal CD tracks.

While the DirectX version of Sonic CD for PC is the most common and the best-selling initial commercial game for Windows 95, it is not the first version of Sonic CD for PC. The original version of Sonic CD for PC was powered using Dino libraries, an Intel-developed precursor to DirectX. This version of Sonic CD was never individually sold at retail, it was only sold with Packard Bell computers as a pre-installed game, and sold as double-packs along with other PC Sonic games. Upon the release of DirectX 3, Sega ported the Dino dependencies to DirectX calls and released Sonic CD in its DirectX form.

In addition to the PC port, Sonic CD is part of the Nintendo GameCube (and, in Japan and Europe, PlayStation 2) compilation Sonic Gems Collection. This version is, in turn, ported from the PC version with some enhancements regarding the game's framerate and action speed (with no framerate slow-down). The soundtrack in this version depends on the region, though European versions of the game contain the American soundtrack (unlike previous European releases which featured the Japanese soundtrack).

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