The History of Sonic on the Master System
While Sega’s speedy hedgehog is generally remembered as a 16-bit superstar, his appearances on Sega’s 8-bit platform were just as memorable. Nick Thorpe takes a look at the unique Sonic offerings available to Master System owners…
Nick charts the blue blur’s relationship with Sega’s 8-bit home console
If there was one thing that Sega craved at the beginning of the Nineties, it was star power. Despite boasting good conversions of some extremely popular arcade games, its Master System had struggled on the world stage for a variety of reasons, one of which was that it lacked a true competitor to Nintendo’s marketing juggernaut Mario. The plumber’s family-friendly appeal was backed with some classic videogames, whereas Sega’s mascot Alex Kidd had suffered from uneven game quality and some truly horrendous artwork. While the recently-introduced Mega Drive was doing better than the Master System had, it was still finding its identity. Worryingly for Sega, even in places where the Master System had done well, it was clear that the brand was far from invincible. The UK distributor of the NES had struck a deal to bundle Teenage Mutant
Hero Turtles with NES consoles in 1990, and over Christmas that star power allowed the Nintendo console to outsell the Master System for the first time. Other strong Sega territories were in much the same position, with an Australian Nintendo advertising campaign pointing out that the only way you might see turtles on a Master System would be if live ones started crawling on it.
By this time, Sega had recognised its deficit in the superstar department and was actively working to address it. A companywide character design contest had been put into place, with the winner being a small hedgehog by Naoto Ohshima, who was best recognised beforehand for his work on Master System games such as
Phantasy Star and Spellcaster.
Sonic was to be a speedy critter, an attribute designed not only to position him as an alternative to Mario, but to emphasise the raw processing power of the Mega Drive. But even as Sonic Team got to work on making the game that would sell the Mega Drive,
Sega recognised
that Sonic could do good work on its 8-bit platform too. The company didn’t have the capacity to develop the game internally however, and instead entrusted the game to brand new developer Ancient.
The choice of a rookie company to handle a game featuring Sega’s brand new hero might seem like an odd one, but it was made on a sensible basis. The team had been formed by the family of Yuzo Koshiro, who had established a relationship with Sega as a freelance composer on the Mega Drive hit The Revenge Of
Shinobi. The Master System game was developed in tandem with the Mega Drive game, but it proved to be far from a simple conversion job. While the Master System game shares its character designs and some stage designs with the Mega Drive game, a conscious decision was made during development to differentiate the game from its 16-bit counterpart – unused fragments of code in the game show that work had started on the inclusion of enemies and music for Marble Zone, a Mega Drive stage which ultimately didn’t appear in the Master System game.
While this meant more work for Ancient, it was a treat for players. The 8-bit version of Sonic The
Hedgehog might have shared the most identifiable stage themes with the Mega Drive game – the Green Hill, Labyrinth and Scrap Brain Zones – but all three had new layouts and bosses. Three new stages also came in the form of the Bridge, Jungle and Sky Base Zones, and proved Ancient’s aptitude for adapting the source material.
The Master System couldn’t hope to replicate the impressive speed and loop-de-loops that the Mega Drive version relied upon, but it’s arguable that a stronger traditional platformer emerged because of those limits. Finding Chaos Emeralds required exploration of stages, and level design was more varied – the game’s forced-scrolling stage in Bridge Zone, vertical ascent stage in Jungle Zone and maze stage in Scrap Brain Zone didn’t have equivalents in the Mega Drive game. It was a little tougher too, thanks to the lack of rings in boss stages.
Sonic’s Master System debut came in October 1991, roughly four months after the Mega Drive game had been launched to critical and commercial success, and met with similar reception. Computer &
Video Games’ 90% review advised readers to buy the game and “watch your mates’ jaws drop, even if they have got Mega Drives.” Sega Pro’s Les Ellis was no less effusive in his praise, awarding the game 96% and declaring it “as close as you are going to get to the perfect game.”
Sonic The Hedgehog proved to be a last hurrah for the Master System in North America, a territory in which the console had struggled to
gain a foothold, and is now a rare collectors’ item. In Europe however, it gave the machine a new lease of life. Soon after release, it replaced
Alex Kidd In Miracle World as the built-in game for the Master System II, and helped to sell the hardware to younger and budget-conscious audiences for years to come.
Sega was quick to capitalise on the success, and quickly put a sequel into production. For Sonic The Hedgehog 2, development duties passed from Ancient to fellow young company Aspect. With the change of developer came a change of approach – while the Master System games would now employ additional aspects of the Mega Drive games such as destructible walls leading to secret areas and the iconic loopde-loops, they were totally distinct entities in terms of story and game design. It was freedom which Aspect relished, and as early as 1991 the company was leaving its stamp on the series with the introduction of new elements, most notably the mine cart and hang glider vehicles.
In Sonic The Hedgehog 2,
Robotnik has kidnapped Sonic’s new friend Tails, and it’s your job to rescue him. To aid in your task, Sonic is able to pick up a small number of dropped rings after he is hit, a welcome ability brought over from the Mega Drive games. However, Sonic’s second 8-bit outing is widely regarded as being one of his most difficult, and not without reason. Mid-stage checkpoints are eliminated and while boss stages still don’t give you rings, there are usually pre-boss hazards such as spikes, and the bosses themselves are tougher due to their nasty habit of launching you backwards into projectiles upon being hit. As if that wasn’t enough, the Chaos Emeralds are now harder to obtain too, and missing just one during the game means you’ll miss the final Crystal Egg Zone.
That high level of difficulty didn’t seem to put off critics or fans when
Sonic The Hedgehog 2 arrived in October 1992, shortly before the Mega Drive game. Critics praised the improved visuals, with Mean
Machines Sega’s Jaz Rignall noting the use of “brilliant sprites that wouldn’t look amiss on the Mega Drive” in a 95% review. Computer
& Video Games wasn’t pleased that Tails was your buddy in distress rather than a playable character, but awarded the game 93% while also reserving praise for the improved visuals. The game hung around the Master System charts near-permanently afterwards, eventually being included in an official Master System II bundle alongside the built-in version of the first game.
With another success behind the team, a third game was put into production under the guidance of Aspect, which had secured a longterm place in charge of the major 8-bit Sonic The Hedgehog games.
Sonic Chaos brought yet more of the 16-bit experience to Master System gamers, adding the iconic spin dash technique for both Sonic and his newly-playable sidekick Tails.
Further, the game had
Brilliant sprites that wouldn’t look amiss on the Mega Drive Jaz Rignall
implemented new obstacles from those games, such as the corkscrew loop which provides a solid surface only to players running at speed.
The additions weren’t all cribbed from the Mega Drive games, though. Sonic’s rocket boots made their debut in this game, allowing the already-speedy critter to dash through the air at incredible speeds, often skipping much of the stage. Meanwhile, the pogo spring allowed for unlimited vertical travel so long as Sonic didn’t get hit. As well as their appearances in the game’s main stages, these power-ups would be particularly important in special stages, which returned after an absence in the previous game. These were generally based around gimmicks, such as a stage based entirely on rocket boots and a pipe maze, and for the first time on the Master System, awarded Chaos Emeralds for successful completion.
The special stages were tough, but this is something of a contrast to the rest of the game, which was significantly easier than both of its predecessors. Part of this was welcome change – while the bosses were not significantly more aggressive than before, they were far more manageable due to the inclusion of rings in their stages for the first time, and the challenges leading up to them were significantly fairer. However, the rest of the game suffered from an abundance of rings – as 100 were needed to enter special stages, regular stages were jampacked with rings without the enemy count being similarly increased. Entering a special stage also counted as completion of the regular stage, making things even easier.
The result of this was that when
Sonic Chaos arrived in the autumn of 1993, critical reception was for the first time somewhat mixed, with responses ranging from slightly positive to very positive. Sega Pro considered that the game didn’t do enough to innovate over previous titles and was altogether too easy, awarding the game 69%. At the opposite end of the scale, Sega
Force Mega’s Nick Roberts praised the new power-ups and high quality visuals, awarding the game 93%. Not that this hurt sales at all – Sonic
Chaos immediately jumped to the top of the UK Master System charts ahead of rival platformer The Jungle
Book, itself a strong contender during the gift-giving season. The game remained there for almost three months consecutively before
finally being dethroned by the official Winter Olympics tie-in, and would remain a strong seller well into 1994.
Unfortunately for Master System owners in Europe, Sonic Chaos was the last of Sonic’s 8-bit platform outings to reach the region. That didn’t necessarily mean that players were out of luck though, as two spinoff titles carried audiences through to the machine’s discontinuation. The first of these to arrive was an oddity of the Sonic series, in that it didn’t even feature the speedy blue hero. Dr Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine
was a puzzle game, featuring Sonic’s arch-nemesis in his new look from the Adventures Of Sonic The
Hedgehog cartoon series, trying to enact a plot to process the beans of Beanville into robotic slaves using his titular machine.
If you think that sounds like the least obvious idea for a Sonic spinoff, we’re with you – and in fact, the game wasn’t conceived as a Sonic spin-off at all. Dr Robotnik’s Mean
Bean Machine was Sega’s Western branding for Puyo Puyo, itself a puzzle spin-off of the Japanese RPG
Madou Monogatari. But while this wasn’t strictly a Sonic game, it was far from a bad game – the colourmatching puzzle gameplay offered more strategic depth than the likes of Columns, and the Puzzle mode featuring pre-defined problems kept players occupied for hours. Critical reception was positive, with Sega
Pro awarding 90% and Sega Power going higher at 92%, but production was limited and the game didn’t make a dent on the charts. As a result, Master System copies of Dr Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine
are now prized by collectors.
The very last Sonic game to reach European Master System owners was Sonic Spinball, a conversion of the Mega Drive spin-off of the same name. In this game, Sonic mounted an assault on Robotnik’s latest fortress – but this being a deadly pinball contraption, our hero found himself being shot all over the place to capture
Chaos Emeralds and defeat enemies in such glamourous locations as sewers and boiler rooms. After years of Sonic forging his own path in the 8-bit world, level design was surprisingly faithful to the Mega Drive version.
The 8-bit version did feature one significant difference from its 16-bit sibling, to be found in the bonus stages. Sonic’s Mega Drive bonus stages had always been flashy hardware showcases, and Sonic Spinball’s pseudo-3d tables were no different. The Master System version replaced these with platforming challenges instead, bringing Sonic too close to his comfort zone. Unfortunately,
Sonic Spinball was never popular with critics on the Mega Drive, and the Master System version suffered from small sprites and slower gameplay. Critics were unimpressed ahead of the game’s release in
1995, when the Master System was extremely close to discontinuation. The combination of a late release and poor reviews meant that the game didn’t sell well.
Like Dr Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine, Sonic Spinball is now a rarity, often fetching £50 £100 on online auction sites.
While Sonic Spinball wasn’t a tremendous end for European Master System owners, it wasn’t the end at all for Brazilian Master System owners. As international support dried up, local distributor
Tec Toy still had an audience eager for Master System software and began converting Game Gear games in order to keep supplying it. Only one Sonic game received this treatment – Sonic Blast, another major platform game from Aspect. This starred Sonic and Knuckles, and offered advances from Mega Drive games. Sonic could perform double jumps, while Knuckles retained his skill for gliding and climbing walls. More surprisingly, the game opted to utilise pre-rendered character sprites, an approach that had served the likes of Donkey Kong Country well but seemed bold on an 8-bit platform.
Key staff from Aspect’s previous Sonic games didn’t work on Sonic
Blast, and this shows. The game did offer positive aspects, including expansive stages and plenty to find within them. For the first time, poor control response and slow gameplay were issues. Beyond that, additional issues were introduced in the conversion process. Visuals were simplified for the Master System’s palette of 64 colours, and pre-rendered sprites looked a lot better when drawing from the Game Gear’s palette of 4,096 colours. While increased screen resolution made huge sprites less problematic, bosses and special stages weren’t correctly recoded to use the whole screen, leading to odd situations such as projectiles being visible but unable to harm your character. While Sonic Blast is not the pinnacle of Sonic’s quality on the Master System, its obscurity and rarity ensure that it often sells for over £100 – a real achievement for a disappointing game.
Looking at Sonic’s time on the Master System, what stands out is how carefully Sega approached
multiple platforms and their different capabilities. While Sonic Team delivered flair on the Mega Drive, Ancient and Aspect brought a unique vision of the mascot tailored for
8-bit hardware. Ultimately, that’s what made Sonic an excellent hero – when the right people determined the challenges, he could adapt to overcome them. Sonic might have been conceived as the saviour of the Mega Drive, but his Master System outings made him a hero for
every Sega gamer.