Sonic Master 2 Review

Hello everyone and welcome to the next part of the Sonic Marathon. Today we will be looking at Sonic Master 2, the sequel to Sonic Master on the Master System and Game Gear and also on the same devices. Let's begin.

Unlike Sonic Master 1, Sonic Master 2 has a much different plot compared to Sonic 2. After the events of Sonic 2, Dr. Robotnik decides to kidnap Sonic's best friend Tails and Sonic has to go save him. Unlike Sonic Master 1, all the stages in Sonic Master 2 are completely unique. You start off in Ruin Zone, heading to Sky Zone and then Lake Zone, Hills Zone, Gimmick Zone, Crystal Zone, and Machine Zone in that order. 

Now instead of a chaos emerald hidden every act, there is now a chaos emerald in every zone, making it much less clear where you can find them without a guide. The chaos emeralds in this game are much more important than in any other sonic game where collecting the emeralds was a side quest, as not collecting all of them not only results in a bad ending where Tails freaking dies, (Well, implied to die. We never actually see it.) it also locks you out of the final level and boss! Make sure to collect every Chaos Emerald in the game while you progress, or you will severely regret it.

While I'm seriously glad that they decided to give us all original zones this time, what I am not glad about is the various problems found in Sonic Master 1 not being fixed or addressed. You still lose all you rings when you die, you still don't have any rings against bosses, and the screen crunch on the Gear Gear version is still awful, possibly worse than the original. Let me explain.

In the first zone of the game, Ruin Zone, you fight an Antlion for some reason. The goal of the fight is to survive for as long as possible while Robotnik sends glowing spheres at you, bouncing their way down into the Antlion's jaw. This is a cakewalk in the Master System version, but in the Game Gear version, prepare for hell. There is almost no possible way you can see the spheres coming and dodging them in time, resulting in instant death. 

This makes the first level of the game impossible, probably resulting in many upset children and the parents returning the game to Toy's R Us where it falls into a cart and is randomly found by a shopper during the Toy's R Us sellout two decades later and buys it for 1 cent. He then proceeds to post the event on Twitter in the year 2018. This seriously happened. Check it out here.

Overall, Sonic Master 2 is a pretty enjoyable game, despite some major flaws including not fixing the problems present with Sonic Master 1, (Screen crunch, no rings against bosses, no recovering rings, etc) the first boss being nearly unbeatable on the Game Gear, and the horrific bad ending, this game still holds up, but is far from the best 8 Bit Sonic game. Also, why would you play this game over the original Sonic 2? For those reasons and more, I'd rate this game a 6.3/10.

Good

• Fun 8 Bit Sonic gameplay.
• The levels are all original this time.
• There continue to be no special stages, thank God! (I wish more classic sonic games did chaos emeralds this way...)

Bad

• Tails is not playable, despite being an 8 bit port of Sonic 2.
• The first boss is almost impossible to beat on Game Gear.
• The spin dash is still not in the game.
• Screen crunch is still a major issue for the Game Gear version.
• The problems found in Sonic Master 1 are still not fixed.

6.3/10