Year released: 1995 (Genesis)

Number of Players: 1

Sonic has to free his bird friends and hunt down Robotnik.

Graphics: Wow. Save for cutscenes, this is Genesis at the top of its game. Everything is rendered and colored brightly.

Play control: Jump with A or C, roll into a spin with B. Move around in any direction with the d-pad. Jumps and rolls are the attacks Sonic can use.

Sound: The music fits the mood and is quite catchy. Sounds more exciting than the gameplay, to be honest.

Gameplay: Essentially searching levels from an above-the-head view (well, not totally above-the-head--enough from above to see that Sonic is going north and south, and enough from the side to accurately judge jumps) and coping with platforming challenges. The action is slow-paced and definetely not Sonic-like, but it can still be fun.
You aren't completely in the dark, either--for every stage, there is a given path you can follow. However, things get interesting when there's a fork in the path.

Challenge: Find five flickies trapped in robots and free each one with a single attack, then find the goal. Sonic meets platforming challenges along the way, which prey not only on his mortality, but on his flicky friends. When Sonic frees a flicky and touches it, it follows him. But if Sonic is attacked or a flicky itself is attacked, all of the flickies scatter. Their sprites are somewhat small, so it can be a tad hard to find them again, but it never takes long to find them--they're pretty slow.
The above-the-head view makes for more interesting boss fights than your average Sonic game.

Bottom line: A slow game that puts platforming in an isometric world.
This version can't save. The Saturn version, which has the same stuff, can. Huzzah!

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