683: Sonic 3D Blast (Sonic 3D: Flickies' Island)

[JaySevenZero]

Here's where you can contribute your thoughts and opinions for Sonic 3D Blast (Sonic 3D: Flickies' Island) for potential inclusion in the forthcoming podcast.

A friendly reminder that where the feedback for the podcast is concerned, we love it - but keeping it brief is appreciated. We do want to include a breadth of opinions where appropriate, but no-one wants a discussion podcast that’s mostly reading out essays. Better to save yourself time and cut to the chase if you can.

[Seph]

Sonic 3D can be summed it up in one word: disappointing.

Up until this point I had been a die hard Sonic fan and nothing came close, to the point that Mario was a weak pretender and Zool was just stupid. With good reason though, as the Sonic series, especially the Mega Drive entries, had been top class releases that defined a gaming generation.

So when it was announced the next game was going to be using some new fangled, fancy 3D graphics, I was bouncing around the room in anticipation. All the, in retrospect, bizarre high praise and reviews this game got before release got me excited to the point that this game was going to be a letdown no matter how good it could be. However, it turned out to be rubbish anyway.

This is possibly the first game I remember playing as a youngster where I realised it just wasn't any good (I even found excuses for why the Ren and Stimpy game I demanded wasn't the massive pile of crap it clearly was). There's nothing to like here. It looks terrible and plays like trash; the gameplay loop of finding Flickies and throwing them into a portal was boring. The isometric view made it hard to even jump properly. I just want to bomb it through levels, not complete dull fetch quests using slow and cumbersome controls. I don't think I ever got passed the first stage and quietly went back to Sonic 3 and Knuckles.

This wasn't the first bad Sonic game, but considering this was released on the flagship console and seemed like an continuation of the mainline series it was a huge blow, to the point that it almost killed my interest in the blue hedgehog until Adventure popped up a few years later. I even stopped buying Sonic the Comic once they started serialising this story, much was my disgust in this game.

Sonic has never worked in 3D. It's never going to happen. Stop making it happen. It's 2D or nothing.

[NoMoreSpearows]

I am thankful for Sonic 3D Blast for being among the first opportunities for people to hear the music of Richard Jacques.

Those of us who played the Saturn or PC versions of this game don't know the Genesis-sounding jingles that would later be retrained for Sonic Adventure, but rather a slightly richer and (ultimately) less Sonic-sounding OST. It's far from perfect, with the same motif being repeated level after level and ultimately feeling a bit tired after seven worlds, but it was enough to get his foot in the door.

Let me put it this way: without Sonic 3D Blast, there's a possibility Richard Jacques wouldn't have contributed songs for future classics. Jet Set Radio, the LittleBigPlanet series, and other Sonic titles like Generations and All-Stars Racing Transformed. Worse still, we may have never gotten the duology of Sonic R and Metropolis Street Racing where he teamed up with TJ Davis to create songs that are iconic for better or worse. I have nothing to say about the gameplay, but I'm happy this game was made.

It also gave us one of my favorite high-quality rips:

[Jobobonobo]

I remember when I first saw advertisements for this game in magazines, I was amazed. Sonic is going into 3D?! I was vaguely aware at the time that Mario was going to be in his first 3D game at roughly the same time and with the Playstation already being around for a year or two the hype for a 3D Sonic game was real. So, when me and my Sonic mad cousin saw that there is not only a 3D Sonic game, but it is coming out on the Mega Drive, we had to get it. After what seemed like ages (to 10-year-old me at least), my cousin finally had it in his possession and we both sat down to experience what was undoubtedly going to be a future gaming classic. The letters of the SEGA logic flying towards the screen while a nervous voice blurts out “SEGA!” was an intriguing start but the following opening scene in 3D looked amazing in our eyes so got us even more excited to try out the game. Flickie’s Island having an actual intro cutscene explaining the plot was even a big deal to me, Sonic never did THAT before.

And then the game begins. It is a bit different from what I imagined. I was unreasonably expecting the Mega Drive to do something on par with Mario 64 or Crash Bandicoot and well that is just not possible for the 16-bit wonder to do. Still, we gave it a go and the idea of wandering around a level rescuing flickies from badniks and bringing them to a ring to progress to the next stage was just so different from what Sonic was and the odd loop the loop and spin dash pad did not really make up for the high-speed action that we associated the blue hedgehog with. Also annoying is that if you are hit, you not only lost your rings as usual but any flickies you had following you and sometimes it was an exercise in frustration and tedium trying to get these little birds back depending on where in the stage you lost them. Regardless of these flaws, we both managed to beat this back in the day and while I found it to be my first disappointing title from the Sonic series, I did not dislike it either. The soundtrack is top notch as always, I still have the Rusty Ruin music stuck in my head to this day. I also still thought the actual visuals were nice enough, not DKC levels of good but still impressive for the Mega Drive. But the gameplay could only ever reach levels of alright at best and l never went back to this after I finished it unlike the regular Sonic titles which I replayed countless times. So, Sonic’s first “3D” title was a tad disappointing, but he did eventually go into 3D properly not too long after with Sonic Adventure. Surely everything will be smooth sailing for the blue speedster once he finally makes the move to 3D, right? But that is a story for another day.

TWR: Herd those birds!

[ashman86]

I got a Sega Saturn for Christmas in 1996 and, with it, a copy of Sonic 3D Blast. I had rented a copy of the game the month earlier for my Genesis, and I hadn't exactly fallen in love with it. Even as a kid, I felt there was something disingenuous about pitching the game as a 3D Sonic in a world where Mario 64 now existed. But it felt weird to ask for a new Sega console without also asking for a new Sonic game to go along with it.

I remember feeling more curiosity than excitement as I popped the disc into my Saturn later that day. How would the game look and feel on the new hardware, I wondered? Maybe this 32-bit incarnation would actually turn out to be the 3D Sonic game I was dreaming of.

It wasn't. As far as I could tell, the only real difference was a nice, pre-rendered CGI intro at the game's opening that looked miles ahead of its Genesis counterpart. Passed that, it was still the same, awkward isometric game that felt almost as though it had never really been intended as a Sonic game to begin with.

What the Saturn port did feature were Special Stages that more closely resembled those found in Sonic 2, which I remember enjoying primarily because of the glimpse they offered into what a proper 3D Sonic might look like. Little did I know that the Saturn would never actually see one of those, and the closest I'd get would be a hub world in Sonic Jam.

I soldiered on and finished the game--I considered myself a Sonic diehard at the time--and then set it down and never played it again. I didn't hate the game, but I also didn't really like it, which was saying a lot for a 10-year-old.