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Author: Team Megamix | |
    
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So the Sonic game of 2008 has arrived. Yes, you heard right. This is the best new Sonic game you will play all year. Forget Sonic Chronicles and Sonic Unleashed, a group of fans have created the best game you will play all year. Team Megamix have created a game that’s better than anything Sonic Team or SEGA will ever create. ‘How can that be possible?’ I hear you say. Well, let me explain...
Game play What a lot of Sonic games lack nowadays, is engaging game play. In the eyes of SEGA, all Sonic represents is a visceral thrill. All Sonic games you will have played recently rely on Sonic’s speed as its ‘fun’ factor but Sonic isn’t just about speed as Team Megamix seem to understand. Yes, Sonic 1 Megamix is a very fast Sonic game. But to skilfully play it, you need to master the platforming elements and explore all the different routes the game has to offer. Sonic 1 Megamix’s game play thrives on your exploration and each of the 5 different characters allows you to do this in different ways. Flying, gliding, climbing, spin-dashing, homing-attacking and even using melee attacks; Megamix’s character roster offers you the most diverse set of game play features a Sonic game can offer. What makes this even sweeter is that the levels do not change depending on the character you pick. Everything is already incorporated for you to experiment with. Graphics Do you remember the days of the Mega Drive? Do you yearn for the days of beautifully colourful scenery, parallax scrolling backgrounds and an amazing level of detail? Well Megamix has all of that and more. Most of the stages in Megamix fuse backgrounds and foregrounds from different Sonic games to create something original. Not to mention, the colour palette has been changed to give a new, vibrant look to the recycled graphics on display. However, despite a lot of the graphics being re-used from past Sonic titles, some stages incorporate newly sprited graphics. The main source of this comes from the character sprites which now have a lot more frames of animation than the original Sonic the Hedgehog ever had. Everything is a beautiful nod to the original game with some fresh new images that really make it stand out as its’ own game. Bugs It’s not often I review a fan-game and see so few bugs on display. The main issues are the characters moving too fast that they end up in the scenery and cannot be removed and some minor graphical glitches during the Chaos Emerald display screen and the end scenario. That is it. Plus, when these occur you really couldn’t care less as what you have is a more complete and enjoyable Sonic game than most fan-games available for the low, low price of nothing. Soundtrack As far as I have heard all the songs in Megamix’s soundtrack are recycled from other Mega Drive games. But is that necessarily a bad thing? I’d have to say ‘no’. Where a new soundtrack would be nice, who can resist speeding through amazingly crafted levels backed with music from Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker? No-one, that’s who. Overall Like I mentioned to begin with, what you have here is the best Sonic fan-game you will play all year; maybe even ever. The game play is spot on, the presentation is amazing (I was especially impressed by the HUD which changes with each character), the level design is spectacular and the memories of past Mega Drive games that the soundtrack brings are pure bliss. What could possibly make this better? Oh, that’s right; the game can be burned to a CD-R and played on actual Mega-CD hardware without having to modify your console. No keyboards are required to play this fan-game, you can use the real deal; an actual Mega Drive controller. Despite not including everything Team Megamix would have liked to include, this is the most complete fan-game I’ve seen for a long time. Do yourself a favour and play this game now. 10/10 Reviewed by Sonic Yoda on 17/8/2008 |
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