The Disjointed, Nihilistic Pantomime of Sonic 2 8-Bit (Warning for LOTS of images)

Literally only one thing on this cover ever actually happens in this game.

I've always felt a kinship with Sonic the Hedgehog, and I think it has more to it than both of us being blue, impatient, and autistic (okay, maybe I'm just projecting that last one).

The confidence this guy exudes, his unflinching can-do attitude in the face of impossible odds, and his free-spirited nature always resonated with my soft-scaled, awkward self ever since my hands first formed.

It only makes sense, then, that the second post on this blog would be about the 8-bit game that calls itself Sonic 2! Except it isn't, because it has nothing to do with that game apart from having the same name.

None of the improvements Sonic 2 introduced to the series are in this game: no Spin Dash, no Super Sonic, no Death Egg. This is as barebones a sequel to the first game as you could imagine.

As a first outing from Aspect, who later went on to create the beloved Sonic Chaos and Triple Trouble, Sonic 2 8-bit is... lacking. Yet, it's always stuck in the back of my mind, ever since I got my paws on a Game Gear as a hatchie (those scratches and minor scorch marks were there when I got it, I swear).

This game has a bizarre quality to it that I've never been able to pin down. It keeps me coming back to it every so often, soaking in its surreal, now-comfortingly hostile atmosphere.

Somehow, by virtue of sloppy game design, a few half-baked ideas, and bizarre decisions on the part of the development team, this game accidentally becomes a powerful nihilistic pantomime.



Sonic 2 8-Bit is a game that runs on broken promises:

Before you even play the game, you are shamelessly lied to by both the box art and the cartridge label itself. You are promised a fun adventure wherein Tails will be your loyal companion, just like in the Genesis game!

And, indeed, all signs point to this having originally been the intention; yet, Tails is barely even in it at all, despite how the marketing, packaging, and in-game art all emphasize his presence.

I swear, I see this cartridge at every single flea market I go to, yet nobody ever talks about it.
These things will outlive the heat death of the universe.

"Look!" It seems to cry. "Tails is important in this game! So important that we had to cram another picture of him, and overlap his name on Sonic's on the cartridge label!"

Upon turning the game on, however, the lie is revealed:

Also, the zone this scene takes place in was actually cut from the final game. It can be found in an Autodemo sent to the press that was recently found and hacked to be playable, however.

Tails, one of the game's big selling points, is abducted, taken out of the action in the most crass way possible before the word "Start" even appears. The game proceeds to include him on the title screen, as if to remind you that you're not playing the actual Sonic 2.

This title screen is a mirrored and redrawn version of the scrapped title screen for the Genesis game (pictured below).
Given the two games were developed simultaneously, Aspect was likely given very little information to work with.

This title screen stuck around for a long time, being used in promotional materials (even the manual!) months after it was scrapped.

The minute you press start, the game contradicts itself; even though you saw Tails' abduction in the opening scene, there he is in the zone's title card beside Sonic, as if nothing had happened.

Kudos to Tom on SMS Power for making this. Also, yes, those are the Sonic 1 sprites that they used for these. By the way, the letters have a scrolling animation inside them of, guess what, that same unused zone again. This game has a fetish for emphasizing things that aren't in it, apparently.

Tails, in-game, has a complete enough sprite sheet to show that he was likely intended to follow Sonic around like in the original game, possibly even be a playable character.
 
Regardless, it's obvious that the artwork was already done long before the game itself finished development, so it's likely they threw in the story of Tails' kidnapping as an afterthought, with no time to correct any other aspect of the game or its marketing.

Bizarrely, an earlier version of the title screen from when the game was still in development actually just had Sonic by himself, throwing my theory into question. It's also possible that whoever did the title cards was never told about the game's plot. Gosh, I wanna know how this game's dev cycle went down.

Thus, this game becomes an accidental exercise in Derridaesque deconstruction; Tails is omnipresent precisely because of his absence from the majority of the game, and its constant reminders thereof.

In other words, Tails is not so much a character as he is a vague, chaotic presence.

It's fitting, when you look at it: foxes are agents of chaos, they're tricksters. Not to mention, in Japanese folklore, foxes possessed powerful illusory properties, and grew an extra tail every 100 years. What does Tails's second tail imply then?

Look again at that cartridge art; it's as if Tails is peeking outside the bounds of the fiction presented by the box art, wearing a cute little smile. What does this smile mean? Is it an innocent one? A knowing one? Perhaps he's playing the role of captive for show, and retroactively inserting himself into the margins of the narrative. Perhaps, behind his silly, boyish facade, Tails is far wiser than we'll ever know.

Thus, it's not too dissimilar to his role in the Genesis game: he's not following you around to be useful (though he occasionally can be), he's following you around so you can feel like you have a sidekick on your adventures as Sonic, and to give the game's third act something resembling emotional stakes when you lose him, and give weight to the ending, in which he saves you. Thus, while you CAN play as Sonic alone in that game, doing so just feels wrong.


So, these title cards serve to re-enforce that sense of wrongness, a wrongness that cannot be corrected until the game's end.

But all this can be easily attributed to a disorganized development cycle, as can plenty of other things we'll be covering, such as the game's strange choice of opening stage.

Sonic 2 8-bit was the first game in the series not to start in a lush, green environment of some kind, instead opting to dive straight into the industrial by starting you off in a very non-OSHA-compliant mine.

This level's central gimmick are mine carts, which Sonic can ride in, and if there's any spikes in the way, the mine cart will destroy them.

Of course, you still have to be wary of when the crash, especially into lava.

Take note that these are the ONLY level gimmicks in this game that actually feel useful, instead of either worse than useless, or an inconvenient obstacle.

Fun fact: pressing down on the d-pad while he's in a mine cart has Sonic make this face. It serves no function whatsoever, but I enjoy doing it. Also, Sonic, you're not supposed to get in a mine cart, despite what Donkey Kong Country would tell you. Can't you run faster than this thing, anyway?

... Apparently not.

Let's see, no guard rails, very obvious fire hazard, no handicap access... Yeah, Robotnik's gonna get his ass sued off.

I don't think OSHA even has a regulation covering this, but they'll sure as hell invent one after this.

 Compared with the first game's starting zone, Underground Zone is a hellscape; Sonic is already too late to stop Robotnik's industrialization of the world around him.

The only real enemies of note are Newtrons from the first game, and these weird America Crabmeats that appear in nearly every zone in this game:

Were killer robots that shoot fireballs covered by the 2nd Amendment? That part of American history is sketchy.

Sonic's waiting animation in this game is a confused shrug, rather than his usual foot-tapping. Most of the previous game's Sonic sprites got used in this, so I have no idea why they made this new animation for it. It's pretty fitting.
This screencap was taken from the Game Gear version, after I switched to playing it with the screen borders off; you're not supposed to see that wall.

One thing of note is the End Posts in this game: in the first 8 Bit Sonic, the number of rings you had would decide what was on it: if you had more than 50, you'd get an exclamation mark, and get sent to the Bonus Round. If you met certain conditions, you could get a continue and have Sonic's face show up. Otherwise, you'd just get Robotnik's ugly mug.

I have no clue what conditions you're supposed to meet to get anything special, so 98% of the time, you're going to see this:

In the Genesis games, the sign post starts out with Robotnik's face, and always changes to whoever you're playing as, symbolizing your systematic dismantling of Robotnik's means in every zone you visit.

Here, you're continually reminded of the opposite: despite what you've done, the world around you hasn't really changed. Underground Zone won't shut down just because you smashed a few things. Brutal.

Act 2 is more of the same, but we're introduced to the fact that five of this game's six Chaos Emeralds are hidden in the second act of each zone. The idea, according to the manual, is that the Chaos Emeralds are Tails's ransom.

And if you don't pay it... well, don't pretend you don't already know, or can't guess.

This one's relatively simple to find: stay along the top of the level, then jump off at any ramps or ledges you may come across.

How did Robotnik not find this one? He literally could've picked it up as he was flying by. Lazy bastard.

Easy enough. Sadly, this and one other Emerald are the only ones that are this easy to get.

Also in Act 2, we encounter the first instance of a running theme in the level design: Spikes. Spikes absolutely everywhere, no Gosh-darned reason. Spikes are this game's salt and pepper.

In Act 3, we get a bit of a double whammy:

Yes, I died and went back just to get this screencap before loading my savestate, shhhhhh!

First is the taking away of any sense of agency you previously had— which will be a recurring theme in this game— by forcing you to careen off a ramp into a pit of lava, then having you be rescued from this dire fate...

THE CLAAAAAAW!

By Robotnik.

The man who's been trying to kill you since the first game saves you from a very convenient demise, only to drop you into one you can escape. This carries a few strange implications: for one, the fact that his factories and mines and secret bases are less fortified compounds than they are elaborate obstacle courses is both diegetic and intentional on his part.

You're not a rebel storming into the enemy's fortress; you are a rat, running through an elaborate Rube Goldberg contraption for the enemy's amusement. Robotnik saves you here because if you were to die in such an anti-climatic fashion, he'd just be disappointed and bored. This scene sends a very clear message: your continued survival depends entirely on this man's whim. The reason you can penetrate his defenses isn't because he's incompetent; it's because he lets you.

Adding to the cruelty of this revelation is the device he drops you into: in the Sega Master System version (which came first), he drops bouncing metal balls that Sonic must avoid, so they can land on Mecha Ant-Lion instead (yes, I looked up its name).

However, the Game Gear version, which was the only 8 bit one to see Stateside release, is an exercise in frustration: for starters, the GG has a much smaller screen resolution than the SMS, meaning you have much less room to maneuver about and it's incredibly difficult to see what's coming.

There's actually a ball just off-screen in this shot. I'm dead serious.

Here's how it looks when you turn off the screen borders. Note the unseen segment of the ant-lion.

On top of that, the balls' bounce height is randomized in this version, meaning that you have to calculate where the ball is going to be in real time AND dodge them! Not to mention that you're on an incline, which means walking left is much slower, and right is damn near impossible to stop from careening into the ant-lion; only way to dodge is by jumping to the right, and veering back left in time.

Lastly, being hit even once or falling into the ant-lion's maw being instant death because the third acts in this game don't give you any rings.

This is the first boss of the game! Final bosses are seldom this dickish!

Consider how, because this game was packed-in with so many Game Gears, this was so many people's first impression of the system!

[Source: Bakayote on Sonic Retro] This box shows one such pack-in. I love how it's explicitly called "THE Sonic 2 system!"

Suffice it to say, I believe most people either got a refund, or played Shinobi instead.

And, as the icing on the fuck-you cake, once you successfully dodge every one of these balls, this happens:

Robotnik apparently gets bored/frustrated with this little game of Hardcore Dodgeball, and destroys the ant-lion himself. You don't even get to say you killed it, as Robotnik puts it out of its misery when it's presumably one bomb away from death. What kind of hero needs to be rescued by his antagonist like this? What kind of antagonist is so enabling towards a hero?

As we ponder these questions, let's move on and free all the critters imprisoned in the...

... Robotnik UFO? For some reason, for just this one game, Robotnik eschewed the usual animal capsule in favor of something a bit more stylish, but ultimately no more effective. Just another small way this game runs contrary to its peers, I guess.

I often wonder what it was like, to live beneath a blue sky. Every human over 40 I've talked to about it says they miss it.

Next up is Sky High Zone: it's Hill Top Zone, but without anything that made the actual Hill Top Zone fun.

You do get one thing, though:

Hang-gliders!  First, you run into them, get a running start off the nearest ledge...

Then fall down because you can't master the very oddly-specific rhythm you need to tap left in in order to go up, and promptly give up on ever using these stupid things again. Ideally, these things are meant to help you soar across the level, with a little skill, but in practice, you're likely better off avoiding them altogether.

If you go all the way up to the top left corner of this level, and run into this monitor from the left, without breaking it, a strange yet nifty little Easter egg will appear:

Yeah, little birds! Part of me wonders if these are supposed to be a reference to the ones you rescue in Flicky; Flicky is a recurring minor character in this series, so I don't see why the game it came from wouldn't get referenced every now and then.

[Source: Sonic Retro] This screencap from a magazine shows a prototype version of this zone that came later than the one in the Autodemo, but still used the same checkerboard. Note that weird flower.

In Act 2, the weather becomes a lot less pleasant.

You are once more given hang-gliders, yet whereas the first act attempts to set up a fun situation wherein your proficiency with the hang-glider rewards you with more rings, here it only serves as another means for the game to take agency away from you: strong gusts of wind will, without warning, start pushing you upwards, often simply crashing you.

I couldn't get a screencap of Sonic on a hang-glider when the winds blew, but any time those black leaves appear while you're on one, you're forced upwards.

Also, Act 2's Emerald is a pain in the haunches to get: in theory, it's entirely possible, with sufficient practice, to use a hang-glider to get enough height to reach the Emerald way up in the clouds.

In reality, however, the more likely method is somehow more reliable and more bullshit:

See that cloud under Sonic? That's actually a spring. You have to use a series of these in a series of blind-faith bounds across the level until you launch into the Emerald itself. Often, you'll fall down just short of where the spring cloud actually is, if you don't know exactly how long to hold right.

Oh, and there's other clouds that look just like these that you fall right through, so have fun landing into the spikes ad nauseam until you get it right.

After that thunderstorm is done, we return again to a more pleasant backdrop in the clouds.

Some minor platforming later, at the end of the stage, out of the clouds will pop... Little birds that do nothing but hop around; if these things kill you, it's your own fault.

After you've killed these, you're dropped down to another cloud with four eggs you have to destroy, with even more birds appearing in a futile attempt to protect them.

After you've committed enough infanticide, their mama is understandably pissed, and proves the first effective threat in this boss, firing projectiles. at you while bobbing up and down.

This mean mother-ducker.

Bizarrely enough, they drew an entire body for this thing that you never see.

Source: Sonic Retro

This wasted effort is one of many symptoms that points to a combination of a hectic development cycle, and possible inexperience on the part of the devs; indeed, this is the third game Aspect ever made. Their previous efforts were the mediocre Ax Battler: A Legend of Golden Axe, and 8-bit version of Batman Returns.

A strangely lacking resumé, for Sega to choose to outsource their mascot's second 8-bit outing to. Perhaps there were few or no other appealing options. At any rate, with titles like Sonic Spinball, and the doomed Sonic X-Treme, this certainly wouldn't be the last time Sega would put the hedgehog in less-than-capable hands.

With the slaughter of mother and child done, we move on to...

[Source: Sonic Retro] You've already seen what this zone's title card looks like, so have a crusty JPEG of a prototype version! Tails's presence here lends further credence to my theory that he was meant to be playable.

If nothing else, you've gotta admire the art direction in this game.

Aqua Lake Zone!

This zone isn't sure whether it wants to be this game's Labyrinth or Aquatic Ruin Zone: in the first act, nearly all the underwater segments are entirely skippable, while in the second, you spend the entire act underwater.

Remember how, in Sonic 3, you could run on water in Hydrocity Zone? This game predicted that, somewhat: if Sonic jumps at the water at a high-enough velocity, he'll skim across it! Nifty!

Take note that this is the first loop-de-loop in the entire game. Three stages in. And in a water level, too!

In Act 2, we encounter one of the obvious differences between the two versions:

In both versions, the level starts you off dry, only to submerge you in water for the rest of it.

In the SMS version, there is no visual indicator to show the transition; the color palette remains a sickly green throughout.

The GG version, however, visibly fills up with water, turning the whole level blue!

I swear, the enemies look less and less like robots the further you go in this game.

This zone's big gimmick is a bit of a twist on the air bubbles from before: these are bubbles you actual ride inside and control, or at least control its x-axis and upward velocity; you can't go down unless they pop. More on that in a bit.

Sadly, not as cool as the bubble shield.

Here, the game introduces another way it'll be taking away any sense of control from you: pipes.

Now, you CAN choose what direction you'll be going in, but you don't get a chance to stop and actually process your options: either you know what's coming, or you get sent flying into what you can only hope won't be spikes (it's usually spikes).

Getting the Emerald in this stage is remarkably easy: Just hold left, when you enter the second set of pipes.

Now, remember what I said earlier about bubbles?

Yeah. In continuing the trend of taking what could be a fun gimmick and making it an utter pain in the ass, we find an entire segment dedicated to dodging spears, prawn enemies, and the ceiling.

And if you get hit? You're sent careening back down to the bottom, helpless to avoid getting hit again by whatever's on the way there.

Courtesy of Ruubster from Secrets of Sonic Team.

One bizarre feature of this act is that, in the SMS version, this zone is the ONLY place where you'd find Speed Shoes. They even get a unique jingle you never hear anywhere else!

Out of all the places you could've put this, why here? This is the area where you'd need them the least; Green Hills or Underground Zone would've been a better choice, by far.

Same source as that last shot.

The Game Gear version saw fit to replace the Speed Shoes here with a more useful Ring monitor.

[Source: Sonic Retro] Here's a prototype screenshot of this zone, from the back of that Game Gear bundle box.

And now, we fight what I always thought was supposed to be a Robotnik-faced sea lion, but is actually just sporting a super-cool pair of sunglasses. No prizes for guessing its name.

Going by what little knowledge of Japanese I have, this says something like "Stop its spinning 'Arf Arf!' attack."

It'll inflate an exploding ball, and try to attack you with it...

But you can just pop it before it's fully inflated, and it'll explode in the seal's face. Hell, sometimes the ball will just randomly explode when it lands on the poor thing's nose. Every time you damage it, it throws a brief little tantrum.

After that, it'll try to lunge for you, but you can just jump, and it'll harmlessly catch you on its nose and toss you off before trying to inflate another ball.

This boss is so pathetic, it feels like you're bullying it. So far, for bosses, we've had: a boss that had to be euthanized, a bunch of defenseless babies and their mother, and now a seal who just wants to play with his ball. Question is, why would Robotnik make such utterly pathetic machines?

They were clearly never going to be very effective at killing you, so what's their purpose? To demoralize you, by forcing you to destroy something you pity? To rob you of any sense that you're a hero?

A man like Robotnik, with seemingly endless resources, surely would've been more keen on flexing his power in a more intimidating way, wouldn't he?

In the years since this game's release, there have been many different continuities with vastly differing interpretations of the man, from the cartoonish evil and sadism of SatAM and Sonic The Comic, to the occasional glimpses of vulnerability in the games and Archie comics, and of course the buffoonery of AoStH and Boom.

Sonic 2 8-Bit offers up an entirely different interpretation from any of these: a man of utterly ineffable motive and inscrutable action.

This interpretation is further served by this game's wordless storytelling, wherein the only motivations are ones supplied by the audience; Sonic obviously wants to save Tails, but does that come before or second to stopping Robotnik's evil plot, whatever it may be? That's up to the player. Sonic shows no sign of giving a shit about what's going on throughout the game; he could be enjoying the senseless bullying of these pathetic machines, for all we know.

Green Hills Zone.

It seems so nonsensical that this zone takes place so late in the game, yet here we are.

This has to be the most outwardly cheerful level in the entire game, with a blippy rendition of You Can Do Anything playing in the background as you run through flowery fields, picking up an abundance of rings and one-ups. In any other Sonic game, this idyllic, happy landscape is where you'd start the game.

But, this is still Sonic 2 8-bit, and this cheer is a facade.

I joke about this game being sentient, but then I see shit like this and wonder.

Come Act 3, Green Hills shows its true colors.

I'll let you just look at this map someone made of the whole zone.

Why are there spikes under the visible playing area?!

Yes, this is the reason the game doesn't start at Green Hills. Although it originally did, going by the leaked prototype build's version (and the fact that it's the first zone to have a demo that plays when you leave the title screen, they likely didn't have time to redesign the third act, so they just moved the whole zone to later in the game.

If you consider the fact that Green Hills was originally the starting zone, suddenly the game's schizophrenic difficulty curve and sense of progression make perfect sense; going by what the autodemo shows, Underground Zone would've originally been the third zone, after Sky High Zone.

Hard to say whether I like this more abstract style over the generic Emerald Hill-style one they went with, but I understand they had to make that switch to make Sky High's re-use of this zone's tiles less obvious.

With the springs, it's a matter of keeping enough momentum in the air to clear the gaps, while also avoiding flying over the next set of springs. Often, you have to kill your momentum entirely, go as far left as you can, then build it back up and spring off as far right as you can, and hope to Gosh you can make it to the next set.

And, of course, it's worse when you land next to a spring, then careen off the edge because you can't stop Sonic's running animation in time.

And, of course, it's even worse on the Game Gear, since you can't see what you're doing. It really is a matter of memorization and blind leaps of faith.

All in all, this part feels like the game's most desperate attempt to get you to turn it off, and let it return to oblivion once more. Unfortunately for this game, we dragons are the epitome of pigheaded determination.

Thankfully, once this is done with, we've cleared the absolute worst this game can throw at us.

Oh, speaking of pigheaded!

Why, yes, I did forget to screencap this part, and thus stole this shot from Sonic Retro because I couldn't get the level select cheat to work. How kind of you to notice.

This guy's attacks are easy enough to avoid; he curls up into a ball, and moves towards the other side of the screen either by leaping, shooting straight across, or rolling inside the ditch. When he's not in this state, just hit him again.

It's almost as if this guy was the intended first boss, hmm~?

Onward to the very appropriately-titled Gimmick Mt. Zone.

Why is it appropriate? Because this stage decided to cram in not one, not two, three, or even four, but a whole five level gimmicks:

 Conveyor belts...

Those spinning disks from Scrap Brain Zone...

 Moving platforms, spinning floors...

 Conveyor belts...

Both of these screen caps come from one alb3530 of SMS Power; I forgot to take a shot of the mine cart, and in the process of finding one online, discovered this neat little thread. We don't make mistakes, here in Paphvul's Lair, we just have happy little accidents.

 And the mine carts from Underground (which were apparently changed at some point in development. Weird).


Gimmick Mt. also possesses the title of "most bullshit Chaos Emerald location".

 Stand at this spot, and keep in mind that, on a real Game Gear, you couldn't see past roughly the area beyond where the HUD is.

 Now jump left into this wall, and keep going down the linear passage, up, (note that this section actually contains the part with the wheels I showed you earlier), then right and you should see...

Tada!

For a game whose good ending depends on you getting these, it does its absolute damnedest to keep you from obtaining them, making the Bad Ending arguably the default one.

This next boss showcases the late game's strange tendency for bosses to keep getting easier:

 First, it charges at you...

Then it rams into the wall, rocks fall, and you have to attack it while it's knocked out.

That's about it for Gimmick Mt. Zone.

I prefer Omelet Zone, myself.

Yes, this zone really is called Scrambled Egg Zone. An accurate description of the level design.

No, seriously, this screenshot about tells you all you need to know about it. Oh, but it gets worse.

See this? This is part of a maze of  pipes that's not unlike the one from Aqua Lake Zone, but this one's ten times worse. If you fuck up even once, it's back to the start of this tube maze. Better hope you figure it out before the timer runs out!

Act 2 thankfully has no Chaos Emerald bullshit to deal with, but, boy howdy, does it make up for that in another way. It's a bit like an abuser breaking your property, then buying you replacements to make you think it evens out.

And here's where I switched to Kega Fusion (funny how we still use this centenarian program; it's good for hacks that don't work in modern emulators, at least), and Action Replay'd my way to this act to get any screencaps I missed.

Essentially, at one point, there's a moving platform that zips right by the minute you step on it, so it's very easy to find yourself reflexively jumping off and hitting the bed of spikes that I promise you is off-screen. Then, we come to this pipe...

 Here, you must quickly zoom into the left branch, lest you be sent straight into a bed of— you guessed it— spikes...

Then land on the platform while it's here, and immediately jump back in...

 And hope to Gosh you land on the platform just in time not to fucking die.


As for Act 3... I'll just show you the map again, then show you screencaps of what that looks like in-game.

There's five different locations this shot could be.

Yep.

So, after we've conquered that, it's time for this zone's boss...

Think about it, the sheer difficulty spike of this zone, the foreboding music, the dark background!

All in all, this would be a good place for the final boss to happen, right?

Ha ha, yes it would, which is exactly why Sonic 2 8-bit refuses to do that.

Instead, meet Ersatz Metal Sonic!

Yes, he really is trying to do a 'bad touch' attack. It's as easy to avoid as it looks.

Out of all the ideas this game could've lifted from the Genesis game, this one seems like an odd choice. Thankfully, for those of you experiencing flashbacks to the Genesis version's absurdly difficult counterpart, this one is a relative pushover.

Instead of his jumping animation being instant death, jumping into it just sends him bouncing away from you.

So, only real strategy here is "always stay in ball mode".

Also, remember those five Chaos Emeralds we've been taking the trouble to collect? If you have them, then this guy drops the last one after you defeat him.

If you miss even one, however...

Courtesy of RyuWatase of VGMuseum. They just could not let go of this design motif.

The game ends, then and there!

You get some depressing music as Sonic runs alone all day, until he stops at night, and looks at the stars...

You must take your place in the Mobius Strip of Life, Sonic!

*cue canned gasps from listicle writers everywhere*

As if you haven't heard of this.

Yes, Robotnik presumably kills Tails off-screen if you fail to get all the Emeralds. Of course he would, what were you expecting? I'm not going to insult your intelligence by pretending to be shocked.

By this game's twisted logic, it only makes sense that Tails, whom the box art, the cartridge label, the title screen, and even the zone title cards all emphasize the importance of, is killed off without any ceremony if you fail in this game (or finish it using the level select cheat; this game shows no mercy).

And yet, look around you. Sonic has failed, his best friend dead, yet the world around him seems no worse off. Sonic's grief is his, and his alone, in Sonic 2 8-Bit's indifferent universe.

Well, enough of that grim alternate timeline; since we DO have the Chaos Emeralds, it's time to head to the final zone!

After all the Mickey Mouse nonsense leading up to it, Sonic 2 8-Bit chooses to end in the most outlandish way a Sonic game ever has.

Flying fish! Cacti! Crystal sculptures of Robotnik's face that glow in rainbow colors!

This is a developer's acid trip translated to a final level!

No rhyme or reason given to why it looks like this, no hologram projectors or facades that fade away; this game does not owe you an answer or explanation, and it sure as hell won't give you one.

This zone also has the distinction of having the most spikes in a row in any level of the game. Seriously, this one goes on for screens and screens.

And the spinning wheels give us a final one for the road.

And this zone of course leaves us with the last of this game's mysteries.

Courtesy of Jan Abaza, from Secrets of Sonic Team. I swear this is the last time I steal someone else's screenshots.

This item monitor makes an enemy-destroyed sound when hit, and you can unly see what it loks like by digging through the game's data.

These monitor sprites courtesy of Sonic Retro.

This right here gives you a continue when broken. It's the only one of its kind in the entire game, and you don't even get to actually see it.

While we're here, let's look at three other monitors that never show up in the game at all.

This one looks as if it would've been a random item.

This one was likely meant to be Slow-down Shoes, like in Sonic 3's Competition Mode.

This one is just infuriating. This was, in Sonic 1 8-bit, a checkpoint that, when smashed, would save your position and respawn you there if you died. Its absence is probably the most jarringly obvious and aggravating example of how unfinished this game actually is; they didn't even have time to implement this most basic of gameplay mechanics from the first game.

Now, back to the game.

Despite the insanity of the first two acts, the third one, which holds the final boss, is shockingly bog-standard for a Sonic game. Just a room with Robotnik in a tube, and a series of tubes Sonic can roll around in to dodge the room-filling electricity that comes up every so often.

The bullets Robotnik launches at you have some very elaborate patterns, yet because cheesing them entirely by simply staying in the tubes until they disappear is such an easy strategy, and the only reliable one, the only reasonable conclusion is that it's the intended one.

Thus, we're given an anti-climax of a final boss: a waiting game. Even the Genesis game's infamously hard final boss demanded some level of actual skill on the part of the player, and the thought of fighting a giant robot in space was inherently cool; this is just pathetic. Less so than Sonic CD's, but only by a thin margin, and even that had its own dedicated final boss theme, while this just uses the same theme as the rest of the bosses.

And, of course, the Game Gear version is marginally harder, again because of pure bullshit. Smaller screen and all that.

Nevertheless, we destroy this machine, and chase him as usual...

But this time, he successfully makes it into the teleporter before we can do anything.

The screen starts flashing cyan, at this point; I guess Sonic's ducking to avoid getting blinded.

And so, Robotnik gets away with all this crap with a shit-eating grin on his face, this time without so much as a humiliating burst of cartoon soot like in the previous games. Sonic 2 8-Bit mocks the lie we call Justice. You may have won, yet you can't truly call Robotnik defeated, not when he has a getaway plan as effective as this, and an ego as unquenchable.

Sonic's reaction here is very appropriate.

Still, Robotnik's an eggman of his word, and gives us Tails.

Unused Tails ending sprites courtesy of Sonic Retro. Even the ending is only partially implemented, good grief.

Which prompts the question, does Robotnik have the Emeralds, now? We're never shown Sonic giving them to him, but we're never shown Sonic still having them after this ending, either. For all we know, Robotnik's gloating because he now has the very things Sonic's been trying to stop him from obtaining since the first game.

In fact, Sonic Chaos actually begins with Robotnik obtaining the Emeralds, only to lose them soon after, so this might have been how he got them. So, in the end, not even Robotnik came out of this having gained anything.

Here, we get the same running scene, but now Tails is following along happily, as if nothing had happened. And, as far as the games' canon cares, nothing important really has. We also get a nice, happy tune playing this time, filling us with a sense of accomplishment, that all is right in the world once more.

In the SMS version, however, this Happy Ending music isn't implemented; the soundtrack doesn't care whether Tails is okay or not, the game is over, just the same.

In the sole bright spot in this long ordeal, we see that the stars themselves have commemorated Sonic and Tails's reunion. Or perhaps they're simply imagining it.

But of course, even this bright spot is spoiled immediately by the the Game Over screen appearing, same "You failed" music playing as if you'd just lost.

I mean, it's not wrong.

Thus, after all the ordeals you went through to finish it, this game robs you of any sense of victory you might have had. I don't think this game could really have ended any other way: all throughout the game, you're reminded of what little effect your actions truly have on the world; even Sonic, with every animal he frees, does no good that can truly last. Animals freed from the UFO prisons in this game will simply serve as Badnik batteries in the next. Robotnik will always get away in the end, and the cycle will start again, and again, and again.

This cycle is hardly unique to the Sonic franchise, and is indeed endemic to long-running game franchises as a whole. Yet, in so few other places is the futility of it all made so evident.

Like in life, it doesn't matter what you achieve: in the end, you will die, as will all life itself, and eventually the universe. Everything you accomplish will fade away, erased by entropy.

In the face of the pointlessness of it all, the only way to avoid falling into despair is to embrace absurdity, to laugh at the inherent silliness of our condition. It's appropriate that, years later, Sonic's theme song would be titled "It Doesn't Matter"; Sonic doesn't care that everything he does is in vain, so why should we?

These two sprites from the AutoDemo have no obvious intended use, but I figured they'd be an appropriate last image for this article. 

So, the final question remains: why do I care so much about this rushed, sloppy piece of crap meant purely as a tie-in with a far superior title?

I think because it's so utterly bizarre, confused, and melancholy. Because the circumstances of its development are so mysterious and very clearly chaotic.

Because this game, not in spite of, but because of its faults, has its own unique voice.

Were its message intentional, it would come across as pretentious, or else be praised endlessly by the masses who could only appreciate its philosophy on a superficial level, as Youtubers make endless videos on "The PHILOSOPHY of Sonic 2 8-Bit".

What we instead get is a conflicted, awkward, beautiful mess of a text that could only come about by accident. And that, I feel, deserves to be celebrated.