Cons: -Slowdown occurs too often in 2-Play Versus.
-Only 4 levels in 2-Player Versus.
-Final boss is too hard for anybody but the most hardcore gamers out there.
-Special Stages are unfairly difficult and don’t look very good today.
Summary: To start this off I would like to say this was my first video game back on the MegaDrive/Genesis and almost certainly my favorite.

The gameplay of the Sonic the Hedgehog series is rather simple: You run at amazing speeds through levels ‘Acts’ and there are multiple Acts in a ‘Zone’. At the end of a Zone there is a ‘boss’ to challenge you before you move on to the next Zone.

The controls in this game are rather simple: use A,B or C to jump and hold Down when running to perform a Rolling Dash. When standing still you can perform a Spin Dash by holding Down and pressing the Jump button. When Sonic is in a ball he cannot be hurt except by spikes.

You collect ‘rings’ which you lose if you get hurt by a enemy. To defeat a enemy you simply jump on its head or use the Rolling Dash to roll into it.

If you are hurt when you are out of Rings you will lose a life and restart the game from the last checkpoint.

To this day I find new paths to explore and even though I have completed this game many, many times it still offers a great challenge while not being overwhelming difficult.

Even after you finish the game a million times you will still want to play it due to its blazing fast gameplay and awsome music and rock-solid gameplay.

The bosses are also very well thought out and are very inventive and push the MegaDrive/Genesis to its limits. Especially the final boss.

After you can finish the game for a added challenge you can try to complete all the special stages and unlock Super Sonic which you need 50 rings to activate and uses 1 ring a second. Super Sonic is invincible and cannot get hurt (unless he drowns or is crushed) and moves at a unbelievable speed until your rings run out.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 has a very nice ending that will make you complete the game just to see it (with a very sweet 16-bit rendition of a popular song during that time).

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 sports really colorful sprites that look great even today and the amount of depth in the backgrounds are truly astonishing with many Parallax layers.

2-Player Versus is very fun to play with friends even with a little too much slowdown. You will have a blast competing with your friends in 4 stages including Special Stages.

Even after you think you have done absolutely everything this game has to offer you would be wrong as there is a debug mode that lets you use the secret debug mode the programmers used. The debug mode is a little glitchy (it’s a programming feature so don’t expect perfection) it is still very fun to play around with and place any item anywhere and explore areas of the level that you did not know existed.

Level Select: Go to Options and then Sound test and play the following: 19, 65, 9, 17 and then press Start. when you are at the title screen again press A Start and then you can choose any level in the game!

Debug Mode: When at the Level Select screen go to the Sound Test and play the following: 1, 9, 9, 2, 1, 1, 2, 4 and then press A Start on any level.

All 7 Chaos Emeralds: When at the Level Select screen go to the Sound Test and play the following: 4, 1, 2, 6 and the press A Start on any level.

(NOTE: I am known by many names on the web and 2 of them are Mycatedwin and Jaseman. if you see my review on another site by the name of Jaseman or Mycatedwin you can assume it is me unless I post there otherwise.)