4. Sonic the Hedgehog (Mega Drive / Genesis) - 19913. Sonic 3&K (Mega Drive / Genesis) - 19942. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Mega Drive / Genesis) - 1992Having now covered my favourite classic platformers that Nintendo had to offer, now onto Sega's best. Sonic has turned to shit in the past couple of decades, but in the 16 bit era, Sonic continued to get better and better.
Sonic 1 was a great start for the franchise, with its complex physics based movement, and high speed platforming.
Sonic 2 is my personal favourite. Part of this is nostalgia, as this was the first of the 16 bit Sonic games we owned, and I played it to death. It improved upon the formula with the addition of the spin dash, which was utilized in a lot of creative ways. Like Sonic 1, it also had a killer soundtrack by Masato Nakamura, one of my very favourite game soundtracks of all time. I taught myself to write music largely by transcribing this entire soundtrack, so it's been a big influence on me.
Sonic 3 was a game so ambitious that it ultimately got released in two parts with the funky lock-on feature to combine the Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles cartridges into one long game, so I only consider it as one game rather than two (you could also plug Sonic 2 into the cartridge to play Sonic 2 as Knuckles, which was way cooler than DLC). A feat of both hardware and software, it was arguably the high point of the franchise. The game introduced Knuckles, who could glide and climb walls. It also added a ton of new gameplay features, and brief cutscenes to bridge together the different zones and tell the story.
It's not my personal favourite though, as it has a few weaknesses imo. The soundtrack was not composed by Nakamura, but instead by various people (including apparently Michael Jackson, but that's a whole discussion of its own), and isn't quite as strong overall. It's still one of the best soundtracks on the console though. I also feel the level design is not quite as creative at times, with some punishing and lazy spring/spike placement. That said, I still think it's an amazing game, but for those reasons, I still prefer Sonic 2 overall.
ALL HAIL SONIC TEAM.
I'm too lazy to dig through that many screenshots, but you should all know what a Sonic is.