Sonic Pocket Adventure

Look, you don't need me to tell you who Sonic is. He's made a place for himself in the videogame community, both as a gaming hero as well as a lucrative license outside the electronic world. He may be a Sega character, but SNK has swung a major deal with the Dreamcast company to get the hedgehog to spin his way onto the NeoGeo Pocket Color. What we have here is the rodent's first real color handheld return since his adventures on the Sega Game Gear years ago.

Features

Original Sonic 2D adventure
Puzzle Mode
Two two-player modes
Link cable support
For NeoGeo Pocket Color

Sonic is all about speed. This 2D sidescrolling platform game began as a test of the Sega Genesis' true gaming power (and Sega marketing coined the phrase "Blast Processing" because of it). Sonic was also Sega's answer to the incredibly popular Mario game, since Sega had yet to capture the action platform market prior to the blue dude's arrival.

The game is simple, at least in description: Get Sonic from the start of the level to the end in order to save the Flickies from the evil Dr. Robotnik. Each level is designed to test Sonic's pure speed ? some levels have loops, others corkscrews, and some even have springboards that will launch him into the air with the greatest of ease. Rings are scattered all over the game's worlds ? collect 100 and you earn an extra life. As long as you hold one ring, you can take a hit from an enemy sprite. But you don't want to get hit, you want to nail these bad guys...so pounce on them. There will be powerups to help you along the way ? including sneakers to make you faster and orbs to make you invincible.

The NeoGeo Pocket Color game is an amalgamation of all the Sonic games that were released. Some levels look like they were ripped from Sonic 1, others from Sonic 2...Tails, Knuckles, Amy, and Metal Sonic all make appearances in the game, as does Super Sonic when you acquire all of the Chaos Emeralds in the game. The game will also feature the cool half-pipe bonus level from Sonic 2.

One of the most promising features of Sonic Pocket Adventures is the link cable support. The game will have two modes of play for two players -- one player takes Sonic, the other Tails. The first is a race to see who can get from the start of a level to the finish. The other is a race to see who can collect the most rings.

This promising NeoGeo Pocket Color game should hit the shelves the first week of December. While your waiting, why don't you peruse these 60 or so screenshots from the game in action?

-- Craig Harris