Factories Are The Best Levels In Sonic

As part of my quest to catch up with all the games I missed in the veritable Santa’s stuffed sack that was 2023, I am playing 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Sonic Superstars. So far, it’s the second-best Sonic game of 2023 (168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog has first place on lock). But it has me thinking about how new Sonic levels are often just variations on old Sonic levels, that take basic themes and accentuate different aspects, or add new mechanics that make the old feel fresh again. If you've ever played a Green Hill Zone then played another very similar Green Hill Zone, you know what I mean.

In Sonic Superstars, Press Factory Zone exemplifies this approach. In this 💦zone, Sonic has to carefully evade crushing machines that lift and drop on a timer. If the Blue Blur gets caught in their path, he becomes the Purple Smear.

Sonic Superstars Sonic in Press Factory Zone

In one of the levels within the zone, a giant death-dealing Eggman machine is visible in the background and you need to stomp on switches at frequent intervals to prevent it from cooking the whole level with furnace heat. It’s a lot like the underwater levels where Sonic has to intermittently top up his air supply by finding bubbles and sucking them down. It’s my favorite level in the game so far, but really it’s just a mix of two classic Sonic tropes, combining the classic aesthetic of Sonic's factories with the mechanical time crunch of the series' water levels.

It's an interesting mix because I rarely enjoy those aquatic adventures. I mostly just endure until I get back to dry ground. But, it's a testament to the power of Sonic's grungy metallic warehouses that Press Factory can elevate water mechanics.

As a '90s kid, Sonic has a special place in my heart. Though I first played Zelda and Mario in their Clinton-era incarnations, Nintendo's flagship series have both shaken off their association with that decade, at least for me. But Sonic has forever been locked in a window that spans the '90s to the early '00s.

Unlike Mario or Zelda, Sonic hasn't had a game in the time since that redefined the series in the same way. There's no 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Breath of the Wild for Sonic, much as 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Frontiers may have tried. So Sonic is still nostalgically tied to the '90s (represented best by the anime cutscene that opens Sonic CD) and '00s (represented best by 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Sonic Adventure 2's butt rock and Shadow's whole deal). Sonic's vibe hasn't changed because, when there have been good or even great games in the series like Sonic Generations and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Sonic Mania, they're more interested in harkening back to earlier eras than they are in blazing new paths.

A remaster of Sonic Generations, 🐻titled Sonic X S🦹hadow Generations, was recently announced with an autumn 2024 release window.

And the levels that most consistently epitomize the '90s/aughts vibe are the factories. In Superstars, it's Press Factory, but given that Sonic's chief antagonist is a dude who builds robots, factories have unsurprisingly featured in many games in the series. There's Chemical Plant Zone in Sonic the Hedgehog 2, complete with plate metal surfaces, oozing purple goo dangerously lurking at the bottom of the level, and black and yellow caution panels. The opening level features one of my favorite things that sidescrollers can do to make their worlds feel bigger than they actually are, with a dusky city far off in the background that parallax scrolls by as you run. Sonic Mania brought Chemical Plant Zone with more detailed backgrounds and a final boss battle against Eggman that — in one of the most surprising throwbacks I can remember in a game — has you playing him in a round of Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine.

Other Sonic games have brought the factory setting back, too. Sonic Advance has Egg Rocket Zone. Sonic Adventure 2 has Metal Harbor, which isn't strictly a factory, but basically feels like one, what with all the heavy machinery. Sonic Generations' modern update to Chemical Plant Zone really nails the vibe, with smokestacks, blue chemical tanks, and an unnatural red sky. Sega knows that factories have the juice, which is why the games keep returning to this setting. These levels capture the vibe of what Sonic games should be perfectly. Give me Sonic fighting robots in a hellaciously '90s/aughts coded setting and I'm a happy hedgehog.