It’s weird being such a huge fan of a franchise but having almost no major interest in anything that franchise has done beyond 1994. Sure, I’ve played many of the 3D-era releases, but despite his prominence and iconic status, it feels like Sonic The Hedgehog has always been chasing the tails of those early entries. There’s been flashes of brilliance with Sonic Adventure, and of course Sonic Mania - ironically a full throwback to the style that popularised the hedgehog with attitude – and not to say there’s been no good across the near 100 titles to feature him, but it’s usually felt like something was missing to me.
Sonic has pretty much always been there. It wasn’t the first video game I ever played, but it was almost certainly the first I ever truly fell in love with. I even once convinced my mum to ask the school to change my name on the register to Sonic. If you think that’s cringe as a reader, just know I’ve had the look in the teacher’s eyes brunt into my memory for over 30 years. With the arrival of Sonic Superstars in 2023, and the Origins collection in 2022, it feels like a continued acknowledgment from SEGA that strengths remain in the side-scroller format and what originally made Sonic so great. In an era of astronomical budgets, and the technical nightmares of modern game development, maybe keeping things simple should be an easy win for Sonic and the gang? Though does he even really need an easy win? Sonic might be bigger than he’s ever been. With the success of the recent movies, TV shows (Sonic Prime got a second season at Netflix, with a third on the way, despite their pledge to cut animation productions), and Knuckles has his own TV show coming too! There’s life in the old hog and his pals yet. As the father of a young son, you’ll find no complaints from me – I’ve been indoctrinating my spawn since birth, and we’ll continue to absorb anything that gets put out.
Is Sonic Superstars worth your time though? I suppose that depends on your mileage with the franchise and which era of the Hedgehog’s tenure you prefer. Back in 2017, Mania triumphantly delivered a game that ticked all the boxes for me, and after the team who worked on it went in different directions, it felt like we may be looking at a one-time deal for the throwback style. SEGA are smart though (usually), they’re following up Mania with a similar approach for Superstars, and with remakes, remasters, and nostalgia bringing in the bucks more than ever before – it is, as mentioned, an easy win. There is always the chance they phone-in a project like this (Origins wasn’t without complaints), but thankfully, that is mostly not the case from what I’ve played. Mostly.
The game’s story sees Eggman takeover a place known as The Northstar Islands, and in his quest to rule the world using the chaos emeralds, he’s recruited Fang The Hunter for assistance. It’s up to the heroes to reclaim the emeralds and take down the villains. You choose to play as Sonic, Tails, Amy, or Knuckles, and each character playthrough offers slightly different perspectives and incidental moments throughout (they even have some levels unique to them), but the overall gist remains the same. One of the natives to the islands also shows up, and eventually has a bigger role to play than it first seems.
On the gameplay front, this is classic sonic with a modern lick of paint - which to be honest means there’s very little to complain about if you’re a fan of those original games. Take down Eggman’s Badniks and free your furry little friends from their enslavement. You move from themed zone to themed zone, with each level offering up multiple routes to reach the goal. Take the treacherous high road, or the safer, but slower low road, collect rings (and giant gold medals used in the game ‘shop’), and find yourself warping in and out of special stages along the way. We’ve done this before, and it all plays as expected (Sonic 4 physics this is NOT). There’s many paths to take, fruit based collectibles and extra stages to be found too. If you go too fast, you will miss a lot. Exploration of the levels is encouraged, which I actually did enjoy, but I can see if always moving fast is your thing, this might hold you back a little.
The main chaos emerald special stages have received a pretty dull makeover where you swing like a monkey inside a void chasing the floating gem. They’re easier than ever before to collect, but the whole mini-game nature of it came off a little uninspired. The second special stage where you go after the medals is more of a straight up re-hash of the trippy rotating worlds from the original – much more fun!
The other main selling point here is the option of the four different characters, each with their own unique skill or attack, adding different dynamics to the experience (tails and knuckles can both fly so that's very handy) – plus a new mechanic known as Emerald Powers. With each chaos emerald you collect, you unlock a new super-power which can help you traverse the environments, and attack your enemies in x-men like ways. Turn into water, grow some vines, use special vision to reveal hidden platforms, and more. This really did end up being much more fun than the gimmick it sounds like, and with clever use, can make seemingly impossible situations become more bearable and allow you to reach new places. Some of the boss battles in this game are tough, and the powers can often give you a ‘free-hit’ or two – very welcome stuff. It freshened things up enough to make me actually want to collect the emeralds – something I’m not sure I’ve ever really cared about!
Regarding boss battles, they remain varied and not always the walk in the park someone of my waning reaction times might hope for. Have people at SEGA been playing Dark Souls more? There are a few punishing moments, and multiple phases which kept me on my toes. The interactions with Fang did overstay their welcome for me, and when I found myself with zero rings, some of the fun disappeared. The eventual final boss battle is one of my favourites in a very long time though, and felt like it could stand along-side smarter titles such as Metroid Dread.
Visually the game is genuinely stunning. No pixel-art style this time (except for one level), and instead we get something closer to Sonic Generations. Diverse atmosphere from lush jungles, to spikey factories, it is quintessential Sonic. A rich world with all the zing and pop the IP is known for. I played on the Series X on a 4K TV and every zone is bursting with life, vibrancy, and charming animations. From the swaying of Knuckles’ dreadlocks, dancing movement of light-up butterflies, to the explosion of rings on screen when you get hit, and the tantrums of Eggman when he’s thwarted once again, all the attention to detail is a joy. You can often spot action happening in the background too, including glimpses of the other characters on their own journeys which I thought was a particularly nice touch.
Sound design is great, with all the iconic boings and womps present and correct, however the original soundtrack in a Sonic game is as important as the characters themselves, so it’s a shame to say it mostly does not leave a lasting impact here, spare for a couple of tracks which are shockingly good while the rest around it is lacking in the life it needs to elevate the experience. Not sure I’ll have this one on repeat at the gym.
As for how it all functions, I did encounter quite a few buggy moments, which felt like a mix of gaps in the level polish, and straight up code confusion. The game features a mechanic where you jump between the background and foreground (nothing majorly new), and on quite a few occasions I seemed to fall off the map and die at a point which wasn’t sealed up properly. This wasn’t a mistake on my part, there was nothing catching me when really it should have. Another hilarious bug transported me to the very end zone of the game despite only being about a third of the way through. After running around for a bit I just started falling…and continued falling until I rebooted the game. This falling bug appeared once more before I finished the game too. Superstars appears on every platform, including the previous gen, so this may explain some of the shortcomings and overlooked areas.
The bugs do not destroy the experience. There’s plenty of good to engage with here, and it runs fine, and most importantly I was genuinely compelled to finish the game. After completing the main story and playing some of the painfully difficult New Game+ with the new character, I have ended up with a smile on my face (except for when I was uttering some f and c bombs during the more challenging sections). There’s plenty more to see and collect and I’m definitely going to squeeze some more time out of it.
Sonic Superstars has aspects where it does spin on the spot for a little too long, but as an overall package this is more than welcome. It broadly delivers the classic format despite never reaching the highest bar, and credit is due for throwing in those new ideas. This is undoubtedly the closest we will ever get to a Sonic Mania 2 and more than adequately functions as a worthy enough follow up, even if it's not as good. I’m a sonic fan-boy who doesn’t always like what the IP does, but this ticked most of the boxes. Make like an orange and juice to your nearest gaming platform to play it (it’s out on everything).
3.5/5 Played the Xbox Series X version
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