Sonic Superstars is fast. Arguably too fast. Sonic is moving so damn quickly that it's difficult to appreciate how lush the stages might be without a blue blur blazing a trail across them. The environments are rich with evocative detail, sprawling off toward some distant, colorful horizon. You'll want to stop and take it all in, even if Sonic does start to tap his foot impatiently – he's got places to be, and henchmen to bonk on the head. Some things never change.
Well, maybe that isn't fair. Sonic Superstars may be a new 2D Sonic game, but Sega doesn't seem all that interested in a mere nostalgia play. Plenty has changed, I realize, as I shift gears across all-new zones – inspired by the greats, but are otherwise offering a set of challenges fresh enough to make me ignore the slight sensation of motion sickness in the pit of my stomach. If you've gotten enough mileage out of the best Sonic games, and if Sonic Frontiers has you yearning for something more familiar, then you won't want to ignore Superstars. It's that classic Sonic style with a fresh new attitude.
Return of the king
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Sonic Superstars has all the hallmarks of a classic 2D Sonic game. Evocative and expressive, the sort of experience that can be enjoyed solo but is best played sitting on your couch with a couple of friends – just as you might have done as a kid. Superstars also shares a lot of the series' shortcomings too; platforming can be inelegant at speed, combat a little haphazard, and yes, the vast majority of the special stages are still a little naff. I'm over navigating rotating mazes, and I'm not all that enamored with swinging between bubbles in search of Chaos Emeralds. But then all of that is a part of the charm, isn't it?
It's actually quite remarkable how close the development partners at Sonic Team and Arzest have come to replicating the feel of the best Sega Genesis games, given the massive presentational shift. While movement is restricted to a 2D plane, the game world and characters are rendered in 3D, giving Superstars this revitalized quality. Naoto Oshima, the development producer on Superstars (also credited with the original Sonic the Hedgehog and Dr. Eggman character designs back in 1991) tells me that this merging of styles has been a massive, complicated undertaking for the studios.
"If you think about the old Genesis games, everything's flat. So if you turned one of those 2D Sonic games on its side, it's just a line of pixels," says Oshima. "But when you're making a 2D game with 3D models, if you turn that sideways you're going to have this really wide area. And because we have four-player multiplayer, each of the characters need to be able to run side-by-side but not on top of each other – otherwise you're going to see arms poking out of other people's bodies"
"So even though you're seeing it all from a 2D perspective, we had to make the collision work for that 3D space… at the same time, it still has to look and feel like the 2D Sonic games while you're playing it. It was extremely difficult," says Oshima. "It's actually more difficult than just making a 3D game, where you can just look with a free camera, because it always has to act as if it's a 2D game."
Sonic Superstars delivers where it counts: tight controls, vivacious level design, and a solid sense of momentum. After playing the game for 40 minutes, I do have this nagging sense that something seemed a little off with the physics system. Perhaps it's the weight of the jump, or the way Sonic interacts with jump pads and rail grinds. Honestly, it's difficult to pinpoint with such limited gametime – and there's every chance that this is nostalgia clouding my mind, as it is want to do from time to time.
Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka assures me that the studios have "gone back to the original Sonic games, looked at their physics, and tried to really reproduce them authentically inside of Superstars" in an effort to bring about a true representation of Sonic's speed and precision. With the game set to launch this October, there's only a few short weeks to wait now to see for certain. But even still, I was left impressed by what I played of Sonic Superstars. There's a very good chance that Superstars revitalizes the classic 2D Sonic formula, and outlines a new path for the series' ongoing evolution.
Sonic Superstars will launch on PC, PS5, PS4, Switch, Xbox Series X, and Xbox One on October 17, 2023.
