Memory Pak: My Nostalgic Sonic 2 Playthrough Was A Treasured Gaming Moment

It’s a big anniversary year for various Nintendo franchises, but it’s easy to forget that it’s also a whopper for SEGA’s mascot, with June bringing the 30th Anniversary of Sonic the Hedgehog. We’ll have various articles celebrating that milestone, but a little ahead of time I thought I’d share a fun memory I have with the franchise; I suspect many have had similar experiences.

A decent number of years back — 8 or 10 years, my memory is failing me on the specific time — I was at my parent’s house for the Holidays, and for reasons I can’t remember I had dug out the old Sega Mega Drive (or Genesis, for you NA folk) and began perusing our collection of cartridges from back in the day. The urge hit me and realising my childhood bedroom still — at that point — had an old CRT TV with the relevant inputs, I plugged the system in and picked a game.

There was only one choice: my absolute favourite from that era, Sonic the Hedgehog 2. When that game originally came out I was eight years old, and I played it over, and over, and over again. Though the system had lots of games I loved, not to mention the other glorious 16-bit Sonic titles, Sonic 2 was the top one in my world. And so, around 15-20 years later, I was sitting on the edge of a bed in my old room playing it once again.

My initial thought was “I’ll play the first few levels and then head down to spend time with the family”; that didn’t happen. Once the music kicked in and I was dashing through stages and summoning memories to find secret areas, there was no going back. Early on I was doing well, hoovering up Chaos Emeralds and barely getting hit. “Ok,” I thought, “you still have it”.