INFO BURST

Format: Video game
Initial Release Date: 1991
Feature characters: Sonic the Hedgehog
Villain: None
Other Characters: None
Locations: None specified
Items: Sonic Eraser blocks
Continuity: Video Games
Synopsis: Players are tasked with matching blocks of the same colour which descend from the top of the playing area. Different game modes provide a touch of variety.
Notes: The first spin-off video game in series history and the first Japan-exclusive video game in the series.

CREDITS

Producer: Takao Miyoshi
Program: Op #1
Design: Rouly
Music: Masaru Setsumaru
Special Thanks: Naoto Ohshima, Osamu Hori, Noisy Pad, Chie Yoshida, Iiyo

Review

Now this is quite the curio. Back in the early 1990s, Japanese Mega Drive owners could, using the Mega Modem, connect to the internet and pay a subscription fee to download games to their Mega Drive. Owing to the nature of early 1990s internet, these games had to keep filesize small in order to accommodate 56k dial-up internet (how times have changed). What this meant, in real terms, was the games had to be quite simplistic. Simplistic, of course, doesn’t have to mean bad and two of these titles went on to be reworked as retail releases (specifically, Flicky and Fatal Labyrinth, games with a short but incredibly rewarding gameplay loop).

It didn’t take long for Sonic to receive the online treatment in this, the first spin-off video game of the Sonic the Hedgehog series. Sonic Eraser would largely fly under the radar for most international fans until it was rediscovered in 2004 and now exists online in an easy to find format. Would those international fans thrill to the rediscovery of this lost hidden gem? Not quite…

Sonic Eraser was created in a time the world was still going potty over Tetris, with the 1989 Game Boy version in particular taking the world by storm. Seemingly every game company worth their salt wanted a Tetris-alike game. Even Sega and Nintendo, at the time seated as titans at the head of the video gaming world, would struggle to find a worthy contender to the throne, with almost every attempt being a lesson in how it’s not enough to simply have things drop from the top of the screen, you also have to have addictive gameplay, something Tetris had in droves.

To say Sonic Eraser doesn’t quite live up to the hype of Tetris is perhaps being rather kind. In fact, it’s being exceedingly kind. In the standard gameplay mode, blocks drop in formations of four from the top of the screen and it’s up to the player to match them and make them disappear. The two-player mode is much the same, though if a player can string together a combo of three or more, their side of the screen’s Sonic will attack the other player’s Sonic (no, we don’t know why they didn’t come up with a different design either) and force them to lose full control of their pieces. So far so basic. This is all fine and well and a decent enough time killer.

What does make Sonic Eraser stand out slightly are the alternate game modes. The game features Round Mode, which is a serviceable if uninspiring puzzle mode tasking the player with clearing special icons from the field of play; Doubt Mode in which one of the blocks in a given formation will turn into a white block upon being placed (making for an entirely frustrating experience as planning combos becomes an exercise in impossibility); and Block Mode, in which gravity has no effect on blocks overhanging a gap, meaning they’ll stay in mid-air similar to Dr. Mario, which is fine but not a particularly challenging change.

All of the ideas in Sonic Eraser are basically fine and inoffensive, but the presentation is ditch-water dull and renders the game pretty visually boring. None of the modes, save for Round Mode, ever last more than a few minutes. Worse, however, is the music. The actual compositions themselves are fine, with some surprisingly catchy or tense tunes. The issue is the particular arrangement of those compositions, which are utterly horrible. The Normal Mode theme is infamous in the Sonic community for the assault on the ears it presents- far too loud and magnitudes too grating to be comfortable listening. You might be able to just about eke an afternoon of fun out of Sonic Eraser, but expect to reach for the mute button in pretty short order.