Sonic the Hedgehog No-Death Playthrough (Wii Virtual Console)

This is a capture of me playing through Sonic the Hedgehog for the Sega Genesis. This was played on the Wii Virtual Console and recorded directly from my Wii (not the Wii U). I'm collecting all of the Chaos Emeralds in this playthrough.Show more

I’m sure this playthrough might come as a bit of a surprise to people. I have thought about posting a Sonic the Hedgehog playthrough for quite some time, but I knew it would take a lot of effort for me to memorize the game and achieve a no-death/all-Chaos Emerald run. I finally put in the effort this year.

Although I have exclusively owned Nintendo systems all my life, I knew a few people who owned a Sega Genesis when I was a kid, and my cousin even owned a Game Gear, so I got to experience the other side of the 8-bit/16-bit wars during the ’90s. I was a big fan of Altered Beast, Golden Axe, Streets of Rage, Road Rash, and of course, Sonic. However, I don’t recall ever playing the first Sonic game as a kid. Instead, I only remember playing Sonic 2 and loving the simultaneous two-player mode with Tails. I also managed to play Sonic 2 on the Game Gear.

Since I only had a subscription to Nintendo Power as a kid, I loved going to the magazine aisle in stores and reading the multi-console video game magazines such as EGM and GamePro to see what Sega and the other companies were doing. Despite Sega basically calling us Nintendo fans retards through their commercials, I loved the competition between Nintendo and Sega and used to wonder which games would be better if you compared Mario to Sonic in a head-to-head match up.

In fact, I remember being incredibly excited at the prospect of a 3D Sonic game for the Sega Saturn so I could see how it would compare to Super Mario 64, but sadly, Sonic X-treme was cancelled and I lost interest in almost all of the new Sonic games once the “modern” Sonic design debuted on the Dreamcast.

However, a few years into the Wii era, I decided to finally download the classic Sonic games for the Sega Genesis through the Wii Virtual Console, and I got to truly experience them for the first time. With quite a bit of struggle, I managed to beat Sonic 1 and 2 while collecting all of the Chaos Emeralds, but it was challenging. I later downloaded all of the available mainline Sonic games for the Game Gear through the 3DS Virtual Console and beat them as well. However, I still haven’t finished Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles.

I think the Sonic games are a lot of fun, and the music is course excellent, but the bonus stages are a huge pain in the ass, the underwater stages suck terribly, and the first two Sonic games really could have used a save function as well.

I’m not a natural Sonic player since I grew up on Mario games and I tend to be a little more methodical with trying to collect items, but I figured people might want to see how a die-hard Mario fan plays through Sonic.

Since this is the original version of Sonic, there’s no spin dash available. Also, since this is the Wii Virtual Console, there’s no save state feature, though you can suspend your current game by simply hitting the home button and going back to the home menu. That means I beat this entire game in a single session. Enjoy.

Recorded with the Hauppauge HD PVR and the Wii's component cables at 60 frames per second.

I'm using a Wii Remote.