Sonic Blast

Sonic Blast is a 2D side-scrolling platform game. Its story begins when Doctor Robotnik shatters a Chaos Emerald into five shards with a laser. One of the shards hits Sonic the Hedgehog, who, with the help of Knuckles the Echidna, sets out to prevent Robotnik from collecting the other shards and fortifying his island base. Sonic and Knuckles serve as the player-characters of the single-player game.

Sonic, in addition to his spinning attacks from prior Sonic games, has a special double-jump that gives him a secondary jump in midair. Knuckles retains his abilities from Sonic & Knuckles: like Sonic, he can perform spin attacks, but can also glide through the air and climb up walls when he hits them in midair. The player travels through 15 levels (called "zones"), across five parts called acts. Every third zone contains a boss fight against Robotnik and one of his larger robots.

Sonic Blast was the sixth and final Sonic the Hedgehog platformer released for the Game Gear. It was developed alongside other outsourced titles in the series, including Minato Gaiken's Sonic Labyrinth and Traveller's Tales' Sonic 3D Blast. Like the previous Game Gear titles, Sonic Blast was developed by Aspect and published by Sega. Key staff from Aspect's prior Sonic games did not work on Sonic Blast.

A prominent feature of the game is its pre-rendered visuals, which had been popularized by Donkey Kong Country (1994). The graphics were rendered in 3D before being converted into sprites; the final result has been compared to that of Donkey Kong Country and Mortal Kombat (1992). However, the visuals presented some limitations: Sonic and Knuckles have few animation frames, there is no timer, and the player only loses ten rings when hit. Several gameplay elements were reused from Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Sonic & Knuckles, such as Sonic's double-jump and the playable characters.

Retrospective reviewers did not remember Sonic Blast fondly. Nintendo World Report (NWR) summarized the game as "a step back" from the other Game Gear Sonic titles, due to what they called "the attempt at aping Donkey Kong Country's pre-rendered sprites on a handheld".

Most critics disliked the graphics, some claiming they ruined the game. Digitally Downloaded called the visuals more distracting than impressive—hampering the fluidity of the gameplay and preventing the use of integral series elements—while Nintendo Life thought the game aged badly when compared to the other Sonic Game Gear games with its "muddy colours and shaky animation". Some, such as writers from USgamer and NWR, complained the character graphics were too big for the Game Gear's small screen. com found the character animations poor and said they caused gameplay limitations.