The Crack of Knuckles

Today, another game has been struck from my Hall of Shame: Sonic 2 with Knuckles.

Considering every Sonic game that hasn't been a Megadrive one has been pretty much rubbish, it's hard to think that once upon a time, this series had a bunch of really good ideas. And one of those ideas were the Sonic and Knuckles Dual cartridge, where, upon incorporating the Sonic 2 or Sonic 3 cartridges on top, anyone could play through those games with Knuckles.

And it certainly was an innovative idea: playing through a familiar game with a different character was appealing enough - but the real strength in the idea was that it required the player to adopt a completely different play style and adopt new tactics in dealing with particular bosses.

You now that I think of it, this is probably the first time ever in the history of gaming that such a thing came about (well as far back as I can recall anyway). And it least that's an achievement indeed in a series whose disasters have far exceeded it's strengths.