Makon Soft Sonic the Hedgehog platform games
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| Sonic 3D Blast 5 Sonic Adventure 7 Sonic Adventure 8 | ||||||||||||||
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The three unofficial cousins of Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis.
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Sonic 3D Blast 5, Sonic Adventure 7 and Sonic Adventure 8 (or simply Sonic 8 for Sonic Adventure 8) are bootleg platform games developed by Makon Soft and released in 1997 for the Game Boy (Sonic 3D Blast 5) and in 1999 and 2000 for the Game Boy Color (Sonic Adventure 7 and Sonic Adventure 8, respectively).
Why They Suck
- For starters, naming Sonic 3D Blast 5 after Sonic 3D Blast is a very weird idea because the Game Boy does not really experience with 3D well, so it makes no sense to name the game as Sonic 3D Blast 5. And as with most bootlegs, naming these games as Sonic 3D Blast 5, Sonic Adventure 7 and Sonic Adventure 8 is also confusing as there were no other Sonic 3D Blast and Sonic Adventure games, as the only two games named after Sonic Adventure are Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2.
- Incredibly ugly and poor graphics, even for the Game Boy and Game Boy Color standards. Despite being taken from some Genesis or Game Gear Sonic games, the sprites look much worse, which is laughable considering that both the Game Gear and Game Boy are 8-bit systems. The graphics look much worse in Sonic Adventure 7 and Sonic Adventure 8, where the colours look completely random and give an extremely ugly result, which is unacceptable for the Game Boy Color standards.
- Abysmal soundtrack that is very loud and causes ear-bleeding after a few seconds. While some Game Boy games had music that might be a little loud, three of these games, especially Sonic 3D Blast 5, change the entire definition of "loud 8-bit music". The music that plays in the title screen and opening in Sonic 3D Blast 5 sounds like it came from an extremely obscure DOS game from the 1980s instead of a 1997 Game Boy game, but the level themes are worse, especially levels 1 and 5. Despite being taken from Sonic 3, the music is way too loud and can give a headache just from listening to it. The music in Sonic Adventure 7 and Sonic Adventure 8 is no better, as it is still loud, but not as much as the music in Sonic 3D Blast 5.
- The controls are absolutely terrible. Sonic moves like a truck on an icicle, and even when you stop holding the left or right buttons on the D-pad, it takes like a second for Sonic to stop, which can result in cheap deaths. Jumping is also stiff as it can sometimes result in a failed jump if Sonic doesn't jump well enough.
- The intros in all three games are very poorly made. They are nothing but slideshows with low quality images taken from various Sonic games, such as Sonic 3D Blast 5 taking screenshots from the Saturn version of Sonic 3D Blast.
- Additionally, in the Sonic Adventure 7 intro, Knuckles is coloured green instead of red. Additionally, he never appears in the game, only in the intro, which can be considered as false advertising.
- The games' engine is very weak, and as a result, there are some sprites that can glitch out sometimes. Not to mention, sometimes the game can have problems with loading objects thanks to the games' weak engine.
- Horrendous level design. Some parts have enemies that are placed in a way that could give the player little time to react, some parts are impossible to progress, and there are some parts where you have to use an enemy to progress otherwise the level would be impossible.
- You can only defeat enemies by jumping and landing on the top of them. If you try hitting them from below or just next to them, you will get hurt. The Spin Dash and the roll are also almost useless because they also do not defeat the enemies, something that was possible since the very first Sonic game, even though the Spin Dash was introduced in Sonic 2.
- For some reason, in Sonic 3D Blast 5, all of the level title cards suggest that the entire game takes place in Green Hill Zone, but it's actually not true, as every level with the exception of level 1 looks absolutely nothing like Green Hill Zone, with level 2 actually being Flying Battery Zone, level 3 being either Spring Yard or Casino Night, level 4 being either Sandopolis or Desert Palace and level 5 being Marble Garden. However, in Sonic Adventure 7 and Sonic Adventure 8, they were replaced by title cards that just show the number of the stage.
- Sonic Adventure 7 and Sonic Adventure 8 are nothing but lazy reskins of Sonic 3D Blast 5, except with colour (due to being made for the Game Boy Color instead) and changed order of the levels. While it could suggest that they are sequels to Sonic 3D Blast 5, they are actually the same games but with colours and different order of levels. It's like if Sonic 2 would be released and it would be the first Sonic game but with different order of levels.
- As a result, the difficulty has become very unbalanced, especially in Sonic Adventure 7, as you start on level 4 as the first level, and level 4 in Sonic 3D Blast 5 is the hardest stage in the entire game because of glitches that can occur and a very difficult gap to jump through.
- The games have several glitches that make them even more difficult than they already are. Perhaps the worst bug in these games is the spike bug that was also present in the earlier revisions of Sonic 1. When you land on the spikes, you will be knocked back, and if you land on spikes again, you will have no chances of escaping and you will have to restart the level from the beginning.
- There are no check points or 1-UPs. If you lose a life, you have to restart the level from the beginning, making these games even more unplayable and a lot harder. About the lack of 1-UPs, there are no monitors that give you 1-UPs, and your maximum ring counter is 99, further making the game's difficulty incredibly brutal.
- When you lose your rings after hitting an enemy, they do not come out of Sonic, which just makes the game's difficulty even more higher thanks to the aforementioned awful controls, terrible level design and lack of check points and 1-UPs. The only way to at least recover some of your rings is just collect the ones you have not collected yet or jump on a monitor that gives you 10 rings.
Redeeming Qualities
- While the glitches in these games are horrible due to increasing the difficulty of these games, there's one glitch that is very neat and allows you to perform a trick. This requires performing the Spin Dash, and after you drop from something you can stand on, jump at the right time. Doing this well allows you to perform a jump in mid-air, making it look like some sort of double jump.
- The user Gustavo Firmino created a good remake called Sonic Blasting Adventure that fixes graphics, gameplay and music, adds boss battles, 5 more levels and permits you to play with Tails or Knuckles, too.
Trivia
- While Sonic 3D Blast 5 was released first, out of all of these three games, Sonic Adventure 7 is the most known one.
- A hack of Sonic Adventure 7 exists named Pokémon Jade. The colours are much different in this hack (looking more like an actual Game Boy Color game), although it is impossible to complete the hack because the game crashes after finishing the first level.
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