Sonic the Hedgehog's horrifyingly bad GBA port

Let's celebrate 15 years of Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis on the GBA... by completely ripping it apart.
Watch to find out everything that makes this handheld port of the beloved classic so horrifyingly bad.
There are lots of reviews of this awful game out there already but I felt that none of them covered absolutely all of the awfulness. So I took a lot of time and effort to make sure I get absolutely everything into this one review here.
0:00 Introduction
1:43 Title Screen, Menus, Features
3:56 Graphics
4:31 Screen crunch
5:30 Camera issues
6:22 Late GBA release
7:28 Slowdown
9:19 Speed discrepancy
10:07 Slowdown II - Music VS No music
11:49 Music
13:32 Sound effects
14:57 Jukebox
16:50 Gameplay
21:52 Graphical flaws
25:32 Summary
27:03 Sonic GBA by Stealth
28:30 Outro
Background music in order of appearance:
Sonic Advance 3 - Main Menu
Sonic Advance 2 - Hot Crater Act 1
Sonic Advance - Egg Rocket Zone
Sonic Battle - Emerald Town
Sonic Pinball Party - Casinopolis
Sonic Advance - Special Stage
Sonic Advance 2 - True Area 53
Sonic Advance 3 - Special Stage
Sonic Advance 3 - Route 99 Act 1
Sonic Advance 2 - Egg Utopia Act 1
Sonic Advance 3 - Ocean Base Act 2
Sonic Advance 3 - Staff roll (custom edit)

[@JamesR624]

Another nitpick I don't see mentioned anywhere is the asset laziness. Notice how ALL the "switches" (the buttons that you press in the zone) ALL have the Marble Zone assets. The ones in Spring Yard, Labyrinth, and Scrap Brain, are supposed to be generic grey and blue graphics, but ALL are Marble's green and purple graphics.

[@BlueMue]

Thanks for putting up this detail for everyone to read here! I did mention the switches very briefly in the graphics segment. But it was rapid fire info about object mistakes so no specifics there.

[@WorksOfMagic]

7:15 Small correction on that. They didn't take the Advance games' engine to make this port. Sonic Genesis is actually based on the J2ME port of Sonic 1 called Sonic The Hedgehog Mobile released in 2005, which in itself is based on the Sonic Cafe version of the game, which is why stuff like the title screen is adjusted, because they already had assets for that.

[@lipika2841]

That is some truly nerdy Sonic knowledge that you got hold of.

[@sparksterz]

I was going to say...that doesn't seem right and would probably take a LOT more work to get the physics similar with all its quirks

[@BlueMue]

I do see now that the J2ME claim can be found on TCRF. But they resort to using the word "seems" on the page for Genesis so I guess it's just as much of a theory as the advance engine one. Comparing the title screen I do see that Genesis has added dithering on the logo like J2ME. But Genesis definately has its very own background. J2ME has the brighter level water and 3 layer paralax. Genesis has correct dark water but just one merged plane. On further analysis there are interesting discrepancies in the level backgrounds. J2ME actually has some extra parallax layers from REV01 in some levels but not the cloud layer in GHZ that Genesis received. Wish I could've included this in the video. The phone versions totally didn't cross my mind back then. Sonic Genesis looks to be even more of a messed up Frankenstein Monster with even more obscured source of origin than I originally thought.

[@sonic3dblastdude]

This is the best review of Sonic The Hedgehog Genesis EVER!!! I enjoyed this review much more than I would for playing Sonic The Hedgehog Genesis.

[@FunkyStudios]

FINALLY, I FOUND SOMEONE TO ADDRESS THE MUSIC LAG

[@Boomrainbownuke9608]

the fact that's even a thing is an example of bad programming. having music on shouldn't lag a game. i have never seen any other game act like that. heck no Nintendo game in existence lags if the music is on but i guess sega does what nintendont.

[@PLATINUM_Rook]

Fun fact, this is the first Sonic game I ever played. I was 6 when I first played this game and for a few years I could never get past Marble Zone. I didn't even think it was bad, I wasn't knowledgeable enough to know that this was a terrible version of Sonic 1.

[@InkfinityOkamix3]

Same. Played it on a friend’s GBA. Became familiar with Sonic afterwards and bought Sonic Rush and Sonic Heroes.

[@ScourgeTheKing]

I always felt bad for those were not at least gifted a hand-me-down Genesis with Sonic 2. That's just how I grew up.

[@shalpp]

+1 more person accurately describing the gba sound hardware situation

[@shaankelly1302]

Great video. Ive seen videos on this port before but not this in depth. We sonic fans salute you for torturing yourself with this game for our entertainment

[@Master-Mo]

Really enjoyed the editing and how elaborate the video is. This port is rightfully infamous. Truly horrible...

[@stupidragerantroastoftakes2981]

Now that is some serious "mean beans" Robotnik ate. lol

[@AubreyTheKing]

You know what's more insulting? Well, at least to me...I got this for my birthday. Yeah....what a birthday surprise. My parents know I'm a huge Sonic fan and at the time, they felt bad, because they didn't have enough money to buy me a Xbox 360 or PS3, so I can get Sonic 06. So when they saw THIS at Walmart, they "knew" I love it. After I played this and saw how awful this game tried to recreate the beauty of the original, I actually had to lie and pretend to my parents that I loved it lol just so they won't feel bad that they couldn't get me a new console lol and I wanted them to think this game made me feel better....it didn't. Years later and I still have this game laying in my drawer collecting dust. Why haven't I thrown it away? I don't know, maybe it's because my parents bought it for me, and no matter how awful this game is, believe me, its BAD! But it's still a gift from my parents. UGH!!!! Great review my guy! The editing, clips and everything was good! Sorry you had to suffer to play this shit lol

[@thecoolbroscoolman4672]

I feel bad for you, I wonder how you would’ve felt if you got 06 instead

[@dylanbanning]

@AubreyTheKing oh, you poor soul 😢😢

[@sonicultimateyt1090]

he would've been dead either way​@@thecoolbroscoolman4672

[@stupidbluebird]

in hindsight would you really have been happier with sonic 06 lmao

[@TheTartKnight]

Good video and good analysis, shame this video is not as popular as it deserves to be.

[@MrKirbyEnterprises]

13:51 Those particular sound effects sound like the experience point bars from Pokémon.

[@bismajoyosumarto1237]

Why does this video have only 22 likes? Why does this have only 466 views? Why does this video have only 3 comments (4 including this comment of mine)? This video was really REALLY well made! I watched the entire video all the way to the end and I enjoyed every second of it, got some laughs here and there. A while ago, out of curiosity, I tried this game on a GBA emulator, and gave up by the time I reached Act 2 of the Marble Zone because of how laggy it is (and it's not the emulator because other ROMs work perfectly fine). I also wondered about the screen size and why I couldn't see as much as those KZbin videos of Sonic 1 can (turns out, it was screen crunch as you mentioned). Now, having watched this video, it all made perfect sense. Oh dear, the slowdown. Thank you SO MUCH for this video! Honestly, by the time I finished watching the video, I scrolled down and was expecting like at least several thousand likes on the video, some thousand views and at least a few hundred comments, but I'm really REALLY surprised. This video is really well made and, to be honest, I think it is on par with bigger channels out there that have thousands of likes per video, several hundred thousand views per video, hundreds of comments per video. Keep up the good work! I haven't seen your other videos, but, I gotta say, your channel really deserves to grow big if you keep making videos of such high quality.

[@BlueMue]

Thanks! I'm glad someone finally really appreciates what I have done with this video. I'm honestly shocked how much it tanked and I really don't know why it's so ignored. It also got a bunch of thumbs down right out of the gate, during the last days where KZbin showed them openly.

[@noname-jt6kl]

​@@BlueMueI really like this video too. If I had to guess it might be the title of the video. Someone might look at it and assume you're talking about the og game and not read the gba part of the title so they might get touchy as a result.

[@BlueMue]

@@noname-jt6kl Thanks for the advice! I don't think there's any confusion but I really should've considered are more attention grabbing video title. Might be way too late now but I guess I'll think of a replacement.

[@noname-jt6kl]

@@BlueMue I really do wonder why they thought releasing this in this state was ok. Putting aside the sound problems, the performance is so bad that surely any dev would have looked at it and thought 'hmmm, maybe we should fix this'

[@AxelStone]

This looks like an interesting _30_ minutes..

[@ilikesonicxbro]

PLEASE DO MORE VIDEOS LIKE THIS. I literally loved this video so much so that the day after i watched it which is tonight im eating and got a random urge to watch ur channel and man!!!! I love this style you do

[@BlueMue]

Thanks! Very pleased that you enjoyed this enough to rewatch. This here was actually very much not my style and a one-off thing. Don't know if I'll be doing another review like this so I have to curb your expectations.

[@ilikesonicxbro]

@@BlueMuenoooooooooooo😢

[@BlueMue]

@@ilikesonicxbro I could point you towards my Hitachi TRQ-298 video if it helps any. Very different subject and different kind of visual and narrative style. Also old... But it's literally the only other video I have where I actually talk.

[@ilikesonicxbro]

@@BlueMueYes please:)

[@StormsparkPegasus]

I don't know how this could've possibly happened. How can you make something THIS BAD for the GBA? It's not just bad, it boggles the mind how bad it is.

[@Spider-Man-257]

Oh... Shit, I just brought four Sonic games for GBA, for my Analog Pocket. This was one of them.

[@ScourgeTheKing]

imagine buying ram chips in the year 2024

[@paulievvlogs]

I know this is a old video but did you try it on the Nintendo Ds and see how the perform it was love to see a follow up video Ps I’m a new subscriber

[@BlueMue]

Well I actually showed that I played my cartridge on a DS Lite. The GBA inside the DS is absolutely identical to an original GBA so there's no possibility for differences.

[@crisproductions336]

Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis for the Game Boy Advance, where do I even begin? the way Sonic jumps in the game is so exciting and thrilling, making it feel like an absolute surprise every time you land high in the air, never quite knowing where you’ll end up. the spin dash is nothing short of amazing, the slow motion effects being applied as you roll around on the grassy hills or the marble floor being a nice touch to such a brilliant move added to the game. the soundtrack captures the emotion of nostalgia and how it distorts the nature of things very well, being a successful meta commentary on the relationship between nostalgia and accuracy to the imagined past. I especially love it when it ends, it’s such a satisfying and fun experience to see the game finish and you feel really accomplished after all the hard work you’ve put into the game, trying to figure out its secrets and hidden meaning. thank you for everything, Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis for the Game Boy Advance. you truly are the best Sonic 1 port of all time. 😁

[@Cadey]

The true irony is that Sonic Genesis is based on the Sonic Advance engine lol

[@ScourgeTheKing]

Sonic Advance was probably the closest replica of the Genesis physics until Mania popped out.

[@ScourgeTheKing]

I remember getting this GBA Cart when I was a kid. I ended up tearing off the VRAM chip and unlocking every single level.

[@nopemcgee2831]

The one game Sonic fans won't pretend is secretly good -- but I don't know, give it 10 more years.

[@Mojo1356]

And this is why ports need more than 1 month. The other thing is that while this game uses the engine for Sonic Advance, it was also not meant to run Sega Genesis programming. The Java version ran better than this for crying out loud.

[@lpfan4491]

I kinda want this on NSO for the lolz. It should be a kind of rite of passage to beat this game.

[@mattalan6618]

ive beaten it more times the the original

[@louiswindsor7334]

You know what would have been cool for anniversary mode redo the game in sonic advance graphics

[@Carthunder1983]

Sonic the hedgehog genesis is like gta the definitive edition

[@bloodedge1528]

I remember seeing a copy of this game on display at Wal-Mart a few times all the way back in 2004 and I've been wanting to get the game not only because I owned only one Sonic game on GBA, that being Sonic Advance 3, but because I always wanted to play the old Genesis classic that started the whole franchise anytime, anywhere. Now looking back, I feel congratulated by not wasting away my cash on this train crash of a game. This is obviously what the Sonic Advance series would've been like if all those games sucked. Like, if I wanted to play what resembled a version of Sonic Genesis that was actually GOOD, I could do a run on Green Hill zone in SA3 with a team of Sonic and Knuckles.

[@ScourgeTheKing]

Game didnt come out til 2006 pal

[@ScourgeTheKing]

you shoulda got mega collection

[@bloodedge1528]

@@ScourgeTheKing I do have the Mega Collection!?

[@nostalgianetwork1225]

im surprised that avgn never covered this

[@bobsponge8539]

I played this game a lot as a kid since it was my only gameboy game at the time, I loved and still do

[@ivythay4259]

Why

[@bobsponge8539]

@@ivythay4259 well I mean it's obviously a terrible port but I still do enjoy it a little bit

[@samitou5477]

At this point. Sega just took the original sonic the hedgehog's file and squeezed it in a Gameboy advance cartridge

[@ScourgeTheKing]

Not really. There's a lot of technical differences between the two. It's not even a port of the Genesis ROM it's just a lazy copy and paste of assets over a Dimps engine

[@ColdsterColdy]

The question is why didn't they just use the 8bit version instead? Couldn't that have worked better?

[@madden8021]

This is why the Mario Advanced Series, Donkey Kong Country Trilogy and heck, even Sonic Advanced worked well with the Fricken GBA BUT this can't? At least the Sonic Classic Collection for the DS made it feel like that Sonic Genesis didn't exist in the first place and then later the 3DS version to the forever loved iOS and Android ports that you can decompile and it'll work on your P.C.

[@schmity007]

On the camera comment, if only there were two unused buttons, that your fingers always have access to, that could be used to manually pan the camera

[@ADCFproductions]

I see.

[@imnotuploading512]

I did broke and destroyed a Sonic 1 GBA cartridge after failing in Green Hill Zone Act 2 3 times until i got a game over, because of those stupid controls and physics.

[@ramgladore]

Oddly enough its still more playable than Sonic '06

[@AnthonyZ.]

Funny that the ESRB says No One.

[@BlueMue]

I am so very happy that finally this easter egg was found and pointed out!

[@AnthonyZ.]

Thx, and also about the game on the gba instead of the DS, when Nintendo unveiled the DS, they didn’t say it was a successor to the GBA, but instead a “3rd pillar” just in case it failed (which it didn’t, I mean take a look at the DS’s sales numbers)

[@vanitas456]

When I played it I didn't remember it being that bad probably because I was young when I played it and I couldn't get past marble zone

[@bigsoupes]

I'm sure I'd have a different opinion on this today buuuut I recall buying this back when I was 19/20 and I didn't hate it! Crazy, right?

[@MaxOakland]

It’s too bad it’s so horrible. A good port to GBA would be nice

[@bingobo2551]

I blame sega for the lack of preparation of making this game, I would have loved to see them make a remake of the game gear/master system sonic platformers aside from blast instead. Imagine how great the game could be if it was made with a bigger screen in mind.

[@DanialDEcool]

Huh, guess that blast processing is actually important.

[@catlover9593]

The DS Classic Collection was half of my childhood, i always considered it to be kinda decent

[@pokepress]

It’s respectable for sure, particularly on the DSi. Newer ports remove the need for it, however.

[@BlueMue]

It was decent enough, yes. I just brought it up to drive home the point that software scaling on the GBA would've been helpless when even on the higher resolution DS it still caused criticism.

[@brownrobinbird6091]

I don't care what anyone says At this point , the gameboy advance version of sonic 1 was the port I grew up with Before I knew about the Genesis and I actually liked it despite the game, not having it's best visuals and graphics

[@DJSwagz]

I was really looking forward to this as a Christmas present, but once I had it... boy it was as bad as they say

[@omegaflowey9932]

12:46 Egg fart

[@mattalan6618]

i know it was a bad port but i kinda like it as a guilty pleasure

[@Mskart109]

13:53 Serious really? That's sounds terrible

[@daisytorres6979]

Be scared of sonic jam (the gamecom one) not this thing

[@BlueMue]

There is a very brief stab at this towards the end of the video. To add to that... Jam for the Game.Com is definately worse on a technical level. But did anyone ever expect anything to come out of that handheld? The GBA can cleary do Sonic justice so Genesis is definately more shameful and much more disappointing.

[@phorchybug3286]

Yeah, i'd rather play the other 2006 Sonic instead.

[@MicrosoftXbox360-jw6oo]

20:49 When Sonic stubs his toe.

[@VictoriousVic525]

12:45😂😂😂

[@shalpp]

If this is supposed to be a java port like some have speculated theres a chance it's not even properly ported and just running in a sort of j2me interpreter for the gba there's no way the sonic advance engine couldn't handle this game out the box tbh it's doubly embarrassing because i've played through "part 1" of the java version on several phones and none ran anywhere near as dog ass as this one did.

[@BlueMue]

I wish I knew more about this theory back then, would've definately included it in the video. I remember playing these old Java versions on a flip phone and I have to agree that they worked better than Sonic Genesis. They were quite choppy but at least not sluggish. Really no idea if the J2ME theory holds any water though. It could really be anything that makes Sonic Gensis such a mess. Unless the code gets completely disected we may never know.

[@shalpp]

It would explain how disabling parts of the sound processing improves performance just like old emulators on weak computers

[@Morgil27]

What the heck is up with that ESRB stamp on the box? That can't be real.

[@casultaser]

I wish "No One" was a legitimate ESRB rating option, but it isn't.

[@autobotstarscream765]

​@@casultaserRated N for Nope

[@Jader47]

The Russian version of Sonic 1 GBA is funnier because it has CONHK

[@midi_feline]

Other languages exist, so funny

[@HeavyMetalSonicRM]

I wouldn't call Sonic 1 "glorious" since everything after Green Hill Zone is miserable.

[@DeltaBlazin]

Spring Yard Zone, Star Light Zone

[@autobotstarscream765]

In this port, yes.

[@ls190v2]

All we're celebrating is how beeping terrible this.

[@beargerwashere]

A trash sonic game/port, but it doesn't have a banger soundtrack?! i believe this is pacman.

[@realtacobell]

Nice video, however if you're trying to show us how bad a song sounds, please don't talk at the same time.

[@BlueMue]

Thought I was doing everyone a favor, respecting their time and ears by just pointing out the flaws and not letting the music do itself in. Although the Slowdown II segment has a good bit of Sping Yard Zone playing, wich I deemed to be the most offensive. So I guess I failed either way. :D

[@samitou5477]

Sonic Scratch port

[@itsyaboi3951]

Rated N for no one😂

[@Over0w0MeAmTheHotel]

Even sonic 06 is better than sonic genesis

[@lpfan4491]

It has actual individual merit. That automatically makes 06 worth more than Genesis, even if Genesis is easier to casually beat due to being less fully broken.