Sonic CD

Posted January 7, 2013 by James Day in Editorial

Sonic CD is probably the most fascinating game in Sega’s flagship series. Originally released exclusively for the ill-fated Mega CD expansion for the Mega Drive, it was developed by Sonic creator Yuji Naka in the US while a second Japanese team worked on Sonic the Hedgehog 2 at the same time. It featured a time travel system and encouraged exploration rather than simply speeding to the end of each stage. In addition to the full motion video cut scenes and CD quality ‘red book’ audio (as opposed to music produced by the Mega Drive and Mega CD’s on-board sound chips) Sonic CD stood out as a unique entry in the classic 2D era of Sonic.

With the same wisdom that led them to rename their platforms to Genesis and Sega CD in the region, Sega decided to replace the game’s original soundtrack in North America with a vastly inferior one created by three Western composers.

The original score was composed by Naofumi Hataya (pictured) and Masafumi Ogata, the former being one of Sega’s most prolific composers.

Why was the original score better? Honestly, it just sounded much more like a Sonic game with quality, memorable compositions and consistent musical motifs throughout.

The North American soundtrack for the most part just sounded generic by comparison and didn’t really gel thematically across the three different time periods per level. That said, it did at least give us the cheesily awesome Sonic Boom title track.

Whatever your preference, both soundtracks were finally included in a single version of the game in the excellent 2011 re-release for Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and smart phones although sadly the vocals from the original intro and outro tracks were omitted supposedly due to issues regarding licensing the lyrics (honestly, they’re pretty dumb but for the sake of being faithful to the original game it would have been nice to have them). Luckily, we live in the online era as opposed to 1993 so these versions can be viewed at any time on YouTube.

If I had to highlight one track outside the main themes it would be the ‘Good Future’ version of the Stardust Speedway stage theme. It’s smooth, catchy and tinged with a feel-good early 90s dance vibe.

Credit to YouTube user Lerenwe for the above soundtrack comparison video.