Sonic 3D Blast

About Sonic 3D Blast

Sonic 3D Blast (1996), Sonic 3D: Flickies' Island outside North America, is the last Sonic game for the Genesis, an isometric platformer built mostly by Traveller's Tales in which Sonic rescues captive birds.

Sonic 3D Blast in Depth

Seen from an isometric angle, with pre-rendered 3D models turned into sprites, Sonic keeps his jump, spin attack and spin-dash, collects rings as health and breaks monitors for shields, speed shoes and invincibility. Each zone has two acts in which he must free the Flickies, birds that Robotnik has trapped in robots, by destroying the robots, collecting all five birds in each section to move on, followed by a boss fight. Getting hit scatters both rings and Flickies; blue, pink and orange birds try to find Sonic again, while green and red ones wander and hop away. Ten Sonic medals give a continue.

Tails or Knuckles hide in each level, and standing next to one with at least 50 rings opens a special stage, viewed from behind Sonic as he runs a set path collecting rings and avoiding obstacles to win a Chaos Emerald. Gathering all seven unlocks the final fight and the true ending; otherwise Robotnik escapes with an Emerald. The story has Robotnik discover the Flickies on an island in another dimension and exploit their ability to travel through rings to hunt for the Emeralds.

Making Sonic 3D Blast

Sonic Team conceived the idea during Sonic the Hedgehog 3, but was busy with Nights into Dreams, so Sega asked Traveller's Tales, impressed by its Toy Story and Mickey Mania games, to program it, with Sonic Team supplying designs. Development took eight months from July 1995. The isometric view drew on Sonic Labyrinth and Super Mario RPG, the bird collecting on the 1984 game Flicky, and the graphics on Donkey Kong Country. Jun Senoue and Tatsuyuki Maeda composed the Genesis music, while the Saturn version had a new CD score by Richard Jacques.

Both versions were released in November 1996, and the Genesis game sold over 700,000 copies, by one Sega employee's account. Contemporary reviews were positive: Computer and Video Games called it "the first essential Mega Drive game in years", praising the graphics and music, though some found the controls hard to adjust to. Critics thought the Saturn version too similar to the Genesis one, and later reviewers turned against the slow, isometric play, IGN calling it "a looping, lazy fetchquest", while still praising its visuals and soundtrack.