First off, if you’ve found this page before watching my video where I count down my Top 20 Classic Sonic Zones you can watch it on YouTube
I’ve been a Sonic the Hedgehog fan since almost day one, when I got a Mega Drive and Sonic the Hedgehog one Christmas. Although Sonic has had his many ups and downs, I can’t place another game series higher than Sonic. In my opinion, there’s no better platformer game than Sonic!
It was quite a daunting task to create a definitive Top Sonic Zones list, of any type. So I decided the best way was to create a spreadsheet and look at various aspects of the zones.
I looked at:
- The Level Design, including how a zone plays and looks
- The boss designs (including the smaller bosses after some of the first acts)
- The music. Music really does help to bring a level together.
I gave each section of Level Design, Boss and Music a value out of 5. However, I had to increase or lower the scores, by adding in decimal points and putting a few at a little higher than 5s, so that they didn’t all score 4.0 or 5.0, which I initially found meant that many zones had the same total when adding up the three sections.
I then decided that Level Design really needed to be considered higher than the other two, so I gave it a 75% boost!
Yet still, I felt that I needed to give a few zones an extra boost so I added in a section called Change, where I gave a little extra points to the zones that mean more to me, for example. because I loved them just a bit more than others within the game.
As I mentioned in the video, I made the decision to only include one version of a zone, so, for example, if I found that Oil Ocean in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 scored higher than the Sonic Mania version, I’d put a -10 in the Change section to bump the Sonic Mania one down to the bottom of the list.
And there we have it, my personal (maybe not scientific) list of the Top 20 Classic Sonic Zones. Have a look at the spreadsheet below!
This is my personal list, and I am sure that everyone’s own list of Sonic zones would be different. It really does come down to personal preference, and of course, your own experiences, and likes and dislikes within a Sonic game. I think what makes Sonic games so great, is that there is so many different zones, where everyone can have their favourite 🙂
Let me know what you think, and your Top Sonic Zones in the comments below, or on YouTube HERE!
