3D Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Speculations

Earlier this week a trailer for 3D Sonic the Hedgehog 2 landed on the Japanese Nintendo 3DS eShop, along with the announcement that 3D Streets of Rage 2, and 3D Gun Star Heroes are also on the way.

Streets of Rage is due state side in July with Gun Star Heroes coming in August and Sonic 2 in September. This is awesome news because all of these are must have games for your 3DS collection. While that news itself is exciting, the real purpose of this entry is to tackle some of the rumors floating around about the Sonic 2 release.

There are some sites that are reporting that the game will feature online co-op play, meaning if you and a friend both have the game then one of you can join in control of Tails. In the particular article I just linked they state this is confirmed by the trailer itself, however I do not see any indication of "online" play in action. For most of the video Tails behaves as he does when CPU controlled. There are a few moments when his movement seems independent, leading me to believe that the game will feature 2 player co-op, however nothing seems to indicate this is online play. Something to keep in mind that if this were true, this would be the first 3D remake of this series to have online play. I think some people are mislabeling "local wireless play" as "online play."

Check out the trailer for yourself here:

My biggest concern though are the rumors that you'll be able to move Tails independently on your own 3DS without the game killing Tails for being too far away from Sonic. I'm not sure if this is just wishful thinking for some people or if those unfamiliar with Sonic 2 are confusing the competition mode with co-op play.

Regardless of how the rumors started, I think that the kind of co-op described above (ie each player's camera follows their character on their own 3DS) is probably unlikely. They do a lot of updated content for these games, but I think an undertaking like that would simply be too much.

I predict the game in "co-op" will behave just the same as if you and a friend were playing together on a Genesis. The camera will follow Sonic (on both 3DS') and while the second player can move Tails, if they get left behind the game will reset them and respawn Tails back to Sonic's position.

Now all of this is purely my speculation, just as the rumors are their own speculation. I could be completely wrong. Actually, I would love to be wrong about this, because being to play as Tails and be independent of Sonic in a co-op situation would be really fun.

In a nut shell, I'm just saying don't get your hopes up. Now that's not to say this is going to be a bad release, in fact the 3D releases are arguably the best ports of these games available outside of playing them on the original hardware. Sonic 2 will likely feature all kinds of extra features, such as the ability to play international versions and choose which version of the Sega Genesis chip set you want to use for audio.

Regardless of how the co-op is truly handled in the final release, you're going to want this game for your 3DS library. It's Sonic 2, it's a classic!

Thanks for reading!