Jeremy Gallen's Game Reviews

Too Bad It Isn't Ugly Sonic

Early in the 1990s, the video game corporation Sega yearned to get a foothold in the industry like Nintendo had, releasing their Mega Drive / Genesis system to compete with Nintendo, which would release the Super Famicom / NES. To one-up the Big N in Sega’s efforts, Naoto Ohshima and Yuji Naka conceived the anthropomorphic Sonic the Hedgehog to rival Mario and succeeded in many respects. Sonic would star in his own series, their character casts gradually amassing, not to mention several animated television series and most recently, a successful Paramount Pictures movie franchise. In a surprise release, The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog would appear on Steam as an April Fool’s Day celebration, but in terms of quality, is the game an actual joke?

Murder opens with a birthday celebration on a train for Sonic’s girlfriend and fellow hedgehog Amy Rose, which quickly turns into a murder mystery, with the players controlling a waiter they name who helps as Tails the kitsune serves as detective, and Amy as a journalist, to find out who exactly offed Sega’s iconic mascot. Just the game title alone hints at the game’s lighthearted nature and appealed to me in its surprise release, and is actually pretty good in its denouement, the mystery itself resolved satisfactorily. Probably the biggest issues lie with the script, which is full of many punctuation errors and the always irritable and lazy use of “ok” when it wouldn’t be terribly difficult to just spell it out as “okay.” Regardless, the story is one of the game’s main appeals.

The game is at heart a point-and-click visual novel, with players traveling through the train’s various cars to gather clues and evidence, interrogate suspects, and so on to solve the murder of the eponymous victim. Many of the game’s point-and-click moments require the character players name to enter a “Think!” mode that consists of a minigame resemblant of classic Sonic titles, with the hedgehog running along an isometric field to collect a certain number of rings while avoiding obstacles until they reach the end. While things can be somewhat challenging on standard difficulty, the game mercifully allows players to reduce things such as the minigame’s speed, the number of rings necessary to advance, whether Sonic is invincible or not, and so forth, that very much make the gameplay more than bearable.

Control is generally tight for the most part, players able to record their progress anytime outside cutscenes and the DreamGear minigame, the story direction never making one lose himself or herself in the limited gameplay setting, an in-game map of the train, and so forth, although there are some minor issues when using a controller with a Steam Deck, the game lacking directional control and the player needing to use a controller’s right joystick as a point-and-click “mouse”.

She seems awfully happy about someone murdering her "darling Sonic."

For a title that was a surprise release and is short, the composers seemed to go all-out regarding the soundtrack, which is full of solid tunes that fit the murder mystery milieu and the various cards such as the ragtime Saloon Car theme, and there are occasional remixes of Sonic the Hedgehog’s iconic theme. There are occasions where sound effects are missing, but otherwise, no complaints here.

The visual presentation is solid as well, with the cool designs of the various Sonic characters being front-and-center and demonstrating wide ranges of emotions, along with good, colorful scenery believable for a train setting, although some portrait animation that made the designs less static would have made the game better, as well.

The game is short, somewhere from two to four hours for completion, with little lasting appeal, given the absence of achievements, other than the adjustable difficulty settings.

Overall, my instinct was correct when it came to downloading the free visual novel that is The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog, given its endearing mystery and characters, tight gameplay, and solid audiovisual presentation, although there are ways in which the sound and graphics could have been better, but then again, they probably would have skyrocketed what was likely the game’s meager budget. In my experience, it’s probably one of the best, if not the best, installments of Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog series, though then again, I have limited experience with it. Regardless, fans and non-fans alike owe it to themselves to download and play this short but sweet title.

This review is based on a playthrough of a digital copy downloaded to the user's Steam Deck with the easiest difficulty setings.