Sonic 2 (originally released on the Sega Megadrive/Genesis) is quite possibly one of the greatest platforming games released on any system. Ever. No, wait, we're not twelve year olds so let's just leave the stupid "Mario is Bettar!" argument, it's only an opinion, not to mind the fact that it's an irrelevant argument in terms of an article about an Xbox 360 Live Arcade game. The game was originally released in 1992 to huge much anticipation an great acclaim after the surprise hit which was Sonic the Hedgehog.

Sonic 2 added a number of features which, in many peoples opinions made the original game almost unplayable after you got used to them. Features like the Spin Dash, now synonymous with the entire Sonic series. Perhaps more importantly, Sonic 2 did not overburden itself with extraneous features like the bubble or fire shields in Sonic 3 or Sonic & Knuckles. It was (ands is) the perfect balance of speed, platforming and special abilities.

There is perhaps only two thing which could make this game better, and I just found them on Xbox Live Arcade: A save feature (which actually slightly ruins the game experience to be honest) and Achievement points. Achievement points succeed in making this, self admittedly linear and repetitive game (and there's nothing wrong with that in this case!), into an immensely replayable experience. It also encourages the player to play the game in the manner the game designers intended: quickly. I mean, we've all played through Emerald Hill zone, collected every ring and already got 3 or four Chaos Emeralds, but how many of us hve ever finished it in under 35 seconds? Not me let me tell you that. Finishing the game in less than an hour might not seem that much of an achievement when we think back to how short the game sometimes felt, but now that I've tried it, I realise that I rarely if ever finish a Zone in less that 8 minutes (because of my RPG training at collecting everything in a level), which is way too long to gain this achievement.

Even the Super Sonic achievements (which I know I've gotten a hundred times over on the original version already) seem worth doing all over again just to get those 100 or so points, and to prove that you have done it. So it seems that Microsoft has succeeded where everyone except Squaresoft (note, not Squeenix) and Bethesda have failed: they make me keep wanting to replay a game I finished numerous times more that ten years ago.

Bravo sirs. Bravo indeed