While the Sega Saturn is my favorite console ever, it suffered from a litany of problems that led to its downfall in the United States. Among those was, and I remember hearing it a lot at the time, it did not launch with a dedicated Sonic game. Whereas I think BUG! is a more than serviceable platform game, I understand it: The Blue Streak is the franchise, he can get Saturn systems flying off shelves. Sega finally got a Sonic game...in 1996.

Sonic 3D Blast was produced by Sonic Team, with assistance from British studio Traveller's Tales (who are still around and producing games, even after the debacle that was Rascal). It was being developed alongside Sonic Xtreme, a game SO Xtreme, it had to be cancelled. Concepts for Sonic the Hedgehog 4 were roughly based on what would eventually become 3D Blast.

At the time, the isometric angle gave the illusion of 3D developed environments, and in some games, it can be effective (Snake, Rattle & Roll and Desert Strike). For Sonic the Hedgehog, this is a design that ends up seemingly arguing with the way the game plays. I'm on record for stating that Sonic being built around speed is already a clumsy philosophy that barely works. In 3D Blast, Sonic has two modes; sluggish as hell and slippery fast. When taking something that barely functions in 2D and trying to implement it with a different playing field, you can't just copy/paste it.

3D Blast plays like the 2D Sonic games. The bumpers, speed boosters, power-ups, and enemies are all still there. At this point, it was still about rescuing the Flickies and retrieving the Chaos Emeralds. After two acts, it's a boss fight with Robotnik in a new contraption. There's nothing about it that separates it from the way the Genesis and Game Gear titles, the biggest difference is the illusion of 3D makes the game pretty boring. The irony, a series based on SPEED ends up feeling sluggish. It doesn't help that despite each zone being a different location, they can practically be beaten in the same way. This might be contradictory, but the only reason why any stage would take more than two minutes to beat is because it's cumbersome getting used to guiding Sonic in the direction you WANT him to go.

The visuals aren't too bad, all things considered. There's no polygons or true 3D graphics, everything seemingly borrows that rotoscoped digitized animation Donkey Kong Country uses. It's a neat look for Sonic, a world that already bursts with color. Each zone in 3D Blast does aesthetically sport nice style. 

My issue with this isometric view, without a way to control how zoomed in it is, it feels like it's way too close to the action. Similar to the 2D games, the speed can kill for the same reasons; you can't see what the f**k is in front of you. Probably the closest to actually affecting the difficulty, it's the only thing that makes 3D Blast challenging. That being said, this game might have some of the best music in the franchise up to this point. Don't know if that opinion will get me raked over the coals by the fans, but I stand by it.

Is Sonic 3D Blast a bad game? I don't dislike it for the same reasons I have issues with in other Sonic games, but this is an absolutely boring as hell platformer. While some zones in Sonic and Knuckles did get overly expansive to cater towards Knuckles' ability to climb and explore, the levels in 3D Blast feel very claustrophobic. This foray into the 32bit world brought nothing new out of Sonic, a problem that would plague the Hedgehog for decades.