What makes this boss
battle so purely memorable for me is simply that it is my first boss battle. I
had reached the end of Green Hill Zone Act 3 only to be met with this
monstrosity swinging a ball at me. I felt that panic of not knowing what to do
after I hit him only to find he was still alive; up until this point all of my
enemies had died in the one attack. The boss battle music served up dramatic
tension while I was destroyed by what was probably one of the easiest boss
battles in gaming. What can I say, I was a noob.
However, there are
interesting aspects to this boss battle beyond just being my first; the way the
ball swung in a predictable manner forced the player to learn how to time
Sonic’s jumps, and got us especially familiar with the mechanic; the time that
Sonic hovered in the air, the height of the jump itself, the speed at which he
fell to the ground. In this boss battle we were forced to confirm that we knew
how to do the jump attack at a proficient level enough to move on. As far as
teaching players go, the overall result is effective.
Not only that, but
this battle taught us about the structure of the game; we had been through three
acts, and now we had a boss. Now we knew to expect that the next zone will have
three acts and a boss. It taught us a lot about the story; if you didn’t read
the manual, you’d be forgiven for wondering why there were robots patrolling
around, but this game gave you the smoking gun; there’s a bad guy.
It seems elementary
to this day, but in the retro gaming era these lessons were big things, and it
is clear that Sonic’s developers took the thinking that a game should be
teaching you its mechanics as you play. Sonic 1’s first boss might not be the
most memorable to many gamers, but for someone playing his first ever
videogame, it is probably one of the most important teaching exercises in a
game that I’ve experienced.
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