Spring Yard Zone

Hey, look who it is! I've lapsed a bit on this but gonna get back in the swing of things here.

Hopefully.

So here we are, with not a bad little zone to get me going.

Theming

This one is a bit easier for me to describe than Marble Zone. It clearly takes place in an industrial complex, with neon signs scattered about the place showing such phrases as "COPE" (I don't get it either). This zone also introduces some "casino style" elements, with a casino themed zone featuring regularly in later Sonic games.

Difficulty

This zone takes cues nicely from the first two, mixing some precise platforming with a couple of sections where you can build up a good amount of speed. There are some sections which frustrate me intensely though. See the image below..

See those barrels there? They move up and down, making you wait for the positioning to be right before you move. If you go too late, you're dead. The risk of death by crushing in this stage is very real, even in a few of the shortcuts you can be killed cheaply.

There's a few tough sections in the later acts featuring flying spiked balls and a certain enemy, who will be detailed in a later part of the post but overall this isn't too tough a zone, provided you have a decent stockpile of lives to make up for those you will lose to cheap crush deaths.

Music

No Smooth McGroove for this one, so I will just link the original here. It's a pretty decent little tune, a bit funky, bit of an industrial rough edge to it also. Far from the worst but nothing really special here (for me at least).

Enemies Introduced

So once again those dastardly Buzz Bombers return, along with the Crabmeat guys from Green Hill. We have two new and quite rare enemies making their debuts here, complete with hugely imaginative names. Of the two, Spikes causes the greatest threat, what with only one (not hugely reliable) way to kill it by running then rolling into it face first. In Sonic 2, there is a nice move introduced which would make these guys simple, but I don't think there are any enemies like Spikes in Sonic 2. 

Roller - Rolls behind you on downhill sections then stops and opens to shoot lasers.

Spikes - Rolls side to side, can only attack from head on by rolling.

 Zone Boss
This time, Robotnik is clearly very wound up by Sonic and takes a few cheap shots. First of all, there are normally rings to collect in between the final checkpoint and the boss battle, to prevent you from getting caught in a loop of deaths. Not this zone though. You have to travel back if you want to get any rings and that is only the beginning of the cheap shots used by this machine.

See that spike on the bottom of his machine? He uses that to pick those blocks off the bottom and smashes them right in front of you, meaning you have to go quickly to destroy him before he makes it impossible for you. Due to the removal of blocks, he can make it impossible for you to finish the zone or you could just accidentally fall and die after beating the boss, which isn't annoying whatsoever.

Final Rating

A decent enough level, it has some fun parts especially with the casino/pinball bits. But there are some cheap deaths starting to emerge and let that be a lesson to us ahead of the next zone... 6/10