Star Light Zone

It feels good to get back to something a bit more enjoyable after yesterdays horror show.

As a young un, the only way I ever got this far was by use of the level select screen. Being fascinated with space from an early age, the words "Star Light Zone" stood out to me amongst all the others. I never finished this stage but I enjoyed it a great deal. So you can kind of see how this post is going to go.

Theming
This zone takes place on an abandoned highway near a city, it carries a decent retro-futuristic vibe with the unique street lights and the glimmering stars in the background give the zone its name as well as providing a nice contrast to what we are going to see in the next zone. Despite being simple, it is one of the best looking zones in the game.

Difficulty
Playing through this now, I never had any trouble. The main hazard here is falling to your death, but with patience and good fundamental skills you can get through it no problem.
What I like most about this stage is the return of speed. There are plenty of areas to build up a good solid pace and you can reach the fastest speeds in the game with good planning.
This zone introduces fans, which will blow Sonic back or prevent him from running, but these are never in dangerous areas. They exist more to annoy the player and test your timing than to actively kill you. Also, catapults are introduced, which have the classic slapstick effect of causing you to fly into the air when a spiked ball lands onto the other end. There are a few times where effective use of the catapults is needed to progress, and they feature heavily in Act 3 as well as the boss battle.

Music
Here it is. It is magnificent, it fits in well with the stage theme. I love it. The electronic main melody is strangely tranquil and calming, while the chorus adds a bit of impetus and livens the track up. Hands down my favourite track in this game.

Enemies Introduced
Only one enemy technically makes a debut in this zone, the bomb. I couldn't find any decent pictures online, but just imagine a grey and black bomb with legs and you won't be far off. I'm not sure whether the bombs are actually "Badniks" as they don't have a critter inside them and you can't harm them. They move about and explode into 4 laser balls when you get close enough, pretty dull stuff. The orbinaut gets a palette swap here and is now green. Not much else to say about enemies here, the main hazards are the bottomless pits that permeate the zone, otherwise you can go fast!

Orbinaut - Now comes in green!

Zone Boss

This is a pretty fun boss battle, there are two ways you can harm Robotnik. You can either use the catapults to attack him with the spiked bombs he drops on you, or you can use the spiked bombs to fire yourself up in the air to hit him.

Both methods take the standard 8 hits to wipe him out, he flees once more and retreats back to his base.

Final Rating

I love this zone, the speed, the style and the music all make this one of the best (if not the best) zone in the game. With a bit more enemy variation this would be perfect. 9/10

See you after the weekend for Scrap Brain and the Final Zone!