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Travel through the zones, killing the bosses and collecting the Chaos emerald by finding the special stages.

A diamond may be forever, but an emerald is infinitely more useful at keeping a dimension in order. Sonic's world is kept in balance by the six Chaos emeralds, the source of all vitality. Careless then of Sonic and Tails to leave the jewels in a position for Robotnik to steal one of the stones, thus destabilising the whole of Moebius.

Sonic's planet has collapsed into a frightening alternative universe, where Robotnik's creations are much more frightening than before. All the emeralds are scattered round six zones, each of three stages, and the future of Moebius depends on finding them all.

Two new pieces of footwear are available to Sonic. Both are found in TV sets, much like the ten-ring sets. Picking up the rocket shoes gives Sonic a quick burst of flight. Sonic speeds horizontally, but vertical movement is possible. The second piece of equipment is the spring shoes. Sonic is able to bounce over dangerous areas and reach high rings in them.

Sonic and Miles are selected separately, and each has learned new skills since Sonic 2. Sonic retains his super spin ability. By holding the joypad down and pressing button B, he achieves maximum spin velocity immediately, which is useful for breaking down walls.

Miles is now able to fly by pushing up on the joypad with one of the buttons.

Reaching the emeralds first means collecting 100 rings on the initial stage. When that total is reached, you're immediately zapped to one of five sub-games. These involve different tasks: picking up hundreds of large rings, or scaling a lot of platforms. One even takes place in a labyrinth of intersecting pipes.

As with all Sonic games, the visual designers have really gone to town. Sonic's six stages depict a mass of styles and tastes. The starting point is the familiar Green Hill Zone.

Later on is a city zone, complete with skyline; a bizarre mixture of palm beach and robotic, where the coconuts and made of metal; and an imposing castle.

The final level is electronic spaghetti, which glows as Sonic is whisked down a set of conduits.

Oh dear, I think it's jump on the bandwagon and milk the cash cow for all it's worth here.

Sonic is the software giant's main flagship and the game games have lived up to that title. Unfortunately this game doesn't. In fact, it stops just short of being a pile of told tosh. Sonic himself is as fast and wonderfully detailed as ever but the levels are too short, there are practically no enemies, the backdrops aren't a patch on either Sonic 1 or 2, it's too easy and all in all, not worth the dosh.

Sonic's always been at the spiky edge of Sega's game technology, so it's a disappointment to see him let down by Sonic Chaos. The character is as fast and feisty as ever, but the layout of the game is seriously flawed.

Most of the later stages look superb, and have some ingenious ideas, but throughout the question is 'Where are the enemies?'. There just isn't enough opposition. Even worse it's so easy to get into the sub-games, you never get to see the substance of most levels. Think on this: I reached the final stage on my third go, with fourteen lives and six continues!

Let's give the hedgehog something more substantial to fight.

Presentation 77%
P. Interesting attract sequence, choice of characters. N. The overall presentation is inferior to Sonic 2.

Graphics 89%
P. Fabulous in some of the later levels, with great use of colours and even multi-level parallax scrolling. N. The first levels look dull, and the enemy sprites are poor.

Sound 74%
P. Good enough tunes for the Master System. N. The sound effects are pretty cruddy.

Playability 81%
P. Some bits of the old magic are there, especially when Sonic gets going. N. This is very similar to every other Sonic game, and even easier.

Lastability 64%
N. Even the task of getting the emeralds is not going to stop most players screaming through this in days.

Overall 71%
A very weak Sonic game that combines lack of originality with complete absence of challenge.