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Life is tough when you're a budding video game star. Old favourites such as Alex Kidd and Wonderboy have fallen by the wayside, with only Robocod being able to hold his own in the first division struggle dominated by Sonic and Mario. Imagine then the heartbreak of rising young star, Tails. Hyped up as the next big thing to hit Sega's consoles and given the choice co-starring role in the major new Sonic release, poor old Tails [aka Miles Prower - groan!] has been kidnapped by the wicked Doctor Robotnik just hours before his Game Gear debut.

Now it is the job of everyone's favourite blue hedgehog to zoom to the rescue, saving all the innocent bunnies and birdies who are also in Robotnik's clutches along the way. Thus runs the plot for Sonic II, surely one of the most eagerly-awaited Sega games ever. All right, so it's a bit of a cop-out way of avoiding having to put Tails in the main game, but the programmers have made up for this by revamping the graphics and making the game run even faster! Will you ever reach the end?

I enjoyed playing Sonic II on the Master System and this version is almost identical. There aren't that many games that measure up to the class of the first Sonic game on the Game Gear, but this sequel really does its predecessor proud!

The game itself is actually much faster on Sega's portable and the music that greets you upon reaching the end-of-level- bosses has been improved too.

Furthermore, the difficulty setting has been raised slightly but this isn't the only factor that contributes to Sonic II's high level of challenge. The field of vision has been reduced considerably so that it is impossible to see where Sonic is going. The very first boss is almost impossible to beat because you need to use ESP to determine where the bouncing bombs are about to appear from next!

Although most of the game is only slightly affected by this flaw, there are times when it is extremely annoying.

Apart from that, Sonic II is still a great game and you'd be silly to pass it up.