The life of a sidekick must be a tough one. You’re basically an extension of the real hero; an accessory that can’t function on its own. Seems a bit unfair to me though. I mean, there’s a ton of sidekick stories that I’d love to hear (Buzz Lightyear excluded), like what’s Samwise Gamgee up to these days, or was Chewbacca always Han Solo’s hairy punching bag? But all these pale in comparison to the untold…tailof my favorite fox counterpart, Miles “Prower” Tails.
While going down the garbage chuteof Sonic Origins Plus’ Game Gear titles, I stumbled upon Tails’ Skypatrol and Tails adventure, two games that immediately stood out from the pile. Granted, they were just as bad quality-wise as the others, but what was striking about these two was that they exclusively featured our two-tailed buddy without a trace of his bluesenpai. Interesting indeed, Sega. Instead of allowing a Tails-centric game to be forever buried in Game Gears’ 8-bit tomb, why not give him a worthy standalone game of his own?
I’m truly grateful that Tails’ debut was on 1993’s Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and not on Tails’ Skypatrol in 1995. Trust me, if that were the case, you’d never want to see that little orange ball of fur again. Automatic side-scrolling levels force a constantly-hovering Tails to keep flying through a generally unpleasant environment, dodging obstacles and defeating bad guys with a boomerang. This is easier said than done. I spent most of the game stuck in the opaque and stupidly frustrating Training Level, where I died countless times just from touching the same rotating fan over and over.
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As I exhaled the frustrated smoke from my lungs, I had to remind myself that Tails was the victim here and another casualty of Game Gears’ poor Sonic output. Seriously, it’s as if the majority of its Sonic games were conceived in a mad scientist’s lab where Sega could release them under the radar, which probably also helped minimize the damage and PR if they weren’t particularly well-received. It could also be why Tails’ Skypatrol was released only in Japan and only on the Game Gear to boot. Did Sega already have a premonition that it’d be a bomb? No matter. There was still Tails Adventure to play, and it was immediately better off the bat. What’s more, it’s currently the closest game we have to a fleshed out solo entry.
Adventure starts out more like an origin story, opening up with a forest fire endangering our furry hero and his wooded home, thus prompting him to take action to find the source of the destruction. Tails can fly, launch bombs, swing a hammer and even punch (nice, right?), all the while collecting those good ol’ rings, just like his role in Genesis’ Sonic the Hedgehog 2. It was…OK, but far from awesome. In fact, to augment/speed up the experience, I found some Tails Adventure cheat codes online that gave me unlimited health and other resources, but even with immortality, a powerful arsenal, and an all-purpose submarine, I still wasn’t crazy about the game. It was a bummer, nay, a shame. With both of Tails’ spin-offs never quite taking off, the chances of another reboot seemed slim, or did they?
Let’s scrape what we can from the bottom of Game Gears’s barrel of shame and work from there. When dissected, Skypatrol and Adventure have bits and pieces that could be lifted and successfully repurposed to a future remake. For example, it wouldn’t be a bad impulse to include an automatic side-scrolling level as a bonus stage or something, but that’s about all you’re able to salvage from Skypatrol. Adventure had the right idea about an origin story featuring platform gameplay, but perhaps the best thing the game did was underscore Tails’ competency as a genius and tech wizard by giving you a glimpse of his laboratory where his submarine is stored. OK, let’s wash the Game Gear off our hands and move on to other influential spin off factors.
Video game movies certainly are thesaveur du jour,witha thousand directionsgame studios could take their IP. Due to the success of the Sonic the Hedgehog movies, especially the most recent sequel in which Tails makes his theatrical debut, the interest in the entire franchise seems to have been reignited. This fervor could easily be harnessed and amplified with a new Tails game featuring the vocal talents of Colleen O’Shaughnessey, who voiced the fox in the film.
Look, I’m not saying a fresh take on Tails would break any records, but at the very least, it would significantly raise the bar out of the mud and put an end to Game Gear’s monopoly on the fox. It’s the least you’re able to do, Sega. I mean, you did make quite a bit of cash from that movie sequel. Time to think about investing it in something other thananotherSonic-centric gamefor a change.
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