Oy™ - a daily comic

Full speed ahead on of my top ten favorite video games ever.

#6 - Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Genesis)- Released: 1992-2007 - Publisher: Sega - Rating: E

What it is

The second installment of the adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. With improved graphics, an added character and an improved Spin dash feature, Sonic 2 I think is still the best Sonic game to this day.

Why I like it

In the days of Genesis vs. Super Nintendo the deciding factor for which console I should get came down to a blue hedgehog. After playing the first Sonic in Sears one day, I decided I was going to be a Sega fanboy. When I went to get a console I was fortunate enough to hit a promotion where, not only did the first game come as a pack-in, there was a coupon to get Sonic 2 for free! The first game is fun in its own right, but the improvements in this second version make it more fun and faster.

Is it still available?

It’s available in a number of configurations, the main ones are: On eBay if you still have a Genesis. On Wii you can get it on the Virtual Console or on Xbox 360’s Xbox Live Arcade. It’s also available in the Sonic Mega Collection which plays on GameCube (which makes it backward-compatible with Wii), or the Sonic Mega Collection Plus version which plays on PC, PS2 and Xbox (and in turn is backward compatible with Xbox 360 and (some) PS3’s.) I recommend getting the Mega Collection in some form as it has the most content for the money (vs. only getting two Virtual console games for the same price.)

After a lot of experimentation and research into the maximum width I could format my comics to be readable in a 1024 x 768 browser window, without excessive scrolling, I’ve discovered that I still need to format for the 800 x 600 crowd. This is not due to the computer users who haven’t upgraded their monitors in 10 years.

This is an effort to make my comics more portable: RSS readers, MySpace and even visiting my site via the Wii Internet Browser all require making my comics as user friendly as possible, and thus, smaller. This means I must shrink all my comics to 700 dpi wide from the 925 dpi I was using (This makes it the most readable in an RSS reader without having to scroll sideways.)

The reformatted comics are being uploaded as I type this, but it may take a little trial and error to reformat the page dimensions of the site itself (after, ironically, going to a lot of trouble to make things bigger than the default… which was suited to 800 x 600.) But if you are already reading my comic via RSS or e-mail subscription (which I highly encourage), then get ready for an easier to read comic.

Meanwhile, please bear with me as I update everything. I’m just glad I realized this now before I had 100+ comics in the queue.