The company Compile had earned some success with their Puyo Puyo series of puzzle games. Despite their success in Japan, they had a hard time porting the game to the rest of the world. When Sega was seeking more Sonic-releated content to keep fans entertained while the work on Sonic 3 was underway, they would take their Megadrive port released a year prior and reskin it with characters based on the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog TV series. AOSTH had just started airing in September of 1993, so the timing of this game was perfect. Ports soon followed for the Game Gear and Master System, though the game never saw release in this form in Japan.
The plot of the game is no different from any other Sonic game really. Dr. Robotnik once again seeks out to turn living beings into his robot slaves. In this case, it's the citizens of Beanville, which he roboticizes with his new Mean Bean Machine. You, as the player must battle all of Robotnik's minions to save the Beanville citizens, and eventually do battle with Robotnik himself at the end. What makes this most interesting for a Sonic Spinoff is that this is the first to make zero mention of the blue blur.
Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine is a 1-2 player puzzle game. You move your beans with the D-Pad left and right, with down moving them to the bottle much faster. A and C will shift the beans clockwise, while B shifts them counterclockwise. You drop two beans at a time, so timing where to place them is essential in success to winning the game.
There are three modes of gameplay. The main being Scenario Mode, which plays you through the game's story as you must defeat Robotnik's many mechanical minions to eventually make it to the evil egg man himself. 1P vs 2P mode is a versus mode, while excercise mode is more of an unlimited play version of the game.
The way to beat Mean Bean Machine requires skill on creating combos. You see, to defeat your foe, you must get matches of four at least with the stacked bean colors. Doing so adds garbage beans (or refugees as the game calls them) onto the opponent's board. The key to success is to plan out a strong combo with more and more beans landing on each other in succession to make multiple matches. The bigger the combo, the better your chance at victory.
In Scenario Mode, you have to play through 13 levels, each consisting of the many crazy robots featured in Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. For the most part, they're all very forgettable, with the most memorable being Coconuts, Grounder and Scratch since they were the most featured badniks on the cartoon. You'll face off against Robotnik at the end in the game's most challenging fight. Speaking of challenging, this mode is extremely tough. You'll breeze through the first few fights, but by the time you reach Coconuts (the fourth boss), you'll need to have mastered your speed and combo skills to have any hope in advancing. The game at least offers unlimited continues and passwords to continue where you left off.
Graphically, the game is decent. The sprite designs are well done, and do a good job in representing the more absurd design of AOSTH. It gives the game its own personality far different from the main Sonic games. On the sound side, the music is very solid. Catchy and fun sounding during the easier portion of the levels and intense when the game gets close to the wire. Masanori Hikichi of Terranigma fame offers a solid soundtrack for this puzzler.
Overall, Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine is a solid puzzler on the Genesis complete with easy to pick up and play gameplay, great graphics and sound. It offers a high challenge, so you'll definitely need more than one sitting to get through the game. Is it as addictive as Columns? That's for you to decide. The Game Gear version offers a few more modes and feels like the definitive version, but for simple sit down and play fun, you can't go wrong with the Genesis port of Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine.
RATING: B+
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