You can choose to play as either Sonic or Knuckles. Sonic can double jump, Knuckles can glide and climb, and both can do the Spin Dash. The levels are rather simple in design; certainly nowhere near the quality of Triple Trouble or Chaos. The big kicker are the rendered graphics, which actually do look pretty good. The music's not too bad either. And hey, Silver Castle is kinda fun in a labyrinthine way. Okay, maybe Blast isn't all that bad. Don't get me wrong, it's no Triple Trouble, but it's bearable.

   Some item monitors are blocked with question marks...so you won't know what's inside until you pop 'em open. Here's a list of the goodies you stand a chance of getting:

• Super Ring -- Worth 10 Rings
• Power Sneakers -- Temporarily raise your speed
• 1-Up -- You get an extra chance
• Robotnik -- Nothing happens
• Arrows -- Mark your place in the level

   And like all the 8-bitters, there's-a rewards for spinning the Bonus Panel:

• Sonic (Sonic only) -- You get an extra life
• Knuckles (Knuckles only) -- You get an extra life
• Ring -- You get 10 Rings
• Chaos Emerald -- You get a continue

   Similar to S3&K, you'll find one giant Ring hidden in each Act. And you know where that takes you. The Special Stages feature Sonic or Knuckles running along a large 3D sphere like the S3&K stages, except you can't rotate the stage. The object is to collect 50 Rings by the end. Should you achieve this, you're rewarded with one of two things: a Chaos Emerald, or a 1-Up. You can only obtain one Chaos Emerald per Zone, so one Special Stage will lead you to that Emerald while the other will just give you an extra life. You get the same ending either way, but you get to fight the real final boss if you've collected all five Emeralds.

   The five Zones are:

• Green Hill -- And it's Green Hill, for the third time. The checkered hillsides are gone, but those musical log things are pretty cool...
• Yellow Desert -- What we have here is an Arabian-style desert much like Desert Palace. Act 2 is played inside an ancient temple.
• Red Volcano -- This level's actually kind of fun (Act 2 is, anyway). In Act 1, you're up in the range, and there's lots of lava and rocks and stuff. Act 2's played in the caves underneath.
• Blue Marine -- There's a few pipe games around the water ruins, and some currents that send you floating around, too. I think that's ice on the surface...at least I hope that's ice on the surface.
• Silver Castle -- You know the story: a metallic maze, this time filled with all kinds of teleports. At two points, you find yourself chased by this big spikey wall...it's kind of neat.

• Blast was released a month later in Japan under the title G Sonic.