First Sonic Frontiers Nintendo Switch footage shows linear Green Hill Zone

Sonic Frontiers – that looks more like old school Sonic (pic: Nintendo)

The Nintendo Switch version of Sonic Frontiers not only looks the same as the others but reveals previously unseen new bonus stages.

Ever since Sega gave up making consoles, Nintendo formats have become the natural home for Sonic The Hedgehog, and now it’s becoming clearer that the upcoming Sonic Frontiers was made very much with the Nintendo Switch in mind.

That explains why, graphically speaking, the game is a little disappointing on the more powerful consoles, and why the footage during the Nintendo Direct Mini managed to look near identical.

Although a lot of the gameplay shown was the slightly melancholy looking open world that we’ve seen before there was also a few brief shots of more linear stages, including one clearly based on Green Hill Zone from the original Mega Drive game.

The voiceover describes these linear worlds as entering ‘Cyber Space’, with the implication being that they’re treated something like the bonus stages from previous titles.

They presumably work like existing 3D Sonic games and underline why Sega has been keen not to paint the game as a traditional open world title.

As well as the Green Hill Zone inspired stage there’s also one that seems to feature a maze of real-world highways, that’s a little reminiscent of Sonic Adventure 2, so it may be that Cyber Space levels are all inspired by classic games.

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The fan response to Sonic Frontiers has so far been mixed, and while the game is definitely more ambitious than previous 3D entries many have complained that the overly serious atmosphere and more complex combat doesn’t seem enough like Sonic.

Sonic Frontiers still doesn’t have a released date but the Nintendo Direct restated the fact that it’s due out this year. It’s not an exclusive for any format though and will be released on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PC.

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