The Marble Zone

The second zone from Sonic the Hedgehog (1) for Genesis, the Marble Zone is awfully darn MEAN for that early in the series. The first time you play this level and realise how HARD it is, is the first time you realise that Sonic Team ain't kidding around...
For only a second level, this is one hard Zone. After the easiness of the Green Hill Zone, the Marble Zone completely knocked me backwards. Basically, despite its ancient-ruin-sounding name (there ARE ancient ruins on the SURFACE, but practically all of the level's main action takes place underground) it's Dracula's Castle Meets the Lava Reef Zone--with the WORST features of BOTH! Its three (yes, three!) acts drag on and on, that is, even you even MAKE it to the third act...
In descriptive terms, well, the surface of the area is rolling grasslands with broken falling down marble ruins (which are moderately cool-looking for the technology of the time but cannot hold a CANDLE to Marble Gardens. Then again, Marble Gardens itself can't hold a candle to Mystic Ruin/Lost World...) and lovely green meadows that just HAPPEN to have blazing trails of fire race along them every now and then. Nothing to worry about, really, all in a day's work for the typical Mobian! Oh, and there are firepits, giant spiked metal caterpillars, and huge flying dive-bombing bugs shooting at you, in addition to the occasional fire-pits you have to jump over, as well.
Inside, ("Dracula's Castle"), things get even MORE sinister. I mean it, this is one NASTY level! The first time I played it I wondered what the game designers had been ON (and where I could get some) when they decided to place this as Zone number TWO in the game, and even though I CAN beat it now, I still don't like it all that much. Oh, sure, it's creative, clever, challenging, and has a wonderfully atmospheric mood to it. (The lava actually goes surprisingly WELL with all the old-fashioned Horror Mansion stuff...) But it's just TOO HARD for that early in the game! What's it like? Well.....hard to describe....you have to figure out puzzles to get spiked metal chandeliers to move out of the way in time so that you can raft across a lake of fire on a floating marble block before the swooping vampire bats get you. Seriously...that's what it's like. There are also the same annoying spiked caterpillars from the surface, WAY harder to get past here because of the extremely cramped quarters. The lava occasionally spurts itself up into the air like a water-flume and the floors, ceilings, and walls might get it into their heads to try to crush you or stab you with spikes at ANY given time. It's all extremely dark, creepy, (rather depressing) and treacherous.
And, like all castles of any note...there are a few hidden rooms and passageways here and there, too...
All in all, the Marble Zone (which if you ask me was almost COMPLETELY misnamed, I think "Castle Zone" or "Fire Palace" or something like that would have been better) is a very hard, but creative and interesting, level.



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curious tourists have dared to enter the Marble Zone since July 14, 1999...and nothing has ever been seen since...except for their burned and mangled corpses, forever serving the evil wills of the tortured undead...