The Metropolis Zone

The Metropolis Zone, eighth in the game Sonic 2, is both one of my favourite AND least favourite Zones. It is cool because it's so, well, HIP. Along with its Metro name comes appropriate urban hip-hop beats, complete with old-school-rap style SCRATCHING! (I almost died laughing the first time I heard it.) Even though I don't normally like rap or hip-hop it goes so perfectly with its setting I just adored it from the second I heard it. It's bad, for me at least, because it's insanely HARD and contains an unexpected 3 acts instead of the standard 2, so just as you're wiping your brow with relief that it's over, it ain't...and hey, wait a minute, how come I didn't fight Robotnik? Maybe they figured I'd already gone through enough with this level and there IS no boss. They do that sometimes. Ah, now I FINALLY get to see what comes after this....WHAT?!! Metropolis Act THREE?!! You gotta be KIDDING me!! GET ME OUTTA THIS FREAKIN' LEVEL ALREADY!! ARRRGGHHH!!! Well, at least, that was MY reaction...
It is a huge city complex, actually more like you're inside a giant factory, to tell the truth. It's agressively industrial. The exact polar opposite of such beautiful wide-open spaces as the Emerald Hill Zone or Angel Island...giant gears turn, rivers and lakes of lava? molten steel?--I'm guessing the latter--splash and gurgle menacingly beneath, hidden mines explode near you when you LEAST want them to...bizzarre elevators made out of huge SCREWS that move up and down when you turn them...everywhere you look, this level makes you feel like a cog in the machine. LITERALLY. It does the same thing that Scrap Brain was trying to do, only much better. You REALLY feel trapped between the gears (sometimes quite literally, again) when you're playing in the Metropolis Zone. In fanfic/comic book terms, Metropolis is almost synonymous with Robotropolis, and indeed I agree. (In my own fanfics, since I have never seen the SatAM cartoon, I describe Robotropolis as looking totally like this Zone.) It's definitely Robotnik's main evil city-fortress, no matter how ya slice it. (Not that you CAN slice it...I've tried, though.) And the Chemical Plant Zone, way back at level 2, is also part of the same city. (The music is even similar). Some say that the Casino Night Zone is as well, but I dunno about that...
At any rate, the Metropolis Zone is a big, complex, and interesting level with lots of stuff to explore and discover--if you can SURVIVE long enough to do so, that is! And it also makes a very intriguing/scary place in which to set fanfics, 'cos it's so much fun to describe. (Look how long I'm taking with this description, for example! Okay, so about half of it is smart-aleck quips, but hey, I gotta be me...)
And one more thing--just for the record--how many of you out there want to SMACK those annoying knife-throwing-grasshopper-bots upside their ugly green heads? Raise your hands or whatever you have.
(surveys the sea of raised hands, paws, wings, tentacles, antennae, tails, claws, etc...stretching back almost to infinity...)
Yeah, that's about what I thought.
At any rate, Metropolis is about the ultimate example of the old saying: Nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to LIVE there!



Click HERE to return to the Mobius Tour Route.

Click HERE to return to the Freedom Fighters' Fortress.

Click HERE to return to Sandopolis.



curious tourists have been stupid enough to visit the Metropolis Zone since August 9, 1999. Of course, they were all crushed into the ceiling by those screw-elevators or blown to bits by a star-shaped mine, or thrown into a pool of molten steel, or whiplashed by a set of throwing knives, or...