The Oil Ocean Zone

The Oil Ocean Zone, seventh in the game Sonic 2 for the Genesis, usually ranks as among the players' LEAST favourites, but I fail to see why. Sure, it's got some annoying bits but generally it's a very creative level. What most fans cite as the thing they don't like about it is the music. And I fail to see why--I LOVE the music on this level! Very exotic and Arabian-Nights-esque...it reminds you of veiled belly-dancers swaying in time with tiny chimes jingling on their costumes, or something, in a sumptuous Rajah's palace...something like that. Of course, that may sound rather ODD with a Sonic game but it FITS the scenery. (And may I point out a bit of cleverness...the Oil Ocean Zone being the name of the level...and the Arabian/Middle Eastern area that the music comes from is where we get most of our oil!)
But anyway, enough of that--as to the level itself, it's kind of...odd. It falls into the "unique" category of Sonic Zones; there's really nothing else QUITE like it. It does indeed take place above an entire ocean of oil, thick, oozing black stuff that will kill you INSTANTLY should you be unfortunate enough to sink all the way under it...crumbling metal bridges, traps, metal lids that shoot into the air when the GREEN flames beneath them turn on and turn up the pressure...floating octopi that shoot balls of energy at you (no, they are NOT Oktoroks! heh heh don't mind me, my Zelda brain is BUGGED by those things...) and worst of all, those ANNOYING flying seahorses that float up and shoot you at EXACTLY the wrong moments--say, when you're flailing helplessly down a slippery oil-slide. (Frankly, I think it's a three-way tie for Most Annoying Badnik between them, "Grounder", the tank-bot with the pointy nose from the Acquatic Ruin Zone, and the Eggrobos from Sonic and Knuckles' Sky Sanctuary Zone...)
My personal favourite part of this Zone is those WEIRD transporter things that look like large squishy checkerboard-patterened balls with one end open that hang in the air, and when you break open something by jumping on it, the air pressure SUCKS you in and you are then ZOOMED, by vaccuum alone, through the air all OVER the Zone until you land, dizzied, in a random place--probably far away from where you started--and maybe not! It's a LARGE Zone, with several different ways through and lots of stuff to explore and discover, so that may be ANOTHER reason why it's less popular with the fans. The "slower", less linear levels, where you have to explore more, such as Sandopolis and Marble Gardens, tend to be less popular, so maybe that's the case with Oil Ocean as well...
At any rate, the Oil Ocean Zone is an interesting place to visit, but if I was a tourist, I wouldn't go there unless I had a very good reason...



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 Oil Ocean Zone since August 6, 1999. Of course, they were all boiled alive horribly as they sunk beneath the viscous churning black waves, but there are a LOT more tourists where those came from, so it's no big loss...