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At its onset, much of Sonic 2 looks the same – it's a side-scrolling platformer again, with the same rolling hills, green landscapes and looping curves. But noticeably different right away is that Sonic's not alone. A new tag-along sidekick character, Miles "Tails" Prower, has joined up with the hero. Tails is a twin-tailed fox who doesn't serve any specific purpose in the default single player mode, but going through an options screen allows you to select to play as only him.
Tails controls similarly to Sonic, with a few minor differences – the major change, you'd think, would be his ability to spin his two tails like a helicopter to fly around the levels. You're not given control of that power, though. That would be an innovation left for Sonic the Hedgehog 3.
So the introduction of the sidekick was more meant for multiplayer, a new head-to-head feature that the original Sonic adventure didn't have. 2 Player Vs. mode here in Sonic 2 splits the screen horizontally, and compresses the graphics of each player's half in odd, distorting ways. It's still a fun and innovative idea, though, and one Sega can say they did better than Nintendo – Mario and Luigi could never run competitively through the same levels, at the same time.
Sonic got an addition to his moveset beginning in this game – the Spin Dash. Activated by crouching down and then holding the jump button, Sonic will spin in place until you release the pressure on the trigger – after which, he takes off like a rocket. The move enhanced the speed of the gameplay, as Sonic no longer had to have a long stretch of straightaway to get up to his signature blazing velocity any more.
And there's a greater variety of levels for him to blaze right through. Sonic 2 changed the level layout structure of zones and stages – for most of this game, now, there will be only two levels with the same background style before the speedster blasts off to another distinctive area.
