Hands-on: Sonic Superstars co-op is chaos controlled

destructoid.com:

The existence of Sonic Superstars is a beautiful, mystifying conundrum.

If you owned a Sega Genesis growing up, you probably know that a co-op Sonic game is a bad idea. Sonic runs too fast, the screen moves too quickly, and player two often gets lost off-screen. So when I learned the upcoming Sonic Superstars would offer a multiplayer sidescrolling Sonic experience, I couldn’t help but scratch my head. Sure, our own Eric “the Hedgehog” Van Allen covered this already, so I knew the game was already toying with some 2D Sonic fundamentals. But the how and why of a Sonic Superstars co-op mode continued to eat at me. How could a game like this ever work?

Fortunately, during a recent event held by Sega, I was able to sit down with a demo of Sonic Superstars that let players get into the trenches of the two-player co-op experience. And after playing the game myself, I was again reminded that multiplayer 2D Sonic really is a fundamentally broken prospect. But rather than try to fix something that can’t be repaired, Sonic Superstars instead embraces the insanity of its premise and molds a chaotic, riveting experience for Sonic fans to sink their teeth into. And honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

My session with Sonic Superstars began with testing a Jungle-themed zone by myself, since this was the demo’s designated solo level. I picked my boy Knuckles—which, look, back in the Genesis days, Knuckles was the coolest. If you think I’m not going to try Knuckles first, then obviously, you didn’t know me at seven years old. Which makes sense, as the odds of that are statistically improbable.

Anyway, this turned out to not be the best way to first experience Sonic Superstars. Every character in the game has unique properties,