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Sonic establishes his controversial gambling problem with the original casino themed level, a classic staple. Bumpers, flippers and blocks are inexplicably arranged high above the buzzing cityscape at night, and colourful neon lights are everywhere. The classic pinball zone of Sonic 2, that'll send you bouncing off of things in all directions, often across giant pinball tables.
Game: Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Sega Megadrive, 1992)
Stage Number: 4
Zone: 0 Stage Classification: TBC
Level Division: 2 Acts
Boss: End of Act 2
Playable Characters: Sonic & Tails, Sonic, Tails. (Knuckles is playable when connecting Sonic 2 to Sonic & Knuckles).
Difficulty Rating: 
Music: "Dooooo, dum diddle dum dum.. dum diddle doo" ...Sorry. Jazzy, Casino style band music with an extremely catchy tune that sounds a bit like it should have lyrics. Quite unique for its time. Same music for both acts.
Typical Length:
Act 1: 2-3 minutes
Act 2: 2-3 minutes
Available Items:
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Act 1 |
232 |
2 |
7 |
1 |
2 |
2 |
1 |
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Act 2 |
206 |
2 |
9 |
2 |
2 |
2 |
1 |
Top Tips:
- The bouncy pinball tables and arenas can get slightly frustrating at times, though more often than not, there is an exit at the bottom of the table aswell as at the top, so you don't necessarily have to struggle too much just to continue. Otherwise, the first thing you need to figure out is where the exit is, and then how to get to it, and keep trying. Good control helps.
- The main danger, damage-wise, is getting crushed by those blue moving blocks. They're most dangerous in the narrow corridors, so just be aware of them when venturing there, and don't speed through carelessly, or you may get stuck in a dead end with one.
The nighttime city is alive and buzzing for miles in the distance, with multi-coloured lights constantly moving back and forth and flashing away. Blue skyscrapers line the horizon, and above, some large bright blue stars move along rather unnaturally with you. In the foreground, you can see the actual casino buildings, with their bright, flashing neon decorations (including the words "Sonic" and "Sega"). In essence, this location is set high up above a very Vegas-like city. Alive, and vibrant, and no light remains static.
Most of the ground is of a gold colour, made up of many small blocks and square black gaps, possibly to indicate windows on buildings, but all over the place you'll also find all manner of flashing, neon decorations. Amongst the gold blocks there are colourful signs depicting arrows, flowers, bars and crazy shapes, and little panels that alternate between images of Sonic and star, and Tails and moon, respectively. The amount of variety you'll see is incredible, and way too much to be detailed here (conveniently). The surface of most of the ground is an animated red neon road, sometimes held up a little way by thin blue bars, other times surrounded in little flashing decorations, around loops and curves. Open areas that have alot of bumpers, flippers and slot machines form a kind of pinball table, supported by a much more minimalist, spiky-edged chunk of yellow and blue background, and there are alot of little flashing numbers, words and $ signs to boot. On the ground, you'll find mini neon palm trees, flowers, pillars, circular signs sometimes saying "Casino" in the middle of them, and the names of Sonic and Miles in flashing lights, etc. There is so much to see, and so much artistic work has been put into this level that you really have to see and play it for yourself.
Casino Night is based on a fairly built-up structure, with much of the map being occupied by solid ground, but there are large open vertical spaces cut into it. These spaces are often occupied by the pinball tables, filled with bouncy objects, flippers, slot machines and all that jazz, the idea being that you simply try to bounce your way through. Linking these sections up together are smaller, slow-moving areas with moving blocks and elevators, etc. In relation to a real casino, if the open areas are like the large casino rooms, then these smaller areas are like the back corridors that the heavies take you to for a bit of roughing up, after you're caught cheating (and the big blue moving blocks are like the heavies.. or perhaps I'm over-analysing). You can also find extremely narrow diagonal and horizontal passages in the large chunks of ground, in which you can only fit by spinning through. These are handled much more speedily though, and pinball-style plungers are used to send you off, and loop-de-loops are thrown in aswell, for good measure. You may also need to do careful platform hopping and/or bouncing in order to get from one ledge to another in some areas. So in essence, we've got a mix of both open and enclosed rooms, plus a variety of levels of speed here, and all that bouncing around to go on top of it.
Ground surfaces tend to be fairly straight and sometimes based on small steps in the slower areas. Platforms and ledges don't seem to last very long before you have to leap off, and often contain tight holes and shafts in them, dropping you down to an area below. You can also get fairly gentle slopes, but the bouncy areas are much more curvy on both the floors and ceiling. Remember those deep dropping pits with curved bottoms in Spring Yard Zone? You can get quite alot of similar structures here too (though luckily, you now have a spin dash move with which to blast your way up the long walls), and long, steep slopes make up the walls in some pinball tables, leading downwards. Multiple routes are quite numerous, and the zone often holds two or three at any one point. They usually originate at different points along the right side of the large pinball tables and bouncy segments. If you manage to flip your way up to the top of them, you may take one route, while simply dropping off at the bottom will allow you to go on an alternate path. There are many of these across the map, and some routes merge together after a short way, so there's quite a large variety of places to explore, and ways of getting through each act, but they don't tend to differ too much in how quickly they take you to the end. As usual, the main direction is right, but your vertical position changes quite regularly, thanks to those long, large pinball rooms and also small blue elevators that can travel a fair distance up or down long, thin vertical shafts in the ground.
The big hotbed for items in Casino Night Zone are, of course, the pinball tables and rooms, where all manner of crazy bumpers and bouncy things lie. Glowing neon green flippers are positioned in standard pinball places such as a pair of them near the bottom of the table, or single ones to the sides of it. They're also found in a variety of other places around the level too, but mainly in the large, bouncy spaces. They hang slanted to the side, and you'll start spinning when you land on them. When on it, press a jump button to flip it up, which will send your character flying up across the area, which is your main way of getting around these tables. You can also find red flippers which hang vertically, positioned in the middle of curved pits. These will flip automatically as soon as you touch them, sending you speeding back up the wall you came down on. Bumpers, all animated, come in a number of forms for you to bounce off of. There are the circular star plates, established in Spring Yard and positioned in the air just about anywhere and everywhere really, each delivering 10 points per hit, but only for the first ten hits. Two types of red triangular bumpers are positioned on the sides, floors and ceilings, and small blue hexagonal ones that move slowly from left to right (and sometimes stationary) can often be found in the middle of pinball tables. In horizontal, diagonal or vertical rows, you'll spot little green icons positioned sideways that you can bounce off of, and that I can only describe as looking a bit like hot dogs. Hit one once and it changes yellow, twice, red, and three times, it'll disappear, but you get 10 points for each hit, and 500 for the last one of the group. Quite often, you'll have to get rid of at least one, in order to fit through a gap to get to the area below.
Another common feature of the pinball tables are the groups of three horizontal bars, which you can land in by entering from the top or bottom. Ones on their own will top up your score a little way with a series of 100 points, before dropping you back down after two or three seconds. When they're positioned above or below three casino slot machine panels however, landing in them will get the slot machine rolling, which is located at the heart, and acting as the centerpiece of many of the pinball tables. One by one, the three slots stop by themselves after a few seconds, producing any three of the following images: The faces of Sonic (replaced by Knuckles in Sonic 2 + S&K) or Tails, "ring", "bar" and "jackpot" icons and a picture of Eggman. If all three turn out to be any one of those first five icons, you'll be rewarded with various, and usually large sums of rings. Get stuck with three Eggmans though (which is quite common), and you'll lose the maximum of 100 rings, via 100 (probably - I didn't count) little spikeballs that come flying at you from all directions. You can play the slots as many times as you like, and you won't die if you get three Eggmans when you have less than 100 rings, or none at all, and you may still get small ring payouts, such as 2, with pictures that aren't all the same.
Adding further to the pinball theme, red plungers found in narrow dead ends in the ground can be used to launch yourself with great force, much like they do in real pinball tables to launch the ball. When you land on the top of one, you'll be spinning and won't be able to move, or jump off of it. Simply hold down the jump button instead, which will charge up the plunger and force it downwards, and it'll gradually start to flash yellow more and more vigorously. When it's as far down as it can go, release the jump button. Diagonal ones will blast you through the corridor at maximum speed, usually into a loop-de-loop, while vertical ones shoot you straight up into a pinball table. Release the button sooner for less speed.
One of this level type's most commonly used features, the standard "big moving block" are blue and flashing in this zone. They hang out in the more slow-moving sections and narrow corridors, and like all of them, they move slowly upwards, downwards, left, or right. You can land on them fine, but save for one odd exception (Point #5), they will happily crush you into the ground or another block if they feel like it, so literally stay on their good side. Little blue elevators will take you up or down long, very thin vertical shafts when you step on them, accompanied by nice whirring sounds, and they'll usually go back when you step off, meaning they're one-way only. Thin purple conveyor belts, usually found more often in mechanical zones, are placed in the air and force you to run that little bit harder, by heading in the opposing direction. Over open gaps in the path, obscure objects made of small green blocks can be used as temporary platforms. They kind of go around in a small square pattern, one block following the other, but they disappear on one side, and reappear at the other. There are a few long spike sets to be aware of, and plenty of springs, of course.
To balance out that vast amount of stuff, you'll find only one badnik here, who appears fairly infrequently. His name is Crawl, and he's a round faced crab-like bot who moves very slowly, but is armed with a bumper plate that he uses to defend himself, should you try and mount an attack from the front or above, causing you to simply bounce off. To defeat him, you need to go for a rolling attack or spin dash from behind, only.
Be careful of this grid-based corridor structuring on the bottom route, at the start of Act 1. Your pathway leading right is invaded by a pair of moving blocks that travel up and down vertical shafts along it, so you need to ensure that you don't fall in one of those gaps on the floor if a block is on its way down, or it'll crush you. Take it slowly, and be aware that you can also get caught between a block and an edge of the ground too. Jump on the top of the second block to get up to the next ledge on the right. This kind of grid-corridor trap is common in later pinball/bouncy stages throughout the series.
Everyone knows this extra life. At least I hope they do. Roughly half way through, the lower routes converge into this very tall pinball table, squeezed between the tall ground. The bottom surface is rounded, so you can drop down one wall, and press the down button when you hit the curved bottom to help you sail right up the other side, getting higher each time. Use this method to get out, or alternatively, as you're falling back down the right hand wall, stay close to it and you may be able to enter a secret passage inside. You won't be able to see anything happening in there, but make your way through, and jump at the end to open up the extra life. The passage then leads out into another area on the other side.
Soon after the first loop, if you use a horizontal red spring, you might spot this series of grey horizontal bars, each triplet of which can give you several hundred points when you drop through them. The spring isn't powerful enough to get you up there so you have to go round the other way. Continue on until you reach the bottom of the pinball section on the other side of it, then hop onto the flipper on the right. Avoid all the bumpers etc in the middle and try and use it to get to another flipper over on the upper left of it. That flipper can send you up to a conveyor belt suspended above, from which it's possible to leap across to the left, hopefully getting on top of the ledge there, then dropping through all those bars on the other side. You'll get an additional 4000 points if only one character goes in, but this can be doubled if Tails goes in too.
Just past the last point, don't stand on either of these two moving blocks for long, because they both reach right up to the ceiling, going up and down in opposing directions. Either use one to jump to the ledge on the right, or just drop down below. Both routes link up soon after, though the lower option also takes you to the next point, which is on the lowest route.
Use a blue elevator to get down to this passage, being careful of the block just below you. You'll probably come face to face with another one further down the corridor, and both may be heading towards you from either side, all set to make a hedgehog sandwich with extra fox fur. Or are they? Anywhere else in the series, you would be crushed to death in a trap like this, but oddly, Sonic and Tails manage to survive this particular phenomenon completely unscathed, as the right block suddenly seems to stop being solid during the moment of impact. Then again, it would be a little unfair if you could get killed, as this is a trap very easy to get yourself into. Hop up to the next ledge above after the block passes it to continue. If you wait there until it goes left again, you can drop back down into the corridor after it's gone past you, and find an extra life in a hole on the right side of the corridor.
Boss:
This boss arena is much larger than in other Sonic 2 levels, and takes place in a standard pinball area enclosed within walls, with curved tops and bottoms, and all the usual trimmings. You'll only really be interested in the bottom section though, as not alot goes on above. Eggman comes in from the right in a rather flashy contraption. It has yellow pincers on the bottom which produce electricity, and he'll move down and shock you if you get too close. Otherwise, he'll move from left to right, just above two pairs of flippers and a blue bumper, but regularly stopping for a moment to drop a little red spiked ball that explodes into a pair of flashing projectiles upon contact with the ground. As normal, you have to hit him 8 times on the noggin, and there are probably a number of ways to do it, but my way is thus: Ignore the flippers as best you can, they just cause problems. Spin dash either left or right, depending on which side the doc is nearest to, and your momentum will take you up along the wall. When you're at Robotnik's vertical level, jump off the wall, using the left and right buttons to help control your direction, and you should be able to land a hit on him, if he's close enough. Where and how you'll land back on the ground isn't always up to your own intervention, but keep this up, and avoid the spikeballs/projectiles, and you should be ok. You'll be prone if you touch the flippers, because you'll have to wait until your character rolls off, during which time Eggman can easily drop down and assault you.
- Like the introductory tropical seaside stage, the bright, flashing casino level is another location that is a particular signature of the Sonic series, mainly because you never see anything quite like it in other, similar games. The Casino Night Zone is essentially the first full-on casino, borrowing some aspects of its design from the more general-looking Spring Yard Zone. This type of setting is most commonly associated with the "bouncy/pinball" kind of stage that features regularly in Sonic games. The features and design of Casino Park, from Sonic Heroes, are modelled closely on this classic stage.
- While in production, Casino Night had a completely different appearance to the impressive gold structures and detailed scenery art we see today. As the Sonic 2 Beta Rom shows us, its main colour scheme was originally going to consist heavily of pink! The ground carries much more of a playing card theme, and the music is an alternate version of the same tune, but with added notes here and there. For once in Sonic 2, the backgrounds are different for both acts, with a more simplistic, less busy cityscape in Act 1, while Act 2's background is based on the pinball tables of the final design. Level maps and structural components remain largely the same, but with objects and pieces of the floor missing, this early version is unplayable.
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Contents of this page were last updated on 8th September 2007.
