Sumez wrote:
The only real way to deal with that terrible break of pace is to intentionally avoid taking the minigames, which just feels absurdly counterintuitive.
I have no idea what they were thinking. :\
You go in, get what you want, and get out. Or ignore it, which is what I realized plenty quick as a kid. You specifically have to stop, let it open a bit, and then jump in if you're interested.
TransatlanticFoe wrote:BrianC wrote:null1024 wrote:
I've grown to tolerate Marble... but act 3 still fucking sucks.
in fact, most of the third acts in Sonic 1 are some degree worse than the other two
Funny thing is that a couple of the GG/SMS Sonics are more stingy with rings and Sonic 2 GG/SMS even has a couple bosses that have to be fought without them, IIRC. Sonic 1 and 2 GG/SMS also have very short act 3 stages with a short area and a boss, IIRC.
All of the 8 bit Sonic 1/2 act 3s have no rings and a boss (except Scrap Brain in Sonic 1, which has 99 rings amd no boss). They're not always that short and easy either - Sonic 2 Green Hills is a gauntlet of springs and spike traps, Gimmick Mountain has precise platform timing surrounded by spikes. Both have bosses that require careful timing as the fight goes on, so one mistake and it's back to the start.
The first two 8 bit Sonics are massively underrated. The generally shorter, smaller levels are less frustrating for speed runs but also more satisfying for pure platforming. Bosses actually require you to get good. I'd say Sonic 2 is marginally superior were it not that it hands out lives left, right and centre - and extra life boxes respawn on death, whereas in Sonic 1 you could only break each one once per playthrough.
I think S2 8-bit is fucking pants, myself. I've always hated the stages and bosses. Had it as a kid on GG, hated it because of the first boss on the tiny GG screen. Played the SMS version years later... and it turns out that I really don't like the rest of the game either. Almost willing to say that Sonic Blast is better [admittedly, it's quite a bit better than a lot of people like to say, despite still being a fairly poor game]. Almost.
S1 8-bit though... that game's brilliant. It's just a really solid platformer. It's slow, but it pulls the pace up sometimes. Whenever I play it, I'm reminded that not being able to re-collect rings would probably have been a better choice in general, although S1 8-bit's somewhat slower pace plays well with that.
It'd kinda really suck for huge chunks of say, Sonic 3.
Always did think the no-ring [or in Triple Trouble, you had to look off the main path for 'em] bosses on the 8-bit games was a good idea, too. Made 'em a threat, much more than their 16-bit counterparts.
It's got cool music and nice stages and it's just a solidly made game that doesn't do anything too wild and is all the better for it because it's really competent.
as an aside, there were way too few spots in Sonic in general where you go without rings for an extended period of time [there's like one bit in Marble, and you get two shields along the path]
if they weren't quite so frequent, there'd be an actual aspect of challenge in areas that weren't just full of bottomless pits, which is what Dimps ended up trying because they probably realized that it was way too hard to die in Sonic
...and that reminds me: if there's one thing Mania actually buggers up hard, it's the way rings move when hitting walls -- in Mania, it'll bounce back properly, so it's almost impossible to really lose rings in an enclosed area. In S1-3&K, rings have a tendency to fall straight through the ground [this felt like bullshit when it happened, if mainly because it 's super inconsistent and it's got something to do with what the collision type of the wall is], or if they hit the side of a wall, they're snap to the surface, far up an away [this seemed deliberate and was consistent].
It was a lot easier to actually lose your rings, and the removal of the latter [which was consistent, predictable, and in some cases still let you get to the rings if you chased 'em] makes certain scenarios way easier for no reason.