R2TRRFF: High-speed Hedgehog Monogatari

[ryu]

I was talking about Sonic Superstars. Does Contra even have three player coop?

[Steven]

Yep, the new Contra has up to 4 players at once. That said,

Given the not-especially-high quality of the textures and models in that game the PS4 should it run a hell of a lot better than that.

This applies to Superstars as well. It's not a graphically intensive game by PS4 standards at all. I'd understand the game having framerate problems if it was running the game in a split screen configuration, because in that case the hardware would have to render more stuff. That would probably make the game play better too! Having everyone confined to the same screen in a side-scrolling Sonic game must make it very awkward to play at times.

[ryu]

That would probably make the game play better too! Having everyone confined to the same screen in a side-scrolling Sonic game must make it very awkward to play at times.

It's almost unplayable. Everyone gets send to "press X to rejoin" hell over and over again as the lead character switches all the time.

[XoPachi]

Doesn't pretty much everything have issues on Switch at this point?

Of the games I've played of this nature? This is the absolute worst I've seen. Obviously Doom Eternal, Witcher 3, and maybe someone other 3D action games like Zelda run as bad or worse on Switch. But a 2D run n gun arcade title with mid budget XBLA graphics? Other far better looking games run so good on Switch but some of these newer 2D games with 3D graphics run especially horribly.

[BrianC]

This is really bad coming from WayForward, though. Thier Primary Focus was handheld games and now they have a demo that runs unacceptably poor on Switch.

[Sima Tuna]

I'm of the opinion that Wayforward is very overrated, but I realize this is not the thread for that discussion. I've mostly played their early games, but I was not impressed.

[BrianC]

I'm of the opinion that Wayforward is very overrated, but I realize this is not the thread for that discussion. I've mostly played their early games, but I was not impressed.

and that has nothing to do with my point. Handhelds like GBC used to be their primary platform. They made games specifically targeted at GBC, GBA, DS, and 3DS. Now they jumped on the Unity bandwagon and make games that run worse on switch, the current major handheld system.

[Steven]

I found not one but two new glitches in Sonic Origins Sonic 3 & Knuckles. At the end of Angel Island Act 2, if you peel out while standing at the right edge of the screen Sonic will do some weird shit, and if you use debug mode to escape Knux dropping you into Hydrocity and place a signpost and then pass the signpost it will skip Hydrocity Act 1 and start you in Hydrocity Act 2.

Here are both of them in case someone is too lazy to go do it but still wants to see: https://youtu.be/qwGz5A5frd0

[ryu]

I found not one but two new glitches in Sonic Origins Sonic 3 & Knuckles.

Feels just like the classics lol

Pretty awful bug though if it can be triggered that easily. Seems like a thing that can happen readily to anyone playing the game a lot.

[Steven]

It seems that this Act skip glitch can be done at the end of (almost?) any Act 2. I didn't think to try it in the other games until just now, but I definitely will. Sonic 3 has always been a super glitchy game, with or without Knuckles, but I don't know if this can be done on those original releases. I'm not going to test it on Sonic 3, though, just 3&K. Getting to the menu to enable debug in 3 is a pain.

[XoPachi]

ugh...

https://twitter.com/sonicstadium/status ... 7069850882

[Lander]

You know you're onto a winner when a trailer breaks a new stratum of oh no with every cut

As ever, Sega follows.

[XoPachi]

I've always wanted an online on-foot racing game with 3D Sonic. But as usual with this franchise, and most other things I like in gaming, the monkey's paw always has to have a say in development.

[Steven]

If that's what you want, there is probably a way to play Sonic R online with an emulator somehow, but...

[Steven]

Suddenly, I have had a very strong desire to revisit Sonic Heroes. The reason for this is that my memories of the game don't seem to match with what many people say about it online. I played the Gamecube version, supposedly the best one, and I remember it as a horrendous, glitchy, poorly-designed mess and a mechanically broken piece of trash, but many other people seem to really like it. It sold very well, too, as the only Sonic game released after it that sold better is Frontiers (another game I want to revisit, but for different reasons; it's actually pretty okay!), and even Frontiers barely did better.

It has been so many years since I played it and decided to never play it again, but I am reconsidering that now. Am I wrong about this game? Is it REALLY as bad as I remember it being? Most likely, but I have grown increasingly interested in finding out if it actually is. I may try to play the Japanese Gamecube version on my Wii if I can remember where I put the damn Wii and its cables. Might as well try Shadow while I am at it, as that is one of the very few Sonic games that I haven't played.

The idea of Sonic Heroes is cool. Sonic Classic Heroes proves this, although it's a decent bit too much for the MD to handle at times and has moderate slowdown relatively frequently and occasional messes of CRAM dots, although I don't mind the CRAM dots at all. I don't remember if I tried the newest version, but that is said to alleviate some of the slowdown.

[ryu]

Sonic Heroes really isn't that good. Not a game I could ever bring myself to replay. I don't remember much about the mechanics and feel of it, but I remember that it wasn't great fun. Playing it over and over with the other teams to unlock the true last boss was a huge pain too. And I remember that the stages were all much longer than they had any need to be. The game really dragged on.

[Steven]

I think it's possibly related to the whole Sonic Adventure 2 vs Sonic Adventure 2 Battle thing. The older Sega/Sonic fans who grew up in the early 90s with Sega consoles HATED SA2 because we (yes, we; I am fortunately included in this demographic, something for which I will forever be grateful) had the reference point of how good Sonic 1-3&K are but the younger Nintendo kids who grew up in the early 2000s with the Gamecube LOVE SA2B (and still do) due not having that reference to how good the series used to be. Without a reference point of better games, maybe the younger kids that were born around 1998~2004 or so who played it at that time before playing the earlier, better games are the ones that like it.

The only other reason that I can think of for Heroes selling so well is that it was the first Sonic game that released simultaneously on a bunch of systems: PC, PS2, Gamecube, and Xbox all had it. Sonic 1 and 2 had been in the arcades (shame they didn't release the arcade version of Sonic 2 for Sega Ages like they did for Sonic 1! Arcade Sonic 2 is another of the few Sonic games that I have not played. I wonder how many people even know there is an arcade version of Sonic 2, but I doubt many do) and some Sonic games like 3&K and CD had been on PC before, but this was the first time that everyone with a modern game system had access to Sonic.

I didn't play the game for very long, though; I only either rented it or played the demo and was disgusted by it and stopped playing relatively soon. It's one of even fewer Sonic games that I have played but not finished. I might not even finish it when I do return to it because I know about the requirements for doing so, so I think it's likely that I will play Sonic's team's story thingy and leave it at that unless I can find a save file somewhere online that has all of the other stuff done as well.

[ryu]

I wasn't aware there had been Arcade versions of Sonic 1 and 2, and that the Sega Ages release of Sonic 1 was not the console game. Are there even any differences?

I had a great time with the Mega Drive classic and Adventure 2 Battle, never owned a Dreamcast or Saturn as a kid. Afterwards the series began falling off a cliff for me, although I can appreciate Sonic Adventure a bit more in hindsight for its less railroaded level designs. The Gamecube port was still a technical mess though.

[Steven]

Sega Ages Sonic 1 has the Japanese MD version, the NA Genesis version, and the obscure Mega Play arcade version. Most people likely didn't know the arcade version existed until the Sega Ages release.

Mega Play Sonic 1 has a decent amount of changes:

max lives is now 3. Extends and extend scores might be removed, but I might be wrong. I'd have to check
Special Stages do not exist, which means Chaos Emeralds also do not exist
much stricter time limit that varies depending on the stage
Marble Zone, Labyrinth Zone, and Scrap Brain Zone Act 3 are removed from the game

This is most of the important changes, I think. Arcade Sonic 2 also has some similar changes, but it's closer to the regular version of the game than the arcade version of Sonic 1.

Arcade Sonic 1 removes everything that most people seem to hate about Sonic 1, so many people will likely find it to be the best version of the game. I like it a lot myself, even though I like most of the cut stages and am not particularly fond of Spring Yard. The Mega Play version is highly recommended, but if you don't know your way around the game I can see the shortened time limits and lack of extends being frustrating.

[ryu]

Thanks! I thought the game released with Fukkoku Archives was said Sega Ages release, but apparently it isn't so.

I caught rumours of a Sonic Heroes Remake being in the works. I'm not sure I would dig into that. They'd have to redesign the game from the ground up to get me interested I think.

[XoPachi]

Suddenly, I have had a very strong desire to revisit Sonic Heroes. The reason for this is that my memories of the game don't seem to match with what many people say about it online. I played the Gamecube version, supposedly the best one, and I remember it as a horrendous, glitchy, poorly-designed mess and a mechanically broken piece of trash, but many other people seem to really like it. It sold very well, too, as the only Sonic game released after it that sold better is Frontiers (another game I want to revisit, but for different reasons; it's actually pretty okay!), and even Frontiers barely did better.

It has been so many years since I played it and decided to never play it again, but I am reconsidering that now. Am I wrong about this game? Is it REALLY as bad as I remember it being? Most likely, but I have grown increasingly interested in finding out if it actually is. I may try to play the Japanese Gamecube version on my Wii if I can remember where I put the damn Wii and its cables. Might as well try Shadow while I am at it, as that is one of the very few Sonic games that I haven't played.

The idea of Sonic Heroes is cool. Sonic Classic Heroes proves this, although it's a decent bit too much for the MD to handle at times and has moderate slowdown relatively frequently and occasional messes of CRAM dots, although I don't mind the CRAM dots at all. I don't remember if I tried the newest version, but that is said to alleviate some of the slowdown.

Every issue people have with Sonic Heroes is pretty on point, but I returned to it recently and really really got hooked to it despite it's flaws. When things are going right, it's weirdly engrossing. Even ignoring the other teams, it is a shockingly full featured package if you don't care about fighting a very mediocre TLB. Just playing as Team Sonic in stages that last well over 4 and 6 minutes sometimes, it's as much of a game as I'd want. I put in 16 hours playing just their story, getting their set of Chaos Emeralds, killing Egg Emperor, and trying to get all A rank with the occasional time trial. When I did all of that, I was more than satisfied. Team Dark is all else one really needs as a sufficient hard mode. And it's one of Sonic's aesthetic peaks to this day with music that is just incredible. The game is gorgeous.

It's apparently getting a remake revealed in 2025 according to a leaker who was correct about Persona Reload and some other stuff.

[Lander]

My Friday night was spent replaying Sonic Adventure 2, for the first time since its GC release.

Nostalgia certainly is a powerful thing. Twas a veritable war between my inner child - sperging all over every setpiece and banging Crush 40 track - and my critical grown-up psyche screaming this is a trailer fire, jesus christ look at it every few minutes.

An enjoyable time, all things considered, if a little drawn-out by the end.

Blown away as I was by the shonen conceit back in the day, hearing Knuckles' Uhh... The servers are the seven chaos... chant during Final Episode reminded me of how much more earnest of a story SA1 was, so I think the first game holds up better despite being similarly rough-cut.

And man, Final Episode really comes out of nowhere. I appreciate the attempt to fold back the Robotnik legacy, but Gerald's Fun Time Implied Firing Squad (feat. Amphibian Apocalypse) could have used a bit more setup. Still, there's unintentional hilarity to be had from the juxtaposition between Eggman's Hmm... Grandfather... subplot and Tails' pregraduate We did it all together! I'm nine! silliness.

Puts '06 in stark contrast, now I think about it; the last hurrah of that Adventure-era edge, with the DBZ character timejump it so badly needed for the ridiculous OTT plot to make tonal sense - tongues aside. Seemingly well-executed in all the ways it needed, except the small but painful point of being a video game.

Speaking of, that Unity '06 fan remake project looks to be making strides - all three campaigns' stages accounted for as of the latest demo, with Final Episode apparently next on the docket. I hope they'll stitch it all together with FMVs once everything's accounted for, perhaps finally lay that particular relic of the Sonic Cycle to rest for good.

[XoPachi]

Aside from the dumb treasure stages, I tend to enjoy Adventure 2 more each time I revisit it. The speed stages are a lot longer than I remember and tend to be more involved than most modern Sonic levels, especially lame ass Forces and Frontiers.

I don't understand why grinding was never fleshed out beyond what Adventure 2 offered. It's just this automated scene transition these days instead of an actual attempt at a more active mechanic.
And god I love Adventure 2's graphics.

[Lander]

The speed stages are pretty good, barring a couple of clangers like Crazy Gadget's gravity gimmick. It's a weird balance; the game positively showers you with 1UPs, but is equally happy to repeatedly pit your ass to claw them back - especially if you're tempted by the mid-grind kamikaze shortcuts.
The treasure stages were pretty painful, even with a mod to allow all three macguffins to ping the radar from the beginning of the level. Especially the mine - a.k.a. Panic Attack Drowning Zone, yeesh. Hiding the aqualung in there was a cruel move.
And the mechs... Meh. The lockon stuff is kind of cathartic, but is all too easily reduced to wildly rotate the analog while smashing the shoot button.

Unfortunately grind leaning is pretty busted on the PC build, so I ended up installing a 'modern grinding' mod which, funny enough, turns off all the gameplay nuance and boils it down to B = go faster.
It would have been nice to see it built on, rather than ending up as a convenient death pit traversal system. I'd have been down to see a Tony Hawk style approach, where rails act as a fast 'top route', but require mechanical skill to stay anchored.

[XoPachi]

The seal is broken.

Yuji Naka....has been unleashed.

The speed stages are pretty good, barring a couple of clangers like Crazy Gadget's gravity gimmick. It's a weird balance; the game positively showers you with 1UPs, but is equally happy to repeatedly pit your ass to claw them back - especially if you're tempted by the mid-grind kamikaze shortcuts.
The treasure stages were pretty painful, even with a mod to allow all three macguffins to ping the radar from the beginning of the level. Especially the mine - a.k.a. Panic Attack Drowning Zone, yeesh. Hiding the aqualung in there was a cruel move.
And the mechs... Meh. The lockon stuff is kind of cathartic, but is all too easily reduced to wildly rotate the analog while smashing the shoot button.

Unfortunately grind leaning is pretty busted on the PC build, so I ended up installing a 'modern grinding' mod which, funny enough, turns off all the gameplay nuance and boils it down to B = go faster.
It would have been nice to see it built on, rather than ending up as a convenient death pit traversal system. I'd have been down to see a Tony Hawk style approach, where rails act as a fast 'top route', but require mechanical skill to stay anchored.

I never had much issue with the grinding or general feel of anything in the game except for spotty areas in the treasure stages. The only thing I hate about SA2 controls is how the speed stages tie utterly diametric actions to the same button. Who on EARTH thought it was a smart idea to make dashing through midair ring trails the same button as the action that sends you plummeting downwards?? That still gets me killed 24 years later!

[Sima Tuna]

Lunistice is pretty cool. Feels like an early 3d Saturn game made with the blue hedgedog in mind. I think an important lesson 3d sonic needs to learn is speed vs sensation of speed. If a game is too fast (ANY game,) then the level hazards become unreactable. Lunistice feels fast without going as fast as it possibly could do. Maybe because it's not a sonic game, it doesn't feel obligated to push speed to levels that hurt game flow.

The Lunistice dev(s) should get thrown some money by Sega to design a new 3d sonic game. Something about 2-3x the size of Lunistice with the same level of general quality and Sonic IP would probably be an easy sell to Sonic fans.

[Lander]

Sensation of speed is surprisingly easy to achieve too, if you crank the field of view up high enough during a sequence that's supposed to feel fast.

Even a slow trundle can look like something out of Initial D, with the added benefit that - thanks to perspective - only your peripheral vision is actually moving quicker; the important stuff on the horizon line stays closer to the 'ground truth' speed, so can be made reactable.

The illusion breaks a bit if the camera can be freely rotated, but that tends to be less of an issue if you're running along a sonic-style highway, since the frame of reference remains relative to the character.

[XoPachi]

There's this funny game called Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom. I almost skipped it because, at first, it looked and sounded like flavor of the month meme shit. But it's a really good 3D platformer that oddly mixes Crazy Taxi elements with classic 3D platforming. The gimmick is using a spindash-esque maneuver on the terrain in creative ways to get height and distance as you don't have a traditional jump. It has typical arcade car driving controls. You hit the gas to go forward, brake to go reverse. Of course you turn with the analog stick but you take wider turns unlike other platforming mascots. It's not realistic in anyway at all of course but you are *driving* is my point.

Despite this, it feels so incredibly natural and is full on just a 3D platformer. It's amazing how well this game works. It was super unfamiliar for me at first, but not in an uncomfortable way. I sat down and got to grips with all of the timings on actions it demands and it really does feel great to play.

Also the taxi you play as is adorable. Peak silent protagonist. Just a scrunchy car getting up to some trouble.

Lunistice is pretty cool. Feels like an early 3d Saturn game made with the blue hedgedog in mind. I think an important lesson 3d sonic needs to learn is speed vs sensation of speed. If a game is too fast (ANY game,) then the level hazards become unreactable. Lunistice feels fast without going as fast as it possibly could do. Maybe because it's not a sonic game, it doesn't feel obligated to push speed to levels that hurt game flow.

The Lunistice dev(s) should get thrown some money by Sega to design a new 3d sonic game. Something about 2-3x the size of Lunistice with the same level of general quality and Sonic IP would probably be an easy sell to Sonic fans.

The special thanks at the end of this game almost made me cry. :c