Sonic Mania

[Ben Kirkham]

Blah blah blah DRM blah blah Denuvo blah blah. There’s definitely a point to be made there – you should be able to play offline.

But I’ve not heard anyone talk about the game itself yet. I’ve been playing for a couple of days, and I’m really enjoying it. A smart and clever synthesis of the first four games, with a bit of Sonic CD, Sonic 3D and Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine thrown in for good measure. A bit like being 8 years old again!

Opinions?

Topic

[Jenuall]

[Moonlight]

[Dave]

[Nick R]

Very impressive Sonic CD fan animation: 

[Warbodog]

Second first impressions of Sonic Adventure are quite impressive. I never had anything against it (not like that dickhead Sonic 3D), I was just into Final Fantasy and SCUMM adventure games at the time, so it seemed a bit light and kiddie to appeal when my brothers played it.

It seems to crack the 3D transition well and builds on S3&K’s very basic foundation for parallel character stories. It just remains to be seen how much there is to it and how enjoyable/annoying it actually is to play through, since we haven’t done much.

All the kid really wanted was a 3D “mess-around” Tails Simulator, so by getting to aimlessly fly around Station Square, getting on and off trains, and ignoring the floating orb’s insistence that they should maybe think about going back to the Mystic Ruins some time, by these low standards it has acquitted itself.

Also, can we raise a Chao without the lock-in tamagotchi thing?

[Ridley]

Azure Lake Oasis or Blue Blur?

[Moonlight]

Also, can we raise a Chao without the lock-in tamagotchi thing?

I mean, technically you can, but the correct way to do it is to play Sonic Adventure 2: Battle instead where you have all the more advanced Adventure 2 Chao stuff but you can actually see their stats in-game.

[Warbodog]

It just remains to be seen how much there is to it and how enjoyable/annoying it actually is to play through, since we haven’t done much.

Windy Valley pissed me off (Sonic version; Tails was easy). Can’t see shit and being taunted with Sonic 3D music. On to Skies of Arcadia, I guess.

[Moonlight]

I present this horrible thing I decided to make yesterday.

[Technopeasant]

[Jenuall]

Good old Civvie 11.

Watched that yesterday, I think I’d only ever really dipped my toes into the Jazz waters (that sounds dodgy) so I’d always assumed the Sonic homage was stronger that it actually appears to be.

[Moonlight]

We all know the best Sonic homage is Bubsy in: Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind, which I just beat for the first time ever last month. No save states, no cheats. We refer to that in the business as rawdogging Bubsy.

[Jonathan Capps]

[Technopeasant]

Good old Civvie 11.

Watched that yesterday, I think I’d only ever really dipped my toes into the Jazz waters (that sounds dodgy) so I’d always assumed the Sonic homage was stronger that it actually appears to be.

Honestly more likely to play Jill of the Jungle, if it wasn’t for those gawdawful noises. I was discouraged to find it did not have an Adlib fallback I could use instead of Sound Blaster. The video on Jill is one of Civvie’s best in my opinion though.

[Moonlight]

For more fun Bubsy facts, please visit Bubsypedia, the world’s greatest website.

[Technopeasant]

And not on Fandom to boot. Legit.

[Moonlight]

I’ve been making that exact comment to everyone. 

[Moonlight]

Oh boy, I hope the camera in Green Hill isn’t the worst fucking thing ever because of a bizarre creative choice to make it feel more “2D”.

That’s me 100%ing Sonic Adventure 2 by the way. Only took like 22 years of having the game on different platforms and 300 hours of PC play specifically to get around to it. Although to be fair, I was most of the way there a couple years ago when my save got wiped and I had to start over.

[Jenuall]

I remember unlocking GHZ back in the Dreamcast days, was quite exciting at the time – before the zone had been overused by getting shoe-horned in to as many games as Sonic Team could manage

[Moonlight]

It’s a really cool little extra. Shame that the camera is fucking terrible to the point of basically ruining it for me.

I have no idea how much of the post-game I actually completed back in the day, because on Dreamcast I was too young to play competently and my main GameCube save is polluted from Action Replay codes. I don’t even have a play count for stages, it somehow all got turned to 1024 on every one.

[Warbodog]

We got to about 25% in Sonic Adventure 1 (up to Amy), but not playing it very often. We played Sonic the Hedgehog 2 today, if you know that one, and I see why it’s so highly regarded. As an S3&K loyalist, I’d forgotten how much of those games is just copied from 2, and the zones are probably more reasonably sized than all being sprawling for the sake of it. More valuable observations about a game released over 32 years ago:

– Hill Top Zone just having that one, overly symmetrical tree again and again has always taken me out of the game. Natural mountain ranges comprised of repeating square blocks? Fine.

– I only just twigged why Oil Ocean Zone has Arabian-tinged music.

– Unlike 1 & 3’s, I was never any good at these special stages and don’t think I ever got them all. But I mainly played the game via level select and had the Super Sonic code too, so didn’t have much incentive to try.

– Always found the 2-player Emerald Hill Zone music really annoying.

– I’ve always seen pareidolia faces everywhere in these games, don’t know if they’re all intentional.

[Dave]

Unlike 1 & 3’s, I was never any good at these special stages and don’t think I ever got them all. But I mainly played the game via level select and had the Super Sonic code too, so didn’t have much incentive to try. 

I clearly remember the very first time I beat them all and got all the Chaos Emeralds, halfway through Wing Fortress zone, giving me only the briefest taste of Super Sonic goodness before stripping away all my rings for the rest of the game on the journey up to Death Egg zone.

It was great.

[Dave]

Everyone in this thread talking about old Sonic playthroughs:

[Moonlight]

– I only just twigged why Oil Ocean Zone has Arabian-tinged music.

It’s because that music wasn’t composed for that level. It was likely for the abandoned level Dust Hill Zone. Oil Ocean uses the same music as 2P mode Casino Night in prototype builds.

Sonic 2 is possibly my favorite video game ever made. Such good nostalgic feels every time I play it.

[Moonlight]

Was explaining to a friend the nature of Red Dwarf basically having two alternate third novels by each of the two original writers, having split, that are completely stylistically different from each other and I accidentally realized that the perfect comparison point is Sonic 2 vs. Sonic CD.

The original team of Sonic 1 split up to make their own separate follow-ups to the original Sonic: Sonic 2 was based in SEGA Technical Institute in America with beloved criminal and asshole Yuji Naka, and Sonic 1’s main game designer (and eventual director of Sonic 3&K) Hirokazu Yasuhara, while the other remained at SEGA’s Japan home turf with Naoto Oshima (who directed CD). The two teams had very little communication with the other (beyond stuff like poorly implementing 2’s spindash into CD), and the results are two wildly different sequels to the same original.

Feel free to debate which novel is Sonic 2 (the more coherent, better one) and which is Sonic CD (the admirably ambitious mess that has cool ideas but doesn’t really hold together). Wait, I think I figured it out.

[Jonathan Capps]

The experience of reading Rimmer melting is not unlike that of playing Metropolis act 3.

[Moonlight]

Playing Wacky Workbench is like that bit where there’s a line of what’s obviously Cat dialogue and then the narration ascribes it to Rimmer.

[Dave]

Feel free to debate which novel is Sonic 2 (the more coherent, better one) and which is Sonic CD (the admirably ambitious mess that has cool ideas but doesn’t really hold together). Wait, I think I figured it out.

It’s a tricky one. Sonic CD also has an awkward newly-introduced love interest and the hero facing off against an evil doppelganger of himself – but Sonic 2 has a climax that involves the hero’s slightly irritating mate throwing himself into a Tornado to save him.

[Moonlight]

and a climax that involves the hero’s slightly irritating mate throwing himself into a Tornado to save him.

Are you making a joke out of how this doesn’t happen or are you thinking of the end game section of Sonic 2?

[Dave]

and a climax that involves the hero’s slightly irritating mate throwing himself into a Tornado to save him.
Are you making a joke out of how this doesn’t happen or are you thinking of the end game section of Sonic 2?

You caught me mid-edit when my fat thumbs pressed Submit too early.

[Moonlight]

Well, now your clever joke being ruined is set in stone. I hope you’re satisfied, much like you would be if you decided to play Sonic 2 instead of CD.

[Dave]

I was really quite pleased with that Tornado joke too. Fuck.

[Moonlight]

It was very good.

[sleepey]

One was extensively referenced in the Fleetway comic and the other I had as a child and found somewhat challenging toward the end.

[Moonlight]

I’m 100% certain I would have already said this in the thread, possibly two or three times, but on my original Genesis I could not for the life of me beat the Wing Fortress boss. If I made it through the rest of the level at all, I always arrived at that boss on my last couple lives and never had enough tries to trial-and-error my way through.

[Jenuall]

Parts that always used to get me as a kid were the Oil Ocean Zone boss where I always used to shit myself over the laser beams shooting at the floor and then Metropolis where those bloody Slicers used to scare the shit out of me!

Related: as mentioned in the Personal Projects thread I took part in a charity Twitch stream last week and one of the games I played over the course of it was the all time classic that is Sonic 2, if anyone wants to watch me playing it then feel free to jump to about 4h54m in the video below:

Still got the muscle memory for those half-pipe special stages

Ran out of time on the stream to actually finish sadly, although you do get to see me being shit at the secret Hidden Palace Zone (which I also forgot to enter normally so we level selected our way in there! 👀)

[Warbodog]

After two years of playing platform games, a child suddenly, specifically questioned, “How is that floating?”

[Moonlight]

Just wait until they think about how the spindash would logically work.

[Author]

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