A bit tangential but I've never understood old school sonic games. So much of it seems to be blindly running or being funneled through a chaotic level. There's this sense that you have speed and it feels good, but because you don't know what's coming next, it's very easy to lose that speed, which feels really bad. I feel like the intention of these games was to memorize the levels so that you could actually play them quickly. Whereas in a mario game you can generally improv your way through a level on skill alone. I generally only wanted to play through a game once, and sonic always felt very jarring, like the level design forced me to stop because I didn't know there was going to be 3 random reversals and a loop. The good feeling parts were almost autoscrollers. The challenging parts tended to involve sonic moving very slowly with his awkward jump physics.
Curious if someone can fill me in on what I was missing. I tried Sonic Mania recently and felt the same general frustration.
I was a big fan of Sonic 1 & 2 in my childhood. The levels definitely took some repetition to learn. The payoff, and why I enjoyed them, was that when you were good at the game and knew the level, you'd speed through at a tremendous rate, far faster than any game before ever let you move, and in a really satisfying way with lots of noise and fireworks. So it was really novel in that sense. (Also, fantastic music.) The games didn't reward you much for secrets, unlike the Mario family; the point was always speed.
Not a coincidence, the first 2 Sonic episodes had their music created by the lead composer of one of the most famous Japanese bands, Dreams Come True, who went on to make hits after hits locally.
Michael Jackson was reported to work on Sonic 3's (and Sonic 3 & Knuckles's) [0] music but wasn't officially credited (different reasons have been reported).
The music for Sonic 3 is sometimes attributed as one of the reasons why it has been left out of retro collections ant hasn't been re-released[1].
The music is the reason Sonic 3 isn't included. There was a PC collection that included Sonic 3 but had different music.
It also wasn't just Michael Jackson that contributed to Sonic 3's sound track. It was a number of producers who were associated with Jackson. Particularly so after Jackson left the project. The Ice Cap Zone is a really good example of this because it's virtual a verbatim 16-bit recording of Hard Times by the Jetzons (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9sdsclDwas)
I mean they did a bit - Sonic 2 you could become Super Sonic (invincible) pretty easily, and in Sonic 3 & Knuckles you had to find Giant Rings to be able to get to Super Sonic.
The challenge is to maintain momentum through the whole level. I can get through a lot of Sonic 2 levels without stopping, and for that generation of game to achieve that feeling of speed was very unique.
Also, if anyone out there hasn't played a Sonic game since the original few... check out Sonic Mania. It's largely an homage, but it's very well done.
But is it correct to say that maintaining momentum is basically not an intended outcome when playing a new level? Like if you just want to get through the game once, no amount of skill will let you do this without fairly detailed prior knowledge of the level. That just seemed really shitty to me.
Yeah as a new player you get some tastes of continued momentum, and in some early levels you can stumble into a path where you run through almost the whole thing, but you're going to get stopped at various points throughout the game.
You couldn't save your progress in the original sonic games, so if you liked the game you ended up playing through it a lot. There are a lot of various paths through the levels.
I don't find it shitty or not really, just a different game mechanic.
Yeah, Sonic isn't ALL about speed. There are parts when you can go balls out, but on your first playthrough those will be rare. Sonic really was supposed to be a "better Mario" so his games are platformers first and speed games second. Just play it carefully, like an ordinary platformer, and learn the patterns the levels use to guide you along. Rack up a few lives and faff about with the physics to get a feel for what Sonic can do and how these abilities can negotiate the terrain. It's not all chaos. Hint: Higher paths tend to have fewer obstructions, so stay high if you can.
As you play through the games again, you can learn to get through them faster. You gotta learn to play scales before you can effectively improvise. And yes, the idea is to play them again; back in the day almost no one said "I only play a game once and then I'm done with it". We couldn't afford to buy very many game cartridges for our systems, so we played the same ones over and over, and that afforded us plenty of opportunity to "git gud" enough to learn how to speedrun Sonic, Mario, and other such games. And games were designed to have a bit of longevity to them and to be challenging enough that people would need multiple playthroughs to develop skill.
The Sonic games are a bit like rhythm games. By playing multiple times you will identify patterns and eventually flow through them which can be very satisfying. Also while playing levels the first time you will stumble into some of these patterns by design (e.g. bouncing onto an enemy even though you only intended to jump over an obstacle).
When I played Sonic 1 and 2 as an adult, I couldn’t tell if it was supposed to be more fun going as fast as possible or slowing down and collecting stuff. Loved the games as a kid, but couldn’t enjoy it as an adult.
Sonic 3D Blast however was more fun to me since you’re exploring a level rather than holding right arrow.
That too. Mario levels tend to be designed such that you have segments where you run through and if you play the intended optimal route you'll collect all the coins. They mark the path.
Sonic does this thing where there's just a bunch of rings and you almost certainly won't get all of them.
I agree. When I first played Jazz Jackrabbit, it seemed like an interesting gimmick for a platformer for the character movement to be based on speed, but since, in a side-view 2D platformer, you can’t actually see what is ahead of the character more than a screenful, this represents too short a time to react to anything. It’s like a game made only for speedrunners who want to play the same level again and again to memorize it and get the best possible route. This was not how I played games, so I never played it any more.
Since SRB2 is using a 3D view, it seems that you can maintain the speed design while still have reasonable chance to react in time, since you can see what is actually ahead of the character.
Most of the games of that era employed memorization as part of the game play because it was an easy way to prolong the life of the game given the hardware limitations of the day. Take your example:
> Whereas in a mario game you can generally improv your way through a level on skill alone.
The NES Mario's are notorious for being evil to those who haven't learned the levels. There's literal dead ends that will kill you if you chose the wrong path. Even the later SNES titles will have hidden stages that cannot be reached via improv alone.
Classic Sonic games are based on momentum and not speed. The aim isn't to run through the level as soon as physically possible; speed is only one (small) attribute to the games overall qualities.
Wow. This project is now more than 20 years old. I recall playing this when I was 11(?),12(?). I’m 32 now. My first forum post ever - under this moniker, lostgame - is from their forums 21 years ago.
I actually consider SRB2 to be the greatest 3D Sonic game of all time - obviously including SEGA’s poor efforts - due to the fact that it’s the only one that actually successfully managed to convert the Genesis/MD style of Sonic gameplay into 3D, preserving its sense of speed and exploration in ways that Sonic Adventure 1/2, Heroes, Sonic Colours, etc - just never did.
Even the widely-heralded ‘best 3D Sonic game’ Sonic Unleashed, spends literally half the game as a beat-em-up instead of an actual Sonic game.
I dunno what the hell happened to Sonic after the megadrive days (well, I sorta do, bad management and a crumbling company) - but having grown up with him, and having been a huge fan for a long time, it’s an absolute travesty what happened to him. I’m cringing in Sonic ‘06.
The fan community has been - for so long - so much better at producing content than SEGA themselves that SEGA actually just hired the fans to make Sonic Mania.
It’s intensely embarrassing - and shows how brutally shitty of a game dev SEGA is internally - when your fans, with no budget; in their spare time - create a game engine that is so much bafflingly better than anything you’ve created in ten years with large budgets.
Check out the official GBA port of Sonic 1 vs the fan made version. There’s no excuse for any large company like SEGA to release fundamentally broken software. Especially when one fan with no budget does better in a couple weeks.
And Sonic Mania - made by fans - instead of the company that created the IP - ends up being the highest rated game in the series in 15 or so years.
Like - wow. Owch.
SEGA’s brutal business failures are one of my favourite tech stories. If you haven’t heard about it - check out the hilariously awful mid 90’s period where they released two conflicting 32-bit systems that of course ended up both being total flops and failures. (The Saturn did okay in Japan, but that’s another story.)
tl;dr - if your fans make better content than you do as a company, as has been the case with Sonic for years - there is something seriously fucking wrong with your company.
Here is the release trailer for it if you would like to get a vague sense of it in action, since there’s just screenshots on the web page: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia097A0pKNM
This is the closest thing to a 3D version of classic Sonic gameplay I've ever seen. The 3D games (starting on the Dreamcast) might as well be an unrelated series to the Mega Drive originals.
It plays surprisingly well, would have been amazing to have had a game like this in the Saturn days. There's a fan made tech demo called Sonic Z-Treme (a reimagining of the unreleased Sonic X-Treme) which shows how well the Saturn hardware can handle a Sonic style game.
Would be love to see the awesome level design of Robo Blast 2 on that engine.
I don't like Sonic R personally but some Sega / Sonic fans think it has an unfair reputation. However technical issues and game play aside, it's definitely a 3D Sonic .
While most people will remember Sonic Jam for the Mega Drive era games that featured on it, Sonic Jam did have a 3D level used to select the different content in the package and that 3D level was the prototype for one of the failed attempts to bring a 3D Sonic to the Saturn.
I also think it's worth highlighting this projects namesake too: Sonic 3D Blast. While it's isometric rather than "3D" it is definitely more sympathetic to the 2D Sonic games (which is unsurprising given Sonic 3D Blast was originally released on the Mega Drive too -- the Saturn release came later). There's also an updated ROM released from one of the developers from Traveller's Tales (the company behind Sonic 3D Blast).
Personally though, I do think Sonic Adventure keeps a lot of the original feel too. Albeit you need to look past the City parts of the Adventure Stages. Even 20+ years ago those City levels feels weird.
At this point it's also worth mentioning Sonic Generations (PS3 / Xbox 360 era) as that has some very nice moments that could be described as "Mega Drive in HD + 3D".
Only superficially. It's really more of a racing and platformer hybrid. In fact it's probably got more platformer elements than racing. Though personally I don't think the gameplay works at all.
It's still a 3D Sonic game even though it sucks :)
> Sonic Jam's 3D level is just a level select, not a full game.
I said this myself. However lets not forget that the 3D zone did have have some mini-games in it.
> Sonic 3D Blast is isometric which isn't really it either.
Indeed it's isometric (I also said that myself) but you do have movement in 3D space. It's just not 3rd person. If you want to get pedantic then arguably this fan game isn't 3D either because the Doom engine is regarded as 2.5D.
> Sonic Adventure has lots of different gameplay styles for the different characters, none of which fits classic Sonic (Sonic's levels are too on-rails)
The classic Sonic games had different gameplay styles for different characters. But like with the classic Sonic games, you don't have to play as those characters in Sonic Adventure. You can just play as Sonic if you wanted (unfortunately the same cannot be said for Sonic Adventure 2).
Also the levels are not on-rails. You have full motion in 3D space. The camera adapts to angle it towards the next path (maybe you're confusing "on-rails" with any game this isn't "open world"?) but that was because the game came from an era when controllers only had one analogue stick and game developers were still figuring out how to do 3D on consoles.
> Sonic Generations is extremely on-rails, while the classic Sonic levels are classic Sonic in how they play, but including being 2D gameplay :)
Yeah Generations is on-rails but it's still 3D. To be honest I think this style of 3D suites Sonic better than open world.
> Sonic Robo Blast 2 is the first game I've seen that: 1) has full 3D movement and 2) classic Sonic exploratory level design.
I think you're being too restrictive in your definitions here to suit your conclusion. For example of the games you've dismissed are more 3D than the Doom engine and have more exploratory level design than many of the classic Sonics. Sonic R for example is all about exploration (which, to be honest, is one of it's issues given it's a timed game). Sonic Adventure had Adventure Stages that were all about exploration. And there's a whole plethora of bad 3D Sonic games where the emphasis is on exploration. Then when you look back at the original Sonics, they actually weren't about exploration, they were a path from A->B. Sure you had a few forks in the path but all the forks converged on the end. If you wanted exploration then there were plenty of better suited platformers (like Super Mario Bros) that had more secrets, hidden levels, multiple exits on a level, etc...none of which Sonic had (and I say this as a massive Sonic fanboy!)
What this game does that none of the 3D Sonics have done is gone for the heavily pixelated 16-bit style colour palette. Which is cute but honestly without modern lighting effects (which the Doom engine doesn't have) that actually makes the game harder to play is it's harder to distinguish between platforms in the distance. I don't mean this as a negative against the game, it's intended to be a homage to the 16-bit eta games. I just say this to point out that there is a reason why the 3D Sonics are styled the way they are.
Back when I was a kid I made and released Sonic Doom, a partial conversion WAD that kinda turned you into Sonic, with appropriate music, sounds, and some graphics. The general reaction ranged from "it's cheesy" to "it's blasphemous". Yeah, people took their Sonic deadly seriously, even in the 90s. But it served as the base/inspo that led others to create one of the greatest 3D Sonic games of all time, even better than many of Sega's official releases, so I'm a bit proud of my small contribution to this project.
The problem with projects like these is that once they become popular, they get a cease and desist letter and they're forced to stop.
This means that the effort behind this game will be in vain just because they decided to use trademarked elements of the Sonic franchise.
An example of what to do instead is this StarFox-inspired game that does not use any elements from the StarFox franchise: https://exzodiac.net/ . By respecting intellectual property, they can publish and monetize their game. I am not affiliated with that project.
I agree that's the norm, however, Sega's attitude to Sonic fangames seems to be the exception that proves the rule.
They are surprisingly receptive to the community, and in the case of Christian Whitehead, began to contract him for ports, and then eventually a Sega-approved, fan-made game; Sonic Mania.
Well, this thing has been in development since 1998![0]
Furthermore, SEGA has historically been very lenient with the Sonic community, where you can see prototypes of the games out in the wild being discussed [1], a yearly fangaming/ROM hacking contest [2][3] and a lot more. And of course you have 16-bit remakes and Sonic Mania, where former modders ended up being scouted by SEGA to work on official games. While SEGA could change their instance some day, I believe the current situation is beneficial to them, as even their marketing team (i.e the official Sonic twitter) is made up of former fandom members.
StarFox is Nintendo and they're famously aggressive in protecting their IP. Sonic, however, is owned by Sega who are famously laid back about fans using building stuff like this. In fact the Sega game Sonic Mania (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_Mania) was made by fans after Sega contacted them to work on a Sonic 25th anniversary game based on the quality of those fans work on their hacked ROMs.
> That's a good outcome but Sega can change their stance at any moment
They could. But they've already had a long history of not doing that. So while the risk is there, it is definitely less risky than doing it with (for example) Nintendo IP.
And to be honest I don't consider "Sega might change their minds" as a good enough reason not to do something. Intellectual property laws are already broken enough without suggesting people shouldn't engage with assets from the few companies that are more generous to their fans, just in case those companies change their mind. That feels like a senseless loss to me.
> And they still have to like the game to let you publish it.
While they are releasing the source, assets and some precompiled binaries for free, I don't think it's fair to say it's being "published" because generally when that term is used with regards to gaming it means something a lot different to releasing a project on GitLab.
Semantics aside there's always going to be risk with a fan projects. However suggesting they release with original assets misses the point of these projects. They're exist because of the parent project not in spite of it. Sure they could release an original game with the same mechanics but different assets, however the point of this is a re-imagining of Sonic...specifically Sonic. Releasing this with original assets would undermine the point that this is intended to be a Sonic game (albeit an unofficial one).
It's a little like asking a Queen tribute act to play original music. The point that band was formed was to cover Queen's music. I do understand that music royalties solves this problem, somewhat, so the analogy isn't water tight. But I hope you understand the sentiment behind it.
To go back to the StarFox example you gave in your original post, the aim of that project was to publish a commercial game rather than something for fan service. So the aims are different between that and this Sonic game (and this is also why I made the distinction about this Sonic game not being "published" even though technically speak it is).
I would like to point that SRB2 is already somewhat "popular". It's been in development since at least 1999 and has an enormous community. I remember playing it online around 2006 and, at that time, the game already had a big community: I quickly found non-US/Europe servers filled with human players.
Sega may change its mind any time, of course, but it won't be just because the project got popular: for its niche, it's already.
The licence is interesting, as Sega seem to not have any copyright, but the trademarks, such as Sonic and Tails, are retained. So it mostly operates like free software, but if you wanted to sell it, you'd have to remove the trademarked elements.
Just the other day I saw Doom Shinobi[1], which is impressive but there's far more impressive stuff by far, SRB2 being one of them, and another one being... Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart[2].
This is the power of a well-known, well-written, open-source engine. It was best-in-class when it was released ~30 years ago. It still works, and hobbyist gamers don't care if the graphics are a little antiquated.
zdoom/gzdoom are really full-featured 3D engines now. They can scale down to play original Doom content, but they also support full 3D models, colored lighting, sloped surfaces, and even room over room. The reason to use a doom engine like this is that level creation is still a 2D draw out each sector task, which is a lot simpler and easier to pick up vs. modern engine's fully immersive 3D modeled level creation.
For those that would like to see how smooth the game can be, I highly encourage to watch the AGDQ speedrun of the game where they explain a lot of mechanics: https://youtu.be/Z41SIqcsJVU
Duke used portals, and even supported slopes, albeit quite surprisingly slope calculations performed floating point math making Duke 3D the first game requiring FPU for smooth play (5 months before Quake). Any time you see slope on the screen in Duke 3D on an FPUless system your FPS will tank. NexGen Nx586 is the best example, a 90MHz Pentium level CPU dropping down to 10fps on first level of the game (roof with sloped vents).
gzdoom has portal support for doing room over room: https://zdoom.org/wiki/Portal With stacked sectors you can make truly room over room 3D looking things, check out the walkway on this end of level fight and how the player takes elevators up to it to get powerups, and then back down to fight the enemy wave: https://youtu.be/PjWnVYhzCmQ?t=2450
Curious if someone can fill me in on what I was missing. I tried Sonic Mania recently and felt the same general frustration.