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[spinningbuster98]

put “top 5” anything in my ask and i will answer ok go

[spinningbuster98]

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles (Knuckles) Part 2: Knuckles hates the circus

Now I know that unlike Sonic he doesn’t chuckle (yeah sure), but what does Knuckles have against the circus? I don’t understand why his treck through the stage has him pretty much skip 90% of the thing, was Carnival Night just not designed with him in mind?

Other than that though everything else is fine, ice Cap I like how his act 2 focuses on the bottom portion of the stage and I like how different act 2 of Launch Base is with him. It’s appropriate that he gets to fight two versions of the miniboss, after Sonic only fought one with the other two being left inactive if you noticed.

What’s less appropriate is me dying all of a sudden for no good reason because Knuckles just happened to clip through the floor as I was falling

Ok let’s go there

If we wanna talk about an “objective flaw” that Sonic 3 has is that the game is...honestly pretty damn glitchy

Now I know full well that the whole “Sonic is a glitchy, rushed mess of a series lol” take is something that Sonic fans are sick of hearing but...guys there is a degree of truth in that statement and it cannot be denied. Sonic games, even in the early days, have always had at least a certain degree of rough edges. Sonic 1 and 2 were pretty minor with this, at worst there were some physics related shenanigans but nothing too noticeable. Sonic CD was pretty problematic though, with some winky collision detection at points and noticeable slowdown when things got too hectic

Sonic 3 might just be the worst of the classics in this area and Sega must’ve known this because even the International manual mentions something along the lines of Robotnik setting some traps that might be impossible to escape from without resetting the game....which is a cute way of saying you might get softlocked while playing this and I can confirm

Now I don’t wanna say it’s as bad as Sonic 06, but every time, every SINGLE time I play Sonic 3 SOMETHING happens. Whether it’s my dying for no reason at all like what happened here or in a previous video while in the Death Egg, me getting crushed for standing too close to a crusher even though I wasn’t actually crushed by it, clipping through some terrain because I was going too fast forcing me to restart (this happened recently to me twice during another Knuckles playthrough I was doing, during Hydrocity Act 2, and another time it happened while I was messing around with the Hyper Dash as Sonic) and my most detested and frequent occurence: coming at a complete stop while rolling in some specififc loops or up some small hills which is the absolute worse: you lose all momentum and speed for no reason in a game that’s all about momentum and speed

I don’t know what it is with Sonic and glitches, the obvious answer that most on the Internet would give is that Sega likes to rush out games and that Sonic Team is clearly incompetent, but while there is truth in the former statement (as I’ll touch on later), the latter just doesn’t make sense to me: you may use this explanation for current Sonic Team, but this is the Sonic Team that brought us the original games, Sonic 3 itself, glitches aside, is one hell of a game, these guys are by no means incompetent so what happened? Honestly I think it’s partly due to Sonic’s inherently speedy nature, which makes it way easier for physics related bugs to occur.

Honestly for as much as I love Sonic 3 to death I...don’t really have a defense for this. When I was a kid I would rationalize the bugs as this just being an older game, but not only were Sonic 1 and 2 not this buggy, no other big game from this era had all of these issues. Super Metroid, Super Mario World, Donkey Kong Country, Mega Man X,all of these games do have glitches (as all games do), but they’re mostly minor stuff that you have to go out of your way to trigger and can actually be beneficial for speedrunning. If someone were to play this game for the first time and call it mediocre because they happened to run into these bugs frequently...I wouldn’t know what to tell them. I personally believe that Sonic 3′s overall design, gameplay, music and presentation are so top of their class that it allows me to mostly ignore the rough parts, but depending on one’s own sensibility regarding glitches this might not be enough.

Of course I do have an idea as to why Sonic 3 is so much buggier when compared to its predecessors and I believe it’s mostly due to its complicated development and it having to be split in two halves and I really wanted to focus on the latter part

Whenever I hear someone talk about Sonic 3 split nature they usually go “oh man lock on technology was so cool!”

And I’m like: they split a whole game in two parts and made you buy both of them. They sold you an incomplete game only to sell you the rest later on. This is almost the same shit companies like EA and Ubisoft pull nowadays, had the 90s had DLC that’s what Sonic & Knuckles would have been. People trash modern gaming for this, and rightly so, so why does nobody ever talk about this? And I’m not saying all of this because I want to bitch about how “Sega bad” and get a free cookie from Sonic Twitter, I know about the context behind this game, I know about Sega’s deadline due to their deal with McDonalds (which, unless I’m missing some details, feels very stupid to me and proof that Sega’s decision making was pretty faulty even back then) and I know about the difficulties of putting the whole game on a single cartridge without skyrocketing the manufacturing price. Game development can get insanely complicated and messy and I genuinely have respect for Sonic Team for the quality of the final product, especially given the overall conditions in which they were working.

But in the end there’s no getting around the fact that consumers back then had to essentially buy two games to get one

Sonic 3 alone cost about 70 bucks in North America back then

(This is from a magazine from 1994)

I couldn’t find similar data on Sonic & Knuckles but I think it’s safe to assume that it had a similar price tag, meaning that, if you wanted to buy the complete Sonic 3 experience, you had to fork over roughly 100 dollars at the very least. Keep in mind: this is all without taking inflation into account

Now some might say that none of this matters anymore because nowadays you can buy the whole game cheaply off of Steam or something. I find this logic flawed: when judging a game you need to at least take into account the context in which it was made, as that was the only frame of reference that its devs could have while making it as nobody could predict the future

Let’s put it this way: consider all of the beyond half finished trash that some companies nowadays like to throw on the market, while patching it like a year later or something. Now consider that some of those games might get rereleased 30 years from now more cheaply and with their full content from the get go. Would that suddenly make everything ok? No? Then not even Sonic 3 should be excempt from this

Now I’m not saying all of this because I wanna imply that Sonic 3 is actually bad and a cash grab and Sonic was never good yadda yadda

I’m saying that while Sonic 3 the videogame is, from a qualitative standpoint, a phenomenal experience, one of the very best videogames from the 90s (though with some noticeable rough edges), Sonic 3 the commercial product was pretty shoddily, and perhaps even greedily depending on how you wanna look at things, handled. This is an indelible part of the game’s history and I think it should be talked about. For the past years I’ve seen Sonic fans bitch and moan about the prices of games like Forces or Superstars because they’re too high for games that are so short and clearly rushed etc. And they might even have a point or two but I find it absolutely unfair that Sonic 3, which has the same issues in this regard but on an even bigger scale, is never mentioned, purely because it came out when all the people who are currently bitching about the industry’s problems were kids who had their parents but them stuff and this kind of discourse was practically non-existence. It’s a matter of fairness is what I’m saying

[spinningbuster98]

All that you've just said would be perfectly fine were it not for the overall context in which Forces itself came out

Ask yourself this: how would Unleashed Tails have acted during that scene? Colors Tails? Lost World?

Remember: in Unleashed Tails was already acting the way he does in Forces ( well mostly) WITHOUT all of these possible psychological and narrative reasons that you just mentioned. And while some may argue that this makes his portrayal in Unleashed even worse (I'd agree tbh), my point is that the characterization that we see in Forces is mostly the same it had already been for the past few games. All of the narrative justification that the story gives in order to explain him acting the way that he does in the game feel just like that: justifications. It's not that they don't make sense or that I'm saying you're grasping at straws here, make no mistake, but they feel like they're trying to explain something that they know is usually not the norm even though truth be told he doesn't feel all that different from previously, which is why the game's attempt at contextualizing his demeanor fall flat to me: he's been like that for quite some time already

I literally cannot stand these fucking people I hate them so much it drives me insane

[spinningbuster98]

There's a fundemental difference between having to tell yourself not to be scared as you're facing death in the face, only to actually do so in the end...and just cower in fear

Context is also key: in SA1 Tails was going to battle Eggman all on his own (while also having to save a whole city all on his own) for the very first time, so of course he'd be more scared. By the time SA2 rolls around he faces Eggman twice on his lonesome with no hesitation.

True, Forces tried to contextualize Tails' behavior by saying that he had "lost it" due to what had happened to Sonic earlier, which would've been fine, except:

It's a pretty bad case of show don't tell, as we don't spend any time looking at Tails' mental health before or even after that scene

This scene happened way after Unleashed, another game where he cowered in the face of danger for even less reasons, which followed a trend of him no longer being an active figher, so the Forces scene doesn't feel like a voluntary character moment that makes sense with who Tails is, but just a reiteration of the direction that the character had taken years prior

I literally cannot stand these fucking people I hate them so much it drives me insane

[spinningbuster98]

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles (Knuckles) Part 1: & Knuckles

Knuckles has always been my second favorite character to play as in the 2D games. Some say that Sonic is underwhelming when compared to the other two but honestly? The insta shield is pretty fun to use (although also pretty unintuitive), the shield abilities are also cool, and he gets the most amount of content here alongside the best Super and Hyper forms

What I like about Knuckles is how his glide fundementally is pretty fast and also influenced by momentum, and while his climbing is pretty slow (until you get Super Knuckles then the problem gets solved) it’s unlimited and unlike Tails’ flight you don’t have to murder your thumb while performing it

But of course the best part of Knuckles’ gameplay, and the one thing that no other game afterwards has truly emulated, is the way it feels like both a hard mode and a continuation of Sonic’s gameplay

Knuckles has his own routes within stages, bosses are a bit tougher both due to his nerfed jump and because they tend to use trickier tactics. It’s still fundementally the same adventure but it absolutely also has its own identity, and the fact that Knuckles gets his own routes makes these places feel more “real” in a sense (his Marble Garden boss is cheap though)

Tails is fine, certainly much better than in Sonic 2 where he was just a slower Sonic who couldn’t even fly during gameplay or turn Super, but he really feels like the third wheel here: he gets no unique routes save for some very minor stuff, the Marble Garden boss is awkward as hell with him, he has to get all the Super Emeralds just to go Super which is stupid and makes the first half of the game actually a bit harder (I don’t understand what people mean when they say he’s the easy mode), and while his flight can be pretty broken, it’s slow, your descent is slow and you gotta murder your thumb to perform it. The fact that both Sonic and Knuckles get their own unique final bosses, while Tails simply ends his playthrough fighting Sonic’s penultimate one, really feels underwhelming

[spinningbuster98]

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles Ending: Y'got duped Chuckles!

Lava Reef has issues with how often it likes to pelt you with fire but having a Fire Shield can mitigate this a lot. Honestly a bigger issue is the fact that the level constantly has you stop because of those enemies disguised as rocks but other than that it’s solid and with the most distinctions between its two acts

Sky Sanctuary is not my favorite but it’s pretty cool what with its theme of ascension as you’re chasing the Death Egg, the call backs to the Sonic 1 and 2 bosses which gives this a sense of finality as the last of the Mega Drive trilogy and if you’re playing as Tails you can just skip most of this stage and all the boss fights except the last

The Death Egg is, aesthetically, my least favorite of the 16 bit final stages. The first act is nice with that Death Star inspired background but the Earth in the background of Act 2 looks ugly! It has no visible landmasses, only clouds that even look blurry! However gameplay wise it is the most balanced final stage so far, being much more thought out than the liked of Metropolis and Metallic Madness. It even has a gravity room that has you bouncing around everywhere and....die sometimes when the screen scrolls too quickly....did the game process too much blast there? Oh well that’s for another video...

The battle against Eggman’s mech is pretty simple and much easier than the one in Sonic 2, but still very memorable and climactic due to its multiple phases, the music and the very menacing design...which actually led me to some observation on this game’s artstyle but I’ll handle those at a later time. (also that last phase where you have to stop Eggman from escaping is cheap because on your first time you won’t know that the floor will immediately stop crumbling upon landing that last hit which will probably lead you to fall as the screen abruptly stops scrolling)

Doomsday Zone is basically a borderline interactive cutscene, hell once you reach the second phase you pretty much only have to mash buttons and that’s it. It’s style over substance...that I am 100% fine with because the game earned this moment. For all intents and purposes you’ve already fought the final boss, this is just the cherry on top, you get cool visuals and a cool setup combined with one of the best tracks on the Mega Drive! The only criticism I have is that the game doesn’t really tell you that you have to mash buttons in order to accellerate, which made 7 year old me extremely confused and unable to beat this at first

One of the most memorable aspects of this game is the way it tells its story. Now the story itself is pretty standard fare for 90s platformers, it’s barely any different from the previous games’, but it’s the WAY it is presented that makes it so special. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any other platformer of this era utilize quick in-game cutscenes that don’t interrupt the gameplay to tell a story. Stuff like the act transitions or Knuckles figuring out the truth or him looking on as Sonic and Tails make their leave with a small smile on his face gives the game so much more character, and that’s without going into Knuckles’ own side! (which is coming next, don’t worry!)

In fact I’d go as far as to say that Sonic 3 & Knuckles actually has better indirect storytelling than Super Metroid! I love that game as much as this one, but I never understood what people meant when they say that it has unmatched background storytelling, because Super Metroid doesn’t really have much of that, it mostly has background LORE, like the Wrecked Ship being implied to be a derelict ship that brought Zebes’ Chozo on the planet, or the Mochtroids being implied to be defective Metroid clones that the Space Pirates threw in Maridia like garbage, but that’s not telling a story that’s implying background lore. The only times when Super Metroid actually tells a silent story is during the intro on the Ceres Colony, when Samus makes planet fall and naturally during the iconic ending sequence. Don’t get me wrong: that ending is so good it blows even Sonic 3′s out of the water with how emotionally impactful it is in spite of its simplicity...but every other time Sonic 3 is much more consistent with the way it keeps presenting its story as something always happening to keep the ball rolling, unlike Super Metroid where there isn’t much of a narrative reason why Samus goes from point A to B. Of course that is because the game is a non-linear adventure game, with something like Fusion serving as an opposite example and something that actually beats out Sonic 3 in terms of indirect storytelling, but still, as far as the 90s are concerned, I believe Sonic 3 to be the king in this aspect

[spinningbuster98]

I'm sick of internet negativity, so let's combat it: reblog this and saying something nice/pay a compliment to the prev in the tags.

[spinningbuster98]

I'm sick of internet negativity, so let's combat it: reblog this and saying something nice/pay a compliment to the prev in the tags.

[spinningbuster98]

One must imagine Knuckles succeeding

[spinningbuster98]

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles Part 3: Taste the rainbow!

I’ve always thought it was pretty funny how Sega used to market Sonic as the anti-Mario, yet here we have a level with giant mushrooms. Anyway Mushroom Hill is a fine one, very cozy and very big and interesting to explore, which you’ll have to if you wanna get the Emeralds as soon as possible!

Flying Battery is good, but a bit overrated honestly? It’s the most gray looking level in the game and it’s pretty boxed in in terms of design despite the number of alternate routes it has. It also features the most ridiculous setpiece in the game: Eggman? You’re damaging your own ship with that beam! And then you gotta wait until it stops crashing before you can start the boss fight!

Finally: Sandopolis. Act 1 is serviceable but everyone hates act 2. I used to as well, but I’ve grown to quite like it actually! It’s gimmick, while treaturous, does not go against the core gameplay principles as it encourages you to go quickly before the lights go completely out, it’s got a nice sense of atmosphere and a nice dose of challenge for what is at the end of the day one of the final stages in the game. The only thing I don’t like is the block pushing, but most of the time it’s pretty brief, with only Knuckles really having an obnoxious section

The way you get the Emeralds in this game is, as everyone knows, the best one in any Sonic game. Finding Giant Rings is fun and rewarding and it keeps being rewarding even after you get all the Emeralds since they will then award you with 50 rings each, essentially granting you a free Super transformation. It encourages exploration in a perfectly natural and fun way.

As for Blue Sphere there was actually a time when I didn’t like this very much. Sure it’s much better technically than the half pipe, but due to its more puzzle focused approach I found that, once you knew the solution, all challenge went away and it was just about going through the motions. I changed my mind in recent years after I started going for those Perfect bonuses, as those require you to complete the entire maze and play skillfully, which makes it all not only harder but also much more fulfilling in my eyes. I only wish that the game gave you something more than just 50k points for doing a Perfect run, but this is a case where the journey makes the destination worth it. i think it’s telling of Blue Sphere’s overall quality that it works not only as a Special Stage but as a minigame in its own right, which Sonic Team must’ve known given how many of these you unlock by Locking Sonic & Knuckles to Sonic 1

Hyper Sonic! Now look I’m not one of those who cry for his return because this or that, but I think he’s phenomenal from a gameplay angle, because he has all of Super Sonic’s advantages and weaknesses but combined with a multidirectional air dash that allows you to break the levels even further and is so, SO fun to abuse! I only wish that the game, y’know...TOLD you about it! As a kid I thought that Hyper Sonic was just a pallette swap of Super, I only accidentally found out about the Hyper Dash, and it took me years to find out accidentally on Youtube that you could aim it! Sonic is also the only character who, I think, gets something truly worthwhile from getting all the Super Emeralds, as you’ll see

I wanna add though that, while I don’t cry about Hyper Sonic’s absence in later games, the reasons that have been given as to his absence are generally both silly and self contradicting. Oh we don’t wanna risk kids suffering from seizures, but we have no problem porting the hell out of Sonic 1 and CD, the former having Special Stages that look like acid trips and the latter having Special Stage 6, which features an entire screen that has the same issues as Hyper’s little sprite. We don’t want Sonic to look too much like DBZ but we’ll make sure that all the games released during the 2000s have stuff like a character blatantly inspired by Trunks, lots of Super Sonic final battles, an edgy rival, a plethora of secondary transformations and most recently having Sonic literally go Super Saiyan 2!

I guess that the inner machinations of Sonic Team truly are an enigma...

[spinningbuster98]

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles Part 2: Eggman's hands are rated E for everybody!

I used to dislike Carnival Night as a kid because I thought it went on for too long, but nowadays I actually think it’s the strongest of the Classic games’ bouncy stages, not going too crazy with the bumpers while still having a nice dose of platforming and speed. Plus it’s full of cool little shortcuts and secrets! And yeah: the barrels. The way you are supposed to use them is not communicated well at all, but honestly? I don’t think they really hurt the level in the end, as once you figure them out they stop being an issue, unlike the spinning tops in Marble Garden. About the only thing I don’t like here is the music: generic circus music with a hip hop remix? Ehh. I could never tell the difference between the two acts’ versions

Icecap is fantastic, even though it really has no business being so fun. In a game with so many big and expansive stages, Icecap is really tiny and linear, especially Act 1 where, once you figure out the gimmick, you’re pretty much just going on a straight line. This is one case I think where aesthetics, music and overall style are all that’s needed to make a fun and memorable level, which is certainly helped by this stage being an exception, with another example being Hydrocity Act 2, which means that the game knows not to forego substance in favor of style overall, it just likes to mix things up from time to time

Launch Base shares similar obstacle placement issues as Marble Garden, but I find it less obnoxious here because it’s technically a “final level” of sorts so it’s more justified, plus the fire shield can at least help you against the flamethrowers and there are no annoying gimmicks. Besides it’s pretty memorable from a story perspective given how it features the Death Egg looming ominously in the background throughout Act 1, only for you to stop its launch in Act 2, but not before taking a short ride in Eggman’s hover pod (also screw you Knuckles, I hope you got a nice bath)

The Big Arms boss fight (yeah I’m playing Sonic 3 Complete, because why shouldn’t I?), while iconic in its own way, is also...not the best? It’s got a similar issue as most bosses from SA1 in the sense that you have to wait for him to first do something in order to damage him. Now this is better than SA1′s bosses because at least it tests your precision given the narrow hitbox, but since he only comes down to grab you twice (or four times with Knuckles, which is why he has the better fight imo) before performing an attack when you can’t harm him unless you have a Super form and position yourself just right, this makes it more tedious than fun, heck I’d argue that the bigger danger here is the possibility of getting a Time Over!

The music on the other hand is phenomenal, genuinely one of my favorite tracks in the entire series, hell Eggman’s theme in this game is actually my favorite for the character, even more than the likes of his theme from SA2 and 06! Sonic 3 in general I think has my favorite OST of the Mega Drive trilogy. It’s really tough to decide since they’re all very good and memorable, and tbf Sonic 3 does have Carnival Night, which is a dud, but stuff like Angel Island, Hydrocity Act 2, Marble Garden, Icecap, Flying Battery, Lava Reef, Doomsday Zone, it’s such a varied OST too given how now each Act has its own variation!

[spinningbuster98]

What are your favorite games to speedrun?

Super Metroid, Metroid Fusion, Metroid Zero Mission, Metroid Dread

...yeah not much variety. Surprisingly not Sonic, that's because I don't really like speedrunning in and of itself, as it often forces you to pretty much skip a lot of content that a game may have to offer

I like speedrunning in 2D Metroid only when I'm also doing a 100% item run, because in that case it's not just about going fast and mastering movement, but it's also about memorising the map layout and knowing which routes to take to minimise backtracking, knowing when to acquire an item and when to skip it for later when you'll have an ability that will allow you to get it quicker etc. To an extent this is also the case with Sonic level design and its multiple routes structure, but in this case you'll still only experiece one specific part of the level because it's the fastest, in Metroid with this approach you have to explore about 80% of the map at least to get everything as quickly as possible

This approach allows me to both go fast while also making me experience all that a game has to offer, which in turn makes the speedrun much more interesting and 2D Metroids are the only games that I know of that do this. The only thing that comes close is Classic Resident Evil which has a similar gameplay loop, but character movement is nowhere near as fast or interesting so I'm not as motivated there, the only one I speedran once to unlock an extra mode was OG RE2

[spinningbuster98]

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles Part 1: Can't have anything on Angel Island!

I’ve had my ups and downs with Sonic as a series, in fact I’ll be brutally honest: for as important as this series was to my formative years I’ve had more downs than ups, to the point that I’ve even found myself disliking games I used to love over time. There has been very little that I’ve enjoyed from this franchise during the past 10 years, to the point that I struggle to define myself as a Sonic fan anymore

However!

If there’s one thing I can still put quite a lot of faith into, even after all these years, is Sonic 3′s quality

Sonic 3 is not just the best Sonic game ever, it is, in my eyes, one of the best videogames ever created, and this isn’t something that I’m saying just because I grew up with this game, as you’ll see in the future I’m no stranger to being extremely critical against games I grew up with that I used to enjoy (or even viceversa). The fact that this game is not usually included in top ten best games lists alongside other famous gems like Super Metroid, Ocarina of Time, Resident Evil 4 and the like is, I think, one of the greatest injustices ever done to this series, though I do have an idea as to why that is, but more on that at a later time

The level design in this game is so gargantuan yet intricate and thought out, which is actually something that I have to remind myself of, given that I’m so used to it now. Not only are these way bigger than levels from the previous games but I’m pretty sure that Sonic 3 features the largest levels of any platformer of its generation. Of course I might be wrong but I haven’t played any other game of that era with levels this huge, not Super Mario World, not Shinobi, not Mega Man and not Castlevania. When I was younger I actually used to see this as a flaw because, on average, these levels generally took me around 5-6 minutes to complete, which is longer than the average Sonic level length, but with hindsight these levels have so many secret shortcuts and pathways that you can cut down that time pretty substantially once you know what you’re doing. It certainly helps that these secret paths are not too hard to find for anyone who is at least halfway familiar with how level design in platformers works, it’s the usual stuff: some walls look a bit different than others or maybe you can see a trail of rings go through one. Many of these levels are actually quite fun to explore and the game knows how to reward that curiosity as you’ll see in the future. All of this basically makes Sonic 3 a much better exploration game than Sonic CD, which is pretty humiliating given that Sonic 3 isn’t even trying to make exploration its main focus

Despite this I actually think that Angel Island is the weakest of the classic starting levels. It’s a good level don’t get me wrong, but it’s smaller and overall more linear than Green Hill, Emerald Hill and Palmtree Panic. Though because of its more contained nature it does perhaps make for a better tutorial level for any beginner. I especially like how Act 2 starts with you always (well almost always, sometimes you stop rolling because of collision detection issues, more on those at a later time...) crashing through a wall leading to a Giant Ring, as a way to subtly communicate to the player about their existence and how to usually find them 

Hydro city is peak Sonic water level: the lesson introduced in Aquatic Ruin about trying to stick to the upper routes to avoid going into the water is mostly kept (though unless you can use Tails to fly Sonic up at the start you won’t be able to access the upper route right away with him and you’ll have to go underwater for a while, but not too long), the submerged temple-city aesthetic is pretty unique and act 2 is just a flat out fun old time like Chemical Plant Act 2

Marble Garden is, unfortunately, my least favorite level in the game. Partly because of its pretty drab looks but mostly due to its obstacle placement. I actually think that Sonic 3 can get worse than Sonic 2 at times with its tendency to have you crash headfirst against obstacles at mach speed. Some levels are fine with this, but others go overboard, Launch Base and Lava Reef are the other 2 major examples but I think that Marble Garden is worse because it’s just the third level and, unlike the other 2 examples, you can’t use the Fire Shield to somewhat mitigate the issue. Sure you can abuse Super forms but that’s not a proper solution you know?

The spinning tops are also pretty damn awkward to handle and, as a kid, I had no idea you could make them automatically reach their top speeds by just having them touch the ground, it’s not exactly communicated to you clearly.

[spinningbuster98]

Sonic the Hedgehog CD Ending: All action. No words

Stardust Speedway is one of those levels that you think you’d love, what with it clearly being Starlight Zone on steroids, but it just doesn’t fully stick the landing because, you guessed it, the level design is just all over the place. As a general rule of thumb: unless you’re going for the generator then stick to the lowest route since it’s the quickest and simplest. This is quite literally doing the opposite of what Sonic level design usually does but hey, that’s just how Sonic CD rolls I guess

I’ve never been a massive Metal Sonic fan per se. He’s either a non-character, basically just another tool of Eggman’s that only stands out by virtue of his concept, or whatever Heroes attempted to do with him. His design however is something that I absolutely adore. He looks straight up deadly, what with those dark eyes and spickier, sharper design that generally lacks most of Sonic’s own roundness and softness, presenting Metal as something truly dangerous and unfriendly. It’s also a pretty edgy design, perhaps the series’ first truly edgy character, a full 8 years before Shadow, yet he still follows the Classic characters’ overall design aesthetics what with his body proportions. He simultaneously looks in-line with Sonic’s world yet also unnatural to it. His boss fight is also pretty memorable and also perhaps the hardest in the game (though that’s not saying much here), which, alongside him being the one who kidnaps Amy at the starts and whose holograms you can find harassing small animals in the levels, helps to solidify him as an actual rival to Sonic. In fact, despite my thoughts on the character himself, I actually think that he makes for a better potential rival than the likes of Shadow and especially Knuckles, as his status as an Eggman robot built specifically to kill Sonic makes it easy and natural to set up situations where the two would fight without it feeling forced or stupid (just think about how, in Generations, he’s the only rival character whose fight justification doesn’t feel arbitrary, unlike Shadow “I know we’re all in a world without time but instead of trying to get to the bottom of things I’ll try to kill you now just ‘cause” the Hedgehog or Silver “but how can I know you’re the real Sonic? I know! I’ll drop a bunch of junk on your head!” the Hedgehog)

Metallic Madness is the worst stage in the game. Act 1 is fine, but Act 2 features pretty much every single issue in the game but cranked up to 11 because it’s the final level. It’s a giant goddamn mess and no amount of chibi Sonic can make me overlook this. Don’t go to the Past, I swear to God it’s even worse than the other timeframes, I always get lost in the god forsaken place. Man did Mania give this place a much needed makeover!

Fun fact: the original Sega CD version of the ending cutscene actually features sound effects at the start before playing Cosmic Eternity! I’m guessing that the later versions don’t do this because they play at higher framerates so the sound effects would be out of synch

I actually think I like the ending more than the opening: CD doesn’t have the classic all-stage medley during the credits but we actually get to see brief animated recreations of previous stages, and this is where I think that Sonic’s personality really shines, showcasing all the cute, cool and creative ways that he disposes of Badniks. I also like how, in the good ending, more specifically in the later versions, Little Planet disappears but not before emitting a bunch of sparkles that form an image of Sonic, kind of implying that it’s somewhat sentient and it’s thanking Sonic. It’s a nice way to sort of personify a literal world and make your efforts to save it from Eggman’s influence feel all the more worthwhile. Again: Sonic CD is able to give character and personality not through words but through actions

[spinningbuster98]

Sonic the Hedgehog CD Part 2: The Workbench ain't the only thing that's wacky

Ok so last time I talked about the best parts of Sonic CD

Now it’s time for the worst parts. And boy can Sonic CD be so very obnoxious

You know it: the level design is a goddamn mess. The levels are bigger sure, but they often have little rhyme or reason on how they’re built, either having you bounce around all over the place like a maniac, having you deal with some obnoxious gimmick (hi Wacky Workbench) or they are much more vertically developed than they are horizontally, meaning that if you keep going right you can literally skip most of the level, which is the case for Quartz Quadrant and some other levels.

Sonic 2′s level design was still a bit simplistic and had some issues with enemy placement, but it at least usually felt like it had focus. Sonic 1 was often basic and counterintuitive to what Sonic wanted to be but it was pretty tightly designed overall

Sonic CD feels like it was designed with MS Paint, just putting obstacles and enemies all over the place. The final result is that the levels will either be lacking or frustrating. Lacking because if you try to play them by simply going for the end goal you’ll usually find yourself just heading to the right while skipping over about 70% of the actual stage (save for exceptions like Collision Chaos and Tidal Tempest, and even then it’s debetable). Frustrating because...

Ok let’s talk about the time travel! So this is a nice example of a neat idea that wasn’t implemented very well

The idea of having to reach top speed and maintain it without stopping for a few seconds is not bad, as it requires the player to master the levels in a way, encouraging them to find the best spots to make time jumps, playing into Sonic’s core idea of gaining and maintaining speed. Unfortunately for this to work it would need for the level design to be good and, as I have altready mentioned, it’s not. Oh sure sometimes it’s as easy as finding two springs one in front of the other and bam. But generally the game pretty much asks you to explore the levels and look for ways to easily gain lots of speed through the level design itself, which requires you to explore these levels and therein lies the problem

These levels were clearily designed to be explored, given their huge sizes, but doing so is simply more tedious than fun due to their structure, which makes finding even the Badnik generators even more of a chore, hell sometimes it goes against all common sense in cases like Wacky Workbench which requires you to get crushed by fake crushers which you would never think to do because it goes against all basic game design rules, and when you factor in that there are only a few Past signs when compared to Future ones, meaning that you have only a few tries per level.

I’m gonna put this here: Sonic games are not meant to have exploration as their main focus. It’s certainly an element of Sonic game design, but to make it the main focus and force the player to comb through enormous stages that are much larger than your typical platformer’s can make the experience supremely grevious and completely shit on the pacing in a game that’s all about having a fast pace. And CD isn’t even the worst with this, not even by a mile, Advance 2 and 3 are right over, as are some of Heroes’ Chaotix missions and a lot of shit from Shadow’s game. Need I remind everyone of the Sun and Moon medals in Unleashed? Honestly the only game that has done a decent job with this approach I think is Colors, but that’s maybe for another time

But of course Sonic CD doesn’t really force you to do all of this right? That’s what the Time Stones are for! Well yeah, sure, and to be fair the Special Stages are not that bad I find, this puts us back to the first issue: we are now playing CD like a normal Sonic game, but this only highlights just how exploration-focused these levels are, as you’ll basically be ignoring most of the design through this approach. Honestly the simple fact that they included Special Stages as an alternative feels to me like they realised at one point that people would have hated the Time Travel and so they put these in at the last moment pretty much

And while the Time Travel is indeed the main source of this game’s great background storytelling...said storytelling is also not showcased quite as solidly as many say I think

Firstly there’s a small issue with how the time travel works here: you go to the Past to smash the robot generators which will, in turn, make every enemy in the level disappear both in the Past and Good Future timeframes...but not in the Present? That makes no sense

But the biggest issue I have is that the game quite simply doesn’t give you the time for the changes that you bring to fully sink in

Let me explain

Games that rely heavily on background storytelling that is generally player-initiated tend to follow what I’d call a “3-step-process”

1) You enter a level/area where things look/work a certain way

2) You perform a set of actions that cause changes

3) The game then makes sure to show you the effects that have been caused by your actions

Metroid Fusion is one of my favorite examples of this as it does this a lot: you get into an area, you run around for a bit getting accostumed to its vibe, then you either flip a switch or beat a boss and now maybe a completely new type of enemy have stormed the rea, or maybe the silhouette of a floating monster is speeding by in the background which serves to foreshadow how in a later part said monster will destroy the area. But Fusion always takes the time to have the player acclimate to the areas and their general feels both pre and post change

Sonic CD doesn’t really do this. What you are changing is effectively each Zone’s Future, yet the game gives you absolutely no reason to visit them. The only thing you shoudl ever do is go to the Past to destroy the generators, going to the Future is basically a waste of time and forces you to contend even more with the irritating Time Travel mechanic. What this mean is that the average player will not see the Bad Futures if not by accident, thus they won’t know what exactly it is that they have changed upon destroying a generator nor will you be rewarded by showing you the Good Futures. Sure the third act of ebery Zone is set in the Future and I’m sure that the developers had all this in mind, but the third acts are all stupidly short, they don’t give you enough time to truly soak in the atmosphere and they’re mostly focused on boss fights anyway. This also means that you’re likely to miss out on about half of the game’s OST. Tracks like Quartz Quadrant Good Future, Speed Highway Good Future and Metallic Madness Bad Future are among my absolute facorites...yet I barely hear them while playing because of this

I honestly think that the Present timeframes should have been scrapped as they serve no real purpose nor do they even make much sense, since Little Planet in the opening appears completely mechanised, implying it’s in its Bad Future state all throughout. I also think that the player should be instantly warped to the Good Future upon destroying a generator in order for them to fully enjoy the results of their hard work

I used to hate Sonic CD. Flat out. Yes the game looks gorgeous, it’s got great music and a nice way of telling a story, but what does any of it even matter when playing it is a chore due to some of the most off the wall level design in the series and some really irritating gimmicks? Yet this is the game that for years I’ve seen people praise to high Heavens as the best in the series, despite other games in the series getting shat on for similar or even less severe issues? I’m not trying to insult anyone who likes the game that much, more power to you, really, I’m just saying that, as far as I’m concerned, a game whose best qualities are all things that can be enjoyed without me actually playing it (I can listen to CD’s music seperately, look up screenshots of its spritework and watch the cutscenes online) then it has failed as an interactive piece of media for me, because it means that I don’t want to play it ergo I don’t want to interact with it

Now do I hate Sonic CD NOW? No not really. In fact I’d probably play this over Sonic 1 most of the time due to it being overall faster and closer to a “regular” Sonic game by comparison, and because I have gained a certain degree of weird satisfaction after years of learning the level design in order to discover the best spots to time travel (this does NOT invalidate all that I’ve said, it’s a process that took literal years for me and was not very fun, it’s just the end result that gives me satisfaction but I can’t say it was worth it overall). But it’s not because it grew up on me over time or because I gained a new appreciation for it, as was the case for me with the likes of SA2 and Colors, no it’s simply because I got used to the bad parts over years of replaying it for personal marathons. Because if you were to ask me my “objective opinion” (if there even is such a thing, I know) about Sonic CD? This is one of the weakest entries in the whole series, not bad like Sonic 06 and similar others, but below most other decent games. Pretty much a 6/10 game. I wouldn’t be able to give it much more in good conscience

[spinningbuster98]

Sonic the Hedgehog CD Part 1: Sonic CD is sponsored by Marty McFly

Oh boy, now we’re getting into some spicy territory!

My history with CD is...complicated

Unlike the other Classic titles, while I was exposed to this one at around that same time thanks to the Sonic Gems Collection, I never played it quite as much due to...reasons that will become quite clear in future parts. It’s only with the release of the Whitehead version years ago that I truly dived into this game

So let’s start with the best and most obvious parts

Firstly: the opening and closing cinematics are literally some of my favorite pieces of animation ever. (Well the uncompressed versions anyway, ‘cause the Sega CD was what it was). Not just because they’re animated beautifully but because they feature what is, to me, the gold standard of Sonic’s body language.

This Sonic is quick, adventurous and fun loving when he’s zooming around, but dead serious and determined once he notices Eggman’s effect on Little Planet

But most of all: he’s cool. He’s effortlessly cool in the way he runs around and toys with badniks, while at the same time still retaining a cutesy side to him to remind you that this is still a light hearted and fun loving cartoon character

While I’m not one of those people who thinks that Sonic should never talk (specifically Classic), there is a case to be made on how in just a few minutes’ worth of animation CD is able to tell us literally everything there is to know about Sonic’s character without having him utter a single word while the Storybook games had to devote hours long narratives to get the point across. It also further lampshades just how backwards Sega’s recent handling of Classic as a character has been, focusing completely on his cutesy side while completely neglecting his cooler one, or at least downplaying it, while one of the main reasons for the switch to Modern was because they feared that Classic was being perceived as too cute by fans at the time, but whatever that’s a topic for another time

From a graphical standpoint...yeah this game is above and beyond the best of the classics, both in general spritework (though bosses in Sonic 3 actually look better, but that might just be due to that game having actual bosses that look more imposing in general), color variation, level of detail and artstyle, which is without even mentioning the way that the game manages to tell a simple yet subtle narrative through its backgrounds but I’ll focus on that at a later time

But personally I’ve...actually never been head over heels for these graphics unlike everyone else, mostly due to a personal thing, since Sonic game move so quickly it’s usually hard for me to really focus on background details and whatnot, which isn’t helped by the one thing you’ll be looking at the most, Sonic’s sprite, pretty much being ripped straight from Sonic 1 and looking so out of place compared to the rest of the game. But again: it’s not a knock against the game, it’s just me

Musically I...think it’s good, it’s certainly the most varied and smartly utilised soundtrack in the Classic games (or even in the whole series) due to how each track ties very well to the feel of not only each Zone but also each era, but personally? When it comes to Sonic music I tend to prefer more upbeat, fast paced tracks. CD’s OST is much slower and usually pretty calming and atmospheric, which works very well for what it’s trying to accomplish, it’s just not what I personally prefer to hear in a Sonic game (and yeah I’m talking about the JPN score, it’s been ages since I’ve listened to the US tracks)

On the other hand however I like all of the vocal tracks

Sonic Boom was the first I was introduced to and it still sounds great, but over time I also gained a lot of appreciation for You can do anything. The lyrics are really cheesy and are bordering on nonesense half the time, but I like the energy it has

My absolute favorite however is Cosmic Eternity. I really wish more people would talk about this one because this is, and I’m not kidding here, one of my favorite Sonic songs in general. Right up there with the likes of Open your Heart, Live and Learn and What I’m Made of. It’s just so upbeat and uplifting, it fits both this game’s happier aspects and Sonic’s character like a glove, the latter more in the sense that it sounds like something that Sonic would sing someone to cheer them up

[spinningbuster98]

REBLOG THIS TO GIVE THE PERSON YOU REBLOGGED THIS FROM A GOLD STAR BECAUSE THEY’VE BEEN STELLAR TODAY AND THEY DESERVE IT ⭐️