#stage for the sonic characters to play around in and more like...an actual physical setting they live and fight in

[hadesknockedupintheunderworld]

I feel like Wanda serves her purpose of explaining why Wade is the way he is. Also the thumb thing was pretty funny ngl

I agree! And at the same time, they're fairly similar too. Though Wanda can seem a bit more asshole-ey, it's usually in the stuff like. Starting shit for seemingly no reason. Other than that, she comes off as more antagonistic because of her framing as antagonistic to Wade specifically (like when we see montages of past Shabbat dinners, or her being suspicious of things Wade says).

Although frankly how they act during the Shabbat dinner and how their mother (Wendy) handles it is also just...fairly realistic to me? Like, sure. A bit of it felt dramaticized personally, but aside from that, it made sense for the characters' personalities. Both Wanda and Wade are (for lack of a better term) a bit childish, especially when it comes to each other. And, as someone who has a number of siblings, even when you're adults things can devolve into, well, childish arguments or fights. Whether she started anything or not (and despite the fork thing, a definite escalation of the situation, while one could tell Wade was trying not to engage at the beginning), you can see some realism in the way that Wendy pretty much becomes exasperated by the situation and focuses more on the fact that her kids are fighting at all than who started what. As a person who was once a younger person, I've also been on the receiving end of...dealing with your parent(s) seemingly branding the fight as a "everyone is being bad here" thing, even when you didn't escalate or start anything.

Or in short, that was a fairly real situation to me, down to how the characters acted (especially given their personalities) and how they each chose to handle the situation. To me one can tell that it was at least partially based upon some real life experiences of people involved in the show.

And I'll be real with you anon. To me, Wanda's level of rudeness/assholeness during...the scene where she purposely ignores her mother asking her to help with Shabbat traditions, until she stops bothering to get Wanda to participate, is kind of no different to me than the level of rudeness/assholeness in the scene where Wade purposely mispronounces Pachacamac's name, until the echidna just gives up and allows him an "easier nickname" to use instead.

And ahsjsjwjsjs the thumb thing. I think I was largely uncomfortable looking at it, but all in all it was kind of funny 😂 I love that the creators thought well enough into their new characters (even side characters) to be able to include moments like that. Even if the Whipple family (excluding Pete) is closer by the end of the show, Wanda never stops being who she is and she never gives up on her rivalry with her brother just because everyone is on better terms now. I love it😂

Anyways, thank you for the ask, anon! 😊

[dany36]

now that i've S-ranked every stage in the DLC and also completed the map, just have some final junk thoughts from the sonic frontiers dlc (plus me raving some more about the music) before i move on to another game :)

i know i mentioned that playing as amy is the best out of the new playable characters, and i still stand by that opinion, but MAN is tails' MAX rings cyclone flying ability fun as FUCK. like, i kind of have a hate-love relationship with it. on one hand, who the hell doesn't like flying around the island at max speed? like, oh, there's something all the way over there, let me just ZOOM right over in a few seconds!! AND the fact that you can control its height unlike knuckles' flying is just insanely cool. on the OTHER hand though, yes it cheapens tails' flying ability because honestly once you get the cyclone ability, you don't even have to do any of the set-paths that the game wants you to follow to get to the map kocos or skill kocos. you can just fly up to them and boom, didn't have to do the set path. which is kind of sad because those can be really fun and satisfying to complete, so what i'd end up doing was get to the area where the map koco would be, and instead of just flying up to it, try to follow the path and get the map that way to not just suck the fun out of the entire thing

but also, that one M-puzzle where it lit up 3 or 4 red beams of light all across the island and you had to reach all of them under a time limit??? MAN i think that was my favorite puzzle of all!!! i first bumped into that one when i was playing with amy, and at first i thought i was gonna have to come back to it with sonic since i didn't think i'd get another character that would be as fast as him (also didn't have the spin dash ability yet since this was early in the game). but holy shit once i unlocked that ability and saw just how fucking fast you could fly around the island (skells from xenoblade x my beloved), i immediately went back to that puzzle and just completed it as tails. just so damn awesome!!

and SPEAKING OF the spin dash....wow. amy, knuckles, and tails may not be as fast as sonic, but they become just as fast as him with this skill. and i can't believe i went through the entire main game without using the spin dash more often. spin dashing around the island and abusing the hell of its physics was just something that never got old, even in the sonic stages. i don't think i ever used the fast travel with the portals since i mean....spin dashing everywhere the island is just like a damn dream come true: it's always something i'd do in sonic adventures' mystic ruins but at a smaller scale, but this time? the ouranos island is fucking huge and gorgeous and then with that beautiful music playing in the background and just rolling around everywhere at high speeds AAAAAAAAAA this game is honestly just the perfect sonic game!!!!!

i think i already talked about this earlier but the new stages were super fun and actually challenging to S rank, unlike the main game. there were some i wasn't too fond of (like that one where sonic's speed as "gears"?? what was that lol) but overall they were a joy to replay over and over and try to bring my time down. i think my favorites were definitely 4-A (with the rocket boosters and beehive-looking things) and 4-B (the one with the hologram tails and the falling platforms).

the music. GOD how does sega keep doing this!!! every single new character theme is just so on fucking point, but i gotta say amy wins this one as well: there's something just so hauntingly beautiful about her theme that just honestly fits the overall mood of the game. but honestly, all just so good. i neeeeed to get my hands on the ost, especially since i'm late to the party and realized that now they have a GORGEOUS BEAUTIFUL AMAZING remixed version of the windy and ripply (emerald coast 2) song AKA a song so dear and beloved and nostalgic to my heart that just thinking about it makes me want to cry tears of joy. like, running around the islands with that music playing in the background is just so freeing and beautiful and exciting that just makes you feel glad that you get to experience a sonic game like this.

oh shit got sidetracked talking about this game's overall out-of-this-world soundtrack again um um um what else. i mean, i really don't know what else to say except frontiers just knocked it out of the park and surpassed my expectations in every single way possible. as i was playing the game and would just be exploring the island and completing puzzles/paths, i'd just keep saying to myself "this game is fucking amazing" every once in a while. sega just fucking nailed the 3d sonic formula and any doubt i had about an open-world sonic game was just thrown out the window: i couldn't stop thinking about this being a MUCH larger, more fun, and more gorgeous version of running around mystic ruins than i could have ever imagined, and it's exactly the type of exploration freedom that i had been itching for in a sonic game.

and it goes without saying that sega bringing back amy, tails, and knuckles as playable characters was just soooo fucking good and refreshing to see, and my god did they do them justice. last time they were all playable was, what...sonic adventure?? really?? like, holy crap. sonic frontiers really was a love letter to 3d sonic games and ughhhh i just can't stop saying good things about it. EVERYONE NEEDS TO PLAY THIS GAME!!!

anyway!!! can't wait to see where the sonic 3d series is headed after this, but for now, time to wait for sonic superstars (holy shit that's soon!!!) since that looks fun as hell too, and that's me saying it as someone who prefers 3d sonic vs 2d sonic!

[krissiefox]

Sonic Unleashed (Playstation 3) Review

Sonic Unleashed was one of the first games I picked out when I first bought my Playstation 3 and wanted to get some games alongside Little Big Planet to play on it. Having seen gorgeous artwork and screenshots for the game online, I figured it would be  a fun and exciting title to play - especially with Sonic being a character I've been fond of ever since I was a wee lass. Unfortunately, it instead left me with buyer's remorse and a mental note to be extremely wary of purchasing any 3D Sonic games in the future.

Still, seeing as so many people online just use Sonic as a launching pad for snarky and mean-spirited jokes, I want to start with what I liked about the game before I get into its flaws. As previously mentioned, it is a very beautiful game. The levels are bright and colorful with huge vistas of scenery to enjoy. The per-rendered cut scenes look great as well and are very nicely animated. Sonic moves with a lot of energy and personality. The only downside in this category is that the game might be a little *too* packed with visual grandeur for the PS3 hardware to handle - I noticed parts of the game where scenery would have a delay in its "load in" time , as well as moments of noticeable slowdown. I've never tried the Xbox 360 version but hopefully it runs more smoothly on that console.

The music and sound effects are fantastic. Lots of great tunes in the levels, and since each zone has a hub world as well as both day and night stages, you get a mix of relaxing, exciting and even some funky swing/jazz music to enjoy. The sound effects has plenty of punch to them, which enhances the feel of the game-play when its actually going well.

Gameplay-wise, the Werehog stages were my favorite in the game. Given the problems Sonic has had in multiple 3d titles, I really appreciate that these stages let you slow down and explore your environment. The combat is pretty fun, and it even has a leveling system which is something new for a Sonic game that I enjoyed. One of the things you can level up  is your move set, which unlocks new attacks. I found some of these moves handy, but I do think it would be nice if the menu for them showed a preview of what they look like because I wasn't always sure if I was doing them right or not. Another game-play element I enjoyed (in the Werehog levels, at-least) was how you had to collect medals to unlock new stages, kind of like how in Spyro games you need to collect enough gems or dragon eggs to reach new areas. I like mechanics like this because they give me extra incentive to explore and look for every last hidden goodie. Lastly, the "hub area" of each zone was something I enjoyed, too. You could do many hings in these areas - talk with folks, exorcise dark gaia monsters from people (which consisted of little fight scenes where you have to defeat a set number of enemies within a time limit), try out challenge modes for already completed levels, and even buy items and food! I found out late game that if you stock up a lot of rings you can then buy certain items such as steaks which will give you  a big xp boost that help you in some of the tougher werehog combat areas.

All sounds nice so far, right? Unfortunately, the running stages for this game really shot down my enjoyment of it, even with some of the werehog stages being really cool. I quickly began to dread  every single one I had to play. Sonic's movement felt really floaty/slippery to me, it's very different from the tight and consistent physics engine of the old 2D Genesis titles. The stages expect you to want to move as fast as possible, and in may places even take control away from you with invisible  speed boosts and sequences where Sonic just starts moving on his own. Even when this isn't happening, Sonic accelerates from standstill far too quickly for me to feel like I can control him very well.   The camera perspective moves around a lot and caused me to go flying off cliffs many times, an issue I also recalled having in Sonic Heroes. The running stages also include those medals I mentioned earlier, but here they're just no fun here. The high-speed on-rails game-play actively discourages exploration, and often by the time you've spotted one of the medals in a running stage you've already been forced on to the next part of the level and the camera won't let you see the way to safely get back to it. To continue the problems, some running stages even had parts where I would just fall through solid chunks of terrain and die.  Other times, the stages would have Sonic running along a wall suddenly, and it was often unclear as to if the game wanted me to hold my analog stick in the same direction or move it to it the new camera perspective. Moments like this are why I prefer the "tank controls" some 3d games have, because at-least in those you could be confident your character would continue moving forward no matter what the camera decided to do. There was at-least one auto scrolling boss fight stage where Sonic was going so fast and the visuals were so cluttered that I hah a hard time even seeing what I was supposed to do.

It can be argued that part of why I had so much stress with the running stages was that I'd often attempt to move slowly through them so as to avoid cheap deaths and keep an eye out for medals, but I feel I wouldn't have wanted to slow down if I actually enjoyed moving quickly through them. I certainly wish I could have. There were moments where things went smoothly enough that it did feel like an exciting thrill ride but that feeling would always end up getting derailed by something.  I feel that if they wanted to the stages to play more like a quick-time event roller coaster that would have been fine if they were consistent with it and didn't keep trying to add in plat-former game-play as well. If the stages played more like a beefed-up Bit Trip Runner game that might have worked better.

A warning for spoilers here, because I will be discussing the final battle - which I've actually given up on trying to finish as of writing this review. After completing the last level (Eggmanland), you're pitted up against 3 boss fights in a row. The first fight is pretty fun - because you get to be the Werehog and fight a big robot. But after that, things go downhill. Chip  takes control of a giant temple golem to fight Dark Gaia, which I was initially pumped for - a giant stone golem versus a weird Kaiju monster, fighting in a lake of lava? Sounds awesome! Well...it isn't. You don't get to fight in real time and instead have to awkwardly guide the big slow clunker towards dark gaia, trying to dodge lasers and fireballs that continued to be tough to avoid or punch down despite many, many MANY retries (though admittedly, I was probably self-sabotaging sometimes because I was having so little fun I wanted to get game over). Once you get close enough, there's a quick time event where you punch the big nasty a few times before then taking control of Sonic for what are probably the game's worst running stages of all, because they're on a timer. The game designers here probably assume that by now I've gotten really good at running stages, but the problem was that I always try to resist the railroading in them and take my time exploring them slowly - so I absolutely was not prepared for the incredibly short time limits that are suddenly introduced....anyway,  you have to repeat this cycle 3 times (which I only ever managed to pull off once, in all my attempts), and then you get another cut scene where Sonic becomes Super Sonic. In this last sequence, you have to fly around a big force field and defeat a bunch of weird tentacle things before Dark Gaia can kill Chip. I tried doing this part all sorts of different ways and could never figure out how to defeat the tentacle/heads in time, and eventually gave up on the game because, well I didn't think whatever the ending was would be worth my continued suffering. As far I was concerned, I'd made it all the way to the final boss, and that was already more effort, stress and Time I felt I'd given to a game that I feel didn't really deserve it.

Now that I've shared my painful story of dealing with the running stages and final levels, I should address the story, voice acting and writing as well. Dr. Robotnik has awakened an ancient monster, Dark Gaia, and it has busted up the world pretty badly. Sonic's goal is to put a Chaos Emerald into the temple at each of the game's zones, which will repair that particular landmass. Along the way, he meets Chip, a character that was probably intended to be cute but his american voice acting just comes across as  creepy instead. (which I feel bad saying, for all I know the voice actor is a really nice person, but he sounded....squicky. I really recommend switching this game's audio to Japanese voices from the start, he sounds much better that way). Tails makes an occasional appearance, flying with Sonic during a couple of bi-plane stages and being present in some of the hub world areas. Amy Rose also appears, and unfortunately just like in so many other games, she is written as a "generic female love interest" prop who is just there to creepily stalk and worship Sonic. The game also features a whole lot of human characters in the game's hub worlds, which  I enjoyed interacting with as they make the places I visited feel more lived-in and gave the world more lore. Lastly, while most of the game's cut scene dialogue is pretty generic, I did really enjoy one wholesome Sonic moment towards the end of the game where he tells Chip that he never felt like he needed a reason or reward to help folks with their troubles, it's just what he likes doing. Moments like that are why I like Sonic as a character even if his game's aren't always very well made.

In closing, I do feel like Sonic Unleashed's Werehog stages show a great potential of how Sonic could work well in 3D if the designers slowed things down and emphasized exploration over just making the player run really fast. Unfortunately, the hair-pulling frustration of the game's running stages and finale levels make it something I regret ever buying. If you are looking for a fun Sonic game, I recommend sticking with the 16 bit classics, or giving the newer Sonic Mania a try.

[groundzeroagency]

> 𝓢𝓸𝓷𝓰 𝓑𝓲𝓻𝓭 <

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[ Hawks x Reader ]

Quirk : Canary Cry ; Similar to Dc comics super-heroine, Black Canary. The reader can use their voice as a weapon of destruction.

Character background : Reader is a singer for a night club owned by one of the many mafia’s in Japan. She sings there due to being in debt to the mafia that owns the club. She’s been trying to find a way out of her situation but it never ended good for her.

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[ Warning : Angst, Violence, Swearing and Fluff ]

{This is a long Oneshot }

@trashys-things @bubbleteaa

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Hawks was finally free from his Hero work and decided to go to a club to relax with some alcohol. He heard there was a club with a wonderful singer that could relax the senses of anyone. He flew over towards the club and landed in front of it before walking in. It was a nice setting actually with a stage in the middle with a microphone at the center.

The pro hero sat down in the back from the crowd there was. He ordered two beers at first before hearing a man introducing a person of the name,Canary. Hawks looked over towards the stage as a young woman with long H/C in a red silk dress walk out from the curtains. The woman had a kind smile upon their face as the music started to play. They swayed their hips gently to the music before singing a song softy into the microphone. Hawks eyes widen slightly at the beautiful woman that was singing with their beautiful voice. Hawks felt his nerves and body slowly relaxed at the beautiful sound that filled the club.

“A beauty, isn’t she ?” a voice suddenly said interrupting Hawks thoughts. Hawks looked over to see a man standing next to his booth. The Man looked at Hawks with a slight grin before introducing himself as the owner of the club. “It’s absolutely an honor to have the number 2 hero in my club “ The man said who’s name was Sam Kirov. Hawks simply nodded softly at the man. Hawks kept glancing at the beautiful singer on the stage. Sam grinned at Hawks eye movements. “That’s our canary, she’s like a siren with that voice of her’s“ he joked before leaving to do his rounds around the club.

Hawks was simply hypnotized by Canary’s Singing. Minutes later, Canary’s show was over. The pro hero clapped with the rest of the crowd in the club at the beautiful show was given. Canary was backstage drinking some water as she was suddenly pulled by Sam. She looked at Sam with a confused look on her face but her body was tensed at his hands on her. “There’s someone you should meet “ he simply said pulling her from backstage and towards a certain Pro Hero’s booth. Hawks was finishing his second beer and was going to head home until he saw the owner of the club dragging over the beautiful singer of the club.

“Hawks! This is our lovely canary “ Sam said with a wide grin. Canary looked at her at Hawks and blushed softly before looking down. Sam placed Canary in Hawk’s booth and said “Make conversation “ before leaving them. Hawks looked over at Canary before saying “You have a beautiful miss Canary” with a gentle smile. Canary looked at hawks before replying “Please call me, Y/N “ in a soft tone and smile. “Thank you as well “ she added with a blush. Hawks smiled “Y/n. That’s a pretty name. “ he said looking at them. Suddenly the pro hero and singer made conversation enjoying each other’s company.

One conversation became two to more eventually, Hawks came to the club every night to listen to Y/n’s beautiful singing and every night they sat down together and talked enjoying each other’s company. They would tell their secrets towards another including how Y/n came to be the club’s singer, she fell in love with the wrong person and was a part of Sam’s “group” and she was in debt to him now. Hawks told Y/n, his name and about his past. The two were slowly falling in love with one another but Sam wasn’t happy that his canary was taken a liking towards another man other than him. Sam was a very possessive man specially with his Toys.

One night, Hawks didn’t come due to a night rescue. Y/n just finished her nightly show, Sam came over and slapped the woman harshly causing her to fall down. She looked up at Sam shocked before he pulled her up harshly. “Get up, Bitch” he growled as he pulled her up completely grabbing her tightly by her chin. She looked at Sam with tears at the stinging pain, this wasn’t new that Sam abused her physically. “You are never seeing that hero ever again. He taking my sweet canary from me “ he said harshly before cooing and caressing her hair causing the young woman to flinch slightly. Sam glared darkly at Y/n before tighten his grip on her “Stay away from him or I’ll kill your precious hero. Got it!” He yelled causing Y/n to flinched and nod letting out a soft sob out.

Sam pushes her away before leaving her alone. She cried softy to herself before running out through the back door. She ran towards her apartment but bumped into the man of the hour, Hawks. Hawks grabbed her gently “Hey Songbird! Did I miss your show ?” He asked tilting his head with a smile before his smile faded away as he saw her with tears. “Are you okay ? Y/n?” He asked softy in a worried tone. Y/n simply looked up Hawks and cried softy “Keigo. We can’t see each other anymore. “.

Keigo looked at Y/n confused and worried “Why ?” He asked with a frown causing for the girl to tense up and looked at Keigo with the Harshest glare they could make and yell at him “BECAUSE I DON’T LIKE YOU ! I NEVER DID!”. She was shaking slightly thinking “I’m doing this to protect you. I’m sorry”. Hawks flinched slightly before looking at her and nods gently “Fuck you “ he said glaring and flying off. She was the first person, he opened up to about his life, about everything.

She flinched before seeing him flying away. She whimpered softy before screaming out their frustration out accidentally using their quirk destroying a bus stop and signs. She covered her mouth immediately in shock before crying again and running home. Once she made it home, she closed the door and slide down against it crying her heart out. She loved him and found happiness in him but now it was taken from her.

Hawks never came back to the club for drinks or to see her. Y/n kept singing at the club but she was different, more duller like she lost the light within her. Sam abused the young singer more frequently leaving bruises on her arms and throat. The young girl had to wear makeup to cover up the physical abuse she had to endured from the owner of the club. It was a nightmare that she couldn’t escape from and no body could had help her, her only savior was pushed away by her for his protection. The abuse would go on for many nights until one night.

Hawks came back that night, he sat in back like he did when he came to the club for the first time. He had to see her one more time, he couldn’t get his songbird out of his head. He made it just time for the show. He kept to himself as he heard Sam introduce “Canary “ on stage. He sat up straight as he saw her walking through the curtains with a black silk dress and a collar around her neck. He noticed some makeup on her arms and some bruising around her throat.

Y/n started singing not even looking at the crowd, just wanting this to end. She sang softly as she was simply tired of the abuse and missing Hawks. She slowly looked up at the crowd and immediately made eye contact with Hawks. Something in her eyes changed like they lighten up slightly at appearance at Hawks. She looked only at Hawks as she sang softy letting her hands out ;

Could you hold me through the night?

Put your lips all over my mine

Salty face when I start cryin'

Could you be my first time?

Eat me up like apple pie

Make me not wanna die

Love me rough and let me fly

Get me up, yeah, get me high

Tie me down, don't leave my side

Don't be a waste of my time.

Hawks slowly got up from his booth which gained the attention of Sam. Sam glared at Hawks then looked over at his little Canary before calling his men over. Y/n noticed before stopping her singing and saying “No! Don’t hurt him !” in a scared tone. Hawks looked over at Y/n confused before looking at Sam noticing there were more men now. Y/n ran off stage and in front of Hawks “Don’t hurt him, Please “ she pleads toward Sam. Sam glared darkly before grabbing her roughly sending his men on Hawks.

Hawks immediately fought back with his fists and quirk. Y/n struggled against Sam screaming for the men to stop. She fought against her abuser but it was no use. Hawks was knocked down and getting beaten up. Y/n eyes widen before yelling “Cover your ears, Keigo!”. Hawks listened without a doubt before Y/n used her quirk, Canary cry. A sonic scream was let out causing the men to stop and fall cradling their heads as blood came out of their ears. Sam immediately let go of Y/n as she used her quirk, since he was the closest to her, he was hurt badly. She fell down as she stopped her canary cry. She looked over at Hawks and got up running towards him.

She looked at him worried “Keigo!” She cried out causing him to look at her. She looked at him completely worried and he looked at her Same. He sat up slowly in slight pain checking on her to see any injuries. The police came shortly after as calls were made about the club and the disturbance. Hawks and Y/N were checked over by the Ambulances. Hawks was set free as his injuries weren’t that bad. He immediately went over to Y/n. The Ambulance person was looking over the bruises the young singer had on her body. Hawks saw them and eyes widen. She noticed Hawks and looked down not wanting to make eye contact with him.

Hawks asked the ambulance for some privacy with Y/n. They got their privacy and Hawks immediately made a comment “What the hell did he do to you ?” Looking at her bruises causing her to flinch gently and tear up. “Songbird “ he whispered gently towards her, coming closer and grabbing her hands gently. She looked up at him slowly “He would hit me every night “ she whispered softy before crying. “I pushed you away to protect you, Keigo. He was going to kill you if I didn’t stop talking to you “ she said telling him the truth about why she yelled at him that night. He frowned at her words before replying “Y/n. You could had told me, I would had stopped him. I’m a hero after all”. She looked at him before yelling “I know ! But I was scared what would happen ! Because I LOVE YOU ! “.

Hawks eyes widen at her confession before hugging her gently. She sniffed softy and hugged him back “I love you, Keigo Tamaki” she whispered into his chest. He held her close before whispering “I love you too, Y/n L/n”. She tensed up slightly at his confession but relaxed immediately saying his arms. He looked at her “He’s going to jail, all of his men too. You’re free, Songbird “ he told her. Y/n let out a breath of relief, she was free from her cage. Finally her nightmare was over and was free at last.

She slowly smiled and stayed in Hawks arms, her safe haven. She pulled away and looked up at him before kissing him gently. He kissed her back gently and held her close before pulling away.

“Now, let’s go home, Songbird and live a cage free life “ Hawks told the Young Singer with a gentle smile.

[kaiserdingus]

Sonic Handheld Games - Part 1

There’s an era of Sonic the Hedgehog history that’s often overlooked, despite occurring at the height of Sonic’s popularity. Through out the 90′s Sega released a series of original Sonic the Hedgehog titles made specifically for Sega’s handheld Game Gear, some of which were ported to the Master System. 

These games were released alongside their Sega Genesis counterparts, but weren’t watered down ports. Instead these were completely original games that played to the strengths of Sega’s 8-bit systems. For a lot of people, especially in markets where the Master System dominated, these were the definitive Sonic games.

Sonic the Hedgehog

Sonic the Hedgehog was released for the Master System and Game Gear in October of 1991, several months after the release of the Genesis version. While the two titles share the same name and several stages, they’re two separate games entirely. The 8-bit version lacks a lot of the graphical flourishes of the 16-bit version, but accurately recreates the gameplay and physics to a degree.

The game is slower-paced than the Genesis version, with a higher focus on platforming rather than speed. While there are special stages in this version, the Chaos Emeralds are found in the stages themselves. Special stages offer the player the chance to rack up lives and continues, which are desperately needed as this game can be unforgiving.

As a side note, the music from the stage Bridge Zone may have been the inspiration for the 2001 Janet Jackson song Together Again. This wouldn’t be the first time a member of the Jackson family was tangled with Sonic the Hedgehog, as Michael Jackson famously agreed to compose the soundtrack for Sonic 3 only to be let go in the face of allegations of sexual misconduct.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was released in 1992 on Master System and Game Gear, alongside its Genesis counterpart. While the first 8-bit Sonic game had a slight resemblance to the 16-bit version, this one is practically its own game entirely. While the Genesis version was marketed entirely around the inclusion of Tails as a playable character, he’s nearly completely absent from the Game Gear and Master System versions.

The game opens with a cutscene featuring Tails being kidnapped by Robotnik, setting up the story of the game. Each level begins with a title card that features Tails alongside Sonic, but the game is a solo venture for the blue hedgehog. If you don’t beat the game with all of the Chaos Emeralds you get a bad ending where Sonic looks up in the sky to see Tails in a constellation of stars, implying Sonic’s failure lead to his demise.

Another silly piece of music trivia, the music from the stage Green Hills Zone was re-purposed as “Sonic - You Can Do Anything” in the Japanese and European versions of Sonic CD. Both games share the same composer - Naofumi Hataya.

Sonic Chaos

Sonic Chaos, or Sonic & Tails in Japan, was released in 1993 for the Master System and Game Gear. By 1993 Sega had thrown the branding convention out the window and decided the next 8-bit Sonic game would stand on its own. Chaos launched alongside Sonic CD, establishing the handheld titles as separate from the titles they’re commonly released with.

Correcting the errors of the previous game and living up to its Japanese title, Sonic Chaos finally allows you to play as Tails in an 8-bit game. It also includes the Spin Dash, which both previous titles lacked, and the Super Peel-Out which was introduced in Sonic CD. 

Chaos also changes things by introducing a completely different art style than previous games. Instead of everything looking flat, now everything has an almost 3D pop to it. This was likely to imitate what could be done on the Genesis hardware, as by 1993 the Master System was already long past its expiration date in North America and Japan.

While the focus of this was supposed to be on “handheld” Sonic games, I actually played the Master System versions of the games for a few reasons. Namely the Master System offers a slightly higher resolution than the Game Gear, resulting in more screen area. The games are largely the same between the two, but I felt it was important to point this out.

It may seem like the console titles are the most important Sonic games, but we’ll see that the handheld lineage can be just as strong. 

Where to Buy

Sonic the Hedgehog (8-bit) (Game Gear, Master System)

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (8-bit) (Game Gear, Master System)

Sonic Chaos (Game Gear, Master System)

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Is It Epic? Sonic Mania (Plus) Review

Sonic Mania is a pretty special game, from it’s creation story to the end product we see before us today. During the days of the Dreamcast and the days following after, there would be several attempts to recapture Sonic’s glory days on the Genesis. Though none of them quite matched the quality of those games, for many, Sonic’s handheld adventures such as the Sonic Advance trilogy would be Sonic’s only 2D games for several years.

But that’s just for official Sonic games, meanwhile, there was a steady, lively community for Sonic mods and fangames, yet again trying to recapture that Sonic 16-bit magic. While many fell flat on their face, some of them actually came quite close. Enter Christian Whitehead and Simon Thomley.

Christian Whitehead, also known as the Taxman, had coded his own engine, dubbed the Retro Engine, and showed it off at SAGE of 2009. This engine would of course, be used for his pitched remake of Sonic CD. Whereas games like Sonic 1 and Sonic 2 were available on iOS at the time, they ran on rather crummy emulators. This was different. This was a complete remake from the ground up.

Enter Simon Thomley, aka Stealth, who worked on several well known Sonic fangame projects like Sonic MegaMix, and possibly most famously his own version of Sonic the Hedgehog on Gameboy Advance Hardware. Being friends with Christian, he provided his own advice on the Sonic CD remake before joining him on the remakes of Sonic 1 and Sonic 2.

After a failed pitch for a Sonic 3 and Knuckles remake, the two would not be deturred. Enter Sonic Discovery, after a lengthy meeting with Takashi Iizuka, Sonic Mania was born. After it’s reveal at San Diego Comic Con 2016, people were excited, and I was right along with them.

After a frustrating delay for the PC version and dealing with the fallout of Denuvo, many people, including myself, were completely enamored with the game. But that was a year ago, and a lot can change in a year. I’ve certainly changed a lot in the course of a year.

With the new Sonic Mania Plus DLC that was released in July of this year, the game has changed quite a bit and the hype has died down significantly. With this in mind, I figured now is as good of a time as any to sit down and really analyze Sonic Mania, especially with the new 1.4 update.

The plot of Sonic Mania is unfortunately a lot of wasted potential. After discovering a mysterious power source on Angel Island that teleports whoever it is you’re playing as to Green Hill Zone, it transforms the surrounding EggRobos into the new Hard Boiled Heavies. Through one big adventure, The Heavy King faces off with the Egg Reverie and Super Sonic. After defeating them both, a portal opens up and Sonic is sucked in, kicking off the events of Sonic Forces.

In essence, the story only exists to advertise Sonic Forces and that ends up working against it. The original story saw Dr. Robotnik falling into a deep depression after the events of Sonic 3, with the Hard Boiled Heavies taking over, but that was scrapped for reasons I’m not entirely sure of.

But story was never the drawing point of Classic Sonic the Hedgehog. While games like Sonic CD or Sonic 3 had something of a narrative, it was never the heavy focus of the game. What really sold Sonic was his gameplay, and luckily, Sonic Mania excels in that regard. What made Sonic work in the original Genesis games were his physics and level design.

The key to good Sonic level design is fluidity, keeping Sonic moving is as important and his speed itself. Take Sonic 1 for example, all the best levels in that game are filled with slopes and loop de loops that Sonic can roll around and pick up so much speed that he can outrun the screen itself. Sonic Mania keeps such design mentalities in mind, as even in more rigid levels such as Titanic Monarch, skilled players can speedrun it as easily as something like Green Hill Zone.

What’s also important is Sonic’s physics, and by extension, his momentum. This is where Sonic Mania succeeds and something like Sonic 4 fails miserably. How Sonic reacts to the terrain below him is cruical, because if he doesn’t react properly, then the game won’t function right.

Sonic Mania is the first “Classic” Sonic game since 1994 to truly feel like it understood why the Genesis trilogy was so beloved, expanding on what people liked about them in every way. That’s not to say the game is without it’s flaws, however. Some of the bosses way overstay their welcome. Hydrocity Zone Act 2 in particular can really feel like a slog, being two full bosses back to back. Metal Sonic also can be a bit of a drag, but thankfully in the recent 1.4 update, it’s been updated to be slightly more forgiving, adding a checkpoint right before the final phase, which has also been updated quite significantly.

Some of the levels in general can also go on for a really, really long time, and that’s especially a bit of a problem when the save system saves only by Zone and not by Act. What’s especially strange about this is that the Sonic Advance trilogy, Sonic Rush games, and the Sonic 1, 2 and CD remakes all had this figured out, save by Act, and those levels are significantly smaller than those found in Sonic Mania. If I stop playing at Mirage Saloon Act 2, I shold, at the very least, be able to pick it back up again at Mirage Saloon Act 2.

While it’s nice to see the Elemental Shields get some more creative usage, they don’t really get enough of that creative usage. I mean, yeah setting fire to Oil Ocean Zone is pretty cool, and yeah, sticking to the ceilling in Flying Battery Zone is a pretty creative idea, but aside from setting fire to a bridge here or there in Green Hill Zone, that’s kind of it.

Sonic Mania also got paid DLC in the form of Sonic Mania Plus, adding two new characters, Mighty and Ray. It also adds some new Bonus Stages, new Special Stage layouts and a brand new Encore Mode, with new stage color palletes and slightly altered stage layouts. But that’s the operative word: slightly. Mighty is essentially the easy mode of this game, with a ground pound that can destroy certain objects and occasionally lead to different paths, and his shell protects him from certain dangers. Ray is essentially Super Mario World’s Cape Mario in the form of a Sonic the Hedgehog character, allowing him to glide over large distances.

The new level layouts don’t really lend themselves well to the new character’s abilities. By and large, aside from different entity placement, the levels are basically identical. The Special Stages have also seen a significant overhaul, with all new, much more difficult to find Warp Ring placement, the Special Stage design aesthetics going in reverse and being BRUTALLY unforgiving. One slip up, and at that point you may as well throw yourself off the track because you aren’t getting the Emerald.

The only reason I got all the Emeralds in my playthrough of Encore mode is, what I assume was a Debug feature left in the PC version by mistake that allowed you to instantly go up a speed level and the press of a button.

But as cool as it is to see these characters return after over 22 years of absence, and as fun as they are to play, these levels aren’t entirely built around these characters’ abilities. We have fewer Warp Rings and those are moved around quite substanstially, and we have a lot more harsh enemy placement, but that’s all, really.

To be completely honest, I am beyond the point of burnout with Sonic Mania. With over 100 hours on record, gathering all the footage for the video review and getting 100% clear on all files in Encore Mode, I am Mania’d out. I am taking a long, long break from Sonic games until Team Sonic Racing comes out.

Though I sound pretty negative in this review, don’t take that the wrong way; Sonic Mania is a gorgeous, beautiful game that serves as a love letter to fans of Classic Sonic. While not a perfect game, for the first time in many years, we finally have a worthy followup to Sonic’s adventures on the Genesis. If you fell in love with the potbellied hedgehog like I did, Sonic Mania serves as a beautiful reminder of why Sonic set the world on fire.

[adaliacom105]

Blog 5

Hello classmates, professor, and anyone else that has stumbled upon this blog of mine! So you have probably noticed the trend by now that all the other blogs have something to do with movies. Well, this blog is no different! This week it was superhero movies, and they were fantastic! It was an interesting experience for me since they were live-action, and I usually prefer animated hero movies instead. The Marvel movies really impressed me and confused me since there were some characters I didn’t know because I have only seen their animated counterparts. So I might be watching more Marvel movies soon because of how good they were.

So now that you know what I have been watching, let’s get on with the topic for this blog. In this one, I will be creating my own superhero, and I am both hyped and scared for it. There is so much detail when it comes to creating your own character I learned that the hard way in my Sequential Arts class. Well, let’s get down to business then.

First things first let us start with their name and superhero name.

I have chosen the name Aelita Stones. I chose this name for two reasons. The first reason being that in my family by complete coincidence all the first-born female’s names end with the letter A. So I decided to do the same here. The second reason being it’s the name of a character from one of my favorite cartoons, Code Lyoko. Code Lyoko is a show about five teens who travel to a virtual world in order to fight Xana, an evil program trying to take over the world. Any character outside the group thinks it sounds like a game, and it does. In Code Lyoko, Aelita starts off as a being that lives in the virtual world called Lyoko. Since it's kind of like my character's power, I decided to use the name. This then brings me to the hero name, and that would be Player 1.

What does Aelita look like?

Well, she has dark brown hair with some pink highlights and chocolate brown eyes to match. She has a roundish face, and her eyes can be seen sporting some eye bags from all nighters and her mom refusing her to skip classes. Aelita prefers comfort over fashion, so she can be seen wearing baggy clothes. She is never seen without a sweater, whether it be tied around her waist or properly worn. She is also short...why? Well, because I refuse to make someone taller than me!

Now let's move on to her powers and how she got them.

Aelita’s powers are that when she uses this special handheld console, she can take classes and traits like from videogames and apply them to herself and others. For example she can use the handheld console and become a mage, an assassin, or a fighter class. Whenever she chooses a class she gets a new change of clothes that match the type she is currently using. The same mechanics of videogames apply to Aelita as well, which means levels, exp, traits, stats, special abilities, health, and extra lives. At first, she only has access to three classes, which are Mage, Warrior, and Thief, which all begin at level 1. All new class levels start at level 1. In order to unlock more classes, there are conditions that need to be met, but most are through leveling up. To do this, Aelita needs exp, which she can get in three ways. The first way would be going inside the special handheld console that gave her powers. Inside it has training and levels to help her master her powers. The second way would be real-life battles like you see in the games. The third and final way would be to do real-life tasks or ‘quests’ such as going to the store because mom asked, they don’t give much, but it’s still nice. In addition to training, her console can be used to store things like how bags in games are able to store many things. It doesn’t matter the size; it can all go into the console….., even humans. Another power she possesses is to give a class to another person, and they become player 2. With this power, she doesn’t need to be close to the person she is bestowing the power upon; she just needs to see them at least once, and they become an option on her list. She then gains control of the person like a playable character, and the area becomes the stage with boundaries within a limit. The downside to this is that they start off as level one unless she has taken over you before. In good news, they start off with three lives. After you die the second time, she has it set to be stored in the console in order not to risk it. Aelita can let them control themselves and join in the battle if she doesn’t or can’t stay on the sidelines anymore. She can make Players 2 and 3, and they can’t be the same class, or it causes some strain on her body. With enough training, this can be improved upon. She can also max out her traits or push up her level temporarily, but it leaves her drained and shouldn’t be done that often.

How did she get this awesome handheld console, you ask?

Well, she actually wasn’t supposed to get it at all. Aelita is a pretty known gamer, so when she opened her mail one day and saw a video game console, she thought it was some company who wanted to use her to promote their products, so she didn’t think anything of it. So Aelita was pretty surprised when she went to test drive the new console and all of a sudden she was in new clothes and broke her door. There are plenty of people trying to take this new power from her, but she has decided she likes it and won’t give it up!

The next thing would be Aelita’s history.

She was born on September 16, 2002, in Fortniles. Why that date? It's the date from one of the first games I ever played, Animal Crossing on the Gamecube (The very first would be Sonic on the Gameboy….I feel old). I choose Fortniles because I made it up, and it sounds cool in my head.

Who are her parents? Well, they are Flint Stones and Alexandra Stones. Flint is a doctor, and his wife is a zoologist. I one hundred percent picked Flint’s name because of Flintstones. Now there is a family tradition of naming the firstborn in his family after a stone. The two have been together for 20 years now. Next is the siblings.

Aelita has an older brother by two years named Jasper and was the one who actually got her into video games. They have a typical brother-sister relationship of bugging each other and always having each other's back. Aelita also has a younger sister named Yasmin, who is six years old. Aelita is usually the one to babysit her, teach her things, and spoil her a bit.

The next bit would be her childhood and adolescence.

Aelita is an indoor child, which means she prefers to be inside rather than outside. This would lead her brother to teach her about videogames and how to play them. They would then play with each other and rely on one another for a part the other wasn’t so good at. As the years went by, she started playing more and more games and became better at them as well. This then leads us into her adolescence. She has now become an awkward teen and has trouble making friends outside of her video games. She goes to school and is pretty smart, and has been caught for playing games during class multiple times. Her favorite class is English because the teacher is not picky about the subjects of the essays, so Aelita likes the freedom. She hates the gym as she has poor physical health and bad eating habits. This then gets in the way of her hero work as she has to get in shape, which eventually lessens her hatred of gym (curse them making you use effort). 

The next question is if Aelita is a hero, anti-hero, or villain?

The answer is Aelita is a hero, but since she is a teen and not fully mature, there are incidents where she abuses her new found powers. For example, temporarily maxing out her charm attribute inorder to convince her teacher to give back everything he had confiscated from her or using it to get a new friend.

The next question is to talk about her psyche, level of intelligence, and emotional attributes.

Aelita isn’t the fittest; as said before, she hates the gym, is an indoor child, and doesn’t have the best eating habits. She is a little chubby. This leads to a rocky start for her superhero career, but as time moves forward, she does get better and lose some weight. As for intelligence, she is very smart and usually receives 90s on her test, for she knows her parents would kill her and take away her technology otherwise. All the strategy games and puzzles have helped her think outside the box and in battle. For emotional attributes, well, she can be shy and awkward at first and then becomes loud and awkward as you get to know her. She is also excitable when in front of something she believes to be awesome. What does she advocate for? Aelita’s motto is you do you as long as it's nothing terrible. Her current goal is to win a gaming tournament and to live up to the heroes in her games and in life. Is she successful at it? She is trying hard. There have been successes and failures, but she is learning.

In terms of who they are, likened from the DC Universe and Marvel Cinematic, I would say Firestorm and Blue Beetle from DC and Spiderman from the Marvel Cinematic. Firestorm was the first one that came to mind when answering this question, and that is because of his personality. He can be smart at times, but at others, he is the goofy voice in a severe situation, but when it comes down to it, you can rely on him. Blue Beetle was because the stories are kind of similar. Aelita gets a strange package that gives her powers, and Jaime Reyes gets a blue beetle from space stuck to his back one day that gives him armor; both of these events changed them both. I say Spiderman because I imagine Aelita to act in a similar manner.

The final thing to talk about would be Aelita’s future.

How and when she dies? 

I honestly don’t know that quite yet. Aelita would prefer not to die at all, but if she had to, she would like to die knowing she did everything she could rather than be sloppy. Like she imagines it from the movies where they sacrifice their lives for others to go on but understands that it’s not how it works. It could be from anything really, and it doesn't have to be super related otherwise. Until then, she continues to live until that day comes.

What legacy does she leave behind? That would be the new Player 1. She ends up passing the torch to someone new to take over her position as a hero. She actually helps mentor the new hero through her handy dandy console, where she has collected her memories and preserved her in a way so she could help the next generation as best she can.

Well, we're finally done with introducing my very own superhero, Aelita Stones or better known as Player 1, or at least to those in that fictional world where she lives in. Thank you for reading this long blog, and I hope you enjoyed my character.

[sinceileftyoublog]

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith Interview: Electric Awe

Photo by Chantal Anderson

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Like many writers, I’m guilty of (twice) calling Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith a “synth wizard” in past articles. With her upcoming album The Mosaic of Transformation, out tomorrow on Ghostly International, she shows that her skills and ideas are increasingly firmly rooted in the terrestrial realm, the spaces within us as much as the spaces surrounding us. 2016′s Ears was the soundtrack to “driving a spaceship through futuristic jungles,” whereas 2017′s The Kid (one of our favorite albums of that year) was “a concept album about four stages of life.” But her releases and endeavors since then invoke much more corporeal life. After releasing The Kid, she founded Touchtheplants, part record label, part publishing house from which she’s released the first volumes in her Electronic Series and books on listening as well as modular synth work recorded back in 2013 (Tides: Music for Meditation and Yoga). All of this informs The Mosaic of Transformation, an album centered around her awe for electricity and how it exists within the body.

The music on The Mosaic of Transformation, simply put, feels alive, looking to burst from the seams. The appropriately titled opener “Unbraiding Boundless Energy Within Boundaries” begins with a tropical beat that dances into ascension. “The Spine Is Quiet In The Center” hovers like buzzing bees waiting to pollinate a flower. “Understanding Body Messages” is burbling and buoyant. At the same time, Smith captures life when the songs retreat into minimalism, like with the weepy strings and layered vocals of “Remembering” and dropped beat of the previously sprightly organ waltz of “The Steady Heart”. Elsewhere, tracks like “Overflowing” and “Deepening The Flow Of” are less than 30 seconds of pause between more major pieces, including 10.5-minute opus “Expanding Electricity” that closes the album.

I spoke to Smith over the phone last month about the record. The release of it wasn’t delayed due to COVID-19, but her tour with Caribou was postponed (and has since been rescheduled, including a stop in October at the Riviera). In the meantime, she’s used streamed performances on her Twitch channel as a way to reveal bits and pieces of the album. And of course, she’s been going on walks, trying to stay safely distanced from others but closer to nature.

Read our conversation below, edited for length and clarity.

Since I Left You: As you’ve said, a lot of The Mosaic of Transformation centers around your exploration of dance and the body and is contextualized in the music you’ve done for yoga and Touchtheplants. What else is some key inspiration or context for looking at the record?

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith: A lot of it for me stems from my heart’s response to experiences I’ve had with electricity, feeling such a state of appreciation for all the many facets and capabilities of electricity. It’s my musical response to that admiration.

SILY: Are you talking about electricity from a scientific perspective or more metaphorically?

KAS: I guess there’s always elements of both. It’s such a potent part of all aspects of life, and our body’s made of electricity. I’ve been studying the nervous system a lot the last few years, and that really deepened my appreciation for learning about an internal experience of electricity, and I make music with electricity, so I have this external and internal experience. It’s been fascinating.

SILY: Where have you been studying the nervous system?

KAS: I’ve been learning about it from a lot of different teachers and readings. It’s kind of a self-study. I’ve done different online programs about electricity in the body.

SILY: When you think about the word “electricity,” people usually think of a light bulb or light switch. But like you mention, there’s a lot of electricity found in the natural world and in our bodies. To what extent are you trying to explore something natural with this record as opposed to electric objects?

KAS: To me, it’s the same thing, just in a different capsule. That’s where my admiration really started to expand. Having all these different experiences with electricity. It takes different shapes and can do different things depending upon the container that it’s in. It’s just a really interesting medium. It’s such a foundation for what animates life and objects.

You know when you feel so overwhelmed with awe at something? To me, that’s what inspiration is. You think, “I have to communicate this in a different way. I have to find an outlet for it.”

SILY: There are different ways to musically manifest electricity or what it sounds like, but to me, you seemed to skirt the cliche of buzzing or zooming noises. A lot of the time, your music is more fluttery. Was that a conscious decision?

KAS: It’s interesting you say the word “flutter,” because that was one of the first words I wrote down, because before I start a project, usually the moment I feel inspiration flooding in, I start compiling the words and images coming through, and they don’t all connect yet. “Flutter” was a really prominent word in that process. It was neat, because at that time, I was doing this residency with these wooden pipe organs and was recording a lot of stuff on those. That’s what gives it that fluttering sound.

SILY: I could definitely hear the organ on “The Steady Heart”, but I love records where the instrument that makes the sound is not the one you thought it did.

KAS: Me too. I had that experience with On The Other Ocean by David Behrman and Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians.

SILY: One thing that stood out to me about the new record is it’s about half short-form tracks, whereas other songs, like the closing track “Expanding Electricity”, are almost their own suites. How do you make the decisions behind when a track ends and begins?

KAS: I never feel like I’m really making the decisions. It’s kind of just what is coming through. It’s what the inspiration feels like. I remember when I was first writing down the words, one of the ideas was to make an opera, where it had reoccurring themes and felt like you were going through set changes. After set changes, there were these moments where characters were expressing themselves and communicating like opera. It turned into that structure.

SILY: You don’t sing as much on this one, either.

KAS: I sing probably half on it. I feel like most of my albums tend to be like that. The Kid was the exception. It’s just that my voice isn’t my primary instrument. It depends on what that piece is asking for. Sometimes, the thing that wants to be communicated just isn’t through the voice.

SILY: I definitely think of your voice as one being used as an instrument rather than a communicator of words, like on “Remembering”, where you layer your voice and it’s hard to decipher what you’re saying. At the same time, how do you come up with your lyrics?

KAS: It’s mostly what I hear. I don’t have a formula for the actual creation of pieces, but the way that I go about composing is always the same: I first get a really strong feeling of inspiration, and there’s an urgency that has to get communicated, and I can’t say it in English words. Then, I sit and listen with closed ears and don’t play anything. I usually get the full scope of what the sound is in an inner listening experience. During that process is usually when I hear the words. Then, I’ll write them down, and try to actualize what I heard internally.

SILY: I really like your use of space on the album, and you use it in different ways. On “The Steady Heart”, where the beat comes in, it’s fitting, and you realize what the track was previously lacking. On the flip side, on “Deepening The Flow Of”, the song momentarily empties out. How do you go about trying to inject a sense of space into your compositions?

KAS: It’s a hard question, because sometimes I honestly feel like I’m along for the ride creatively most of the time. It doesn’t feel like I’m making decisions. That process is happening, but I mostly am doing that matching process where I hear something internally and actualize what I heard. So it’s less of a conscious process of methodical decisions, “That part will communicate this and this.” It’s more, “I heard that inside, how do I match what I heard?”

SILY: What’s the story behind the album art?

KAS: It’s kind of a long story, but it’s a really big process of the album. When I first got the inspiration for the album, the full sonic listening experience of it, while I was having that experience, I kept getting these visuals of making these symmetrical shapes. I decided to give myself a physical symbol of me working through a transformation and through my body’s electricity while I wrote the album. The whole process of the album, each day, I would show up to working on the music, and usually, what would happen is I would experience a lot of challenges, frustration, and emotion matching what I heard inside, so my process to clear that out was to do the physical practice. They became this double practice that helped each other. I just kept track of my progress, and shapes were the end product of my physical transformation of being able to make these shapes with my body I couldn’t make before. The sonic version was to create what I heard inside. It went through a lot of different versions. I probably rewrote it 12 times.

SILY: What has been your approach to adapting these pieces to a performance?

KAS: The idea was to always make each performance different. It was always going to involve a more performance art vibe by having visuals and some sort of dance element to it. The live streams have been doing makeshift versions of that, but there are still a lot more elements that are going to be coming out as the album comes out. I’m performing using some Buchla gear, and I had written out parts for an orchestra with the hopes there would be some orchestral performances.

SILY: Why did you decide to release this record on Ghostly International instead of Western Vinyl?

KAS: That’s a really hard question to answer. Nobody’s ever asked me that question before, and it’s complicated. It’s like asking someone, “You were collaborating with this person, why are you collaborating with that person?” It’s not really a “this or that” as much as a “this and that.” You keep on growing. It’s not like one replaces the other. It expands.

SILY: How did the Ghostly relationship start?

KAS: We had been friends for a while, and it kind of just happened naturally. I shared the album with them.

SILY: Is anything else next for you?

KAS: A lot of things. I usually don’t have that long of a break before finishing something. I usually go right into making new music. I’m working on a lot of Touchtheplants projects right now. I’m writing the 2nd of 12 planned books on listening. Those are the main things I’m focusing on.

SILY: Do you have a favorite plant?

KAS: Ooh! Not of all time, but I have different plants I highlight at different times. Right now, I’m working a lot with rosemary and fennel. I like to put rosemary in all my water I drink. It’s anti-viral, and it’s got this lecithin that protects the fat around your cells, so it’s a really nice one to work with. But for all plants, like if you’re taking medicine, do your research! And fennel propagates really easily.

SILY: When you go to different cities, do you visit their arboretums? 

KAS: Usually on tour, I try to find where’s the closest park or garden.

SILY: Pre- or during lockdown, is there anything you’ve been watching, reading, or listening to that’s inspired you, comforted you, or caught your attention?

KAS: I go mbira.org a lot and listen to mbira music from that website. I like to support the musicians on that website because the money goes straight to them in Zimbabwe, and American money to them is a lot of money. They don’t have a streaming thing, and you have to buy it from them. You can’t find it online or anywhere else. I’ve mostly been reading about the nervous system, but I just got this book I haven’t read yet called Surrendering. I’ve read a few pages of it and I’m really excited to read that. It’s not comforting, but I’ve been watching the Tiger King. It’s the opposite of comforting. It definitely caught my attention. I watch a lot of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. That, in a weird way, has been comforting. In a weird way, it’s helped me process everything that’s going on by learning about what’s going on. Whenever I go a day or two without staying updated, I start to feel a little bit weird. I like learning from The Daily Show because it’s delivered in a humorous way.

[archonreviews]

The Archon’s Review of Sonic Forces

Sonic Forces is a 3D platformer developed by Hardlight and Sonic Team as part of the venerable Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. These are dark times for... wherever the hell the Sonic the Hedgehog characters live. Dr. Eggman has taken over the world, and a new horror, a beast named Infinite, has slain Sonic himself. There is still hope, however. Knuckles the Echidna has formed a resistance movement, and though its gains have been minuscule for now, their fortunes are about to turn. You, the player, are a new recruit for la resistance, known simply as “The Rookie”. And if that nickname doesn’t get on your tits within the first twenty minutes or so, then you must be a machine or something. You will be the catalyst that saves this world from robotic annihilation. Also, dress-up. So much dress-up.

Deviant-artists, rejoice! You can finally make your very own Sonic-OCs-do-not-steal, and even play as them! I would be lying if I said that this singular feature wasn’t what initially drew me to Sonic Forces. Hell, the concept actually got me kinda excited! Of course, if I wanted to play Sonic the Hedgehog: Dress-up Edition, I could Google it and probably have a competently executed flash game appear, so how’s this game actually do?

Well, we’ll begin with a rather sad statement. That is, you only really play about a third of the game as your OC. And that may be a generous estimate. Otherwise, you play as either Sonic, or the old-school Sonic from Sonic Generations. Sometimes you play as both your OC and Sonic; so as to combine your powers to perform a rare and dangerous team dash scripted section thingie.

Speaking of your OC’s interactions with Sonic the Hedgehog, they have some. And this actually ties with one of my fundamental problems with the game’s story; it characterizes your OC for you. Sadly, the character they decided was “Loves Sonic so huggy muggy much.” Honestly, the amount of time your OC spends thinking about, or hanging out with, or taking inspiration from Sonic the Hedgehog grates on me quite a bit. It also prevents your OC from being their own person somewhat, as most of what you see of their personality is filtered through this veneer of hero worship, and I mean, I like Sonic and all, but I don’t think my OC would like him as much as the game makes it out.

^(Pictured: Sonic helping my OC from beyond the Shadow Realm.)^

What, you want to know how each of the playable characters works? Well, it’s fairly simple. If you’ve played Sonic Adventure 2 or Sonic Generations, that’s regular Sonic. If you’ve ever played a 2D Sonic, that’s basically how OG Sonic rolls. The OC is a bit trickier though; superficially, they play like regular Sonic, going fast and platforming. However, the OC has a device called a “Wispon”, which allows them to swing on certain parts of the environment, Saul Spiderman-style. In addition, Wispons come in various elemental flavours, and each one has an attack ability, and a platforming ability that makes certain parts of certain levels super easy. So stages where you play as your OC are half-Sonic, half-swingy-elemental-bollock.

I have one little nitpick concerning difficulty. There are two difficulty modes: normal and hard. But the game locks achievements behind the hard difficulty setting. Except the hard difficulty setting is really not that difficult. Like, Hard is normal and normal is easy? It’s a bit weeiird is all.

So how about that plot? I’ve got to say, it’s actually really, really dark. Like, darker than Shadow the Hedgehog. And the game just sort of takes on this dark plot by accident. As I mentioned earlier, Sonic is killed in the second cutscene or so. Except, he’s not dead, he was merely captured by Eggman... who then tortured him for months on end. The only reason Sonic was kept alive at all was because Eggman wanted him to witness the birth of the Eggman Empire before Eggman ejects Sonic into the vacuum of space! And all of this is relayed to the player with the same tone of voice as one might relay a sad factoid to a friend. And Sonic himself doesn’t seem all that phased by the relentless torture. Like, damn, great fortitude on Sonic’s part, but it would be nice if the tone of the game reflected the seriousness of the plot.

^(Also, there’s a Death Star -- Sorry, Death Egg bit.)^

In fact, the entirety of the game has this very militaristic overtone that I actually found very interesting. The entire world seems to be inhabited by animal-people, all of whom seem to be engaged in a death-struggle with Eggman’s robot army, and (SPOILER WARNING) Eggman’s over-arching plan is essentially genocide. Like, this may very well be the most threatening Eggman’s ever been. If memory serves, the more recent Sonic games usually have Eggman being a secondary villain in front of some big, bad, true ending villain. (SPOILER WARNING CONTINUES) But here, it’s the other way around; Infinite is built up as this big badass, with reality-warping powers extraordinary, but he gets wreked near the end after a mildly frustrating chase-fight. After that, you fight Eggman, who has constructed a truly frightening mechanized horror, and as far as multi-stage mech bosses go, his transition from stage 1 to 2 is actually a bit grotesque. I’ll admit, this may have been because of my low expectations, but I was actually impressed with Eggman in this one. (SPOILERS OVER)

^(Like, I think this is the first time in recent memory that Eggman actually professed to hating Sonic with as much passion as he does here.)^

Another peculiarity, albeit a minor one, is that there are no Chaos Emeralds, or a Super Sonic, both of which are usually series staples. Instead, there’s a “Phantom Ruby”, which turns out to be the source of Infinite’s powers.

^(Plot phlebotinum.)^

But enough of that interesting plot nonsense; you want to play dress-up with your very own Sonic-OhSee-Donut-Steel. You acquire new options for dress-up and new Wispons by completing missions, such as finishing stages or getting a certain number of medals while playing as a particular species. However, the options for customization are a bit... limited. There are only 7 or so species to choose from, and only a few different eye shapes and voices. As for clothes, there’s enough variety to keep you going for one go of the main campaign, but after that, there’s little else to acquire. Also, I feel that they could have condensed certain clothing options into a single article, while allowing the player to choose the color for their clothes, instead of it being pre-set per article.

^(My Original Character, Greg the Dog. He will later replace that fedora with a tri-corn hat.)^

I have one more problem with the gameplay before the ending wrap-up. Basically, the 2D Original Sonic sections work well, being evocative of ancient Sonic the Hedgehog stages; however, every so often, the regular Sonic stages and the OC stages will shift from full 3D to 2D. Unfortunately, they keep the same physics, meaning that most of the time, your character will go too damn fast, especially when they throw goddamn piss-taking, assaholic precision platforming sections at you. They’re not fun, not engaging, and not a test of the player’s skill. These sections are asssssss. Plain and simple. The number of times I fell into a pit while in 2D mode because I couldn’t curtail Sonic’s ridiculous speed is proportional to the number of blood vessels I burst in rage.

^(This part haunts my nightmares. That pod thing there in the center has no hit detection, and constantly shoots spike balls at you.)^

Also, Shadow the Hedgehog is in there somewhere. He’s not a problem; I just figured I should mention that he has a little 3-part prologue thingie. There’s no reward for beating it, it’s just kinda fun I guess.

Is Sonic Forces fun? Would I recommend it? Well, ask yourself this: Would you play as your Sonic OchSea Doughnewt Stale if you had the chance? If yes, then I would totally recommend Sonic Forces. Otherwise... I mean, it’s not bad, per se, The plot’s a pretty big deviation, which I found interesting. But the mechanics are... okay. I’m not going to keep playing because I already beat it. The adventure of Greg the Dog is over. It’s fun while it lasts, but afterwards, I wouldn’t think about it too much.

Hey, this part is a later addition because I messed up and forgot to include one more point. That is: the music in this game is the most buttastic butt rock I’ve ever heard. I have a soft spot for butt rock; I Am... All of Me by Crush 40 is one of my favorite songs, and the cover of Live and Learn by FamilyJules and Jonathan Young is one of my favorite works of theirs. But this music... Arrrgh, is it ever trite. Like, Think of a middle schooler trying to write music for Crush 40 and having it sung by another middle schooler, and you’ve basically got the music for this game. Is bad.

^(Best shot of Infinite I could get.)^

[thomcoldman-blog]

Don’t Call It A Throwback

The “new old” is a phenomenon hardly unique to games, but a large corner of the medium can be identified as an intentional recreation of interactive entertainment's past. In film you have the 2011 silent film The Artist, in traditional art you naturally still see paintings in the style and approach of painters from centuries ago, and popular music is nothing if not big on recycling past sounds – just look at the turn-of-the-decade revival of 80s synth sounds in the UK. But it's in games where the past isn't so much referenced for new inspiration as it is recreated wholesale; brought out of the loft, dusted off and presented anew for a new generation of players.

Just look at the number of older games re-released in some form over the last 12 months. Off of the top of my head, I can think of Final Fantasy XII, the original PlayStation 1 Crash Bandicoot trilogy, Okami, Street Fighter 2, Pokemon Gold & Silver, PaRappa the Rapper, Yakuza (as Yakuza Kiwami), Mega Man 7 through 10, Full Throttle and the swathe of games released under the Arcade Archives and SEGA Forever banners. These releases include remasters (preserving the game with technical  enchancements), remakes (building the game anew from the ground-up, often with new features) and more-or-less straight dumps of the original code running on emulation software. Whatever the format, publishers and developers are now fully committed to the notion that bringing old games to new platforms – and new players – is a winning strategy.

This is nothing new, of course, as anyone who remembers Super Mario All-Stars or the glut of Final Fantasy collections on PS1 can attest to. But classic titles working their way into the catalogues of new consoles does create an interesting juxtaposition in 2017 – as technology improves and games  get more sophisticated, and new design trends emerge, what purpose does making old games readily available serve? Many new titles supplant or enhance their gameplay – of the above franchises mentioned, Pokemon, Final Fantasy and Street Fighter never slowed down, and games like Parappa and Full Throttle evolved into modern day titles like Rock Band and Telltale Game #353 Episode 1. So is it really the classic game feel that people are seeking? Or is the pull of an oldie simply born out of rose-tinted mythologising?

A handful of titles released in the last year make the argument that, actually, it's both. In 2017 SEGA released Sonic Mania; Terrible Toybox released Thimbleweed Park; and Playtonic released Yooka-Laylee. Each of these titles exists solely to recreate a particular style of game from history in the style you remember it, positing that, yeah, these games did play well, and still do. They occupy a fascinating space between ruthlessly chasing the cutting-edge, evoking classic gaming to explore more contemporary design like so many independent releases do, and bringing old titles to new platforms. In rebuilding a piece of the past that was left behind, each title ends up standing out as more interesting than they otherwise may have been in their heyday, or if they simply conformed to the modern-day standards of their genre playmates.

Let's start with Sonic Mania, a game that feels like it should have existed years ago in two ways. Firstly, it's a clear continuation of the original Sonic The Hedgehog platformers from the Mega Drive – a mission statement of the developers being to create the Sonic that the Sega Saturn never got to have. This results in a game that looks dazzling, and yet in line what with came before – this is Sonic The Hedgehog 2 with far more detail (and an extremely welcome 16:9 upgrade). This is a defining trait of the “new breed” of retro, in that it keeps what worked about the original games visually, and buffs it to a shine without it becoming unrecognisable. Sonic has always enjoyed rich sprite work and detailed backgrounds, and Mania feels as good on the eyes as players in the 90s maybe remember those original titles looking. You can imagine it being around circa 1996, blowing minds with new visual tricks like silhouettes, polygonal special stages and Sonic, Eggman and the gang's gorgeous animations – just looking a bit fuzzier on a CRT, of course.

Sonic Mania feels remarkably overdue in more recent terms, too – it has a slavish adherence to how Sonic span, rolled, bounced and launched in the Mega Drive/Mega CD quadrilogy, making the hedgehog feel better in the hands than he's felt in years. Dodgy physics and a wrong-headed speed emphasis in modern Sonic titles should have provoked a re-examination of the classic title's feel a good while ago. It's a cliché in Sonic conversations that the new is in the shadow of the old, but the idea that design progression does not necessarily mean a genre has objectively improved is a good one to keep in mind, despite it being otherwise scarcely considered. Mania doubles-down in proving the original Sonic feel needed a second outing; the physics and level design philosophy resurrected, developers Christian Whitehead, Headcannon and PagodaWest polish their levels with modern considerations including a dearth of cheap tricks, more inventive level gimmicks than those seen in the originals and an aural accompaniment that bridges poppy jazz, fidgety hip-hop and slowed-down mood music. It feels “old”, but almost only ever in ways that make the whole endeavour fun and surprising.

Thimbleweed Park mostly follows that same philosophy, and is largely as successful with it. Thimbleweed is an adventure game ripped straight out of the late 80s and mid-90s, complete with roughly a third of the screen lost to an ever-present inventory and list of possible actions. Akin to Maniac Mansion, you have a handful of characters to use at any time, and progression requires solving puzzles that tend to require an item being used in a particular way on a particular object or character. Like Mania, Thimbleweed takes that structure – one that used to too often be riddled with obtuse puzzles married to logic from the thirteenth dimension – and refines it, with puzzles following more earthbound ways of thinking and a handy hint system riffing on the old hint lines that no doubt rang up some hefty phone bills in the point'n'click heyday.

As someone who was born the year before Day Of The Tentacle released, I've had to experience classic point'n'click through reissues, which has occasionally been a frustrating experience. Thimbleweed felt like a more comfortable ride, a game I saw through to the finish with the right ratio of time being stumped and time making progress. The game has a lovely, corny sense of humour that always feels to follow Lucasarts' (and Double Fine's) games about, and the game's look is gorgeous sprite work – again, like Sonic, this is an old aesthetic as they truly imagined it. The game isn't necessarily a better time than, say, Day Of The Tentacle – it's not as funny or as clever at its heights, and the ending is maybe a little too self-indulgent – but its flaws never felt like they came from its inspirations. This type of adventure game, a remotely hands-off experience with plenty of opportunities for experimentation and getting stuck, felt relevant again.

Having not played Yooka-Laylee, I can't comment too much on its success, but based on commentary it sounds rather similar to something I have played – 2008's Mega Man 9, one of the earliest original titles to turn back the clock on gaming's progress. That game was brutal – its 8-bit style offered minimal improvements over what was capable on the Nintendo Entertainment System, and so did its gameplay, full of rock-solid boss encounters, pixel-perfect jumps and overwhelming enemy opposition. It felt like an old Mega Man game, but as someone who only played their first Mega Man game in 2007, it felt /exactly/ like a Mega Man game – my time with Mega Man 3 (that is, dying a lot) was more or less the same time as I had with MM9. It felt squarely for classic fans – a novelty, though undoubtedly a well-made one. As far as the commentary I've seen surrounding Yooka-Laylee, it sure sounds similar, stringent design authenticity taking the place of considered design. I don't want to write off a game I haven't played, but as exciting as the new breed of “original throwback” is, this is an important pitfall to signpost.

There are other examples of this kind of throwback, of course – 2014's Shovel Knight is a keenly-made mash-up of elements of Castlevania, Ducktales and Zelda 2, and like Sonic and Thimbleweed it beautifully maintains a era-appropriate look whilst working with more colours and on-screen objects than that hardware could manage. Its level design is tight, challenging whilst constantly incorporating new ideas to keep the whole thing fresh. It's a bizarre concept, a game on the surface unnecessarily slavish to the old school ending up feeling refreshing in the finer details and overall experience, but Shovel Knight, Sonic Mania and Thimbleweed Park all manage to pull this off with aplomb, and they set an exciting precedent for die-hard fans and embattled veterans to spruce up long forgotten gameplay styles. To answer the original question, is there an appetite for the way old games play? Sure – but a side of 2010s artistry sure helps it go down well.

[kyulkyungs]

SEVENTEEN: Superpower!AU

I randomly started to think about this after talking about me wanting to sonic scream every second of my life.

Long! Under the cut/keep reading.

S.Coups - Barriers/Shields

I didn’t want to give him something clunky or cliche like super speed or strength??? (sorry if i offended anyone D: )

But hear me out

Not only can he block attacks with his barriers, he can use them for offensive purposes too?

He can create multiple at a time with not a lot of effort due to practice, so the added force of hitting each barrier with another barrier works like those collision balls in physics?

My idea of physics is not generally sound though, but if this can work then yeah??? (I mean, I ended up with a C in my honors freshman physics class and refused to go into regular classes b/c my ego but)

He can also make those barriers sturdy enough to put things on

Need a trip to the fourth floor from the outside? Done. Want to catch something from falling from the tenth floor? Done. Gotta walk over some puddle and don’t wanna go around? Sure, Jeonghan. Done. 

Okay but listen to this

The barrier’s color or opacity depends on whatever Seungcheol decides

If he wants privacy he can make them dark colored and opaque

If he want to prank someone and have them run into a barrier he makes them totally clear

If he wants to be a weirdo and color a random wall puke colored? Okay that works too

Can make different shapes of barriers as well

The most common ones made are circular or rounded ones and flat ones

As a surprise for the other members, he asked DK to help him make as many tiny little light balls as he could and then trapped those balls in little barriers

They looked like stars and it made all the members really happy

It was super tiring for both of them but Seungcheol felt like it was worth it to see all those smiles and some teary eyes (it was totally not him that teared up, nope)

Once was able to trap some members that were fighting in a small barrier until they made up

S.Coups is also very protective of the other members and people he’s very close to, so this would work out nicely I think

He’s the force that protects the others, but he’s also the pillar of support that allows everyone else to be able to function

Jeonghan - Mind Control/Manipulation

I felt like this was some sort of given?

With whoever Jeonghan makes eye contact with he has complete control over

He can be pretty lazy so this works out pretty well

And being one of the oldest, a lot of times it’s hard for the others to not look him in the eye respectfully (at least that’s one of the signs of respect for me)

Even though it really takes locking eyes with him, Jeonghan has to put quite a bit of focus into his power to make sure they stay under his control

But he can maintain it for a hefty amount of time

The longest someone’s been under is ~36 hours and it was Hoshi because he accidentally sat on Jeonghan’s stomach while he was taking a nap somewhere

It hurt a lot lol

He can also control multiple people at a time, but that’s more straining that one person, so he can’t do it for too long

The more time he spends controlling someone the more fatigued he gets, but if he puts a lot of his focus and effort into it the results last longer

You can’t tell, probably because you’re under his control by then, but whenever Jeonghan uses his power his eye color gets slightly lighter???

The lighter it is the more under the influence you are, so it’s like a glow stick

That’s a bad comparison lmao

But you can tell it’s wearing out when his eye color returns to normal or gets darker

If he wanted to he could probably control an army of people for however long he wanted to but

“Nah, too much work, maybe next time”

Not a lot of people can fight against his mind control, usually they’re able to if they’re inflicted a wound or feel immense pain

Mingyu is usually the one to get out the quickest because he has enough control over himself to throw himself into a wall and break the connection completely

Jeonghan doesn’t even try anymore at this point

Sometimes he makes eye contact with Mingyu just to see him throw himself into the wall and then walk away like nothing happened

Sometimes he does take control of Mingyu and makes him throw himself into the wall because he used his clones to wake him up from a nap by crowding in a circle and screaming

Joshua - Lucid Dreaming/Dream Control

Being able to control his own dreams isn’t really a power, lucid dreaming I know is possible, but he can control other people’s dreams as well

He can also put them “under a spell”

Basically he can knock them out and control their dreams too if they’re not already asleep, like, he can make them fall asleep by his own will

The only thing is that he has to be touching the person one way or another to travel into their dream and control it, and his body on the outside reality world is asleep too and almost frozen in time?

The way to break the connection is to disturb Joshua while he’s in the dream world

A bump, shove, anything will do as long as you manage to move him some

Think of it like Ino Yamanaka from Naruto, how she can do that mind control jutsu thing? Yeah. Her body drops whenever she does that, except Joshua is able to remain standing a little bit

This is effective for stopping someone or buying time for the others because the person being affected can’t overpower Joshua’s dream control unless they can lucid dream too

Even if they can, it’s really hard because this is Joshua’s thing, you feel me?

His favorite thing to do in his own dreams is to create entirely new worlds and just play around with that

Sometimes he creates his own animals

He scared himself awake because combining an ostrich with a weasel and a dolphin was not exactly the best combination for him

He likes the magical type of feelings for his dreams, so he often asks Vernon about plants to make it seem a lot better

He also likes to set the stages of his favorite animes and sometimes creates the characters too! It’s a little harder to create 3D versions of 2D animated people though

If Joshua’s feeling adventurous, he’ll travel into the other’s dreams and play around with them

Jeonghan was not amused when his dreamland got turned into some huge raccoon telling him about the pros and cons about frog mating

Joshua keeps telling Jeonghan that that was actually a dream and he had no part of that

Controlling dreams also means that Joshua can create nightmares, which sometimes scares himself because he doesn’t want to have to do that to anybody

He’s had his own accidents happen in his own dreams by creating nightmares for him. The ostrich-weasel-dolphin... dolseltrich? Well, that was tame enough for him at least, but there has been some pretty dark stuff where he doesn’t like to talk about it if you try to bring it up

He talks to the other 95 liners about them sometimes about that

Junhui - Teleportation/Portal Manipulation

I wasn’t sure what to give him, but for some reason I saw that this really fit???

Think of it as Goblin (The Great and Lonely God), the KDRAMA, where he can teleport to another place using a door

For example, he’s in one area. Opens a door, walks through, whole different area.

Except he can do this with any frame like structure?

A window, car door, subway door, picture frame, empty door frame even. As long as it’s some sort of frame structure, he can do it

He prefers using doors with the actual door because it causes the least suspicion and he feels a lot cooler for some reason

Jun can travel to anywhere he wishes as long as he’s been there, there’s a frame where he is, and there’s a frame on the other side

It doesn’t take a lot of effort because he’s done it so many times to just escape from one place and go relax in another

He frequents going to his neighborhood in his hometown and just walking around

It’s possible for him to bring someone else along, but they have to be touching him somewhere and him focusing on them coming along

It feels super weird for the other person though

For Jun it feels like he’s just continuing to walk through a door like normal, but for the other person it feels like they just went through a heavy amount of air pressure no matter where they get teleported to

It’s bearable enough, but once Minghao threw up because of it

The first time Jun discovered he could teleport was when he was going to be late for school and ran out the front door, only to crash into one of his classmates at school

After that he abused his power like crazy lol

Always agreed to go whenever his mom asked him to go to the store because it gave him a chance to use his power

For some reason he just loves it and wants to use it every chance he gets?

Like he walked under a ladder once and instead of coming out the other side like a normal person who’s about to experience some bad luck, he waltzes into his friend’s bathroom where his friend is pooping

Then he just walks out with a cheeky smile and he’s home while the last thing he heard was his friend hurriedly flushing and angrily yelling

“Lol, what? I was never there while you were pooping???”

Has gotten into so much trouble by his mom for so many things

“Junhui, did you walk into the teacher’s conference room again?”

“LmAO goTTa blAST”

Likes to sneak into the other member’s rooms and lock it right when they come by and try to open it

Hoshi - Blood Manipulation

The first thing I thought of when trying to decide on something for Hoshi. That and I was looking through my old picture files and saw Mirai Kuriyama from Beyond the Boundary/Kyoukai no Kanata

But can you imagine Hoshi holding this really gnarly sword made of blood???

Can also control the blood of others but it’s slightly harder if it’s not his own

Really handy in situations where he has to stop heavy blood flow coming out of a nasty wound. He’s saved Mingyu and Vernon from Dino before and had to reassure the youngest that the damage wasn’t that great, even though it kind of was :(

He loves to wield dual swords because he thinks it makes him look super cool and like one of those protagonists in those animes

It kind of does and Joshua likes to play around with him in the anime dreamlands from time to time

He used to be terrified of blood before finally being able to have at least some control over his powers because there was an accident involving his teacher at a school

The teacher slipped and banged their head, causing blood to start pouring out and he felt so useless just standing there so he tried to do something

He panicked and jumped when someone tried to pull him back because his hands were just getting bloody, then he managed to turn the teacher’s blood into a weapon and nearly impaled the child

He cried

Eventually was able to come to terms with his power and just practice in order to tell himself that everything was okay and that he could totally control it

He would refuse to make a weapon out of the other member’s blood if they offered in a time of battle because he just can’t do that after using the teacher’s blood that one time

It’s often very taxing on himself and his body too since he’s using his own blood, and a great amount of it too, to make not one but two lengthy swords

He names all of his “moves” and thinks they’re the coolest ever???

“Check this out! I call this ‘Blood Rain’“

“Cool, man. That’s literally you turning your swords into multiple little pellets and making them rain”

“I know, man. It can be really scary though because I can control where they end up”

“Oh my gosh, man. You’re right”

“I know, man”

“Man...”

Wonwoo - Ability to freeze time

I felt like invisibility was a little too cliche (again, sorry if I offended you!!!! :( )

Wonwoo can only stop time for a little while, maybe up to ~3 hours if he really felt like it

He can’t go forward or back in time, just stop it

Too much makes him super fatigued and nauseous

It really only affects him though, so it’s hard to make time stop with others too

When he does get tired though and randomly cuts out of his frozen time frame, it may look like he teleported, which his power if often easily mistaken for

Uses this to get away with a lot of things

“Wonwoo did you wash the dishes yet?”

“Yeah”

“I just looked and-”

“Lol look again”

is2g this kid lol

Also takes advantage of messing with the other members

One second there’s Woozi reading or something, the next second he has both fingers in his nose and the book it on top of his head at some weird position. Wonwoo always has the camera ready and then runs out in the frozen time frame before he can get caught

The colors slightly dull whenever Wonwoo goes into a time frame, which he doesn’t really like so he tries not to stay in the time frame for too long

At random times when he’s bored will Wonwoo just randomly freeze time and look at his surroundings and maybe laugh at someone’s face if they’re making a weird expression

Has tons of photos of those weird expressions of the members and shenanigans

Whenever someone says something like “Watch out!” Wonwoo will immediately go into a time frame by reflex and look around for whatever

He’s saved quite a number of kids in his school days from getting hit in the head with a ball

Like Jun, he likes to take advantage of his power and lock doors before the others can open it, but he does this to Jun as well or slips in just before Jun can lock it

Likes to talk with Vernon about plants and sometimes spends his time in the garden area because even in the dulled out world the bright greens and colorful flowers always seem so vibrant?

That’s why he loves the garden so much too

Asks Vernon to grow him some flowers every now and then and Vernon is always like “yes, more babies, thanks”

Woozi - Wings/Flight

Not exactly a power, I’d say, but wings are really cool!!!!

He can control what wings come from his back, for example he wants the wings of an albatross? Yeah!! Bat wings? Sure thing! Hummingbird? Boom, also gets the proper back muscles to support such quick movements

It’s a very complex process though, so it’s almost like shapeshifting but not fully

Woozi has to be able to know the muscle and bone structure of the wings he wants to use, which require a lot of memory, biology, and logic usage

He’s the team’s aerial support so he feels like if something happens with the team that he could’ve stopped, he’d be to blame since he has a great advantage and the best view out of all of the members

His favorite wings are owl wings because he finds them the easiest to form

Because he’s so used to flying around, Woozi walks a little funky and sometimes can’t sit still when he has nothing to do

He’s constantly busy though, so that’s not too much of a problem

Has a habit of making really small wings appear whenever he’s working because he feels like if he doesn’t practice at least a little bit everyday he’ll be at a disadvantage and bring the team down

Also has a habit of wrapping his wings around a member when they’re both sleepy. It works like a big fluffy blanket

He sheds feathers lol

“Woozi, are you trying to stuff our pillows?”

“Shut up, give me that”

Stores all of the feathers in some huge box for some reason, says its a reminder that his powers are real and not just some dream

In reality he just wants to make this really big blanket stuffed with feathers for all the members to use at the same time to keep warm

He was some really developed back muscles (bREATHES HEAVilY), and slightly alternated ones because of using those wings so much

Overall pretty developed because using those wings requires a LOT of strength and willpower to get off of the ground

He’s learned how to use the wings as weapons as well, even taking advantage of some loose feathers and swinging his wings at an angle so that they fly off and directly into something

It’s really scary how accurate he’s become, like, bulls eyes for days, 360 no scope

His wings are generally very large to help with lifting off of the ground so it’s hard to get into compact places with him, which puts him at a disadvantage when against someone

But if you are in a compact area that leads into an open space in some way or another, be careful or you might find yourself stuck in that tiny place with a bunch of feathers impaled to the walls

Honestly really admires birds and has at least several books just dedicated to birds stowed away somewhere

Likes to freely fly whenever he has the time, yet he claims he’s practicing

Took Chan flying once and then it became a weekly thing since he kept asking and Woozi actually really enjoyed the company of someone up there with him

Also likes to fly in dreams with Joshua

DK - Light/Brightness Manipulation

I felt like this was also kind of a given

I wanted to give him Seungkwan’s power, sonic screaming, but was torn between this and that

I ended up giving him “something that was a bright as his personality and smile”

Let’s be real though

His smile is bright enough as it is, like, he can blind you???

Often times will DK mess around and put his hands up near his cheeks and smile so that it’s so bright you can’t tell that it’s actually his hands that are causing the brightness

He can really only control the brightness levels in his hands and for some reason his eyes

Like, no other part can light up except those???

It’s kind of scary when his eyes light up in the dark because they’re one solid, bright light

If he tries hard enough a ball of light can physically come off of DK

Honestly after he got the hang of that, the members had to wear sunglasses in the house because of how bright and how many balls of light there were

He’s tried to eat one of those balls of light and ended up lighting up his tongue for a whole week

It also felt like his stomach was on fire for the first couple of hours after he ate it

Using too much of his power gives DK a headache though, almost like looking at a bright light for too long and your eyes hurting really badly

It’s like that

One time he got super excited and screeched and then his entire body lit up

It was amazing

Like he was doing a full on Pokemon evolution, man

Eventually he dimmed and the only thing that was different was that his expression was completely shocked

He’s not allowed to screech in the house anymore because he was too bright and too loud

“You nearly blind us on numerous occasions, but pls... no deaf”

Likes to pretend that he can fart or poop out those balls of light since they can come out of places where skin is showing since it’s exposed to light the most

He feels great in direct sunshine and often makes jokes that he’s performing photosynthesis

Regrets making those jokes because he usually isn’t able to share a snack with some of the members since they say he can make food from the sun

Mingyu - Cloning

Okay, so he can make at most 20 clones of himself without too much strain

He “reabsorbs” them later and basically earns whatever they did

For example, one clone learned how to do some really complicated dance move in the course of 5 hours

Mingyu not only gets that muscle memory and knowledge of the dance move, but he also gets the fatigue and strain from it as well

It’s not always beneficial because of this, but it helps a lot with multitasking for simple things such as chores and papers and stuff

Sure, the stress and strain add up, but I guess so does the endurance?

Mingyu is always saying things like: “I lost in rock, paper, scissors? Lmao that wasn’t me, that was my clone so it doesn’t count”

There was one time where he chose not to listen to the warning advice from the others and decided to make as many clones as he could and do a whole lot of work

The minute he reabsorbed them he collapsed and passed out because of how much exhaustion and stress he received

He got put into the “time out cage” by Seungcheol

When he first met the others he fooled most of them by pretending he had multiple twins or triplets, like 15 of them.

“Yeah, we’re all identical”

“How is that even possible?”

“Our mom liked to eat a lot so she had a lot of room in her bottomless stomach??? I’m pretty sure there’s more of us??? They’re just??? Waiting??????”

At those skills that his clones learned and he learned at the same time add up somewhat and that’s how he’s nicknamed “the boy who can do anything/everything”

Doesn’t hold information as well as skill sets though

So some person might recognize him and thank him for helping out with groceries and he won’t even remember doing that?

The members sometimes use that to their advantages and make him do the chores

“Thanks for saying you’ll cover my turn for doing the dishes, bro”

“????k then?”

Once he sneezed and like 50 clones came out of him and it was the most horrifying and hilarious thing ever

They all stacked on top of each other in a compact room and the original Mingyu couldn’t even reabsorb them all because he was squashed under so many of himself

There are never those random fights over who’s the original Mingyu because only the original can do the reabsorbing, and they all do something to agree on because they’re all the same person?

Even with the overwhelming numbers of clones, Mingyu is a strong man and very intelligent one too?

Fighting against Mingyu can be intimidating, but against numerous clones of him? N o p e

The8 - Elasticity

Have you seen this kid move around and dance on stage?

You can not tell me that he doesn’t have the power to stretch and bend however he wants, nope, it’s settled for me, yup yup yup

This helps with his b-boying because he can do those really complex moves without having to worry about the way his body moves or about his joints too much

Likes to take things from the other member’s pockets from across the room

He’s sitting literally across the room and you might feel something in your pocket and realize that it’s Minghao’s nimble fingers snatching away a snack probably

Often times likes to trip members as they walk

Very, very flexible, and very much so when it comes to learning new things to do with his powers

Is often asked by Woozi to get things from a higher shelf because he doesn’t want to ask and get teased by Mingyu

Is always the one to unlock the doors after Wonwoo and Jun lock them because he’s the only one who can flatten his arm and get it under the door frame and to the door handle

Sometimes Jun gets cheeky and makes it so that Minghao’s hand ends up in some restroom and ends up touching something he probably never wants to try and imagine in his head

The farthest The8 can stretch would probably be an entire football field

Creeped the whole crew out when he revealed that it was possible for him to rotate his head and neck around like an owl

Helps out Seungcheol with some fighting members by putting them in the “time out box” with ease

He does a lot of the dirty work for the others voluntarily because he tries to lift that burden off of the others as much as he can?

He doesn’t like to talk about it though, but he may ask Jun to take him somewhere more secluded so he can spill whatever’s been troubling him

Morning stretches often include The8 wrapping his limbs numerous times around each other and then releasing a series of cracks and pops in his joints

There are so many it’s really scary

Claims that if he rotates and wraps his arms around enough and lets it unravel quickly, he can fly like a helicopter. No one has yet to see it

His limbs go numb when outstretched for too long, so it ends up looking like a huge noodle that’s slowly retracting

It’s happened at least 30 times already

When he knows a member is feeling down, he’ll sneakily leave little cheerful notes or snacks nearby them without him getting up so they won’t know it’s him

They actually do since he’s not that quick at retracting his limbs...

Seungkwan - Sonic Scream

Basically what I wanted to have myself as said before the cut, but like

I was debating on giving this power to DK

I felt like it kind of fit Seungkwan more and then pictured him screaming in that haunted house on One Fine Day season 1 and then said: “Yep, it fits somehow”

I mean he can really hit those high notes too and I feel like they’re just really powerful notes as well

It also really helps for when a member bugs or annoys him he’ll be able to make them stop really quickly

“Stop or I’ll scream”

It was especially bad when he was a baby and cried lmao

His mom had such a hard time with him, but Seungkwan was a good kid most of the time

He’s really worried that he won’t be able to control his volume and accidentally hurt the other members

He’s only done it once by accident because one of the members accidentally scared him and then got blasted into the other wall with ringing ears

He’s doing his best to be able to control it and he’s progressed so far from the days where it was super hard to control!

As a child, Seungkwan used to not talk a lot because he was always afraid of accidentally being too loud

Now he talks and talks and talks!

The other members may seem like they’re annoyed sometimes, but they’re actually really happy because they understand how hard it was for him!!!!

Likes to talk with Vernon’s plants and uses a really soft voice, it’s adorable really

He loves to sing high notes too! Just to reassure himself that he’s the one in control and not his power

In school he was a part of the debate team because he liked to debate just a little, and also to listen to all the gossip that his seniors had

His voice was always very powerful during his debates, so he came across as very intimidating and it was really effective

Seungkwan once found it really amusing when he sucked in some helium and used his power with the squeaky voice

It was terrible lol

Like Alvin and the Chipmunks on full volume in the dead of the night

The loudest he can scream can probably make someone go deaf, but this poor baby would hate for that to happen

His laughs tend to be really loud though and that’s honestly when he feels the most free because often times he has little control over himself when he laughs

So when he laughs really loudly you know you’re doing a great job at being funny :)

Vernon - Plant Manipulation

For some reason I can see an image of Vernon surrounded by a bunch of green, healthy plants and he looks so happy i’M SCREAMING

Vernon can control the growth of plants and stuff? Just your general earth magic kind of thing

I can see him really liking some flowers and cacti though?

CACTUS VERNON?

He has three different potted cacti in his room that he talks to every morning after he wakes up and every night before bed?

There’s his Notocactus Sopa cactus named Nacho, a Mammillaria Spinossisima and Maria, and Rose Echeveria named Sofia!!!!

He likes to talk with Wonwoo and Joshua about the plants and it’s just so endearing?!?!?!

Vernon’s very comfortable with at least one plant around, so there’s a couple of plants in every room in the dorm

You can bet that he talks to those every day too, but not as often as his cacti

He especially loves it when the other members talk to the plants too because he can feel the love that the plants feel

And Seungkwan talking in an extremely soft voice to the plants because he doesn’t want to be too loud makes Vernon super, super, super, super happy!!!

You can bet all of your lunch money that Vernon supplies the edible greens for the food

As well as herbs and medicines??

There’s a whole garden area dedicated to Vernon because he just loves his plant friends so much

But he’s often super conflicted because he wants to grow a lot of things but has troubles finding room or suitable spots for light or shade or places where competition for nutrients and water isn’t as bad

Always knows the strongest plants to use whenever the members are in a tough spot

Whenever he’s nervous, Vernon accidentally makes those stinky purple flowers. We had some at one of my previous houses, I think they were Society Garlic (EDIT: they are! P.U! i literally just googled ‘stinky purple flower’)

It’s almost like an equivalent to someone farting when they’re nervous

He’s afraid of Venus Flytraps for some reason?

He made one and then decided nOPE and then made it shrivel up and crumble and grow some cactus in it’s place

But like a huge cactus so he wouldn’t have to feel guilty about seeing that dead plant

Somehow there are some Venus Flytraps here and there in the garden and he’s honestly so confused? It’s the guilt seeping in and he isn’t aware of it

Dino - Berserk

You thought the youngest would get something fluffy??? lmao no.

The power is exactly what it says. The user goes berserk.

I wanted to give Dino something like shapeshifting but I was thinking of Overwatch and thought of Winston and then went “lol why not”, then it just stuck and now I can’t part with this headcanon???

He has a hard time controlling himself while he’s in the state since he doesn’t have a lot of experience

There’s a significant growth in muscle and a very tense aura around him when he does go “Full On” (reference to iZombie)

You might not see it, but if you’re able to look close enough without being pummeled to a little pulp, there’s some sort of sparks nearby his eyes along with looking kind of bloodshot

Whenever he’s able to regain control and go back to normal, Dino is normally found panting and on the verge of unconsciousness

Sometimes he can’t control when he’ll go berserk, usually of times of immense stress or panic, and he beats himself up over it even though the others reassure him countless times that he’s not to blame

But he couldn’t help himself when he found out he broke Seungcheol’s ribs, knocked Vernon into a coma for three days, and effortlessly flung Mingyu’s clones practically into the next dimension so that when he reabsorbed he’d go through torture

The members all love him though and would go through that countless times over just to make sure he’s safe and sound at the end of it

They’ve also learned from that experience and found more effective uses of their powers and how to help Chan calm down? Jeonghan has the advantage in this situation though because even in his frenzy, Chan can’t help but maintain eye contact and he listens a lot to Jeonghan anyways

Physical strength and speed and not only enhanced in this state, Dino also makes more calculated decisions surprisingly as seen when he did damage to all of Mingyu’s clones

He gets nightmares frequently because he hates how little control he has, so he often talks to Joshua and asks for some help in his dreams

Eventually learns to control his dreams somewhat or is able to force himself to wake up from a nightmare

He has a lot of control over his emotions because he’s so wary of himself, but that doesn’t mean he’s on emotional lock down!

He has only little control of his power, but even if it’s just a little bit that he can do, he gets really excited and proud of himself!

“Hyung! Hyung! Did you see that? Did you really?!”

“Yes, Dino”

“Are you sure?! I can do it again! Watch”

He proceeds to show how his arm muscles developed into the state and sometimes you have to look away because wow that’ s m a n l y

Was once able to control himself in berserk mode because he panicked when an accident happened and he wanted to protect all of the members

He gets constantly reminded of how loved he is and how proud all of the members are of him

[wizardofbits]

Sonic Forces. Hoo, boy.

Strap yourselves in, folks, this is gonna be a long one. I have numerous thoughts about Sonic Forces. The latest "modern Sonic" game from Sega to use the "Boost formula", Sonic Forces saw a multiplatform release on November 7, 2017. It features three playable characters: Modern Sonic, Classic Sonic, and a new character called the Avatar, as they work together to stop the evil Dr. Robotnik (fuck you, that's his name) who has already taken over the world, with help from the mysterious Infinite.

Ask a diehard Sonic fan and they might be hard-pressed to find anything good about this game. More likely, they'll probably say "Nothing about this is good, Vector. That's why it's called war." And then laugh at themselves for their oh-so-creative sense of humor, repeating memetic lines from the game. But the game is a good game, just not a great one. It's a step down from Generations and in that respect a bit of a disappointment, but it's not terrible. It's definitely not going to take Sonic soaring to new heights either. Still, I would much rather play Sonic Forces than play a long list of Sonic games. Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic Heroes, Sonic Unleashed, Sonic Adventure 2 (yeah I went there)... The real problems with the game break down as follows.

The Levels Are Too Fucking Short

The average Modern Sonic or Avatar level is about as long as Metal Harbor from Sonic Adventure 2. That was a... really short level, in a game that had too little Sonic-gameplay content as it was. But while that was just one level, the entire game is like this in the case of Sonic Forces. Classic Sonic levels are, maybe, about the size of an act from Sonic 1. The thing is, we're used to bigger stages than this. In Sonic Forces, you reach a point where you're finding a groove through a level and having a good time, and then whoops! It's over. The game makes up for it somewhat by packing in a lot of stages (30 to be precise), but I'd rather have 12 memorable stages than 30 forgettable ones.

The Level Assets R Bored ._.

One of the really remarkable things about early Sonic games is what vaporwave kids call A E S T H E T I C S. Early Sonic was aesthetic as FUCK, borrowing cues from the trends in the late 1980s and very early 1990s in graphic design, and especially, old-school CG. If you've ever seen the old Mind's Eye videos and things of that nature, you know exactly where those polygonal palm trees and Escher-esque birds and fish come from. This sort of eye for detail made the early games absolutely beautiful to look at, with the levels boasting streamlined curves and maze-like layouts, bursting with color and exhibiting harmonious balance that was pleasing to the eye. Even the backgrounds were gorgeous -- who could forget Green Hill's shimmering seaside, with mountainous islands and white puffy clouds in the background, or the steel industrial towers rising into the sky in Oil Ocean from Sonic 2, with a heat wave effect around the searing sun above?

What do we get in Sonic Forces? A bunch of boring, rectilinear bullshit, that's what. In fact, the Green Hill stages (way to come up with new locations, guys) just have different-sized checkerboard boxes in the background. Sure, there are some ramps and slopes in the level itself, but they're either straight or just use the same few curves over and over. It's not quite Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric bad, but it's not very good. Also, the same gimmicks are used over and over, level after level, and most of them were taken from Sonic Colors, the first game to feature all-Boost gameplay. Jesus Christ, there's a level called Chemical Plant but it doesn't use the Chemical Plant assets aside from some of the glass tube ramps carrying blue liquid. The elevators, in particular, are samey rectangles instead of the unique Chemical Plant lifts. It's not quite as bad as the bland, depressing, rushed aesthetics of, say, Shadow the Hedgehog, but Sonic Mania and Sonic Generations set our standards higher, with mind-blowingly creative takes on old and new locations.

And the level layout doesn't make any sense because it's not themed to the stage. It's just the same boring shit as every other level. Take Casino Forest, for example. If you remember Casino Night Zone from Sonic 2, you will recall that the entire level was laid out like a giant pinball machine. The slopes and curves seemed to funnel Sonic into the slots when he came across them. Sonic Forces, no such luck. It's pretty much "let's use the same rectilinear corridors and rooms we use for every other level, throw in a couple of ramps -- oh shit, this is a casino level isn't it? Well, we'll throw in some bumpers and slots here and there. Done!" Oh yeah, there's the fact that you can't steer Sonic into the slots very well because you don't have the same level of precision and control. Which brings us to...

The Physics Are Glitchy

Modern Sonic controls like ass. So does the Avatar. They either don't move when I want them to move, or shoot off in a direction I didn't want to go in. Their acceleration curves on the ground are janky as fuck, and when they jump you have to wrestle with the control stick to get them to go where you want them to go. And Classic Sonic isn't much better. He feels "sticky", like he doesn't really want to move when you hit a boost pad, spin dash, or roll. To be fair, none of these are too bad. They don't make the game play like Bubsy, or Sonic '06 or anything. It's just... when old-school Sonic physics is coded into your muscle memory, it can be hard to get used to these foibles in the game's physics and tune your stick and button responses to them.

My biggest complaint is that, particularly in one late-game level, the road curves ahead of you, and with no guardrails to keep you on track, if you aren't holding right hard as you dash along this stretch of track, you will crater to your death. But then there's another stretch of track where the game dynamically adjusts your trajectory to keep you on the track as long as you hold Up, so if you take what you've learned from the previous stretch of track and try to turn Sonic into the curve, you will again fall to your death. That's probably the biggest fuck-you in the game, but it's just in that one level as far as I can tell, and overall the game has a much lower cheap-death count than Adventure 2, Heroes, or Shadow -- let alone '06. (Fuck you, '06 and fuck the fans who say it's good or it can be made good. It's broken.)

The Boss Battles Suck

So Infinite, supposedly, is more powerful than Sonic. Shouldn't that be reflected in, you know, the boss fights against him? Instead we get two boring, relatively easy fights against him where all you have to do is dodge his straightforward attacks and mash the jump button when he's in range. Sonic games used to be known for neat boss fights. There was one at the end of each zone, and each one was based around Robotnik in his egg vehicle, but they all featured different weapons and upgrades to the vehicle, and thus different attack patterns and vulnerabilities. Later games would bring midbosses at the end of each zone's first act. This formula would be abandoned for the Sonic Adventure series, and I really wish it'd come back. But even then, Sonic Adventure 2 had a variety of interesting bosses, even if they weren't all Robotnik.

Things went really off the rails with Sonic Heroes, which had boring, samey bosses up until the last one or two, and this seems to be the pattern Sega feels comfortable in now. Which is fine, except no, it's not, it sucks actually. And it's particularly galling because this is the game where Robotnik finally takes over the world. It should be fraught with peril and danger for our heroes, and they should have to square off against terrifying robots and creations the likes of which the world has never seen before. But no, it's run down a corridor, hit the guy a few times, dodge his telegraphed attacks and fucking repeat until dead. This is even true of the final boss, which is just a ripoff of the final boss from Sonic Colors. That one was fun the first time, but come on. Even Sonic and the Secret Rings had an imaginative final boss.

Oh, another annoying thing: there are encounters which look like boss fights because they feature huge enemies that must be defeated, such as the giant snake from Luminous Forest or the giant crab thing from that one Avatar level with the giant crab thing in it. But you've been trolled because a couple of quick time events later and you fucking beat it. Jesus Christ, Sega.

So those are the bad points of this game. Here are some good points:

Your Name, the Hedgehog

I like the Avatar. More than I expected to. Full background: the Avatar is a custom character created using the in-game character creation facility. The character creation tool is very basic, allowing you to pick from among seven species, two genders, and a variety of head and eye shapes and base skin and fur colors, but that's it. Then again, it's still about as wide a range as the imagination of a typical Sonic fan can muster. Completing missions allows you to unlock accessories to decorate your OC with -- but aside from the Wispon (a gun powered by colored Wisp energy which grants one attack ability and one sub-ability) these do not affect gameplay at all. In fact the only variables that do affect gameplay are species (each species grants a different, specific perk; for example birds can double-jump and cats can hold onto one ring when they get hit) and equipped Wispon.

Adding the Avatar was a brilliant marketing move by Sega. They know what's up. They knew that diehard fans would piss themselves at being able to make their fursona canon in a Sonic game; and ironic hipsters would attempt to recreate Coldsteel or Sonichu in the character editor. Sega also resisted the temptation to decide for us that what we really need is another, vastly different, playstyle from the go-fast modern Sonic style we've gotten used to by now. Accordingly, Avatar levels are Boost levels with a different moveset. You can homing-attack enemies and swing from grapple points with your grappling hook, use your Wispon to clear out groups of enemies, or collect Wisps of the appropriate color to enable an otherwise inaccessible form of locomotion -- like launching yourself into the air with the Burst Wispon or doing a light-dash along rings with the Lightning Wispon. They're not as zippy as the Boost levels, but hey, there can only be one Sonic. Some levels let you play as Sonic and the Avatar together, successfully merging the gameplay of the two characters by putting Sonic in the lead when you press the Boost button and the Avatar in the lead when you attempt to grapple or use Wispon attacks. It's quite seamless, even less clunky than Sonic Heroes, and I love it. They could make a whole game out of this style of play. There are moments when Sonic and Avatar together do a "Double Boost", plowing through enemies and sweeping up rings at hyper speed, but these sections last about ten seconds apiece, in keeping with the game's general theme of frustrating shortness.

Finally, the Avatar is perfectly integrated into the game's cutscenes, giving them a critical role in the unfolding story.

Plot and Theming

So the plot goes like this: with the power of Infinite and the Phantom Ruby (that weird rock he dug up in Sonic Mania), Dr. Robotnik has succeeded in defeating Sonic and taking over the world. A band of rebels called the Resistance -- led by Knuckles and bearing quite a few parallels with Princess Sally's Freedom Fighters from Sonic the Hedgehog (TV series), aka "SatAM" -- seeks to track Sonic down, wherever he's being held, and retake the world. In Sonic's absence, a new hero (your Avatar), a survivor from one of Infinite's assaults on the population, steps in to help the resistance.

Meanwhile, "Tails", presumably wracked with guilt after Sonic's capture, re-connects with Classic Sonic (the version of him from Mania) and the two eventually lend their help to resisting Robotnik as well.

It's a fairly basic plot. It goes back to some dark themes -- like war and torture -- that we really haven't seen in a main-series Sonic game since Shadow. But there's no self-conscious attempt to be grimdark and edgy, no characters brooding about their past, no "damn fourth Chaos Emerald", and no human-hedgehog shipping. Everything is, still, pretty lighthearted and fun. Which gets pretty weird when you're told Sonic has been "tortured for months" aboard the Death Egg, and yet all he says to his torturers are the usual lighthearted, sarcastic quips. But what the hell. He's a blue cartoon hedgehog. This idea of cartoon animals in a war-torn world reminds me of nothing so much as the North Korean propaganda cartoon, Squirrel and Hedgehog, which even Western viewers admit has a sort of bizarre charm about it -- and that's where Sonic Forces is. Although not with the anti-Western propaganda of a repressive dictatorship.

I like how each of Sonic's friends has a specific role in the resistance: Knuckles is the leader, Silver the second in command, Amy the data analyst, Shadow and Rouge are the recon agents. "Tails" has gone underground to conduct his own search for Sonic. Sonic's cast has grown quite a bit in the past few years, and it's good that they found something for all these characters to do without burdening the story with needless exposition or a surfeit of unnecessary "gameplay styles".

Another thing I like is that they managed to keep Sonic's sarcastic "attitude" without making him a jerk. Looking back on 90s Sonic media, it's noteworthy how Sonic is an asshole even to his friends, and gets away with it because he's the hero. In "SatAM" and the Archie comics, for instance, he never passes up an opportunity to make fun of Antoine. In the British "Sonic the Comic", he's constantly mocking "Tails". In this game, Sonic manages to save his jokes at others' expense for his actual enemies and is quite charitable to his friends (especially "Tails" and the Avatar). At multiple points in the game, upon hearing a report of impending defeat from Resistance fighters, he says something like "You've done more than enough already. Good work, everyone! I'll handle it from here."

That's another thing: they actually found a use for in-game quips from the main character. Rather than Bubsying it up and having him say "there's a bounce pad!" or "I love rings!" every time some game event is triggered, Sonic Forces does a fair bit of story exposition with Star Fox-like radio chatter from the main characters before and during the game's stages, as well as cutscenes. The chatter can be turned off at the player's discretion, but I don't find it too distracting, and some of Sonic's lines are genuinely funny.

If there's anything wrong with the plot, it's that sometimes they seem to raise the stakes, but don't follow through and the situation is resolved in like a minute. Sonic is thought dead in the early game, but a couple of stages later, he's alive. Worse, there's a scene where Robotnik banishes Sonic and Avatar to "Null Space". Ten seconds later, they're back out on the street.

Boost Gameplay

The Boost levels are the most fun ones in the game. When you're barreling down the track at a zillion miles per hour, you don't notice the odd bit of minor physics glitch (except when it sends you clean off the track; I'm looking at you, Metropolitan Highway...). They didn't keep up the standards set by Generations, but they didn't kill all the fun in the game, especially the Boost bits, either.

But that just provokes the question: why didn't they keep up the standards set by Generations? I liked this game a fair bit, but I wanted to like it a lot more. Hell, I want to like every Sonic game as much as I like 2, 3, and & Knuckles. But this is where we are. Sonic has just gone from consistently good, to consistently bad, to just plain inconsistent. Why can't he just stay good?

The problem with Sonic is, I believe, a problem with Sega. It ties back into what I said about the franchise in the past: Sega just doesn't understand which values the Sonic brand represents, from a gameplay perspective. They use him as a media icon, but they have no vision of what the player should expect when they boot up a Sonic game. Hell, the players have a better idea than Sega does, which is why an effective fan game (Sonic Mania) got the highest praise the main series has seen in literally decades!

But here's the thing, Sonic fans: It's easy for you to say that a particular game is bad, and even -- as I've done here -- point out what's bad about it. It's much, much harder for a game developer to find and fix those bad things. Say "the physics are too glitchy", or "the jumps are too floaty" to a game dev, and you may was well say "tighten up the graphics on level 3". Take jumping for instance. There are quite a few variables that go into a game character's jump. A jump can be modelled as an impulse that sends a character's velocity upward followed by acceleration back downward due to gravity. But how big should the impulse be? How quickly should they accelerate back to earth? Do you want to have jump aftertouch (changing directions in midair)? How much aftertouch? What should happen when you jump off a slope? Should the impulse still be straight up, or should it be perpendicular to the slope? (Classic Sonic went with the latter; Sonic Rush went with the former. And now to this day I still can't take Sonic Rush seriously as a platformer in the classic vein.)

Getting games right is hard. Hell, getting slopes right is a test of mettle for any 2D game programmer. What needs to happen is the developers, once they have the basic engine put together, need to sit down and test and tweak, and test some more and tweak some more. Because that's what it takes to make a game "feel" right. And what they found out as they made these tweaks needs to be noted for future developers; it needs to become institutional knowledge.

The big difference between Nintendo and Sega is one of institutional knowledge. Quick, who do you think of when I say "Mario"? Well, Mario himself, but who in real life? Shigeru Miyamoto, right? Gaming's Walt Disney. What if I told you that Miyamoto, who had been producer or director on most Mario titles to date, only had a light touch on Super Mario Odyssey? And Super Mario Odyssey is the best damn Mario game to date! That's because the info on what makes a Mario game good and how to make a good Mario game has become institutional knowledge at Nintendo, passed from employee to employee and generation to generation. It is the ultimate mark of success of any genius that they eventually make themself obsolete, so that their successors can benefit from their knowledge without them when they die, retire, or quit. And Shigsy is coming up on retirement age...

Sega, er, didn't bother preserving that institutional knowledge from the first few Sonic games. And today, the end result is like they forgot it. It's like retrograde amnesia. While playing through Sonic Forces, I was reminded of nothing so much as early, 1980s Sega platformers, like Alex Kidd and the Wonder Boy series. In fact I have the modern remake of Wonder Boy III on my Switch, and the janky movement and floaty jumps from Forces all feel specifically familiar to what I remember from that game. But back in the 80s, you could sort of give them the benefit of the doubt. Nintendo basically invented the modern video-game-character jump with Super Mario Bros., and they weren't exactly forthcoming with that information back then because it was a competitive advantage for them, so other game houses had to either figure out on their own what made the Mario jumps so satisfying to use (Capcom), or else do without them and use a lesser mechanic (Konami, Sega).

But here's the thing: when Sega set about creating a better Mario in the early 90s, they succeeded. Sonic was everything Mario was at the time, and more. But in the early 90s, Sonic Team wasn't really a thing. It was just whoever had worked on Sonic 1. There wasn't a Miyamoto at the helm to set the standards and guide the trajectory for the series as a whole. Yuji Naka doesn't count, and neither does Naoto Ohshima. Later games would be passed from team to team, and while the basic engine remained the same, high-level knowledge of what went into that engine may have been lost along the way -- I'd say the best candidate for such a loss was the "Sonic Winter" of the late 90s, when Sega would go a whole console generation without developing a current-gen, native main-series Sonic title. (Sonic 3D Blast was a Genesis port, and the only other games in the franchise for the Saturn were Sonic R and Sonic Jam.) It was a time of tremendous upheaval for Sega, as they had to recover from the setbacks they suffered from the botched Sega CD and 32X launches, and the failure of the Saturn against the PlayStation and N64. This was also the time when Sonic fandom began to coalesce, and to be frank, the fandom which eventually formed couldn't give two shits about gameplay. So by the time the Adventure series appeared on the Dreamcast, already you could see a break in continuity of vision for where the series was going from a gameplay perspective. Bereft of the franchise's moorings, Sonic Team endlessly tried new things, wanted you to try new things, wanted you to like their experiments. But ultimately what they were trying to do was catch lightning in a bottle, and they failed at it. That's why I call the series "tryhard".

If I were the head of Sonic Team, I would instruct my subordinates to do what the fans already did: go back to the original Genesis games. If I can't find the original source code, I'd have them disassemble and reverse-engineer the ROMs. (That is what the fans did!) Part of the problem with updating OG Sonic physics for today may be that the original games were 2D and pixel-accurate, and largely used integer math to calculate the game state, whereas a modern 3D world would be built from floating-point coordinates in 3D space. Nevertheless, I would try to map the integer constants of Sonic's 2D world into 3D space, fit acceleration curves to what's observable from the 2D games, etc. I would have a model of Green Hill Zone Act 1, or a part of it, built in the 3D engine, and if Sonic does not control exactly as he does in the original Sonic 1, I would order more refinements to be made. This can be checked both through play-testing and by running side-by-side versions of original Sonic 1 and the modern engine, sending them synthetic button events, and seeing whether they match up. Once they do match up, only then would I add modern features like the boost, homing attack, etc.

I would have the programmers take careful notes on the refinements they made, and instruct them to put these notes into a company- or team-wide wiki. I would have them bring in their sons, daughters, or little siblings to play-test it. I would reach out to Sonic fans and select candidates for a limited beta test from among their number.

It's going to take effort and commitment for Sega to rescue Sonic from the scrappy heap. What Sonic Forces showed me is that Sega is not ready to make that commitment. It may be time for them to cut Sonic loose, to sell him to Nintendo or WayForward or somebody. I don't think they'll do that, though, because Sonic is the thing that's keeping their name in the limelight.

[jayne-hecate-writer]

Opening night at the opera...

I had been looking forwards to this show for weeks, I had a special dress, new make up and severe anxiety for the whole day leading up to going out of the door...

The opera was the brand new production by The Welsh National Opera of “Un ballo in maschera” by Verdi, a Gothic melodrama in three acts and it was beautiful. This was also the opening night, in their home theatre, in Cardiff. So you can imagine the excitement among the audience, which unlike that we see in Bristol, seemed to have a bias towards the older opera lover. Generally speaking, from where we were sat, the average age of patrons was around 170! Come on young people, you need to embrace the arts because you are missing out on a spectacle of beauty.

So let’s start at the beginning of my story, which involves a trip to the theatre to see the WNO perform in Bristol, which was as always, utterly wonderful. During the intermission and after my dash to the loo, we were approached by the Press Officer, a charming young woman who clearly knows her onions and she asked if my dear friend Ginny would like to review a special show? It turns out the plebs like us are just the sort of people the WNO needs to bring in, in order to keep going. To be blunt, more plebs means more money in ticket sales... OK, that is remarkably disingenuous, but it stands as a point. The arts in this country are in desperate need of support and the more ordinary people who will embrace them, the longer they can survive. 

So, I placed the date in my diary and then pretended to forget about it, while inside my stomach squirmed at the thought of going to Cardiff to see a show in a huge auditorium. I also needed to make sure that I looked smart, this was after all, a special event, so no jeans and Slayer t-shirt for this one. Actually, as I think about this, I have never worn jeans and a Slayer t-shirt to the opera. Maybe I should from now on! Anyway, the only good frock I had in my wardrobe was broken. It also did not fit me that well and quite frankly it was close to being thrown out, despite having been really pretty when new. 

Luckily for me, while out at a Death Metal gig, I met the fabulously clever and talented Cassie of Jolliff Sewing and Embroidery and she said that no dress was beyond saving. Somewhat doubtfully, I gave her my frock and a small payment and hoped for the best. I told her to take her time and in almost no time at all I was told to come and get my frock. It looked brand new. No, actually, it looked better than brand new. It looked tailored, it fitted me perfectly and she had even repaired the lace on the front that I thought was beyond repair. I could not have been happier. My advice to anyone in need of dress making advice or clothing repairs is to talk to Cassie. Mind you, you will have to wait your turn because she now has the rest of my ripped and ruined wardrobe (I must stop fixing the motorbike while wearing ball gowns!) to fix up and alter. 

With a new frock and some new make up, I got myself ready and two hours before I was due to leave, I realised that I really did not want to go. The thought of travelling to Cardiff, of being in that huge room with all of those people, of being somewhere posh, of being sociable... all of the things that us socially awkward quiet shy types have to deal with on a daily basis suddenly piled up on my shoulders and threatened to crush me. I could not eat, I could not drink anything and I even forgot to take my meds prior to leaving. Physically shaking, I left the house and sat in the car. Not even rancid death metal could calm me down.

I picked up Ginny and we hit the motorway, in bad weather and low visibility. The trip to Wales was on and I was focused on getting us there safely. I had offered to drive because Ginny has always driven us previously and it seemed fair to share the load so to speak. Mind you, with no sense of direction, I needed a co-driver who could give me a running list of directions... It cannot have been a relaxing journey for her! Finally we arrived, parked up and I asked Ginny to remember where we had parked, otherwise we would have to walk home and I would never see my car again. 

The Wales Millennium Centre is huge, intimidating and very pretty, well for a building anyway. The acoustics are spectacular and the stage is fabulous. But that is not the best bit, not by far. The best bit is that the seating is soft, comfortable and plush, even in the cheap seats! I love the Bristol Hippodrome, I truly do, but this was a step up in terms of luxury. Everything is shiny and new, the floors are polished, the air is fragrant and the views of the stage are really well designed, even with an ugly fat bald bloke slumped in the seat in front of you! The lighting is wonderful, every detail is clear and yes, I was blown away. My nerves faded along with my inhibitions (thanks to the pain killers I was forced to swallow... Thanks useless body!) and I was able at last to relax in my seat and wait for the show to begin.

I was in awe as soon as the curtain rose. The set, the costumes, the choreography. It opened with a coffin, upon which lay my favourite character of the entire show, Oscar, performed by Julie Martin du Theil, with whom I immediately fell in love. The character of Oscar is a young, possibly gay, Herald, performed by a soprano, but for me the winning moment came when Oscar slid from his Master’s coffin top to reveal the most magnificent costume of the evening. It was all leather, with huge Gothic boots, making the character look like a young Danni Filth of Cradle of Filth. 

Photo credit:- The Welsh National Opera.

Once again, I am comparing classical music with black and death metal and as always, the comparison is worthy. The themes of this opera are dark, with images of Satanism, sacrifice and murder. This is in every blood soaked second, a truly Metal experience. The first act was for me the best, it is dark, occasionally evil and often sinister. My next favourite character was the Sorceress Ulrica, performed by the wickedly dark Sara Fulgoni. The dancers who played Ulrica’s servants were covered in brutal, but hilarious wounds that were soaked in red ribbons of gore, with the various implements of torture poking out of them. There were the usual knife and sword wounds, but also screwdrivers stuck in heads, hacksaws half way through limbs, scissors stabbed into backs, machetes embedded in brains... Every single one was brilliantly brutal and once again, just pure Black Metal.

Act two saw a less exciting and for me less enjoyable scene. The love torn Amelia performed by the always fabulous Mary Elizabeth Williams, is at the gallows gathering the magic herb needed to break the spell of love on her heart. The count who is in love with her watches in the distance, but given that she is married to his best friend, things are not going to end well for any of them. For me, this part of the show was the least interesting because it contained all of the heart break and misery of the piece. It was just far too nice, far to emotional and did not contain much of the mayhem and darkness of the first act. Mind you, the watchful foxes with their glowing red eyes were creepy and beautiful, while the full moon painting was breathtaking.

Act three sees the resolution of the piece and once again the costumes were fabulous, the music swelled and the lights were magnificent. As the party goers arrived at the masked ball (for which the show is named after) dressed in skeleton printed long coats, I desperately wanted one of the black ones to wear home. The wonderful Cassie may well have repaired my damaged velvet jacket, but the creepy and ghoulish skeleton coat would have been a prized piece indeed. 

With the show ended and numerous bows taken so that the royal visitor could be whisked away before us plebs got in the way, I was left with my fingers in my ears because right behind me was sat a man whose clapping was a sonic weapon, probably commissioned by the Police in case anyone decided to have a pop at the royal guest. How one man can clap that hard and that loudly and still have hands left at the end appalled me. I can only imagine that he has had plenty of practice, clapping down concrete bunkers until all that remains is pulverised gravel and dust! 

The drive home was somewhat more chaotic as lost drivers struggling to find the motorway swerved across lanes, almost as lost as I was. They badly needed a Ginny to navigate them too! Finally I arrived home, elated and still feeling pretty in my posh frock and make up. Taking it all off felt like I was stripping away something fabulous, removing something special that I did not want to lose. 

I must now thank the following people. Firstly the whole cast of the Welsh National Opera, for their fantastic Black Metal performance. Cassie for my wonderful dress and jacket. Then most of all, my dear friend Ginny for all of her tolerance, kindness, support and navigating. 

As for all of you, you absolutely must go and see the opera and support the arts in this country before they die out through falsely assumed snobbery and horrible feelings of impostor syndrome. Organisations like the WNO will not only welcome you into their home theatre, but they will do so with the open arms of friendship. If you have never seen an opera performed live or think that opera is not for you, choose one of their lighter ones, grab a good friend and go along. Trust me, I speak as a rancid Black Metal fan, opera really is for everyone and the Welsh National Opera are one of the best out there. 

[spicynbachili1]

Neo Geo Mini outshines the PS1 Classic, could pave the way for a GBA Mini

But it’s not without its missteps

I don’t know what’s going on with the Neo Geo Mini. Shortly after I got my hands on one, SNK announced that an upgraded Holiday version of the hardware would be going up for pre-order in the coming days. That’s not a good sign. I have to guess that the initial SKU failed to sell as well as SNK had expected, leaving them scrambling to rework the units they already produced into a more marketable package. Their apparent lack of confidence in their product leaves me pessimistic about this weird little machine’s future. 

It’s a shame too, because this is by far my favorite plug-and-play mini console to date, at least in terms of its library. I bought the NES and SNES Classics day one, and I love them to “bits”, but there’s no denying that nearly all the games on each system are outdated. That’s the point of the nostalgia-powered novelty collections though, right? To take a trip in your mind back in time? 

If so, then that’s probably why the Neo Geo Mini isn’t selling. These are not the games that many grew up loving. These are the games that most of us could only afford to play for ten minutes a week at the local arcade, before going home and sinking hours into The Legend of Zelda or Sonic the Hedgehog. That said. there are several games on the console that stand up to the best that 2018 has to offer in their respective genres. Garou: Mark of the Wolves looks and plays better than 99% of today’s fighting games. Metal Slug 3 is still the best looking 2D run-and-gun action game I’ve ever played. There are also plenty of quality games on here that I’d never heard of before. For instance, if you told me that Ninja Masters was as all new indie fighter, and not a Neo Geo title from the ’90’s, not only would I have believed you, but I would have been more than happy to pay $15 for it.

That’s why, despite my love of Jumping Flash and Super Puzzle Fighter, the Neo Geo Mini beats out the PS1 Classic for me this holiday season. It’s also why I am more optimistic than ever that Nintendo will skip the N64 when it rolls out its next Classic console, and will instead jump straight to the Game Boy family of systems. I’ve already taken my Neo Geo Mini on the go with me a few times, and I’m sure people would love to do the same with a similarly versatile handheld/home console pre-loaded with games from Nintendo pre-DS portable generation. The Neo Geo Mini has issues, but its definitely worth looking into once Black Friday rolls around. 

The Setup 

The Neo Geo Mini is a better handheld than it is a home console. I have fairly large hands, but I’ve had no problems with the stick and buttons on the console itself. The screen is also bright and clear. The console doesn’t take batteries, and instead runs off of a USB port, similar to most cell phones. I’ve played it running off my car’s cigarette lighter USB adapter, a mobile cell phone battery, and hooked up to my laptop on the train, and as of yet I’ve had no problem with power supplies, or pulling off special moves in KoF 2002 while on the move.

The optional control pads (sold separately) aren’t nearly as nice. The analog stick is loose and the buttons are loud and clicky. They aren’t impossible to get used to, but its strange that they are such a downgrade from the stick built into the console itself.

In some misguided attempt to replicate the arcade experience, all the games are programmed to have a set amount of tokens for both players, You can tone down the difficulty ,or increase the amount of default lives you have for most of the games, but your starting token count never changes.

These are not arcade original roms though. Most have been altered for the home market to let you save then restart from whatever stage you last made it to. You can also open up the emulator’s menu and activate save states. It’s a pretty weird system that is cumbersome and confusing at first, but that’s easy to forget once you acclimate.

The emulator also has some real bare-bones features, like the ability to turn on pixel smoothing and stretching. It’s extremely small-time stuff, and for the most part, will make each game look different or worse, but never better. With the correct aspect ratio and smoothing off, the games look about as good as they do on the Switch or PS4, at least to me. I haven’t had my eyes checked this year, so maybe I’m missing something, but pressed my face up right up to the screen to look for artifacting, and my 41-year-old eyes didn’t detect any. So that’s good news. The bad news is, the only extras here are a couple of stickers. No in-menu history section, no bonuses, nothing but a instruction booklet for the hardware itself. 

The Games

There are 40 games on the Neo Geo Mini. The console costs about $110, so you’re getting each one for less than $3, about $5 less than what they might go for on digital storefronts, assuming they are available anywhere else at all. They fall under the genres of fighters, wrestling games, run and gun, shmups, beat ’em ups, sports games and unnerving Tetris knock offs. There’s actually only one of these here, but it’s worth mentioning for how bad it made me feel. 

The range of quality here is pretty enormous. Some of these games are a sincere waste of time unless you go in strictly to marvel at how much gaming has changed over the past 20 years. Others are games that I sincerely believe are some of the best ever made. I’ll break them up into three categories (Oddballs, Mid-tier and Classics) and do my best to describe them for you. 

The Oddballs 

Blue’s Journey, one of the oldest games in the bunch, is relic from a bygone era, not unlike a cigarette commercial starring The Flintstones. It has a decidedly launch era TurboGrafx-16 feel to it, with overly detailed backgrounds and very small characters. They don’t make them like this anymore for a reason. It’s generally messy, but in a sort of “manic toddler eating a $1 box of sugar cookies” sort of way. 

Robo Army is so bad that it’s funny, but not that funny. The opening cinematic is completely bananas, promising unhinged Sci-Fi violence on whole other level, but when you finally get control of your character, things slow down quickly. It’s a beat ’em up where you play as a cyborg that can randomly turn into a car, as you blow up other cyborgs, giant dogs that turn out to be cyborgs, and angry cars. It’s clunky and sad, but those with a morbid curiosity for what people used to be willing to play for $.25 microtransactions might find it interesting in a scientific sort of way.  

Mutation Nation starts off feeling similarly janky, but after a few minutes, you’ll see that a lot of the animation here is pretty solid. Charge moves lie at the core of the game’s combat system, which is novel for the genre, and the Akira-meets-Cronenberg character designs are surprising, sometimes genuinely disturbing.

Ghost Pilots is a top down WW2 shmup that was probably trying to leech off the popularity of 1942 and 1943. It’s totally fine, but nothing to write home about.

Crossed Swords is another beat ’em up, but this one plays from a Punch-Out!!/Pato Box perspective. It’s more polished looking that Robo Army, and the RPG elements add some depth, but the combat is a total mess. That’s bad news for a game that’s about, uh, combat.

Puzzled is the Tetris-knock off I brought up at the top. It really makes me appreciate all the little quality-of-life improvements that are found in recent Tetris games like Tetris Effect and Puyo Puyo Tetris. All you can do is move, rotate and drop you paces, so even the most basic of advancements like the T-spin is out of the picture. The game has a campaign mode and different stages, based around trying to free pixies who are trapped under some blocks? I don’t know guys, video games just sort of do their own thing sometimes. 

The Mid-Tiers

Magician Lord is one of the first games I ever blew $20 on at an arcade in order to see it to the end. Playing it now is not that great. In many ways it feels like Castlevania with larger characters, but the controls are just as stiff, making it hard to keep your giant hitbox out of the way of enemy attacks. It’s got a cool transformation gimmick though (you can turn into a dragon, a ninja, or even Poseidon for some reason) and one heck of a creepy womb level. 

Kizuna Encounter is a fighting game that probably started of in development as a two-player beat ’em up. Two of the games ten playable characters are beautifully animated, while the rest are serviceable but unimpressive in their appearances. What’s really interesting about the game is it’s tag team system. Unlike in recent tag fighters like Marvel Vs. Capcom: Infinite, you have to get close to your partner before you can tag them in. They don’t automatically jump in when the character you’re using is out of health either, adding an interesting layer of strategy to the otherwise standard Street Fighter II-style fighter. 

Ninja Masters feels like it was supposed to be the first entry in a series that would work as the Ninja equivalent to Samurai Showdown. They clearly didn’t have a lot of RAM to work with for their ambitions, as the characters are relatively small, but it has some really smartly executed animations. If I were game designer and one of my students wanted to learn how to make realistic, non-pandering breast physics for their game, I’d probably point them to towards Ninja Masters. The whole thing culminating in battle with good old Nobunaga, which is a lot of fun for fans of magical Japanese history games like myself.

Sengoku 3 is another ninja game, a beat ’em up this time, one that’s gotten a lot of praise from retro enthusiasts over the years. I’m not 100% sure why. It’s got good art and a varied cast of characters, but nothing about it really stands out about it. Maybe I’m just unfairly comparing it to the Capcom Dungeon and Dragons games without realizing it. 

Blazing Star (sequel to Pulstar) is a pretty good shmup that works on a upgrade system that extends the length and strength of your charge shot meter. Picking up power ups doesn’t always make your basic shot better, but it does give you the potential to fire off huge payloads of neon energy if you play your cards right. Other than that, a standard sci-fi anime shmup.

Last Resort is more up my alley, with a novel take on R-Type‘s bit system and even greater attention to detail to make the world you destroy feel lived in. The open levels takes place in a city under siege by giant robots, featuring little civilians driving – or even running – away from the carnage in a futile attempt to survive. It’s adorable and sad in a way that few modern shmups bother going for anymore. 

Shock Troopers and its sequel are Ikari Warriors-likes with an added evasive maneuver (a roll or a jump) to get you away from bullets, though it has a fair amount of a cooldown so you can’t spam it. The animation is better in the second one, but some of the backgrounds and characters have a weird pre-rendered look that can be a bit of a turn off, whereas the first one has more consistent art direction overall. Still, both are fun enough if you’re in the mood for some hard boiled co-op arcade action. 

King of Monsters, King of Monsters 2 and 3 Count Bout, are all wrestling games that are a nice alternative for people who want to beat up their friends without having to worry about too much depth getting the the way of the immediate violence. The King of Monsters games are based around Kaiju films, which adds an extra layer of charm if you’re a fan of the classic rubber suit Toho movies of old. 

3 Count Bout plays it more straight faced, but it’s definitely very “videogamey”, as are Foot Ball Frenzy, Super Sidekicks and Top Players Golf, the other three sports games found in this collection. Technical limitations permitted them for going for anything that approaching “realism”, but the sprite-based graphics have a loving, hand crafted feel to them, and the respective designs of each game play like cartoonish approximations of the source material. 

World Heroes 2 Perfect has a special place in my heart, as its has both the most superhuman fake Bruce Lee in the history of gaming and a psychic monk based on Rasputin, Russia’s famous love machine, but I have to admit that it’s not as deep, original, or well crafted as most of the other fighting games here. Still, it’s the best World Heroes game of them all, so if you were ever curious about what the Battleborn equivalent of ’90’s 2D fighters was like, then you’re in luck.  

The Classics

A lot has already been written about the Metal Slug, Samurai Shodown, and King of Fighters families of games, so I probably won’t go on and on about them here. Like I said at the top, I think Metal Slug 3 is one of the best looking games ever made. Metal Slug X/2 and the original game in the series come close behind it. Metal Slug 4 and 5 are notably less visually impressive than the games that came before them, with little in the way of new enemies other than bosses. So you can stop after 3 if you want, but if you don’t, go into the next two with lowered expectations. 

There are only three Samurai Shodown games here, and they stand out as some of the most extreme iterations of the franchise. Sam Sho 2 is is essentially the first game but with more characters. Samurai Shodown IV: Amakusa’s Revenge retains the new and improved sprites and Slash/Burt systems from Samurai Shodown III while (you guessed it) adding more characters. Samurai Shodown V Special is essentially an apology for Samurai Shodown V, bringing together characters from every chapter of the series for one last hurrah.

The King of Fighters games are a little more difficult to break down, as they work as a giant crossover of various SNK franchises. Technically, Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury Special (an enhanced version of Fatal Fury 2) work as their prequels. They are both dated compared to the games that followed, but they have significance. Fatal Fury Special is the first game to officially start the shared SNK fighting game universe with it’s hidden battle against Ryo from Art of Fighting. Real Bout Fatal Fury is also on this collection. I almost put it on the oddities list, as its weird, three-plane fighting system is pretty strange. In the end though, I threw it here with the classics because it’s definitely a significant part of the evolution of fighting games. 

From there were have King of Fighters ’95. ’97, ’98, 2000, and 2002. The offer a nice overview of how the franchise evolved during the height of popularity enjoyed by fighting games in the late 90’s into the early 2000’s. From a visual perspective though, they largely pale compared to The Last Blade 2 and Garou: Mark of the Wolves. For my money, they are the two most beautiful SNK fighting games of that era, or any era for that matter.

[These impressions are based on a retail build of the hardware provided by the publisher.]

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      reviewed by Jonathan Holmes

    Filed under…

from SpicyNBAChili.com http://spicymoviechili.spicynbachili.com/neo-geo-mini-outshines-the-ps1-classic-could-pave-the-way-for-a-gba-mini/

[bltngames]

SAGE 2020: Fan Games

I’d hoped to have this article out a little bit sooner, but I overestimated how long it would take to write about some of these games. Whoops! Like I said when I outlined the posting “schedule” on the first day, we’re playing it fast and loose, so this is just what you get.

Today is the day I talk about fan games! And even though SAGE has “Sonic” right there in the acronym, it’s always hosted fan games from all types, so today we’ve got Mega Man, Mario, Rayman, and even fan games of fan games, if you can believe it.

Sonic Pinball Panic!

Pinball is one of those things where I’ve always been obsessed with it, but never very good at it. And now, with access to digital pinball collections like Pinball Arcade and Pinball FX, I don’t actually find myself playing as much pinball as I thought I would when I was 14 years old. Still, I find myself fascinated by a good pinball table, and this honestly caught me off guard. This could very easily be an official DLC release for one of those aforementioned pinball collections and I wouldn’t even bat an eyelash (in fact, if you ask me, this is better than Pinball FX, which has always had weird ball physics). This looks, sounds, and functions exactly like a real pinball table should. My complaints are minor: for starters, the table feels kind of easy. I’ve never been a pinball wizard, but I was losing balls left and right here and it still took a good 15 minutes before I finally got a game over. Score accumulation is also pretty slow; most pinball tables will dump millions and millions of points on you, but here, it felt like a struggle just to reach the 379k I finished with. Both contribute to the fact that the table feels a little flat, like it’s missing a spark to really put it over the top. And, third, it would be nice if it had controller support. The keyboard works just fine, here (it’s just pinball, after all) but I find that the triggers on a controller feel really good with pinball flippers, and mapping the plunger to the right stick is great, too. This is a Unity game, so I wouldn’t think it’d be that hard to hook it up to the controller mapper. Still, I came away impressed.

Mega Man: Perfect Blue

There are two things out there that always give me pause: fan-made Doom level packs, and Mega Man fan games. Fan made gaming content generally has problems when it comes to difficulty balancing anyway, but these games have earned a certain reputation for their difficulty, which creates a problem when you have content made by fans, for fans. This insularity means these things are usually way too hard for what I would consider “normal” people (read: casual fans and outsiders). Add on to the fact that I’d even say that there are official Mega Man games with bad difficulty balancing, and you have a recipe for frustration. Sadly, this is how I’d characterize Perfect Blue: though this introductory level isn’t impossibly hard, it’s definitely pushing that edge where it’s not very accommodating to someone who hasn’t played and finished every Classic Mega Man game ever made. It almost immediately throws you into scenarios where you have jumps you can barely reach, insta-kill spikes, and enemies that not only actively dodge your shots, but invincible enemies that launch counter attack homing missiles. And then it starts making you juggle all of this stuff, together, at the same time. None of this is insurmountable as long as you’re paying attention, but as a very casual Mega Man fan, it’s an unfriendly first impression and makes me worried about what the rest of the game is going to be like as the challenge naturally ramps up. For those hardcore Mega Man fans among you, the rest of this is solid, at least. The presentation and controls are excellent, and the new sprites are beautiful. It’s a game I’d love to enjoy when it’s done… but I’m assuming I’ll be left out in the cold. A shame, really, because there’s so much promise here.

Sonic and the Mayhem Master

There’s a lot to like about this game, but there’s a part of me that really wonders if this should even be considered a Sonic fan game. Mayhem Master’s depictions of Sonic and Amy Rose are atypical to put it mildly. Here, Sonic seems to be a bookish nerd of sorts, a sidekick to Amy Rose, who has been turned into a burnt out, cigar-smoking detective. Most of the game plays out as half an adventure game, half an RPG, where you roam around the world talking to NPCs and gather clues while being assaulted by random battles. The battle system is super off-the-wall, too, perhaps taking inspirations from games like Mario & Luigi and Undertale. This means that battles aren’t passive -- you spend most of each fight dodging or nullifying incoming attacks with simplistic action-based commands. It’s weird, and different, and occasionally even a little bit overwhelming. That’s kind of the whole game, really. It’s the sort of thing that really doesn’t feel like a Sonic game at all, but it also doesn’t feel bad. The artwork is very charming, I’m interested in seeing the characters develop, and there’s plenty of worldbuilding and mystery. Would this still be as intriguing if you removed the Sonic connection, even if it’s so threadbare? That’s a hard question to answer. I know that some of my interest in this game is seeing how it spins more familiar Sonic elements into something that’s completely different. Worth checking out, for curiosity’s sake if nothing else.

Sonic and the Dreamcatcher

This is a fairly brilliant little game with two unfortunate quirks. If you didn’t know, the special stages in the original Sonic the Hedgehog were inspired by an arcade game of the era called Cameltry, published by Taito in 1989. Now, Sonic’s special stages were different enough from Cameltry that it wasn’t a case of Sega outright stealing the gameplay, but there’s a clear lineage there, and it only becomes clearer when you compare the special stages in Sonic 4 Episode 1 to Cameltry (spoilers: in that game, they’re nearly identical). Dreamcatcher is also from this lineage, but is infinitely more charming than either Sonic 4 and maybe even Cameltry itself. The idea is that you must collect a specific number of blue spheres in order to reveal the Chaos Emerald, after which you have a limited amount of time to find and collect it. It’s very simple, but the presentation really sells the game’s charm. It’s just a game that looks good and sounds good, with an interesting premise executed very well. Also, you get a dedicated “& Knuckles” button to spawn infinite Knuckles to help you collect blue spheres and bash enemies. Being able to have unlimited numbers of these guys sounds like it would break the game, but once that countdown clock begins, the last thing you need is 20+ echidnas clogging up the route back to the emerald. The first quirk this game suffers from is that there’s only two levels. Parts of this have a very “game jam made in a weekend” vibe to it despite the rock-solid music, sound, and gameplay, and only having two levels contributes to that. Hopefully more are coming in the future. The other quirk? You can’t actually download this game -- it’s embedded in a webpage. I’m sure this is to make it easy to play on any platform with a web browser (phones, PCs, etc.) but I find myself greatly desiring a hard copy of this game that can live on my computer forever.

Sonic Galactic

Now here’s just a good old fashioned Sonic fan game. Though it clearly takes inspiration from Sonic Mania’s aesthetics in some places, it’s clearly doing its own thing, featuring not just the core cast of Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles, but also Fang the Sniper, and even a brand new character named Tunnel the Mole. Unlike a lot of Sonic fan games at SAGE, this appears to be using something besides Clickteam Fusion, Game Maker, or Unity. Here, it’s the “Hatch Game Engine,” whatever that is. Whatever the case may be, the game runs very well and is basically indistinguishable from just playing Sonic Mania. Visuals are sharp, music’s good, the two included boss fights are surprisingly fun to fight -- everything seems to be in order. As a result, there’s not really a lot to say. This is just a good, fun game. Anything else I’d say would come off sounding like nitpicks. For example, there’s no way to set graphics options yet, so the game is stuck in 2x Windowed mode. Fang and Tunnel are cute additions, but I wonder how much utility they have as characters. Unless I missed something, Fang’s pop gun is mainly for a weak double-jump ability, and Tunnel’s ability to dig and ricochet off floors, walls and ceilings is cool, but it doesn’t have quite the universal utility of Tails’ flight or Knuckles climbing and gliding. It’ll be interesting to see how or maybe even if their abilities have a chance to grow into something special. Anyway, like I said, those are nitpicks, so try to give this a shot if you can.

Sonic Robo-Blast!

Remasters seem to be a bit of a theme this SAGE, between Sonic Triple Trouble 16-bit, Sonic 2 SMS, Sonic 1 Revisited, but this is perhaps the most surprising of them all: a loving remaster of the original Sonic Robo-Blast. SRB1 was perhaps one of the first true “landmark” fan games, given that it was basically a whole entire game that people could play. It's not a stretch to say that SRB1 probably helped kickstart the fan gaming community that still survives to this day -- I certainly owe my involvement in the community to seeing SRB1 for the first time. The problem is, as historically significant as the game might be, it’s nearly impossible to go back to nowadays -- it’s much, much too dated to be any fun. This remaster completely re-envisions SRB1 as a regular Sonic game, while also pulling in gameplay elements from Sonic Robo-Blast 2. It’s a bit of a time paradox mindwarp, but it helps give it a bit more personality than just making a bog-standard 2D Sonic. It works, aided by the fact the sprites, music and overall presentation are fantastic. The only downside is the Act 2 boss, which commits the cardinal sin of taking away player agency and making you wait around far too much. Here’s hoping this gets finished, because it’s definitely on my radar now.

Super Mario Flashback

This has been floating around for a few years now and I’m glad to see it’s finally starting to get some more substantial content as it moves towards becoming an actual game. That being said, this is also one of those games that’s kind of hard to talk about because it’s just… really polished. The art is incredible, it controls exactly like a Mario game, and there’s already a decent mixture of ideas at play in the demo. Anything else I’d say would sound like nitpicking -- like, for example, the backseat game designer in me wonders if maybe the game is prioritizing aesthetics a little too much. This is a wonderfully animated game, absolutely gorgeous, but some actions, like the butt-stomp and the wall kick, feel a bit sluggish, and I think it’s because they show off fancy animations. Even if it’s a split second, waiting for Mario to attach to a wall to kick off of it feels slow. Really, though, that’s an insignificant complaint. This demo is still well worth checking out.

Sonic Advance 4 Advanced

This game seems like a greatest-hits of Dimps best ideas, spanning the first Sonic Advance all the way to Sonic Rush. There’s just one problem: the game seems broken. Now, my desktop PC is starting to show its age. I built it four and a half years ago, and though it can handle game like Gears of War 5 on high settings at 60fps, slowly, newer games seem to be leaving it behind. That being said, I don’t think a game like Sonic Advance 4 here should be running at what appears to be half its intended speed. It also originally launched in a teeny-tiny window (we’re talking, like, smaller than a postage stamp) and even though the options menu has a toggle for full screen mode, it doesn’t want to work. Something about this game under the hood seems to be struggling very, very, VERY hard. It’s a shame, because if this actually played at the proper speed, it seems like it might actually be an alright game, if a bit complex and busy.

Sonic 2 SMS Remake

Here’s a game I was all buckled in expecting to enjoy. Like it says on the tin, this is a remake of Sonic 2 for the Master System (and Game Gear), but with wide screen visuals and huge expansions to the mechanics, roster of playable characters, and levels. On the outside it seems really impressive, and to a certain degree it is, but something about the controls feel a little off. Sonic’s heavier here than he is on the Master System, perhaps to simulate “real” Sonic physics a little more accurately, but you can also pretty much stop on a dime, and the combination of the two feels awkward. The camera also needs a lot of work, as it’s basic at best and does a poor job of letting you see what’s below (to the dev if you’re reading this: there’s actually video tutorials out there on how 2D scrolling cameras work, it might be worth looking a couple of them up). It also leans into some of the tech limitations of the Master System, like how you aren’t given any rings for boss fights (and even hiding the HUD, a move done to save on resources for the large enemy sprites). I could be picky on a bunch of other little stuff, too, like how the flight mechanics feel, but there are other games to play at SAGE and I’ve got at least two more articles to write. Needless to say, this is a solid (impressive, even) foundation but it’s missing a lot of late-stage polish to clean up the tiny little rough edges.

Rayman Redemption

I tell this story every so often, but it was about three quarters of the way through Rayman 2 on the Sega Dreamcast when it struck me, suddenly: I love this game. I was being chased by a pirate ship through some rickety bridges and even though I was dying over and over and over again, I realized I had been enjoying Rayman 2 enough that I might put it in my top ten Dreamcast games. But that was 2002, and the years haven’t been so kind to ol’ Rayman. From the strangely celebrity-infused Rayman 3, to the tragedy of Rayman 4 (eventually becoming Raving Rabbids) to the endless, careless ports of Rayman 2 to every platform under the sun, one gets the impression Ubisoft maybe didn’t know what to do with Rayman. Especially now, when most of Ubisoft’s games are some form of online live service or cookie cutter open world experience (or increasingly both). But the fans know what they want. Rayman Redemption takes the original 1995 Rayman game and lovingly gives it a fresh coat of paint. The results are akin to what Taxman and Stealth did for Sonic CD in 2011, with wide screen visuals, improved controls, touched up level design, but gameplay that still feels faithful and accurate to the original experience. Except that Sega charged money for that, and here, fans have released this for free. Ubisoft’s loss, I guess. I didn’t play Rayman 1 until well after I’d finished Rayman 2, and I’ll admit, I kind of bounced off of it back then. It felt slow, and awkward, and when the difficulty ramped up, it got very hard, very quickly. Now, admittedly, I’ve only put about 30 minutes into Redemption here, but just the addition of a run button is incredibly welcome, and the retooled level design and powerup mechanics helps the game feel way less obtuse overall. It’s just a cleaner, tighter, more accessible and more polished version of Rayman.

Stay tuned for the next article: Indie games.

[sqgtdevreviews]

Sonic CD Publisher: Sega Developer: Sega System: Sega Genesis (Sega CD) Year: 1993

For a brief period during the 16-bit generation, CD based systems were all the rage. CD storage had loading times, but the tradeoff was that they could fit more stuff in the game, and they had MP3 quality Redbook audio and FMV video sequences. Nintendo tried and failed to produce a SNES-CD addon with Sony, which later became the Sony PlayStation, but that’s another story. NEC made the Turbo Duo system which eventually replaced the Turbografx-16 entirely. The Sega Genesis had the Sega CD, the only one to have any sort of mainstream success, and even then it was short lived. That’s not to say it didn’t have any noteworthy software. The infamous Night Trap helped lead to the creation of the ESRB, and Hideo Kojima’s Snatcher became a cult classic.

Sonic CD is indisputably the Sega CD’s killer app, as well as one of the more interesting games in the series. Sonic CD started life as a failed CD port of Sonic 2. Sonic 2 was to feature time travel, but it was scrapped very early on. However, Sonic CD wound up becoming its own game designed completely around the time travel mechanic.

This might explain why it feels like a half-step between Sonic 1 and 2. Almost none of Sonic 2’s new additions are found here, other than some hidden Tails cameos and a much wonkier Spin Dash that you now have to charge by ducking and holding the jump button for several seconds until the camera pans forward. On a surface level, it looks and plays like a trippier Sonic 1. Sonic does have new moves, like the previously mentioned janky Spin Dash, and the awesome looking Super Peel Out. This move is performed by holding up and then holding the jump button, and releasing it after a few frames. Sonic blasts off at incredible speeds with his legs moving in a figure eight motion. The trade off is that he’s vulnerable to attack. The game’s camera also pans ahead of Sonic when he runs fast enough for long enough, giving you more room to see. This is the only mainline Genesis game that does this.

CD sets itself apart in a number of ways, the main one being the Time Travel. In each level there are various signs that say “Past” and “Future” on them. If you run by one of these signs and can maintain your speed for long enough, you’ll warp to that time period after a three second warp sequence (this actually isn’t annoying) and appear in the same spot as you were when you warped. Each time period has slightly different level design and a different look to it. The Past levels are more upbeat and natural looking, and mechanical levels are usually under construction or free of machinery. On the other hand, the Future has been ruined by Eggman and is a mechanized, toxic dump. This is a “Bad Future.” Luckily, you can change it to a “Good Future,” by finding a Badnik Machine in the Past and destroying it. The Good Futures have no enemies and look like utopian mixtures of nature and technology. By getting a Good Future in every level, you can get the Good Ending. Zone 3 in a world (different terminology in this game) is always a short level with a boss and always takes place in the future. If you got a Good Future in Zones 1 and 2, Zone 3 will be a Good Future too. The boss won’t be any more or less difficult (though most of them are much easier and more gimmicky in this game anyways), but it does feel pretty nice.

The Time Travel admittedly feels like a little more could have been done with it. This does sound weird, since every time period has its own music and visuals, so clearly a lot of effort was put into the whole idea. While the Past serves a valuable purpose, there is no reason to go to the Future at all other than for bragging rights. Honestly though, whatever. It adds a lot to the game’s atmosphere and it wouldn’t be Sonic CD without it.

Special Stages are back and are accessed the same way as in Sonic 1. This time around, the Special Stages are Mode 7 style racetracks that fit perfectly in a big square. Sonic runs forward automatically and you can turn him to the left/right and jump. The goal is to destroy various UFO’s floating around, which is a lot harder than it sounds thanks to their weird hitboxes and unpredictable movements. Not only that, but the stages are timed, and stepping into water speeds up the clock. At least Blue UFO’s appear in the center when you only have 30 seconds left, and smashing them gives you more time. Upon completion, you get one of the seven Time Stones, which are basically the same thing as the Chaos Emeralds. Super Sonic isn’t in this game, but getting all of them actually turns all Bad Futures into Good Futures, a much faster way to get the Good Ending. Thank God for the other option though, because these Special Stages can get pretty frustrating if you don’t know them like the back of your hand.

The level design is…divisive. Sonic CD seems to have lost it’s sacred status ever since the 2011 Taxman Remaster made it widely available for the first time, and nowadays the level design has become extremely love/hate. I don’t hate it, but I definitely don’t love it. A few worlds still feel pretty fun to play, but some of them feel, quite literally, thrown together. Not like they were quickly made, but more that they have completely random and messy layouts. They take advantage of Sonic’s physics even more than the other games do, but they’re a lot less fun. Regardless of your opinion of the other levels, you’ll hate Wacky Workbench.

Sonic CD is still beloved today for the insanely cool atmosphere it has. It can best be described as Sonic 1 on acid. Many of the levels are similar to those in Sonic 1, but made a whole lot trippier. The only exception is Marble Zone, which almost got a CD equivalent, but it was removed and what was left of it was incorporated into Tidal Tempest (a much better Labyrinth Zone). Quartz Quadrant and Wacky Workbench are totally new. The fan favorite Zone is Stardust Speedway, which has a race between Sonic and his new robot doppelgänger: Metal Sonic. Metal Sonic is the secondary villain and one of the series’ best characters. He has a sleek, menacing appearance and does not fuck around one bit. Amy Rose was also introduced in this game, and unlike her later appearances, she is simply a lovestruck fan and not an outright stalker. She appears a few times to hug Sonic and annoy him, which is one of those little details that gives the game so much character. Another neat detail is the anime opening and endings. These look AWESOME. Sonic has never looked cooler, and this is the same series where he kills multiple Gods in Super Sonic showdowns with awesome rock music.

The standout feature is the soundtrack. Actually, soundtracks. Sonic CD takes full advantage of the Sega CD’s CD audio, but the real cool thing is that there are two soundtracks depending on what region you live in. The Japan/Europe soundtrack blends sampling and dance music into an extremely unique and upbeat soundtrack. The US soundtrack is much darker and has a lot of electric guitars and some female vocals. Both soundtracks fit the game very well, and while the Japanese soundtrack is the better of the two by a landslide, the US soundtrack has several standouts such as the fan favorite main theme Sonic Boom.

Sonic CD is, as a game, a mixed bag, but it’s almost like an art piece. If you were to remove even the tiniest detail from the game then it would no longer be Sonic CD. For that reason alone it’s worth experiencing.