oneuslovas

[sonicattos]

*inhales*

i have a theory that sonic and shadow have connections to chao and by extension the ancients

BIG RAMBLE:

this started as a crack theory, but it became more sensible the more i thought about it.

the ancients and the black arms are not only aliens, but are very simalar in design, specifically their bipedal stature, their head shape, lack of a mouth, eyes, 3 fingers and 2 toes

chao actually have a similar mutation, which would be neutral to dark

like chao and their hero/dark favoritism system, shadow the hedgehog absorbs dark and hero energy, you get dark energy by doing bad things in his namesake game, that includes hurting humans, which is simalar to the fact that the black arms feed off of human souls.

reasoning for the black arms, more specifically black doom to be evil? idk. maybe he disagreed with something. maybe he was a victim of “the end”s laser bast. maybe he’s vengeful to humans for whatever reason.

during the “project shadow” development prof. gerald created “chaos drives” which is crystalized chaos energy to transfer to living tissue, this was used for the creation of the ultimate lifeform. these can also be used on chao. these drives have different power types; one of them being running.

here’s fully grown run/run type neutral and dark chao:

these chao don’t look like sonic and shadow, it’s the other way around.

why a hedgehog as the ultimate lifeform?

there IS a popular theory since it’s implied gerald visited angel island and did research, since he has replicas of chaos and a replica of the master emerald shrine, that he may have based the both of the designs off of these prophetic murals (possibly created by the ancients):

perhaps he used hedgehog dna? or maybe he just looks like a hedgehog because that’s how chao can look when they evolve. who knows?

as for sonic we have no clue on his current in-game backstory, so we don’t know HOW this could have been done so i’ll just shoot some ideas and similarities:

sonic and shadow have the same abilities, despite having “nothing” to do with each other

the ancients have green eyes like sonic’s and tendrils that curve downwards like sonic’s quills

like the default neutral chao, he’s blue (plus the yellow gradient on the arms could be similar to sonic’s arms if ur feeling reachy) (the reason why i mention this is because shadow and dark chao)

one of his biggest gimmicks is absorbing chaos emeralds and mutating which is what chaos does. yeah others can do this (supposedly) but whatever

neutral chao always have a curved tendril (?) and a dark chao always has an angular tendril simalar to sonic and shadow’s quills.

edited:

not really a similarity but sonic has been described to neutralize the chaos emeralds when he has them (sonic rush). his ability to withstand a super form is also much greater and drains less energy from him (narratively speaking). it’s a little weird how connected he is to the emeralds when they’re not from his world. although, it’s the same case with the master emerald as well.

before i edited this ended it off with a joke saying i think they’re chao. no i really don’t. with this theory in mind shadow would at least be related genetically speaking.

i know sonic has been described with origins in the past, but they’re all outdated and never mentioned in games.

i do believe wholeheartedly he has connections with the ancients somehow, since it is a little weird that he does look like a chaos energy mutant chao.. i don’t think his origins would’ve been like shadow’s though. i think it would be funny i think since sonic can’t swim but he’s related to water people.

this was not really to be taken seriously, 100% because it is only a theory. i don’t actually think this word for word wholeheartedly, just something i found weird and wanted to info dump about. i also just love the idea of sonic having weird out of the ordinary origins. okay bye.

edit:

the dark chaos chao (devil chao) can get horns…….you know who else—

the black arms own ancient temples on earth that closely resemble the ones on angel island and the starfall islands. (built by the ancients, well angel island is implied to be) they homed replicas of the master emerald.

shadow the hedgehog (2005) is actually the first game to display cyberspace. it was owned by the united federation, but i have a couple theories. one: that it originally belonged to gerald as an attempt to replicate the ancient’s cyberspace, since he did visit angel island for research. two: it’s mentioned in frontiers that g.u.n had visited the sf islands before eggman did. this could be where cyberspace was found by the gov. you could also probably combine the two theories.

[mobius-prime]

176. Sonic the Hedgehog #108

Oh… please, come on, man… not this…

Robotnik x 2 = Trouble!

Writer: Benny Lee Pencils: Ron Lim Colors: Josh & Aimee Ray

So, did you think that perhaps for once in the history of comic books, that we'd actually seen a major villain die for good? Well, apparently not so! Eggman has detected the strange reality fluctuations caused by Knuckles several days ago, and gleefully demonstrates to the newly-roboticized Snively that one such fluctuation can be localized directly within their lab. What - or who - might this fluctuation affect, you ask?

Just outside of Knothole, the Freedom Fighters are relaxing and playing a nice game of hide and seek, when Tails, who is "it," runs smack into Robotnik, looking battered and scared. They're all, of course, incredibly shocked at his reappearance, and skeptical when he claims that Eggman brought him back, but is even worse than he ever was. He ran for his life, wishing now to seek shelter in Knothole. The Freedom Fighters reluctantly bring him to the king and queen, who get him a checkup by Dr. Quack to ensure he's not merely a robotic duplicate, and then, despite his literal war crimes, just… allow him to stay in the village. With all the people he tortured and terrorized barely more than a year ago. Seriously, not even a trial for his crimes? Nothing?

Robotnik seems to have settled right in, despite Sonic's obvious exasperation, and as the crew flies him to Robotropolis he eagerly speaks about perhaps becoming allies after all this is over, while they mostly ignore him in favor of playing cards. They infiltrate the city and fight a cursory number of shadow-bot guards, and Robotnik leads them to a room with a suspiciously-shaped "computer," inviting them to stand on a platform in the center of it and have Nicole take some readings while he accesses the mainframe. Of course, this is when he shows his true colors, and traps them in an energy field that harnesses the power of Eggman's "matter fluctuator" while the two alternate-universe villains giggle with each other, ecstatic that their plan to erase their enemies seems to be working.

The Freedom Fighters reveal that they knew Robotnik was trying to trick them all along, and only played along so that he would lead them straight to the device that brought him back so they could destroy it. He's baffled by this since he's already been brought, and as he and Eggman begin to fistfight over the failure of their plot the Freedom Fighters leave, satisfied that their job is done. Their true intentions become clear very quickly, as due to Robotnik's manner of return, his molecules were very unstable, and in the middle of the fight he vanishes back into oblivion, causing Eggman to punch Snively accidentally and then become furious at his loss once again.

This story basically ended up going nowhere, as Robotnik really, truly is gone for good this time, but I suspect it was mostly written as a lead-in to the two character files we'll be perusing today - one on the original Robotnik, and the other on Eggman, AKA Robo-Robotnik. We'll be skipping the explanations of their life stories, as we already know all of it - no new information is provided - and instead we'll look at the technical details. First of all are their height and weight. These details are identical for both entities, as they come from near-identical backgrounds in their respective zones. Their height is 189 cm or 6'2", which is only one inch taller than their game counterpart. However, their weight is where we run into a bit of a problem. Given all the tasteless jokes made especially in the early days of the comic about how fat and humongous and gargantuan Robotnik is, how heavy exactly would you imagine he is? I bet you didn't guess 61.7 kg or 135.8 lbs. That is not just an absurdly low weight for a being of his stature, that is my own weight. I'm pretty sure this is just a big oversight on the part of the writer, because there's no way in hell an obese six-foot-tall man shares his weight with an average-height, average-build girl in her early 20s. For Eggman, however, though I'm sure he shared his body type with Robotnik when he existed within his own zone, those stats are likely to be a bit different now due to his being a robot in a new body and all.

As far as their ages, this is where they differ significantly. They shared their early history in their respective zones, so both were born on the same birthday of September 10. However, the original Robotnik died at age 45, almost 46, when the Ultimate Annihilator went off. I include "almost 46" because the character file actually gives an exact date of death, June 13, meaning we now know to the day exactly when Endgame occurred. Endgame played out over the course of three days, so that whole shebang started on June 11, which was also the day Sally supposedly died before the truth was revealed. Please keep this date in mind, it will become important in a few issues. Eggman's reality, on the other hand, diverged a few years before Endgame, resulting in his own roboticization at the age of 43. At this point, his physical age likely "froze" since he was no longer bound by the aging process of flesh and blood, while his mental age continued to progress. His zone's timeline has already surpassed that of Mobius Prime, as in that zone Sonic and Sally were married with children, so mentally he'd more likely be somewhere in his late fifties or early sixties. Makes sense to me, though original Robotnik was certainly a little younger than I had imagined him to be.

"…A Girl Named Hope!"

Writer: Karl Bollers Pencils: J. Axer Colors: Josh & Aimee Ray

Sally has received a letter from Hope Kintobor, who was taken along to Station Square with the rest of the refugees, and decides to bring it to her parents to read it out to them. Hope proves herself to be a very well-spoken young girl in the letter, writing about how when she and her people first landed on the outskirts of Robotropolis and she saw Sonic, she thought he looked scary, as she'd never seen a Mobian before. However, over the course of living in the city, she began to mistrust her uncle after seeing more evidence of his roboticization of Mobians, and eventually realized that the Mobians were better than she had been led to believe after witnessing them rescue both their roboticized brethren and the rest of the Overlanders.

She describes how most of her life in space, ever since she was two years old, was spent in cryosleep, learning about the history of their home planet, including the details of the Great War between her people and the Mobians. They only ended up returning because their ship's power supply began to fail, but now, she no longer feels at home amongst her people, with the loss of her stepfather and grandmother.

This is honestly a very sweet story, and I'm glad we'll be seeing more of Hope. She was definitely the most interesting character among the Overlanders, and she's obviously a very observant and intelligent girl.

Reunification (Part 3)

Writer: Ken Penders Pencils: Dawn Best Colors: J&A Ray

Lara-Le is not at all happy about Knuckles' decision to join up with the Legion, even scolding him for what his father will likely think when he finds out. Knuckles becomes defensive and asks her why they can't just hear him out first, and she replies that she thinks he's too much of a threat to her children.

Wow, Lara-Le, you and Wynmacher have been pretty busy then, huh? That's a pretty big gap between your kids' ages there - Knuckles is gonna be seventeen by the time that baby is born, assuming that Mobian echidnas have a similar gestational period to humans. While he and his mother continue to discuss matters, Dimitri goes before the council to argue his case for reuniting echidna society. Most of the members present have obvious misgivings, but one Mitre agrees that society should come back together instead of fighting, though he expresses some disapproval of Dimitri's methods through such extensive cybernetics. While they continue to argue things out, Lara-Su waits outside Lara-Le's apartment, waiting for Knuckles to come out so she can spy on him and ensure he's not killed. He exits, and she follows him to the council chambers, witnessing him talk briefly with Lien-Da on the steps outside the building. She recognizes Lien-Da as "the one person Mom absolutely refuses to talk about." The two go inside, and Knuckles steps forward to express his reluctant support for Dimitri, commanding the respect of those present since they know he's fought with Dimitri many times before. Interestingly, the current echidna government is referred to as "the theocracy" in contrast to Dimitri's "technocracy" - elements of an echidna religion have been hinted at here and there, such as Lara-Le praying in the Aurorium, and the councilor all the way back when Dimitri first "died" quoting from what sounded like some kind of bible, but I think this is the first indication we've ever had that the current government is literally a theocracy, running according to a religious tradition instead of an intellectual one. This puts an interesting - and even more worrying - spin on the whole "banning technology" thing, as real life has shown time and again that religious fundamentalism almost always leads to hypocrisy and needlessly-restricted personal freedoms, which honestly fits exactly with everything that we've seen over the echidnas' history so far. But anyway, while Knuckles says his piece about trying to work together and resolve differences, Lara-Su tries to badger her way into the council chambers, only to be stopped by a guard.

What a cliffhanger! I'm sure there's no way she's interpreting the situation wrong due to not seeing everything that's happened up to this point, right? Right?

[leakinghate]

The Depths to which We Sink

Disclaimer: This theory and analysis contradicts some points made in my previous metas, but what’s the fun of speculation if we limit ourselves to having it all gel together?

Nothing in animation is wasted: every action and expression seen on screen is something someone had to draw and something someone had to pay for. Everything is deliberate, from changes in expression to major plot events, and things which do not contribute to the overarching vision of the show will rarely, if ever, be included. Voltron Legendary Defender in particular moves so fast that they don’t have the space to include anything extraneous even when they want to. The showrunners have said in interviews that they’ve had to cut several of their comedy ideas for lack of space.

The exception to this that has always stood out to me as not fitting into the meta narrative is s2e2 'The Depths'. It's mostly plot irrelevant on the whole, with it being notable only for introducing the Blue Lion’s sonic canon. Sure it has some nice character moments for Lance, and the animation is beautiful, but it’s basically filler. It’s almost completely forgotten by the story, only brought up again once, when Lance references the mermaids in s3e2, ‘Red Paladin’.

In preparation for the fast approaching season 7 on August 10th I was attempting to re-watch the entire show up to the end of s6. Most re-watches I do I skip less plot relevant episodes like ‘The Depths’, but I wanted to go through the whole show this time.

But as I was watching this particular episode, post season six. I was struck by an uncomfortable feeling of déjà vu. So what do you do when you think you’ve stumbled upon some heretofore unnoticed foreshadowing? Why, bring it to the Lotura Discord of course! We put our heads together and came up with some fascinating observations, as well as some intriguing possibilities for where the plot might be headed in the future.

On re-watching it again, post season six, 'The Depths’ contains an uncanny amount of foreshadowing to the entire colony plot.

Two of our protagonists unexpectedly stumble upon a completely isolated and hidden settlement after traveling through a strange space anomaly. They are initially greeted by a single member of a race they previously believed did not exist (anymore).

The mermaid civilization is beneath a thick layer of ice, and the Altean colony is inside a dome.

Information received from an erstwhile ally reveals an apparently sinister truth about the actions and motivations of someone in power who had previously acted as a friend. To wit: the authority figure has deceived their loyal subjects for the purpose of killing them.

The ally that provides this information readily admits that they do not know all the facts and that their conclusion is only a theory based on the facts that they do have.

Dialogue from The Depths:

Lance: But what’s the point? Why mind-control the mermaids? Blumfump: To kill them! Lance: Really? Blumfump: Well, we don’t know that for sure, but hundreds of mermaids have disappeared and never come back.

Dialogue from The Colony:

Romelle: My brother was dead. I knew the truth, or at least part of it, but I also knew that no one would believe me without proof. When Keith and Krolia arrived they were my last chance at finding it. I told them what had happened to my brother, and as it turned out, so many Alteans that had been taken before him. As they explained their mission to me, we knew there must have been a connection between the missing Alteans and the pure strain of quintessence.

One of our protagonists is compromised by an antagonist’s mind control and is used to attack and subdue his fellows. The shadows on Hunk’s face when he is under mind control even look like Shiro’s scar.

The physical appearances of several characters are also intriguing. The one character we see fall victim to the Baku, Florona, is the only red-headed mermaid in the episode. A shade of red very similar to Bandor’s hair color.

Plaxum, the most prominent of the ‘cave dwellers’ and the one who eventually directly confronts the queen, has two ponytail-like projections on her head very reminiscent of Romelle’s hairstyle. They also share very similar body language. And Plaxum’s eyes while wearing her jellyfish are the same color as Romelle’s.

In fact, both of these pairs of characters share very similar color schemes; Plaxum and Romelle are teal, pink, and yellow, while Florona and Bandor are red, golden-yellow, and green.

These are all things which have already happened; there is no speculation here, only observation.

Hilariously, this means Bandor has been metaphorically represented by a red fish.

In other words, a Red Herring.

From Wikipedia:

"A red herring is something that misleads or distracts from a relevant or important issue. It may be either a logical fallacy or a literary device that leads readers or audiences towards a false conclusion."

This is exactly what we've been saying since season 6 aired. Specifically referring to Bandor’s line after his ship crashed through the dome. The one thing he manages to tell Romelle is: “Lotor... the other colony... It’s all a lie.” Which tells us exactly nothing, but is the evidence that convinces Romelle she is correct to distrust Lotor, and what sets off the chain of events that ultimately led to the s6 finale. It’s also the strongest evidence we as the audience have that Lotor has done something truly monstrous. The scene with Bandor irrefutably connects Lotor to the emaciated Alteans, even if we don’t know precisely what that connection is. It’s easy to assume the worst both in and out of universe.

In cinema characters with red hair are often made to be the red herrings. A red herring may be intentionally used by the writer to plant a false clue that leads readers or audiences towards a false conclusion. Bandor led Romelle to a false conclusion.

Both in and out of the show. Romelle concluded wrong. The paladins concluded wrong. The AUDIENCE concluded wrong.

What’s next? Well, the plot of ‘The Depths’ isn’t a 1-to-1 relation to the Altean Colony storyline, so it’s difficult to say exactly what aspects of the episode’s climactic fight and conclusion will turn out to be relevant. But, we can be fairly certain that the overall narrative is the same.

The apparent villain was actually being manipulated into taking the actions they took by a greater, silent threat. The few rebels our protagonists met were wrong about who was the real enemy. They were right about the issue, but wrong about the ‘why.’ The leader was not at fault because the leader had fallen prey to the creature first and was subsequently rendered powerless to stop it.

Perhaps even, and here we get into more speculation...

The real threat was something that loomed large in the background the whole time, assumed to be providing safety. Fallen from space.

The Baku is referred to as ‘the giver of life’.

That phrase is disconcertingly ominous, considering the only other time we've heard a similar phrase was in reference to Oriande. The Sages, or ‘Life Givers’, specifically.

And what is quintessence, but ‘life itself’.

JDS has previously compared Lotor to Magus from Chrono Trigger, a game I have no personal experience with, but @blackmoonbabe​ provides the relevant info​ here.

What if there's some kind of cosmic horror that Lotor's been fending off with Altean quintessence? Possibly, the only kind strong enough - apart from the rift sourced variety. Extracting it and storing the people in the hopes of eventually restoring them. Only, now that he's gone. There's nothing stopping whatever this thing is. Who knows. It might even be related to the rift creatures.

We still don't know what the Baku was or where it came from, just that it 'fell from space.' The new trailer for season 7 features a similar looking and very toothy one-eyed beastie.

When Lotor is pleading with Allura he says:

"Allura, you must understand I’ve given everything I have to plumb the depth of King Alfor’s knowledge, to unlock the mysteries of Oriande."

It might be that he found something bad while trying to unlock those mysteries.

All of this really makes you wonder why exactly Alfor kept Oriande's existence a secret.

Post season 1, there was an interview where the showrunners said that they had to kill off Alfor's AI because he knew spoilers. Which, okay, that’s fair.

Except... what exactly have we come to know now that only Alfor’s AI could have told us ahead of time?

Everything we eventually learn about Zarkon we find out through Allura and Coran. And everything surrounding Lotor and Haggar  are things that Alfor’s AI wouldn’t have known about because they happened after Alfor’s death. The only outstanding piece of information that Alfor could have know was the location of and the information about Oriande. But, Allura doesn't even think to look for Oriande until mere moments before she and Lotor unlock the map to it. Certainly, the AI could have provided information of the proper way to get past the trials, but that was resolved easily enough in-episode and it was never truly portrayed as a risk that Allura and Lotor wouldn’t return before the castle ran out of oxygen.

If it was true that Alfor knew spoilers... there is something BIG concerning Altean Alchemy that we don't yet know. Not something little. Something potentially game changing.

Even knowing there was a good chance he was going to his death, and Coran and Allura would be on their own, Alfor never told Coran about Oriande. Coran and Alfor have been shown to have a particularly close, lifelong friendship - strong enough that Coran keeps at least two portraits of Alfor in his room above his bed. Alfor trusted Coran to the extent that he entrusted his beloved daughter, the Black Lion, and the future of the universe into Coran’s hands.

And yet.

Alfor didn’t tell Coran about Oriande. The one place Allura might go to strengthen her alchemic abilities and reach her potential. Alfor was faced with the possibility of letting the knowledge of Oriande and Altean Alchemy die, and he chose to risk it.

There had to be a damn good reason he didn't tell Coran about it. He might have known about something bad. It seems like he wanted Oriande forgotten; for Allura to never go there. Or at least, not until she was ready to make some tough decisions. Decisions he would rather spare her.

I’ve been feeling since around season 3 that VLD’s ultimate conclusion will be to show us that there is no true good and evil, that neither violence or pacifism is always the answer, that the world - the universe - is all shades of grey. Allura is our vehicle for that. It’s through her assumed prejudices that the show is shifting our viewpoints. She began the series believing that the Galra were all evil, the Alteans good. As time has gone on she’s improved impressively on her initial bias against the Galra, but has steadfastly refused to acknowledge her own people as capable of similar actions - her response to the alternate reality Alteans was to declare them not true Alteans instead of accepting that they’d become akin to the Galra Empire from her own reality.

It’s clear that Allura will have to face Honerva eventually, and will be forced to confront what the former greatest Altean Alchemist has become. But it’s too easy to dismiss Honerva’s corruption into Haggar as a side effect of the rift - not the willing actions of someone more concerned with knowledge than morality.

For six seasons we’ve seen Alfor as a paragon of good. His one fatal flaw being perhaps too good, too trusting, that he believed his friend’s words over his own judgement. Ultimately damning the universe to ten thousand years of being ground under the heel of a brutal dictator.

Alfor paid for that mistake with his life, with the destruction of his planet and the near extinction of his people. And so, he remains what all good in VLD is measured against, both in our - the audience’s - minds, and in Allura’s.

But just as our ultimate evil, Zarkon, was revealed to be more than just a monster, so too will our ultimate good be made more complex. In season 3 we were introduced to the younger Zarkon. A loyal friend and comrade. Awkward around an attractive woman, afraid of cats, and a dedicated and concerned ruler of his people. He was humanized, for lack of a better word, but we still see in him the man who he’d eventually become.

What better way to finally break through Allura’s idealized view of Alteans than by tainting Alfor’s image in some way? To finally see our Big Good do something morally grey? We’ve already seen it foreshadowed by the corruption of the AI, and the Alteans in the alternate reality.

The first time we’ve heard someone level legitimate criticisms against Alfor was at the end of season 6. Just after Lotor begins his breakdown he says:

"What about your father? He may have been a master engineer, but Alfor was too weak to defend his home world. I���m the one who had to step up and save our entire race. Who are you to question my tactics in bringing peace and prosperity to the universe?"

No one else criticizes Alfor for his choices. Even when they acknowledge he failed, he's always portrayed as having taken the best choice. But, what if Lotor's right? It certainly looks like he is.

If Lotor hadn’t stepped in and saved those few survivors of Altea’s destruction they would eventually have been discovered by the empire and executed. Zarkon had made it his personal mission to drive the Alteans to extinction. Alfor was weak. He surrendered to his fear of what would happen if Voltron fell into Zarkon’s hands and failed to utilize all his resources to defend Altea, his people, and his allies.

This won’t be the only fault we find out he had, mark my words.

There is something dark and unsavory lurking in the truth of Altean Alchemy.

Considering Lotor readily admits that Alteans perished in the process of his quintessence experiments, it may very well be that whatever required such vast amounts of concentrated quintessence is also something Alfor had to contend with in the past. Canonically, as stated in s3e7 ‘The Legend Begins’, quintessence was only first discovered in the course of studying the rift on Daibazaal. Alfor could not have been utilizing quintessence directly, because he didn't know it existed.

So if, whatever Lotor has been having to do with the colony, Alfor may have been having to do something similar...

He was simply sacrificing people.

It’s a lot easier to hide a handful of people going missing when you have an entire planet’s population to work with.

What if this is a thing that had always been happening, and that's why Alfor never told Coran about Oriande?

The thing is, Lotor can't know that now. Or he would have told Allura. To justify his actions, if it was something that Alfor would have dealt with as well.

Lotor didn't have Voltron. If there is some kind of Cosmic Horror beastie out there he might not have been able to fight it, let alone kill it. So he was building Sincline. Hence the urgency to get it completed even after Zarkon was gone. We know he was out of concentrated quintessence as of s4e5 ‘Begin the Blitz’. He was either going to have to access the rift imminently or harvest more people.

The powers that be keep talking about things not being black and white in this show.

Alteans can do bad things. Honerva became Haggar. Allura herself has made some morally questionable choices. Like what she did to Lotor for example.

Allura will need to realize that. The truth will rise from the depths and confront her in a way she can no longer ignore.

Alfor failed. It was up to Lotor to save the Altean people. He did what he felt he had to do, and in many respects, it will turn out he was right.

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[speeps-highway]

What are your opinions on the Adventure games from a critical standpoint? It's obvious that you like going through them and finding unused content but do you genuinely enjoy playing through them?

I could go all day about positive aspects of the games and why I find them good so I’m just going to address what I see as the negatives of the games.

The problems I see with them are:

Camera

Collision

Game Design

Localisation

Development Time

Port Quality

I’m going to explain each of these, because I see a lot of people complaining about the games these days and then not knowing what they’re supposed to be talking about when asked to go into more detail.

Camera

The camera can be summed up in one image:

The camera works by putting a bunch of spheres, blocks and planes throughout the stage that change settings when you pass through them. Most of the time, you’ll only encounter problems with the camera when you’re trying to skip over large chunks of the stage.

The majority of the camera bugs are due to the player running into a new camera while the current one is in a place it’s not supposed to be, but if you know how it’s not hard to get around. In SA1, you can hold down the L and R buttons to stop the camera suddenly changing directions in most cases.

In SA2, the stages are designed in way that it doesn’t matter too much anyway. I think Final Rush is the only stage I can think of that has considerable bugs with the camera.

Collision

The collision is to do with how the game is played. Remember how Mario 64 lets you skip parts of the game if you can long jump up stairs fast enough? Provided you’re Sonic, Sonic Adventure lets you go at that sort of speed whenever you want.

With that in mind, a lot of barriers might be high enough to stop Tails and Knuckles flying where they’re not supposed to, but Sonic is very unpredictable and can use any sloped surface to his advantage, bypassing a lot of the barriers that are in place.

The same people who rant about this game having bugs will then go praise something like Ocarina of Time, which lets you fly with bombs and beat the game in under 20 minutes.

But then again, not too many people play the original game and prefer to use DX as their reference. DX has atrocious collision and quite frankly I can’t even put it down to port problems seeing as how the Preview prototype still has the original collision intact.

I don’t know how the collision fares in SA2, but I know it’s a lot better than the collision in SA1. I think most of SA2′s main collision bugs are still due to Sonic doing unpredictable things (The bounce attack is pretty buggy, it lets you jump sideways and really high)/

Game Design

The main flaws of game design in the Adventure games are of course the non-Sonic gameplay.

In SA1, for the most part they’re fine:

Tails might be select parts of Sonic’s stages, but they’re still fun to play.

Knuckles’ stages are built with him in mind rather than Sonic and there’s lots of exploration.

Gamma’s gameplay might be new to a Sonic game, but it’s still full of action and able to keep up with the faster gameplay styles.

Amy is basically the Dreamcast version of the Werehog but without the constant fights - lots of platforming and puzzle solving throughout her stages. The only problem with her gameplay is that she’s very slow in comparison to the other characters. While this can be annoying, with well timed hammer jumps you can conserve your momentum pretty well.

Big’s gameplay is the main problem, and boy is it awful. Not only was this the style that kept me from completing the game as a kid, but it also still manages to be a pain in the ass years later when it comes to tracking down and catching those 2000g fish.

Looking at the design of his stages, it looks like they either toned down his stages or just flat out didn’t complete them, but it’s most likely the former considering his website pictures:

What I’m talking about is how Froggy is always in the first pool you find, despite other pools suiting him better existing. It’s painfully obvious in Hot Shelter, which has an entire course (with checkpoints) and a puzzle involving Kiki bombs to go through only to find absloutely nothing. (The 2000g fish is in the same pool as Froggy if you’re wondering)

In SA2, the alternative gameplay styles are watered down versions of Knuckles and Gamma’s mechanics:

Tails and Eggman are slower and have more stiff control schemes than Gamma did.

Knuckles and Rouge can only find one Emerald at a time, which was not a good move given that with the exception of Wild Canyon their stages are far too large for that.

They’re not as good as they were in SA1, but they still manage to be fun IMO. I think that you can complain about SA2 for this, but not to the ridiculous lengths I see a lot of people going to.

The Chao raising’s only problem is that they made it a requirement to get all the emblems. However, you don’t actually get a reward for completing the game 100% until SA2, which is the Green Hill stage that was kept secret to a level of it being listed as “??????” on the game’s debug menu.

Localisation

Aka. “Drink every time you see someone complain about Ryan Drummond’s voice acting.”

The English voice actors are pretty bad and there’s not much to talk about for them. However, Drummond did get better in SA2 and IMO is still the best match for Kanemaru’s Sonic.

The most important problem with the localisation of these two games is that the games were given awful translations. While in SA1 this only amounts to a handful of cringy lines (Something buggin’ you) and dialogue differing between stories, SA2 has it really bad.

In SA2, a lot of the plot gets confused through inaccurate translation. Here’s just a few places where this happens:

Knuckles saying him and Amy saw Rouge go inside the Pyramid with Eggman.

Eggman being 100% sure of the fake emerald plan.

Amy’s point to Shadow being “Yeah you can do whatever just as long as you believe in it”.

In the Japanese version, it’s a lot different:

Knuckles asks Amy if it was true they saw Rouge with Eggman.

Eggman isn’t entirely sure about the fake Emerald until he tricks Tails into revealing his plan.

Amy’s point to Shadow is “It’s not to fair to everyone who lives down there”, which ties into Shadow’s flashback occuring a lot better.

On top of that, SA2 has horrendous problems with line timing. SA1′s dialogue was made in a way that doesn’t progress until the voice file finished playing, so both versions had enough time to finish talking. This doesn’t happen in SA2 and all the scenes are still synced to Japanese, meaning things like the above image happen.

There’s also some quality loss in the localised version - the lips are only synced to English for a small number of Sonic scenes in SA1 and isn’t attempted at all in SA2. Some effects, such as Eggman speaking over a filter when he reveals himself after the Boom Boo fight are also missing.

The Japanese versions of each game are pretty good. The voice acting is nowhere near as bad as the English version and the lines are all synced up pretty good.

Development Time

This is a problem that Sonic has dealt with since all the way back in the early 90s. Sonic doesn’t give himself enough development time, so in the end a lot of bugs and unrealised features come about.

This problem seems to be going away now what with them admitting they need delays for once, but up until the 06 backlash you could really see them struggling to keep up with their own time constraints.

For SA1, this is the lack of bug fixing in the game. A bug database for SA1 was leaked out years ago - if you want to look at it, it can be found on Retro’s page for the game’s developement.

In that database, we can see that a lot of bugs and missing features in SA1 were actually found and documented by the game’s bug testing team. A good example of this is that the game didn’t meet several SEGA standards, such as not being able to skip cutscenes at the press of a button, or numerous Camera and Collision bugs that were documented yet still exist in the final game.

In SA2, you can see huge missing features such as the World Ranking and online Chao functionality. There’s also Green Hill being permanently locked in 2 Player mode despite all evidence pointing towards it intended to be unlocked along with its 1 Player version.

However, SA2 is a special case because it was being developed for a console that was about to be discontinued, so they didn’t have time to delay it in the first place.

Port Quality

SADX is probably one of the worst ports you can get out there - aesthetics lost, bugs gained, only minor improvements etc.

I could go into more detail on why SADX is bad, but I think it’s more important that a lot of people think this is what the game was created as, and drag it down based on how shitty the ports were.

Despite coming out 2 years before SADX, SA2B fares a lot better - it has a lot of new features that outweigh the losses (mostly lighting effects) and adds a lot of interesting detail to the stages.

Overall, I’d say that the games definitely have their flaws but too many people are holding these things to unrealistic standards.

SA1 could’ve been better had they not decided to go ahead with the 1998 release and used the extra year to fine tune the game, but it’s not like you don’t see major titles releasing with bugs these days. It’s not like the game isn’t fun regardless though.

SA2 just needed to tweak the alternate gameplay styles and get a better localisation, it’s not nearly deserving of the hate it gets.