LET'S STREAM SONIC 3D BLAST - The Other Genesis Sonic.

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Let's Stream Sonic 3D Blast & Sonic 3D Blast: Director's Cut.

Sonic 3D Blast came out in November 1996, which was basically the last few moments of the Genesis's lifespan. It's a weird bad game with weird bad controls, played from a a weird bad perspective and sporting weird bad visuals. A total departure from the 3 (or 4?) genesis games that came before it.

But despite it's inarguable lesser quality when compared to the 4 (or 3?) other Genesis Sonics, I've always held this weird fondness for it. This is probably because I was somehow even stupider at 11 then I am today, and I played the hell out of anything I got for Chirstmas. Plus 11 year old me was seriously BLOWN AWAY by the intro cinematic. Like holy shit, did you SEE that? Wow!

2 (or 3?) weeks ago I played through a decent chunk of this on my Hitbox and it was a fun experience! And I want a pallet cleanser after the unending nightmare that was my last project. Give myself a little room to breathe between bad visual novels, you know?

And then I returned to this thread after like 3 years to do Sonic 3D Blast: Director's Cut lol.

All footage for the original version of the game was recorded live on my Hitbox Channel in 2015. All footage for the Director's Cut was recorded live on my Twitch Channel in 2018.

YOUTUBE PLAYLIST.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
__SONIC 3D BLAST
____PROLOGUE - HOW DOESɴ'ᴛ SONIC 3D WORK?
____01 - GREEN GROVE ZONE
____02 - RUSTY RUIN ZONE
____03 - SPRING STADIUM ZONE
____04 - DIAMOND DUST ZONE
____05 - VOLCANO VALLEY ZONE
____06 - GENE GADGET ZONE
____07 - PANIC PUPPET ZONE
____08 - THE FINAL FIGHT
____EPILOGUE - BOX ART & CAN SONIC 3D BE "FIXED"?
__SONIC 3D BLAST: DIRECTOR'S CUT
____PROLOGUE - THE MOST OFFICIAL ROMHACK EVER
____01 - GREEN GROVE ZONE
____02 - RUSTY RUIN ZONE
____03 - SPRING STADIUM ZONE
____04 - DIAMOND DUST ZONE

Sounds good. I didn't even know this existed, and since I consider the first four games the only ones worth playing, this should be interesting.

How's this going to work, though?

Fun game imo. I prefer it on the PC where you can save between zones, though.

I play through the game over a series of streams while bullshitting around with SKYPE CREW.

Then I chop the footage into individual levels and post em.

Standard LET'S STREAM operating procedure. I already have up to puppet panic zone recorded, planning on posting level one tonight.

There's a hacked rom of this that removes the necessity to get Flickies. I can't decide if it improves the game or trivialises it.

PROLOGUE BONUS POST #01!
SO HOW DO YOU DO 16-BIT SONIC IN 3D, EXACTLY?

I dunno! But here's how the devs at traveler's tales tried:

1.) USE AN ISOMETRIC PERSPECTIVE. The "Camera" is fixed at a 3/4ths angle above Sonic, giving a relatively good view of the world. The only parts you can actually run around on are the checkerboard floors, everything else is just background. You can't go anywhere that's not a checkerboard floor, attempting to jump off the "Edge" will just stop you dead against an invisible wall.

2.) SLOW SONIC DOWN. Sonic's movement in all prior games is built around the idea of slowly gaining momentum. He starts with a slow walk, then goes faster and faster and faster until ZOOM! It's awesome! But it also probably wouldn't translate well into this odd kind of 3D, so his top speed here is reduced to compensate.

3.) CHANGE UP THE LEVEL OBJECTIVES. In 2D Sonic the only goal is to get to the end as quick as you can. The levels give you variety in the form of multiple paths you can take through the level stacked vertically on top of one another with plenty of chances to switch between them. Again, that doesn't really work in isometric 3D, so the devs changed the goal of each level to complete a series of tasks before exiting at the end.

Well hey! Those all sound like reasonable and creative solutions to the logical problems of making the jump to the 3rd dimension! So what's the problem?

THE PROBLEM IS ALL OF THOSE ATTEMPTED SOLUTIONS JUST CAUSED MORE PROBLEMS.

No way, who could have possibly called that?

1.) THE ISOMETRIC PERSPECTIVE IS AWFUL. It forces all of the level geometry to be built from that 3/4ths perspective. And that means all the jumps that would be tricky just by being in 3d are now even worse because they're all at diagonal angles instead just right, left, up, or down.

2.) SONIC'S PACE IS NOW AWFUL. The act of simply slowing him down wasn't unreasonable, but for reasons unknowable to man, they kept in the way he slowly builds up momentum when he starts moving from the 2d Games. Going from slow to fast feels great! Going from Slow to still pretty slow just feels sluggish and plodding.

3.) THE NEW LEVEL OBJECTIVE IS SUPER AWFUL. So what task did they decide should be the thing you gotta do in each level before reaching the goal? Well, you know those birds that always pop out of the robots Sonic breaks? Well here they're called "flickies" and they're the entire goddamn game.* Each level consists of multiple segments that each contain 5, and only 5 enemies. To move forward, you have find and and kill every last enemy, capture the flickies inside them, and escort them all to a big ring, thus opening up the next area of the act.

Hunting down the enemies is already not what I would call fun, but in a weird subversion of how things usually work, the evil enemies have absolutely nothing on the supposedly innocent flickies they hold.

THE FLICKIES ARE JUST THE WORST THING EVER.

When you pop open an enemy, the flicky will be free to do whatever it wants until Sonic touches it, at which point it'll follow Sonic around. If Sonic gets hit, the flickies he has will scatter in all directions along with his rings, he has to scoop em all up again. They also all have their own unique collision, and will get knocked off by anything that hits them in particular. And since they follow Sonic in a longer and longer trail depending on how many he's freed, they can get knocked off by any number of attacks or hazards further and further away from where you actually are, sometimes from offscreen! And the only way to know how many you've got actually following Sonic is to count the tiny little bastards as they flutter around you!

The enemies that the flickies come in always stay in their places. The uncollected flickes fly wherever the hell they want. This means that if you lose them, and you WILL lose them, you're stuck scouring the entire stage for the tiny feather-brained idiots.

They come in 4 varieties, listed here in order of badness.

BLUE. These guys look more or less like your standard Sonic game bird-in-a-robot. They helpfully try to move towards Sonic's general direction whenever they're free roaming, and are therefore the least worst.
PURPLE. As near as I can tell they just go in completely random directions. You would think that would be as bad as it could get, but you'd be wrong.
RED. These little punks apparently move at random as well, but instead of just flying along the ground they jump in a high arc from spot to spot. For some reason their random path always seems to take them over spikes and other floor hazards.
GREEN. I hate these fuckers. Whenever they're free, they make it a point to get as far away from Sonic as possible, usually flying into as many stage hazards as they can along the way.

It's these questionable design choices that make Sonic 3D Blast a weird footnote in the history of the series instead of a major milestone like Sonic Adventure. There's really no reason to play it nowadays when all of Sonic's much better games are widely available on every device known to man. Only motivation to return to that I can think of would be to show it off for the internet as a weird historical artifact. Like if you were, say, some kinda bottom-tier video lets player, and you wanted some easy fodder for you and your friends to riff on.

WELL WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT?

Let's get started.

*Hence the name of the game in Europe "Sonic 3D: Flickies Island"**

**Fun Fact! The game actually checks the nationality of the system it's running on and displays the name accordingly. I used a screenshot of a US version of the game running on a UK machine for the title screen in the intro post because lol.

SONIC 3D BLAST 01

GREEN GROVE ZONE
SPECIAL GUESTS
Kalir - Kishi

Dam lookit that fmv intro video tho.

I kick off my first session of this game at roughly the middle of the night on a whim. Just like everything else I do! Kishi and Kalir have no idea what to make of what they're looking at, which I consider as proof of the fact that they're reasonably decent people.

Oh also this game has special stages. You get into them by collecting 50 rings and then finding Knuckles or Tails. So that's a thing.

SONIC 3D BLAST 02

RUSTY RUIN ZONE
SPECIAL GUESTS
Kalir - Kishi - FanboyMaster - Caliscrub

The second level is where how bad things can get starts becoming truly apparent. Rusty Ruin is much larger than green grove, has way more of the horrible green flickies, and gives us the the first instances of isometric jumping segments in the form of floating platforms and massive inclines.

And the spinners. The spinners send Sonic into a pirouette which is the only way to break through the pillars. You can't jump while pirouetting, your controls become even looser and the path to the pillars is littered with spike and fire traps. And this is all just the second level of the game!

Meanwhile Kalir Kishi and I discuss whether or not we REALLY need further examination of whether the general public likes horny bunnies. Then FanboyMaster and Caliscrub realize I'm streaming and refuse to allow me to continue until they're added to the call. I have good friends you guys.

Also yes, the levels in this game are WAY, WAY LONG. You are not mistaken. This video is actually over 20 minutes in length.

Torzelbaum's random thoughts and observations:
I really feel like the title of this thread should have been - My "friend" Flicky.

Those Chaos Emeralds look like the square Halls cough drops.

Bouncy ballerina Sonic looks to be the most awful thing every done to Sonic in a Sonic game. (Also, would the male version of ballerina be a baller?)

And finally: Ugh... That moving platform in video 2. That just looked awful.
"Sorry if you miss this jump but you're going to fall allllll the way back to the previous part of the stage.
- The Developers
P.S. Fuck you."

You can actually clear that leap in a single bound if you're careful and keep moving quickly -- the game isn't as fast but a lot of jumps can be beaten by just moving as fast as you can. A lot of jumps are still mostly impossible unless you ignore Sonic and look at the shadow; Landstalker had the same problem, though with the M2 release of games like Streets of Rage 2 with its diagonal hallways on 3DS, maybe there's a chance for a version of the game that ameliorates that.


Also, the green flickies don't bother me nearly as much as the red ones, mainly because I tend to play the PC version where any non-collected flickies show up on a map of the entire level, very helpfully, so finding where those assholes have scattered is not so hard. Since the red ones keep jumping right around where you lost them, you're screwed by everything: the best way to collect them is to stand in one place, but if they're jumping around wherever you got hit, that's not always feasible, especially if it's spikes or lava or similar hazards, meaning standing around would cause more damage, and the iffy camera makes trying to jump at them a crapshoot, since you have to match position on all 3 axes (you have to watch Sonic, the flicky, and both of their shadows to get them reliably).

Oh, and there's an easy way to get the PC version working reliably on newer PCs, and also not have to worry about using the disc to play back music.

EDIT: I do actually like the graphics in this game. They're not super high quality but for prerendered stuff I think it's a little more tasteful than Donkey Kong Country, which had overcomplicated graphics and inconsistent lighting effects. DKC is, no contest, easily the better game, but I genuinely prefer this game's more economical look.

Shit, I also love the axelay effect in the special stages, disorienting as is it with the fake-ish (keep in mind, axelay's scaling isn't even Mode 7 either, it's just a raster effect) scaling on the special stage.

And Traveler's Tales was pretty much just the art and programming team for this game; they didn't, IIRC, do much of the actual game/stage design. Their other credits include Toy Story (where they got their reputation for the 3D effects; check out Really Inside the Claw Machine from that game) and Puggsy (which has lots of raster effects in its bosses and an overly-complex physics engine). They're not quite what Rare was to Nintendo, but they definitely loved their complex programming tricks and demos.

The problem with that solution is that in the end you're still playing Sonic 3D Blast.

I played this game like eight-odd years ago as part of the Sonic Mega Collection on GameCube.

I made it to...Zone 4, I think? The icy one? And then I died, and realized I'd have to do that whole thing over.

I did not play Sonic 3D Blast again.

Well, the music on the Genesis version is great, but that's about all it's really got going for it. I mean, the snow/ice zone? All time great.

Some of its excellent music would be shamelessly pillaged for use in Sonic Adventure, but yeah the soundtrack is the best feature by a mile.

The problem with pre-rendered graphics on the Mega Drive is that they always run up badly against the system's low limits on numbers of colors. The Saturn version of this game actually manages to be decent-looking (although you still have to deal with the "game" part).

In exchange for that much appreciated color depth though you lose the remarkable soundtrack and get a merely passable one which is a shame.

The rest of the game looks pretty tedious, but the special stages make me want to vomit. That's special.

The funny thing is that I actually don't like the music so much. Tatsuyuki Maeda's songs feel almost like rip offs of previous games he's done. Mostly the music in this game makes me want to put on some TMBG instead.

Also, here's Flicky:


Given the Pac-Man World games, I certainly wouldn't have put Namco turning, say, Mappy into a 3D stealth action game, but that's about the sort of change between that and this that we wind up with. It's obviously derived from it, but it doesn't map to the sort of pace an arcade game would require; it's far too deliberate, making Sonic's inclusion as the mascot for the game even more baffling. Then again this is still a step up from Sonic Labyrinth, where trying to do any sort of precision movement is impossible.

EDIT: and oh god you're using a ps3 controller augh why would you do that to yourself on a game so focused on diagonal motion

SONIC 3D BLAST 03

SPRING STADIUM ZONE
SPECIAL GUESTS
Kalir - Kishi - FanboyMaster - Caliscrub

OH GOD MY EYES.

None of the levels in this game are exceptionally pretty, But Spring Stadium Zone's color choices are just tragic.

Anyways I sort of drunkenly fumble my way through the maze of springs and spikes, occasionally getting salty about the fake loops that exist in the game only to taunt me. Then I die in the most impossible way imaginable, and call the whole thing off, swearing I'll return to it eventually.

ONE WEEK LATER.

Oh hey that was quick. thanks video editing.

EDIT: Shout outs to SirTapTap, who is ten times the Let's Player I'll ever be. Even if He likes Neptunia. We'll just have to look past that.

I'm partial to Panic Puppet 2 but the game's music on the whole is pretty darn great.
I remember playing Flicky for a little bit on one of sega's colletion releases. Maybe it was sonic gems collection or something like that?

You can see the shared DNA between the two, but it's still so weird. Like, if it's 1996, and you're trying to turn Sonic 3D, why on earth would you go back to that 1984 arcade game for inspiration?
It works so much better than the 360 Controller man, you don't even know.

SONIC 3D BLAST 04

DIAMOND DUST ZONE
SPECIAL GUESTS
FanboyMaster - Caliscrub - MorningSong

Oh thank god. No more yellow.

Diamond dust I actually kinda like! It's Got some really nice music and it's graphics are actually kind of nice. Or at the very least they're not absolutely eye-searing like they were in the last one. Even the inevitable ice physics sections aren't that bad.

You know, as far as Sonic 3D Blast levels go.

Meanwhile we're joined on the call by super-cool person MorningSong! Hi MorningSong! Great to have you.

EDIT: I'm free this evening, so I'll probably take the opportunity to round up the Skype Crew, and finish off the little of this game I haven't recorded yet.

Basically just Puppet Panic and the TRUE final boss.

Feel free to join us!

OKAY I'M STARTING SANIC NOW.

http://www.hitbox.tv/beathatesall

SONIC 3D BLAST 05

VOLCANO VALLEY ZONE
SPECIAL GUESTS
FanboyMaster - Caliscrub - MorningSong

Volcano Valley is characterized by massive pits of lava, flame shields that totally trivialize them. It's also way too big and sort of totally boring to actually play.

Probably even moreso to watch someone else play.

Fortunately for you though my SKYPE BROS are on the case with some of the most hilarious and awesome commentary I've ever had the privilege of being a part of! It's like 99% completely unrelated to anything that actually happens in-game just as god intended.

Enjoy! Or don't! I'm not here to tell you what to do, man.

SONIC 3D BLAST 06

GENE GADGET ZONE
SPECIAL GUESTS
FanboyMaster - Caliscrub - MorningSong

Most old video games that I played a lot of as a kid have at least one chunk of the game that just never left enough of an impact on me for me to actually be able to remember. In Sonic 3D Blast, it's this level. If you asked me to name all the zones in the game, I would make it to Volcano Valley, pause for a long moment, and then jump straight to Panic Puppet.

That's not to say this stage is bad or anything. I mean it kind of is, but not way more so than any of the ones that came before it. The second act has something resembling an interesting level design, but it's all built around a giant incline, so it's still annoying and terrible.

Meanwhile in the commentary, we discuss the horrors of Donald Trump and the joys of weird twitter. Near the end, MorningSong sadly bids us farewell, having determined she would rather watch movies with her IRL loved ones than watch video games with her fake internet friends. And while we may curse her absence, we all know in our darkest hearts that we would have done the same.

I will never forget Gene Gadget because of that horrible giant slope in the middle of the second act.

But it definitely feels like the earliest-made stage in the game. Everything's built over a black abyss, everything is cheap shots and bullshit, and it feels incredibly hostile in a way that everything else isn't

SONIC 3D BLAST 07

PANIC PUPPET ZONE
SPECIAL GUESTS
FanboyMaster - Caliscrub

The last level actually changes things up quite a bit! Namely, the flickies are no longer kept inside of robots! According to the manual, this is because Dr Robotnik was in SUCH A HURRY to get everything ready for the big final showdown, he didn't even have time to stuff his robots full of annoying birds.

I uh.

I always sort of thought that Robotnick was like, turning the adorable animals into robots. Or using them as tiny adorable pilots, or as a biological power source or any reason at all that made it so that he NEEDED to put tiny animals inside his robots. But I guess all this time he just really liked putting tiny animals inside his robots. He's probably at the center of his evil lair shouting into his various monitors "Darnit Sonic, you're messing up my EVIL SCHEMES so fast I had to skip stuffing tiny animals into my robots and that's my FAVORITE part of the day I HATE THAT HEDGEHOG!"

Something like that.

Act 1 is the SINGLE WORST act in the entire game. The only nice thing I can say about it is that it has pretty nice music, which later got shamelessly reused in Sonic Adventure. It gets around the robot issue by having only 5 Flickies total hidden in glass canisters around the stage. It sounds neat in theory but in practice it's a giant pain in the ass as they're all way out of the way and super easy to miss. The which were always easy to lose are all operating at maximum annoying here, at one point one of them managing to get knocked off right before I take a shortcut back to the beginning of the level. I died shortly afterwards, and I breathed a sigh of relief, because it meant I would just have to do the stage over, instead of hunting down one tiny bird somewhere way over on the other side of everything. It's just horrible.

All that makes it really weird that Act 2 turns out to be the SINGLE BEST act in the game! It has no birds at all and is just an obstacle course to get to the stage exit. It also has a really cool visual design, as level is built around a statue of Robotnik that's so enormous you don't even really realize what it is you're seeing until you're half done. The music is my single favorite track in the game and you finish the level by entering supermassive Robotnik's left nostril. And while it still has all the other problems that Sonic 3D Blast suffers from with the lousy controls and all, I probably would have liked the game a lot more had all the levels been designed like this one.

The boss is also a notable departure from the others, as instead of jumping on Robotnik's glass covering, you have to wait for him to attack and then hit the corresponding flashing blue light. That means most of the boss fight is just sort of waiting around. Man I hate wait around bosses. I hope we don't have to deal with any more of those!

On the commentary side of things, this video is actually taken from two separate streams, hence the lineup change around 6 minutes in. Caliscrub wasn't available when Fanboy and I jumped back in, but fret not beloved viewers, because in the upcoming finale we're joined by a brand new guest! Someone who knows quite a bit about Sonic!

I appreciate your use of hideous euro boxart sonic for the time cuts.

I'm going to have to dedicated some EPILOUGE BONUS POST space on this LP to talk about the amazingly horrible promotional art for these games because my god it is on a whole other level.

SONIC 3D BLAST 08

THE FINAL FIGHT
SPECIAL GUESTS
FanboyMaster - MuteKi

MuteKi, the expert behind the amazing act by act analysis of Sonic 1, makes his debut BEATSTREAM appearance! Shame it had to be for this level.

Had you not gotten all the Chaos Emeralds, The boss at the end of Panic Puppet (which I always say as "Puppet Panic" (it just sounds better! Fuck you!)) would be the end of the game. But if you get all seven like I have, you get to fight the REAL final boss!

And by god, you'll wish you hadn't.

The boss arena is made of 5 platforms, all floating against the same background as Gene Gadget Zone, which is to say, no background at all. Robotnik will throw a bunch of annoying attacks at you, then move his stupid looking robot into the area, giving you a chance to attack. Hit, and the path opens up to the next area where he'll do a different stupid attack. Miss and he'll do more of the same stupid attack. You have to do the whole five-platform cycle twice for a total of ten hits to bring the Robotnick down and it's so fucking tedious.

Which isn't to say it's easy, because it's actually not! I die a record number of times and end up having to load a save state not once, but twice before I finally survive all the way to the end of the second cycle and blow up his boring-ass metalic-gray egg. Man, what happened Robotnik? You used to make such kickass final Egg Weapons! Is everything alright man? You can tell me if something's wrong, you know.

Anyways then we get a little end cutscene where the horrible birds reveal that they are sapient and speak English. We can assume they were all yelling "Hahah fuck you nerd!" all those times they decided to fly into spike traps and lava pits. Sonic lies through his teeth that he just "did what he wanted" to spare their awful little feelings, then bails. The credits roll as MuteKi, Fanboy and I discuss how bad isometric games are.

They're pretty bad.

So. Panic Puppet 2 is definitely the most successful level, but it's interesting how much of the stage is just narrow passageways where you get shot by nigh-unavoidable lasers. It might have been nice if more of the game was like that (the blue shield is pretty useless except to take a hit most of the time), but
It also shares another thing in common with actually-successful 3D games, which is that it's actually a pretty vertical climb. If more of the game had been vertically-oriented it would still have been bad because isometric perspectives make judging distances hard, but at least it would have had more interesting platforming. As it stands there are maybe like 3-4 places in the entire game where the solution to navigating the space isn't mostly just to just run and/or roll around, and they're all on slopes.

Also, the purple flickies aren't as random as you think they are. If you stand in one place they'll come to you, but they *seem* random because they'll try to circle around wherever you're standing at any moment rather than actively try to be collected the way the blue ones are.

Woulda' been nice if the game's manual described their different behaviors, though, eh?

Also: As Fanboy noted, Sonic Blast came out in Brazil, while the only sidescrolling GG Sonic that didn't was Triple Trouble, which was probably the best one outside of the first GG/MS Sonic. So they prioritized a far, far worse game over one of the best, for reasons I cannot explain. And yes, the port is even worse than you think. (It runs slower here because every game gear game is supposed to run at 60 FPS; these guys are probably running on a European-set emulator or console, and so it's only running at 50 FPS. Since it was never meant to be sold outside Brazil, that's easily the least of its problems.) Also great is that the penultimate boss, the one with the wheel and lasers, has all its colors messed up in the port due to a palette coding error.

Sonic Labryinth is worse on the whole, but there is no defending the water level in Blast. Insufferable!!