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BEAT

LOUDSKULL
(DUDE/BRO)
Yeah I actually started a thread about it on speedrun.com after accidentally pulling it off in Carnival Night.

Then I did some digging and found some other guy who'd pulled it off in Ice Cap.

It's kinda cool to know I contributed to the likely speedrun route in some small way!
 

BEAT

LOUDSKULL
(DUDE/BRO)
of course the REAL game-breaking strat is restarting the level right as you enter a flashing big ring. If done just right it'll wrong-warp you to Hidden palace, skipping all of Mushroom Hill, Flying battery, Sandopolis and Lava Reef.
 

LBD_Nytetrayn

..and his little cat, too
(He/him)
As cool as that is, I have to confess: my least-favorite speed runs are the ones that involve skipping playing the game.

That said, that trick is still awesome.
 

Lokii

(He/Him)
Staff member
Moderator
I wanted to do some 3D Sonic after going through Origins but the only one close to hand was Colors. Did a clumsy run which was fun, but very clumsy. Then I went back and started shooting for S ranks and the game really started to sing. It's good and showy at all times but at S rank the design starts to come together. The various setpieces in both 3D and 2D sections started to click and I felt like I was jelling with the type of play the designers were encouraging. The impression I get is that the design is much more prescriptive than the Adventure games but that's okay; discovering the intended approaches and nailing a high score is deeply satisfying, especially when you string them together into a smooth high speed run. I'm playing the old Wii version on my U and I wish there was a way to capture and share footage. I'd love to save some of these S's. Ah well, I guess Sonic doing a cool grind will have to remain an ephemeral thing.
 

muteKi

Geno Cidecity
The impression I get is that the design is much more prescriptive than the Adventure games but that's okay

Compared to SA1 I'd definitely agree. Compared to SA2 (or Heroes), though, there's a lot less daylight between the games' ethos; after all, the ranking system originated in SA2 and the level design in it tends to be a lot more tubelike than in SA1, leading to less room for creativity (which is not to say none). Colors is interesting in that the best way to get S-ranks in a lot of the levels is to nearly-aimlessly mess around with the color powers -- if you have a level with drill power ups, you should drill until you can't get any more bonuses out of it. I still largely enjoy the game but it's probably not that surprising that I don't go back to it very often.
 

Lokii

(He/Him)
Staff member
Moderator
"Best" is subjective here though, right? I haven't gotten S's in all stages yet and I don't claim to be anything like an expert, but I've never felt that the game required grinding color bonuses. I've found that routing to do things like nab rings of rings when drilling or picking up red rings will get you the scores you need without having to meander. Plus its more fun and stylish.
 

muteKi

Geno Cidecity
"Best" is subjective here though, right?

I didn't exhaust all the possibilities (i.e., didn't try to path out access to every red ring, for example) but in some levels I found it was the only way I could get enough points for a ranking. Any level where that possibility wasn't available was certainly more engaging to S-rank. It's mainly most of the Tropical Resort levels, the first Sweet Mountain, and some of the Aquarium Park levels where this seemed to be an issue.

I mean it's not like this isn't engaging in its own way. If you squint a little bit, it's like you're playing Nights
 

ArugulaZ

Fearful asymmetry
He should be able to touch the Death Egg at this point. How long until his head leaves the atmosphere and he dies of asphyxiation?
 

muteKi

Geno Cidecity
By the way, a summary of some of the changes:

Audio section of museum has track names fixed up. Sonic 3 soundtrack still has the (hardware-accurate, I suppose) low-pass filter going on.

Tails issues with a failure to despawn in Sonic 2 have been removed, fixing the forever-jumping bug. Flying SFX properly terminates when switching between levels or into bonus/special stages.

Joycon prompts will not show up when trying to play the Sonic 3 competition stages in single-player (such as for time-attack).

The infamous wrong-GPU option for integrated-graphics motherboards (including laptops with passthrough) has been fixed. You'd think one of these games they'd get this right from the start but apparently not.

You can no longer go past the expected boundaries of the flame shield mushroom hill mission, sadly.

I have heard conflicting reports as to whether or not the S3 blue spheres special stage music speeds up properly -- and no idea if for the blue spheres mode ("No Way?!") it's set to properly speed up every 45 seconds vs. the 30 seconds it does for the in-game stages.
 
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ArugulaZ

Fearful asymmetry
Doing loops in a first person perspective is the worst thing. Remember Hard Drivin'? Half the time you didn't even know what the hell was going on, because all you were seeing was asphalt.
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
Sonic Chaos (or as the cartridge says, SONIC THE HEDGEHOG CHAOS) is excellent. On Master System, of course - the Sonic games on Game Gear don't have a high enough resolution to be any fun. Even the special stages are fun (well, besides the last one, that's just an annoying tube maze). It haa good level design, is short, the boss fights are fun (even if the final boss takes far too many hits), exploring the levels to get enough rings to get to the special stages is challenging later on. Beating the game as Tails (who can't collect emeralds) is a cakewalk, though. In any case - love it!
 

Patrick

Magic-User
(He/Him)
Heck yeah, my childhood favorite! I just added Master System & Genesis games to my 3DS, I should give it a runthrough.
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
Sonic Origins getting a Plus addition, adds 16 Game Gear games and Amy as a playable character (with hammer!) to the Genesis/CD titles from the original release. No idea about pricing yet, but apparently the original release can be upgraded according to a quick bullet point at the end of this video:


I'm a sucker so I'll be buying it.
 
Does Sonic Origins have save states or re-wind? I have the Sega Ages versions of Sonic 1 and 2, never felt compelled to upgrade to this but all the new additions make it tempting.
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
@Tato No save states or rewind, but lives are basically unlimited if you get the full premium version, whatever it's called, since it gives you like 200 coins, which act as lives (you can still get 1UPs in the games as usual, they just give you an additional coin).
 

LBD_Nytetrayn

..and his little cat, too
(He/him)
As good as the AGES versions are, I still felt like these were the definitive versions of the games, S3&K aside. At least, the mobile versions for 1&2 and 360/PS3 for CD.
 

Sprite

(He/Him/His)
Using the Game Gear versions of the games which have Master System versions is baffling. Would the emulator even need to be that different?

I’m a sucker for Tails Adventure, though, so…
 

Ludendorkk

(he/him)
It says a lot about how Sega (and the audience at large) feel about Game Gear games that they feel the need to slop 'em on to convince people there's value add here. (Not that I'm complaining, having such a comprehensive handheld selection feels like I finally have a reason to get this over just booting up the Sonic Mega Collection again)
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
I'm honestly more interested in playing as Amy in the original Sonic games than the Game Gear games anyway, to be honest - she was really fun (and weird) to play as in Sonic Advance, so it'll be interesting to see what she's like in the original games (Sonic CD is going to be a weird one if her mechanics are like they are in Sonic Advance - she was much slower, iirc, so getting speed to time travel will be odd). Game Gear games are just a bonus, really.
 

WildcatJF

Let's Pock (Art @szk_tencho)
(he / his / him)
Yeah being physical and playable Amy has me finally being interested, not so much the 12 Game Gear titles, haha. They're nice, bit not what caught my attention.
 
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