I'm not sure what you want them to do to not have it be "bare bones"? Seems like they're doing just about everything they can do to improve the game without George Lucas-ing it and changing stuff too much. Another update on the SEGA AGES ports: If the series is successful enough and they go beyond the first batch of games, Sega may also port Saturn and Dreamcast games to Switch.
Interesting that the Switch has been attracting quite a fair amount of arcade ports. Can sorta-confirm the dream of an in-house MD mini is dead. The atGames Twitter handle posted that the company was participating in its creation, but then removed it. Nintendolife screencapped it before it was removed though: One of the most-liked comments in the article sums it up quite well: "That tweet was deleted by the sound of thousands of wallets suddenly snapping shut." (But wait! Don't go! The tweet says this Mega Drive mini will have "new and improved" technology! Please understand!)
Mega Play for Sonic is a nice touch. But the Switch was made for the Taxman/Stealth version. It would look wonderful on the Switch's lovely widescreen. Not to mention they could add in a 2P mode to work with the Switch's detachable controllers and probably even port over Ray and Mighty (especially as the Mania team seem to be looking for work, although I admit that I don't know how feasible these additions would be). Why is Sega making such a dumb decision to go with the M2 version? For a company that's always saying how it is listening on social media, this decision just seems so tone deaf. I am surprised people aren't hassling Aaron Webber about it.
Taxman/Stealth are dirty gaijin. Sega would rather keep things internal than be shamed by outsiders' better efforts.
It would be hilarious if the games included in the Mega Drive Mini had better emulation on hacked SNES Minis. :v:
I wonder if there's some legal issue with the porting the Remasters to consoles. Maybe something to do with the music (as Forces didn't have any of the classic music). It just seems bizarre that they would go to all this trouble of creating Drop Dash in an emulated port (as M2 previously explained that including the Spin Dash was a major headache). Still kudos to M2 for adding the drop dash (if it's true). It will certainly make it interesting to play again. It's just a shame that we have to pick between new moves and widescreen/extra characters.
As an incidental note, I want to ask. Is there anything fundamental in the way that Sonic the Hegdehog updates the VDP background nametables that prevents expanding the view shown of the VDP from 320 pixels wide to 424 pixels wide, for proper widescreen? As far as I can understand, it shouldn't be impossible. The very nature of the game requires a 512 pixel wide nametable at the very least anyway. Would any actual expert of the game's mechanics be able to explain to me why my suggestion is heavily flawed, stupid, and impossible to hack up into something reasonable with a reasonable amount of effort? Because I'm definitely missing something obvious here.
First off, the Mega Drive only outputs 224 lines in NTSC mode, so saying that a minimum width of 424 is necessary for proper widescreen is misleading -- 400x224 or thereabouts would suffice. Next, is it impossible? It shouldn't be. Is it hard? Yes, but not necessarily due to the background planes. A while ago I actually put some effort into making a widescreen hack of Sonic 3 & Knuckles, and the biggest obstacles were a) the sprite plane and b) the game logic. There are several points in the game's code where sprites are culled, or otherwise expected to be invisible once they're past the right edge of the screen. Changing the bounds on these checks led to hilarious effects such as cutscene Knuckles waiting with his back turned to you at the end of AIZ2, or the Big Arm boss scrolling just outside the usual visible area and briefly stopping in place before warping to his next position. Speaking of boss fights, the bosses of AIZ1 and ICZ1 are hardcoded to patrol the usual 320 pixel screen width. I fixed these by scaling their horizontal movement speed so they reach the other side of the screen in the same time span, but what about Sonic's LBZ2 bosses, which are fought on a 320 pixel-wide platform? Do you just have death pits on either end? Then there's the fact that bosses mess with the level palette, and the HCZ1 boss area for instance is constructed in a way that affected level blocks are just off-screen. And so on. Finally there's the stuff I couldn't figure out. Such as the slot machine bonus, which I could never get to draw all the way to the edge of the screen, and effects such as the level collapse events at the end of MGZ2, LBZ1 and SSZ, as well as the LRZ2 boss fight which all use the VDP's column-scrolling mode, so you have to shift over all the scroll values to fit the new framing AND extend the scroll table to fill out the whole screen. I would've kept working on it if I had an emulator to test on and real life hadn't intervened.
You say that as if all emulated ports are not allowed to actually be hacked or modified to include extra features. M2 does it all the time. Yes it would be cool if they went the extra orbit around the Earth and just ported the games to a new engine a la Taxman/Stealth but I'm happy with any extras we can get.
They'll probably just forcibly replace the art tiles when doing a Drop Dash, so the enemy collision still thinks you're doing a regular jump.
If only there were an entire community of people who can program new moves directly into the original game.
She is, she's the lead producer on these ports. Also apparently part of the reason these ports are being done is because Hideki Kamiya and Masahiro Sakurai wanted the 3D Classics to be ported to consoles.
Also I'm gonna come right out and say it -- I hate the way the special stages control in android Sonic 1.
my guess is it's not going to matter what M2 does to sonic 1 and 2. If it doesn't have everything from the Mobile versions people will continue to bug Sega for ports of those versions. Sega Japan may have to admit defeat if nothing they offer stops the demand for ports of those versions
Welp, finally got back from Japan! I was lucky enough to be at the event in Akiba as Shenmue was announced. Will upload photos and videos a bit later on (a wild Yuji Naka was in the audience). Was a fantastic event and Puyo Puyo candyfloss was the clear highlight. There was an amazing Anniversary museum for Mega Drive and Dreamcast as well. Sadly couldn't make it to the 'Club Sonic' event due to the tickets being limited, but there was more than enough to do and see there, was quite an amazing atmosphere.
