Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board: Josh - Viewing Profile - Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board

Yeah, it's kind of an odd conundrum that BECAUSE the Sonic games have been re-released over and over and over, not a whole lot of people are even paying attention to this thing. If Nintendo hired fans to update Super Mario World like this, it'd get so much hype and adoration that it'd set a new standard for retro ports.

So regarding the Sonic 3 monitors, 7 emeralds, and whatnot...

Is there any way to actually ACTIVATE this stuff in a real, saved game? I'd love to properly play through the game with the shields, collecting all the emeralds as I go. I've been thinking maybe setting Time Trials might do it, but I'm down to about 35 minutes with nothing showing up.

Okay. Not that anyone's bashing it just yet. Here's why the boost is good.

Classic Sonic, as has been discussed endlessly, wasn't really ABOUT speed. He COULD go fast, but momentum and blah blah blah you've seen it all before. But speed worked, and it was fun, and the levels were designed around it. It felt AMAZING. But part of the reason it worked is because it was simple. Sonic moved all over the place, but did it all on a 2D plane.

Sonic suffered in 3D because Sega tried to make a game that was JUST about speed and flow, but now the character has 360 degrees of movement. The control being what it was, there was a HUGE difference between where you'd end up if you tilted the stick a few degrees left and right. But Sonic was still SUPER controllable; he could turn on a dime no matter how fast he was moving, and this actually took away from how precise you could be due to all the invisible walls and physics objects and shit you'd slam into.

But the boost makes Sonic's speed a simple mechanic again -- point and shoot. You'll blast off in that direction, and your turning ability is mitigated by how fast you're going, so it's easier to make the kind of smaller, precise adjustments you need.

The spin dash never worked like that. You couldn't spin dash and just maintain your momentum going uphill. It was a slingshot. And worse yet, you had to come to a dead stop to use it. Which was fine with all the hopping around and half-pipes you'd be hitting in the 2D games. But really. It was broken and incredibly useful for it in SA, but in SA2, I basically just used it to pick up speed going downhill. It wouldn't work as well.

Sonic Team FINALLY has a really great handle on how to make a speed-based character work in 3D. And while Colors' levels had a ton of 2D sections and were a lot more platformy, the boost was INTEGRAL to Unleashed and Generations' level design. As long as the game is designed well around it, it's a really fun, useful, and SKILLFUL mechanic.

I'm playing with a USB Saturn controller, so I'd be more prone to notice this. Usually when I need to execute a charged Spin Dash, I put three fingers on A, B, and C and rev it quickly that way. Which led me to notice that the Spin Dash sound effect doesn't seem to increase in pitch when you rev it quickly.

God, I hope they don't change it too much. Seriously. Adventure was... okay for the time, but with Unleashed/Colors/Generations, they FINALLY got a handle on how to make a speed-based character properly control in a 3D environment. I'd be all for expanding on that, but Super Mario 3D Land, in spite of its array of powerups and more linear levels, feels pretty much like Super Mario 64. And that's a good thing. Nintendo knocked it out of the park when it came to how a jumping character should feel. Overhauling something when it's working would be really unfortunate, especially considering it took a while for them to really even nail this down. Sonic handles a lot better in Generations than he did in Unleashed, and changing things makes going back to square one more of a risk.

Either way, given that Nintendo's publishing it, I think the pressure will be on to make it one of the cornerstones of the Wii U's Holiday season, assuming it's out by the end of this year.