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

Just a few quick words:

1. The loops are indeed handled quite poorly.
Failed attempt of re-envelopings:
TT (G, obvious fadeout was still there)
QQ (a sudden volume increase near the last 8/8)
WW (cross overlaid?)
SS (obvious fadeout)
MM (G, obvious fadeout)
MM (B, cross overlaid is a bit too short)
Boss (fadeout, again)

Outright abandoning the tails of original meterials:
CC (the densening drums are gone)
TT (the last 8/8 starting at 1:50, the additional instruments are gone)
SS (G, 1:13, oh the abruptness)
SS (B, the densening drums are gone again)

Decent ones:
PP (All, especially B, where a new wrap-up is applied)
CC (B and G, quite easy because the original already covered a full loop)
QQ (G, although the choice of 2nd loop start is arguable)
QQ (B, as well they could've omitted the beginnig 8/8 for the 2nd loop for a nicer transition)
WW (Pr and B)
MM (not so good choice of loop points again)
FF (but why bother for a loop at all anyway, can just let it fade out like that)

2. Quite unrealistic, but it should be much much better if they rework the whole thing from scratch. Same choice of instruments (or better, or they still remember what they used), same melody layouts (new twists are welcome though), only with modern and refined audio production technologies. Compilation albums with hardly anything new is becoming disturbing more or less.

As I mentioned before, BOTH could be heard in the vid. The song never actually "got faster" though. It was merely overlaid with the alternate bassline which is more pumping, then after a few seconds the whoosh came right in only to ruin it all.

However, considering how the whoosh effect was implemented in Unleashed (one normal track, one entire preprocessed track, gradually fading back and forth), my guess is they are doing this the same way this time as well. In other words, one normal track, one with the alternate bassline (not overlaid, but mixed in) and then the whoosh applied afterwards.

It's not very reasonable for them to waste all the efforts of letting the music department record these pretty nice alternate basslines etc only to ditch them later. I wish Tetsuya Mizuguchi could give a hand or two in this.

Either way, constant sweeping effects are indeed quite annoying. I'd prefer how it was done in SU Wii, ie you just hear the boom satisfying the excitement for only a second or two.

PS: I went over the vid again with some audio processing and it seems that they're applying BOTH effects. It's quite ridiculous and off the point. However the annoying part only comes after you've kept holding the boost for 2 to 4 seconds or longer. Maybe it'll become a way to discourage players to be too boost-happy?

I consider creative reinterpretation and diversity from the original materials more appriciatable than plain instrument swapping most of the time. It's boring when said "swapping" usually becomes too unoriginal and lacks attentive choices of instruments. (For instance, the average "get MIDI, find generic guitar and synth soundfonts of poor quality, boot up FL Studio" kind of "remixes" that can be found all around YouTube, Newgrounds and such.)

Here's an interesting example: Green Lane Avenue. It sounds PRETTY MUCH NOTHING like the original GHZ, and had led to quite some impressive debates in OCR's judge panel. However it remained (relatively obscure) one among the most innovative Sonic-related musical works around imo (some others being iMushroom and Robotnik Radio, of both Project Chaos and GaMeBoX fame).

My point of view is, as long as it sounds good, it doesn't really matter how much it sounds like the original. True masterpieces are merely to be enjoyed.

06 really did have impressive level designs. And they are pretty "classic" in a way. There were almost all premise themes applied, and the stages are not very linear most of the time (well, 06 was MEANT to be SA3 after all), and using HD graphics for the first time also adds the flavour. One of my favs is the waterfalls in Kingdom Valley's mach section, which once made me think it was because of SEGA's paying "a bit too much attention" to the environments that the other aspects of the game lacked development and became messed up a whole lot in the end.