Sonic 3 & Knuckles: Master Edition

This hack is really difficult, with traps and bottomless pits here, there and everywhere. However, I think that provides us all with a great challenge. Plus, as the first S3K hack to deal with many changes rather than just palettes and level layout, it is what I believe to be a quality hack.

It is stipulated that there is great difficulty, and I for one, enjoy it. As such, I'm already about to start working on the page.

 

I'll be frank- I didn't enjoy this hack much at all. Blind traps, bottomless pits every 5 steps, enemy saturation, bad object placement in general; you've broken just about every fundamental rule of level design short of leading the player into pits with trails of rings. There's nary a chance to get up to a decent speed, you practically force the player to move as slow as possible. That kind of trounces the whole point of the game, you know. And the stages are far too long- the first time through, I finished HCZ2 at precisely 9:57, completely unreasonable for a stage with such a large margin of error.

I know your goal was to make the game as hard as possible, and you have, but you've gone about doing it in the worst way imaginable. Don't get me wrong, what you've done so far is impressive, but uncharted territory is no excuse for poor level design.

 

Another problem is that the levels are way to long. I'm close to getting Time overs in like every level.

 

I think that people should stop complaining. This hack is meant to be hard; you want an hard game? Download it. You don't want an hard game? Don't download it. An hack isn't mean to be loved by everyone. Someday, someone will release "Sonic 3 & Knuckles - Children Edition", without enemies and with all the levels replaced by straight lines.
Seriously. I love this hack.

edit: fixed a really stupid typo

 

I didn't find it too hard at all, unless you include the SSZ 1st boss. I never actually managed to get a hit in on that one. All the rest though wasn't too bad. Only lost 2 lives from AIZ through to MGZ.

 

oh ok

That would also be bad level design, perhaps even moreso. It's not that I don't want a hard hack, I just want a hard hack that's done right. There's a certain balance that needs to be attained- a level can be made difficult without having to resort to all these cheap tricks.

 

Haha, yes, I LOVE your edit of the GHZ boss. =P He was easy, but rediculous.

Also, holy shit, this hack was so hard it made me laugh. I couldn't get half way through the first act of AIZ.

 

lol, typo. I was at work :D

 

Holy SHIT that was hard, I lost all of my lives by the middle, I think, of Marble Garden. Ace layouts, man.

 

Awesome job! I absolutely love this hack. It's so unpredictable that it's enjoyable. Don't change the difficulty.

 

I must be seriously crap as I said to you before nineko. I couldnt get far on this at all It was good fun BETA Testing it for you im sorry I couldnt give you as much info as you required my friend.

Look forward to playing/reviewing a later version of this

Dj (the hack tester)

 

Remove those bottomless pits. I can't bring myself to play it very far because of their extreme cheapness. One every now and then is fine, but what you've done here, I feel, would be a perfect example of how NOT to make levels difficult. Try thinking of some new traps instead.

 

Personally, I don't think you should remove those bottomless pits just because people bitch about it being cheap, and way too hard. IMPO, those people are just fuckin' sooks. That's the reason the double spike 'bug' was 'fixed' in later releases of Sonic 1, and abolished in the rest of the games. The Japanese weren't all bitching about it.

If you're so worried about the pits, just remember that emulators come with state saving, and S3K has SRAM... so just fuckin' grow up and stop complaining.

This hack deserves more praise, not condemnment.

 

And you've come to this conclusion... How, exactly? Care to back any of these claims? The spike bug was fixed because it was a bug, simple as that. There's virtually no way you could relegate that as an intentional feature. It adds absolutely nothing to the gameplay- doesn't make it any more 'challenging' or anything. Irritating, mabye, but do note that there's a very distinct line between the two. All it does is break the flow of the game, something no other one-hit deathtrap in the game can attest to. They all gave you a bit of leeway; crushers and drowning gave you plenty of time to react, you could always see them coming. Bottomless pits threw you for a loop sometimes, but they were so few and far between that they were rarely ever an issue in the original games, and the level layout never deliberately coaxed the player into them. Spikes were often placed in rows in areas that alloted the player to move at a decent pace, and thus, were often overlooked. This is not a feature. The games never threw anything lethal your way without bringing you to a complete stop so you could react accordingly.

As for the Japanese, is their apparent tolerance for flawed game mechanics supposed to sway me any? You make it sound as if people were free to contact Sega and give their input on the games whenever they pleased, which was about as feasible back in the day as it is now. The only bitching came from those within Sonic Team itself. I don't see where you get the idea that the Japanese weren't complaining, and even if they weren't, that's likely due in part to Sonic's lack of popularity in Japan, as I'm sure they're just as capable of spotting a poor game mechanic as we are. But I digress.

One shouldn't have to resort to saving every 5 seconds to complete a level.

There's nothing praiseworthy about this hack aside from the feat itself. If you truly enjoy spending 9 minutes per stage running blindly into poorly-placed traps and enemies, coming to a halt every 5 seconds to pick your way through some ill-conceived arrangement of spikes and constantly falling into pits, then hey, have fun with that, but it dashes any and all credibility your opinions might've had. Come back once you've got a clue as to what makes a decent level layout.

 

If the spikes were originally meant to kill apon second landing then they would have just made them kill you in the first shot to begin with. If it were also a feature then they never would have fixed it, nor implemented in the other games either. But hey, go you and your wild crazy assumptions.

I'm siding with Prisdam on this as well. It was a nice attempt to make the game difficult, but you went about this the wrong way. The level layouts might work for I don't know, a Mario game, or even a Megaman X game, but they're just painful for a Sonic game. There's just alot of blindsiding of traps everywhere that gives you really no time to react unless you actually know the level to begin with.

Trial-and-Error is what I'm getting at here.

The first few runs there is no doubt you will die, but once you memorized the layouts then you'll probably never die. And that's what I find lame in games like Sonic The Hedgehog. I don't want to approach a ledge with caution and look down just to make sure there isn't yet another bottomless pit, or slow down because there's a spring up ahead that immediately sends me back down towards the same pit or massive spike trap. Maybe if this were Abe Exoddus or something, but not Sonic the Hedgehog.

I will admit however, that the parts where you didn't have such retarded traps were actually quite fun, especially the enemy position in certain areas. These are of course, heavily overshadowed by the annoying traps.

Great attempt to make a great game harder, terrible execution.

And before anyone gives me shit about "Can't play videogames", please shut the fuck. Beat Ghost'n'Goblins and then talk.

 

Fair comebacks, I admit... although I will debate you on the crushers and drowning part giving you plenty of time to react. Crushers were only meant to inhibit your path, and if you were travelling too fast, you'd fall victim to the crusher slamming down, because its programming told it that it had already risen high enough. As for drowning, sure you get 30 seconds underwater, but the last 12 seconds when the countdown begins is designed not to make you think, but to make you panic, therefore fucking up your chances of surviving, constantly falling deeper underwater while scrambling for that one little air bubble.

I guess some people just can't handle one little flaw, and they have to bitch about it until it's fixed. Anyway, you make a point about feasibility of bitching to companies.

One shouldn't have to resort to saving every 5 minutes in Final Fantasy games, just to be sure they're not wiped out by uber-powerful bosses at the beginning of the game, but nobody bitches about that now do they?

A lot of people spent 9 minutes blindly running around when the game first came out? Why the fuckin' big deal? In regards to traps, I've seen a few decent hacks in my time that have traps and enemies in STRATEGICALLY placed areas, and not been bothered to bitch about them. Instead, I congratulate the hacker for making an otherwise too simple game into a good challenge. As for coming back when I have a clue about decent layouts, get fucked. Have YOU tried putting together levels in S3K, and had them fit? If so, I will rightfully stand down. However, if not, let's see you do it. One only has a select few tiles that fit together in S3K, due to how Sonic Team made the game. I understand what good layout is. I've been in the scene long enough. I have done my fair share of "LURK MOAR". Instead of making hoaxes, which by the way, I think are great, why don't you make a hack... work on your own GOOD layouts, and then feel free to criticize people.

 

People save every five minutes for RPG games?

No wonder the games are so long.

I love this bullshit defense.

"YEAH THEN, WELL WHY DON'T YOU DO IT?!"

People don't have to know how to actually draw art to appreciate or criticize it. If they like it, they like it, if not then they don't. No need to pull this shit "YOU DO IT THEN!"

 

Heh... such is true... but even without saving, RPGs are usually longer than they seem.

It's not bullshit defence. It's "Practice what you preach". Anyway... enough of this. We're going off topic here.