Playing Sonic CD Felt Spiteful

I've never played but I clearly should!

 

That artwork has reminded me to recommend trying the unofficial master system conversion Tails Adventure Deluxe. The colour downgrade hurts it, but alot of effort was put into getting it to make the most of the increased screen size. It's more than just a crude conversion.
https://www.smspower.org/forums/16207-TailsAdventureSMSDeluxeUpdateV15c

And on topic, I wouldn't call Sonic CD spiteful. It was just pushing the gameplay in a different direction than Sonic 2. I think they should have pushed the exploration aspect harder and maybe have things to find in each time zone, not just the badnik machines that you can just ignore with the time stones anyway.

 

Screw Sonic Adventure 3, I want Tails Adventure 2.

 

Tails Adventure sits alongside Sonic 4, Chaotix, Chronicles and R on the short list of Sonic games I'd ever actually want full-on reimaginings of, rather than just "best-case scenario" ports that include all the patchwork fixes fans have done over the years.

 

The most interesting sort of new concept i hadn't realized was possible for Sonic CD is to make save states for each of the time periods of acts I'm not familiar with the feature set of the most recent builds of Sonic CD but i think it's possible in those too ?? and if there is already time period specific access via some kind of level select i'm not sure, but this was an exciting and neutral challenge !!

The combination of the unusual level design color shape and music pallette is very good for abstract therapy and active rest for our minds and bodies i think !! So to be able to choose the different areas or emotional textures of all of the available zonelets is most helpful !!

** This included finding somewhere to have Sonic pass away so it would restart at the beginning of the future or past act 1 and 2s of course.

 

There's a hidden level select in the game that allows you to start on any level and time period, but it goes back to the title screen if you beat the level or go to another time period.

 

Calling it spiteful is a bit of a stretch to me. I've seen spiteful games before, Paper Mario Sticker Star literally exists, and CD isn't that to me. It's more like a piss poor execution of good ideas.

 

I enjoyed the game more than I ever have on my last play through and am comfortable calling it one of the "great" sonic games now but I had to basically rethink my approach. I've seen Sonic CD heralded as the king of exploration in the series but when I approached it with that mindset I genuinely hated it. It's not a remotely rewarding game to explore in the "traditional" sense of that word. There's some fun to be had in seeing all the different sights and sounds packed into each stage, but aside from that, most of the game is actively designed to frustrate and waste your time. There aren't unique routes and rewards placed on each like there are in other games. A lot of objects in the level explicitly aren't there to serve you, be fun to interact with, or even be interesting challenges to overcome. They're just there to cut off your movement so time travel isn't as easy as it would be in something like Sonic 2, where there are a lot of straightaways and loops.

I only started liking it when I considered it a puzzle game, with signal and noise and all that. Observe the environment and only plan for time travel after you understand what's worth paying attention to and what isn't. What will help you solve the puzzle in getting to the past and what's just there to get in the way of that? It's a physics puzzle based around Sonic's movement and that's a pretty neat concept for a game, even if it's not like the freewheeling exploration you get from Sonic 3 or Sonic Mania. There's some freestyling involved but ultimately it's a game with right and wrong answers.

It's unintuitive but that doesn't make it unfun or even poorly designed. It's demanding a lot of you in terms of understanding what makes Sonic and the level "tick" but I think that's fun. It's a more interesting way to introduce problem solving like that in a Sonic game than the completely binary puzzles we get in the newer games, at least. It's a gimmick for sure, but one that centers Sonic's movement and level design at the core and those are the types of gimmicks I can get behind.

It pulls you a little bit more into the narrative too. Of course going to the Bad Future would be a failstate you want to avoid, and not just another level you casually want to wander into and check out. With that perspective in mind it might have been cool if there were more ways to accidentally land there and work your way back, as long as that was communicated clearly to the player. Maybe if you fail a special stage?

I do wish screen crush wasn't such a big factor working against it. I also think even with all of this in mind and understanding the designer's intent, the game is a bit dickheaded with object placement. I'd be able to take most of it on the chin since I also like Sonic 2, but the consequences can be a bit much, even for me. Sometimes reflexes don't even play into it. You'll just get flung by an object that seems unrelated into a future post, or through a point of no return, or to an entirely different section of the level and be set back, sometimes by a few minutes. Not a lot of things in the game will outright kill you, but more of it is designed to waste your time which can feel even worse sometimes.

So ultimately I don't agree, but I get the feeling. It took me a while to come around to it myself, but I'm glad I did.

 

I remember many years ago when CD wasn't too well known and people used to treat it like THE BEST SONIC GAME EVER THAT YOU DON'T KNOW YET.

 

i think this is because when a game is largely inaccessible the only part of it that persists is the memory of its aesthetic, and CD's aesthetic is basically unimpeachable. a lot of less-than-perfect sonic games can paper over their flaws with their vibes, but CD's art direction and soundtrack (not to mention the intro / ending animations) really make what would otherwise be a middling experience feel pretty magical. in the years before gems collection, i can definitely see how seeing CD footage and music out of context could let you fill in the gaps and believe it was a masterpiece lost to time

 

This idea that Sonic CD was only popular because "it was inaccessible" is bunk and that was never the case. Sonic CD has *always* been one of the most accesible sonic games, it was the debut title for the Sega PC range. Sonic CD was given away with so, so many PCs in the 90's, and it was a staple at cash registers in game shops until the 2000's where you could buy it for a couple of dollars. It was straight up given away as a Jack-in-the-box kids meal toy in 1999. It ran on every version of Windows going back to windows 95. Sonic CD was always one of the most played games in the series by virtue of it being front and center of the Sega PC line of games for half a decade. In fact, the only time you ever hear about people saying "it's the best game nobody could play" is when detractors are saying that was the narrative. I lived that era, and no, nobody was going off about Sonic CD being some lost, unplayable sonic game, not least of which because the thing people were typing on could play Sonic CD. Even to this day, our nomenclature about Sonic CD comes from the PC version: the reason we call it R2 instead of 2R is because of the PC port of Sonic CD.

 

Well said, I think it sold well on the Mega CD too

It was always well known, just at the time a lot of people couldn't afford a PC CD-Rom, much less a Mega-CD. That soon changed towards the end of the 1990s
Like a lot of things with 90's SEGA, people seem to retype and post things that were said and If they're reposted enough, people tend to believe they're true

 

Just played Sonic CD again after a while and daymn, what a blast! Such nice levels to explore with nice music (Japanese version).

 

Without the hyperbole, I actually really disagree with this. CD was simply not widely accessible. Particularly the point in bold. I'm not sure that's even correct. I was fairly certain that CD's original PC port was incompatible with XP (possibly anything after 98), relying on a patch made by the community to run. And then jf you opted to emulate the MCD version, you'd also have to find the system BIOS and the soundtrack separately to the emulator and iso/rom. This is not accessible. We're talking late 90s and 2000s here. It was harder to get the right information online, harder to find files to download.

I'm not saying that CD was only ever popular being it was inaccessible. That would be absurd. But for a long time it certainly was not easy for people to play. It has had significant periods of being an outlier. And that is going to breed curiosity, especially for a game such as CD that was so influential for the series as a whole.

 

When I was a kid I always knew CD existed because of game catalogues but could never get it since I never owned a Mega CD or PC powerful enough to run it. That was the case for a lot of Sonic fans.CD had a reputation for being a great game that was not easily accessible to console gamers. Keep in mind not all kids had access to gaming PCs - probably the case now too.

It definitely was popular partially because it was inaccessible to some and had an element of mystery in the same way Knuckles Chaotix did. Except CD was often rightfully considered a top quality Sonic game compared to Chaotix. It was definitely held in high esteem partially because of its rarity.

I think it's also important to remember this was a time when CD having Metal Sonic was a big boon. Its easy to forget now but Metal Sonic was an enigma for a long time. Not counting Mecha Sonic, most console gamers before Gems Collection only encountered Metal Sonic in the games in SA1 cameo, SA2s battle mode (on DC a super obscure unlockable) and Heroes. That was it. I remember I bought Gems Collection specifically to experience the true game of Metal Sonic. Although I ended up being disappointed he wasn't in more. But CD's mystery credential was only further enhanced by Metal Sonic.

 

You didn't need a gaming PC to run Sonic CD.

 

PCs in general. Fewer people had them back in the day.

 

I remember the first time I played CD was through the 2011 mobile version back in 2016 (I never owned a Mega CD, bummer); the first time I saw a time travel post I assumed it was just natural level deco, but only found out about the actual time travel mechanic by PPZ2. I only ever got to CCZ1 (or maybe 2? I don't exactly remember, it's been years since I've touched CD) before putting down the game because I kept getting frustrated with the pinball gimmicks. Since then, I marginally got better at the game and was able to complete it in one sitting last year.

Probably the most memorable aspect of this game which I assume everyone's acquainted with at this point are the soundtracks (JPN & US); they have their own unique vibe going for them, with most of the JPN OST having that upbeat and techno feel [particularly Wacky Workbench Present and Metallic Madness Past] and the US OST being more... ambiental, for lack of a better word (the US Game Over theme though? That is something else, dear god). I still listen to some of the JPN themes today, which were really ahead of their time, to be honest.

I still vividly remember watching a video of the opening cutscene and being flabbergasted; there's just something about the look and feel of Sonic CD that every other game released after has never been able to replicate even if they tried. The fact it was originally going to be just a CD port of Sonic 1 does say something, though.