Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode II Prototypes Found with Unused Ending

It seems you're just recalling those original emulated releases that have already been mentioned. If the remastered versions got any negative push back while on mobile, it had to have been when they were brought over to the SEGA Forever banner where they made them worse and broke shit.

 

The only negatives I recall hearing at the time was that the mobile remasters weren't on consoles or PC like CD was.

 

I can’t speak for reviewers but I genuinely really liked how intuitive the touchscreen controls were for the remasters. I was actually pretty letdown Mania never released on mobile (although it did on Netflix with a not so great control scheme sadly).

 

Yeah, honestly it goes to show how important decent touch controls are. I was surprised by how comfortable they were in the remasters. Not ideal, but perfectly workable. That's not the case for the original emulated versions, which were a plain to play. And they're bad once again post SEGA Forever and in Mania mobile.

 

Not to ruin the parade, but I think we are going off-topic here. There's nothing to discuss further until more prototype discoveries are found. (I doubt it)

 

To keep on topic I just saw this via Blazehedgehog on Bluesky:
https://bsky.app/profile/blazehedgehog.bltn.net/post/3lnukcqx2ek2u

 

a lot of people want mods that fix the physics of Sonic 4 but here's a better idea: what if we go in the opposite direction and retroactively transform Sonic 4 into a new Rush game

 

I think beatz did that with Superstars if I recall correctly; either way I wouldn't say either game's levels are really built for the boost...and also, I'm not convinced that Rush 1 and 2 themselves wouldn't be better-off with proper weight, rolling and momentum anyway.

 

Sonic 4Rush has a nice ring to it…

 

Yeah, if you're bloody tone deaf.

 

Sonic 4Rush...
Sonic Frush...
Sonic Thrush?

Well yeah, I guess all that running would make for the optimal warm and sweaty conditions for fungal growth...

 

Sonic Foursh!
Sonic Forch!
Sonic French!
Sonic Frunch!
Sonic Flush!
Sonic Felch!
Sonic Flesh!
Sonic Fresh!

 

Genuinely a better idea than any of the “let’s fix Sonic 4 to make it a true classic follow up!” It was always going to be a bargain bin weird mobile game in the series, there’s no saving it

 

To "fix" Sonic 4, just play Sonic 1 and 2.

 

Well you know, as time passes, I appreciate Sonic 4 more. I learned the wonky physics and I do not attempt to fight it anymore. I just play the game and enjoy it. After all, this is not the only Sonic game which doesn't control exactly as the Genesis classics. Even the Game Gear games are different.

I like the Death Egg mk.II in Episode II. This is sad that Episode III will never happen. They should have tried something with it within Superstars instead of the Egg Fortress.

 

A PC remake of the Rush trilogy built off of S4E1 seems like a neat thing to do. Hell, what if we used Rush's code to port 4 to the DS?

 

I bring this up all the time, but you don't need to play those old versions with touch screen controls. You never did. There are android gamepads, stuff like the nvidia shield existed before those games. I never played the tax ports of sonic 1 and 2 on a touch screen. It would be very weird for a mobile game review site to make a big deal about touch screen controls, since they're A) inherent to the platform and B) optional on android.

RE: Sonic 4 being based on Sonic Rush. This is actually pretty interesting, because the 3DS version of Sonic Generations feels like a sorta-kinda 4th sonic rush game (counting colors as sonic rush 3). What's notable here is that the classic Sonic physics in the 3DS generations are pretty much spot on to the Sega Genesis games, like noticably more so than the big brother sonic generation releases. I wonder if the classic sonic in the 3DS port is some sort of extended revision of the work done to Sonic 4.

 

I still dream that a S4E3 will have Eggman blowing up the Time Stones messing up the time continuum for good, and at the end the characters are all Classic again. So we can have a Sonic 5 with Classic Sonic instead of Modern.

 

Sonic 4, Episodes 1 and 2 were, in short, an absolute dumpster fire of poor decision making by devs, corporate and marketing teams at Sega.

• Describing the game as a return to classic gameplay and a return to form but building an engine with no rolling physics for episode I was an insane choice and the fans, myself included, rightly called this out
• RubyEclipse (Aaron Webber) repeatedly talked about on the Sega forums about engine rebuild or replacement for Episode II. There was no such thing, the Tails combos effectively were designed to distract from this lack of a fix
• Making this specific to mobile phones and consoles with touch controls was an insane choice that made things worse
• Both episodes were rehashes of existing tropes but opinions were mixed on how good/bad they were from an aesthetic standpoint. Some of the music slapped at least, Mad Gear Zone stands out for me
• The graphics choosing modern Sonic in a classic styled setting felt particularly out of place
• Graphics in Episode II were far superior to Episode I
• Reusing badniks good, using Bubbles the spike badnik for the homing attack for homing attack chains was poor
• For that matter, homing attack not necessary if half decent rolling physics had been employed
• Episode Metal probably the only overall good episode because we weren’t treating it as a sonic title

And all of the above would have been almost acceptable…

…but they called it Sonic the Hedgehog 4. The biggest problem with it.

Sonic Mania is rightly remembered as the real Sonic the Hedgehog 4 by some fans, by comparison.

 

I mean... they could just make a new game with the classic designs and call it Sonic 5 without doing any of that time travel stuff. Character designs don't need to be explicitly acknowledged, there's no canon explanation for why Sonic suddenly gained green eyes lol