Right? Some of the things that I love about Sonic games over other platformers are how you don't have to be completely precise to clear obstacles, and the fact that levels typically have several different paths to take making each playthrough of a stage different to the one before. Compared to something like Mario, you almost never see the whole level in any single run. Time Attacks just undermine all of that.
To each their own, I do think there's a sort of charm of optimizing one's runs, but the levels shouldn't be designed strictly for time attack players. Having a bonus mode and an easy reset button like Mania was just good fun and something to compete with friends over.
Stealth confirmed in his 3K Proof of Concept 2014 blog post that he & Taxman made the following tweaks to Angel Island: Similarly to Rexon in the Sonic 2 remake, I’ve re-done the “Monkey Dude” enemy “from scratch” to smooth out its animation without compromising its actual movement Vines take advantage of real-time rotation smoothing out the animation and camera movement Tails as player 2 has been made to keep up with Sonic during the bombing cutscene so that he doesn’t constantly fall into range of the explosions Super Sonic actually leaves a spark trail in the intro sequence Knuckles has an Angel Island equivalent of his Mushroom Hill Zone intro sequence from Sonic & Knuckles I hope Stealth has implemented the above tweaks in the new version. I'd also like to see the following changes: Add a Tails flight cancel option Add a super form cancel (turn back to normal Sonic) Have three ghost-Sonic's follow Sonic when he moves after taking a fast-shoes item box like in Mania Give Tails a snow-board sequence in Ice Cap at the start of act1 to match Sonic.
Yeah, I was originally on the fence about Mania’s Time Attack but I absolutely loved it and put quite a lot of time into it around release. Improving my run times was addictive, and being able to immediately restart with the press of a button definitely contributed to that.
I too also read through his blog and I hope the changes you mentioned also get implemented along with the four possible gameplay modes (S3, S&K, S3&K, and S3C) The only thing that I am kind of iffy about is Super Cancel and this is because SEGA may feel that it’s too drastic of a change that will make the game too easy (yes I know it’s preposterous but this is SEGA we are talking about here); I mean they didn’t approve an option like that in Mania so I highly doubt it will be used here
I think this would be taking too many liberties. Tails' flight should work as designed, being able to de-transform Super Sonic breaks the risk/reward tension of the rings draining, and after-images were cool thing for the Hyper forms, adding them to the speed-up item would make Hyper Sonic less cool.
Same, I feel like Time Attack would be more intrusive if it were a mandatory challenge like, say, how the Crash Bandicoot games do Time Trials (ESPECIALLY Crash 4) but in general Sonic's Time Attack is nearly always optional and for bragging rights. Sonic CD and the timed challenges in the Adventure games are about the one exception, and even CD is largely for superfluous unlockables besides the main campaign. Besides that, if Origins is keeping multiplayer modes, competitive players will want to master the best routes for the levels anyway, so Time Attack and VS race just kinda complement each other.
Also, I’m hardly a speed runner but I feel like the mandatory time challenges (at least the ones you mentioned, in CD and the Adventure games) were designed within reason. Like clearing the time limits in SA2’s Mission 4s really only demands the player be moderately good, rather than like, ace level speed runner. It feels similar to the more modern boost games where S-ranking more or less just requires getting through a level without dying or getting significantly derailed, just a smooth, clean run.
Making transforming into Super Sonic a two button thing or map it to a dedicated button to avoid accidently transforming when playing as Tails or Knuckles would be a good enough compromise.
I like Mania's approach for sure where it's mapped to a dedicated button as that's my favorite way of how it was handled. I haven't really played the remasters but I recall the way the original version of Sonic 2 handles it being my least favorite and Sonic 3 & Knuckles being okay if you're playing as Sonic but not well thought out for Tails or Knuckles.
On the time attack discussion, I know I'm sounding like a broken record here, but I'm just so tired of speedrunning being prioritized as the only way to compete in Sonic, and I especially hate how the recent classic Sonic games seem to be the worst at this. Nearly every modern Sonic game since SA1 keeps best score, best time, and best rings. Three ways to compete, three ways to challenge yourself, three completely different playstyles that all take advantage of the level design in different ways. Why couldn't Mania and Origins have done this (It's maybe possible that some of Origin's missions may involve the scoring system, but I doubt that any personal records will actually be kept, and it wouldn't likely be available for all of the acts)? There don't even have to be leaderboards, just a single personal record for each category. I've said before how classic Sonic needs a lot of rebalancing to really work as a score game, but it would be at least nice to have the option to score attack individual classic acts with the existing system. To me, Sonic is much more about "being cool" than "going fast". What's cool to me in Sonic are things like chaining together creative enemy combos or holding onto the electric shield for as long as possible to suck up countless rings. There's so many cool little nuances in Sonic scoring, like how the enemy combo can be extended by things like rolling along the ground without jumping, bouncing with the aqua shield, or landing every jump with a glide as Knuckles. Even Mania tried to add something to the system with the no damage Cool Bonus, but there was never any real way to compete using it, or any of the other tricks.
Huh, this page flew under my radar. There’s some good bits of info in there(thanks google translate). Here’s what I found most interesting: “Are the Sonic CD opening and ending songs Japanese or North American versions? Or is it possible to choose between the two? The songs on the Sonic CD are included in both the Japanese/European version and the North American version, and songs can be changed. We are preparing rare content that has never been released until now, so we hope you enjoyed it.” “Will the Sonic 3 Mega Drive version BGM be included? Is it included in the music pack? Can I apply it to play in-game? Although not available in-game, you can listen to some songs from Sonic the Hedgehog 3 at the museum. If you play Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles, you cannot listen to other songs because Sonic and Knuckles' songs are applied first, but you can enjoy them at the museum.”
Well, that's suggesting something very interesting involving the MJ music scenario if it is really saying what I think it is saying. That or it means the Proto Knux theme and the Sonic 3-style title and invincibility music aren't available in-game. S3-Style Miniboss theme wouldn't matter if we are going based off the Prototype as the Prototype Miniboss theme is also the SK Miniboss theme.
That would suggest the mini-boss and Knuckles themes will be the Sonic & Knuckles versions, without the ability to swap them. Unless by "some songs" they mean "only the prototype Knuckles theme," we might just find the OG Sonic 3 versions in the museum -- and if those particular songs made the cut in some fashion... Edit: Hadn't factored in the title screen, 1-Up, and Invincibility themes.
So, the quote is definitely saying that the Sonic 3 songs that get replaced in &Knuckles are only available in the museum, like the title screen and invincibility. That's normal, that makes sense. But some of those tracks are the disputed ones, right? So I guess that's a good sign.
I hope it’s a good sign. But I also wanna stress that I just ran the site through google translate so some of the wording may be off.
The songs that get replaced with their & Knuckles counterparts are the Title Screen theme, Knuckles’ theme, the invincibility theme, the 1-up jingle, and the mini boss theme The quote stops dead in its tracks with going into detail about the zone music for CNZ, ICZ, and LBZ Gonna have to wait a bit longer for that one But I sure hope that Sonic CD quote is accurate and we got the You Can Do Anything and Cosmic Eternity vocals back
Actually, this is a big deal, because that strongly implies the original Genesis music 'is' included. Why? Precisely because it says the "replaced" S3 only songs are in the museum. Sega hasn't used those songs in anything outside of ROM collections since the 90s (a remix of Knuckle's Sonic 3 theme can be heard in Sonic Pocket Adventure after you beat him), so this strongly implies they at least have the rights to include the music in a museum extra. If true, that then likewise means there's no reason they couldn't have all of the original songs included in the base game as they would normally be in s3&K.
