Sonic Origins Collection - General Thread

Here's to hoping they cut down the Hot Mobile's health by at least half. Fourteen hits for any Eggman Zone boss is ridiculous and even eight is still tedious for this one case.

 

Hell, I'm hoping that they make the Hot Mobile attackable. It's not only the 14 hits that make him a real pain, but the fact you can't hit him, and instead must wait for his bombs to hit him. The boss is a huge time waster. Even 8 hits is about 40 seconds, a snail's pace in a game like Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Even Guardian in Sandopolis Act 1 is faster, usually taking about 30 seconds if you know what you're doing.

 

I found the concept of the boss getting hit by itself pretty creative, but the execution could have been better.

 

A fun change to the Hot Mobile could be adding the ability to bounce the bombs into it quicker by using the Insta-Shield on them as they fall. Slow the speed of their fall very slightly to accommodate this, and make Robotnik spend less time before shooting the next one if the player attacks in this manner - suddenly you have potential for a much speedier boss fight with greater player interaction if the player chooses to experiment, while also preserving the original strategy for folks who don't figure the new one out.

Completely agree on reducing the hit points to the standard eight either way though - that way at least the fight won't drag on for so long.

 

Not that I don't get it, but its pretty surreal seeing discourse about Sonic 3 music in 2022.

 

It'd be funny as all heck if, after release, folks here found out the game is modding-friendly.
It could become a more ultimate Sonic Classics collection by magnifying the titles within xD

 

Assuming Sega didn't do anything internally to make modding more difficult, modding the remakes that already exist should be very easy (possibly slightly more difficult than with the decompilations), while S3K should be on a similar level to Mania, with code mods being probably more difficult due to the new Denuvo.

 

The antlion boss in 8-Bit Sonic 2 has something to say about that.

 

Starlight Zone's boss too. He does not exactly get hit by himself, but it's kinda stupid to throw bombs on the seesaws.

 

I mean Eggman has taken plenty of questionable decisions in building his combat arenas. As early as GHZ in Sonic 1, why did he put those two platforms for Sonic to jump around? If he hadn't put those platforms he was floating high enough Sonic would've just jumped uselessly while Eggman hit his stupid face with his big brown shiny ball.

 

I've always been of the assumption that unless there's something visually mechanical about them, floating platforms are just a natural occurrence in Sonic's world. Still not the smartest move to go flying around near them rather than swinging that ball somewhere there's no handy platforms, but I don't think Robotnik's actively responsible for their presence there. Of course, at the end of the day, really it's just one of those things where the needs of the gameplay trump any story elements and you just have to handwave it.

It's interesting that they are floating platforms in that particular instance, though, as since they never move there's no actual gameplay reason they should be. Maybe the devs just didn't want to create two unique chunks with small background platforms which would only be used for this boss arena? Or perhaps it's a hangover from the original concept of this as a standalone wrecking-ball machine in a construction type area - two smaller floating platforms were also present in those sketches, but they were intended to move up and down. It's possible that when the idea was reworked/simplified, nobody even thought about whether the platforms needed to be floating anymore. I guess it's also possible that the vertical movement could have been present in an early iteration of the current version, before being removed to make the boss easier.

 

I think I may have another clue as to the whole MJ timeline. Buxer in his latest interview states: "We were in Moscow performing and he’s all depressed with what was going on with him. And he calls me at 10:30 in the morning. I go knock on his door, and I had under my arm a cassette player — I’d been doing all the SEGA, Sonic the Hedgehog cues — because the way Michael works is, he’ll tell SEGA he’ll do it, and he said “Brad, you do it.” So I think we did one cue together with Michael, and the rest, I had to do it myself."

This means that they were still working on the demo tracks after the allegations (which came in August) and while MJ was in Moscow during the Dangerous album tour, so from this we can conclude that MJ/Buxer were still working on the demo tracks around September 11-15ish 1993. That's pretty dang late in the game (no pun intended) give that the ROM was finalized November 20, 1993. I believe Sonic 1/2 had the soundtracks done much earlier in the development cycle.

Presumably Buxer's tracks would still need to be coded into the actual game, compressed, polished, etc.

Grigsby and others mentioned in a previous interview that there were lots of "compression issues" getting the MJ soundtrack into the game and getting the tracks to sound right. So there is a possibility that perhaps SEGA only had time to get in 5-6 of the MJ tracks to replace the turds in the beta version, and there wasn't enough time to port the others. It's also not shocking to me that MJ would ask that he not be credited given that he didn't actually write the tracks, and the fact that the SEGA sound chip just doesn't can't quite reproduce the percussive/rhythmic MJ style.

With the S3/S&K split, and the ongoing accusations, SEGA continue on without MJ's music.

Edit: Found another piece from an older article: In late summer 1993 -- either immediately before or just after the Chandler allegations emerged, depending on whom you ask -- Jackson's team sent a finished soundtrack to Sega for processing..."

This roughly agrees with Buxer wanting to show off the tracks to MJ in mid-September. It seems like there is a good chance MJ and crew were brought on board very late in the development process, probably after a bunch of music was already made up "in house". That would explain why the beta didn't have any of MJ's music in it - it was compressed and added at the very last minute and they may have selected only a handful of critical tunes to go in. I doubt there was a version of Sonic 3 with a "full MJ soundtrack" ever made.

 

Always feels odd seeing the changes to the level design in Jam being touted as "definitive", or "the director's cut". The actual director of 3K (and lead level designer on the whole trilogy) had no involvement. I know I'm taking the word "director" in "director's cut" more literally here than is probably intended, but still. These changes are not something done by the guy largely responsible for the original layouts. They're not as "authentic" as they're often painted to be.

Launch Base has never sounded like a "it's go time" track to me. I think it'd be more at home with in the grassy ruins or Marble Garden than at the Death Egg's launch. It's just kind of chill.

 

The 45 minute Famitsu gameplay showed Sonic has the drop dash in Sonic CD... but no Knuckles? No Super Sonic? Why?

Also, I've said this before but the fact Stealth said he isn't involved with Origins past remaking S3K and everything else is handled internally by Sega, makes me worry the drop dash implementation is gonna be the mediocre Sega Ages version rather than the superior Mania version

 

It's as you said, Sega themselves are handling tweaking and wrapping up the non 3&K games, so they just didn't want to try to figure out how to add Knuckles or Super Sonic, easy as that.

 

Knuckles in CD would require a lot of new spritework for the twirling spring animation, the faux-3D loop in Palmtree Panic, the shuttles and hanging bars and spinning platforms in Wacky Workbench, the mini lasers in Metallic Madness (even if they reuse sprites from Mania, it would take work to reshade them with fewer colors), and all the necessary Special Stage sprites. I'm not surprised nobody at present-day Sonic Team would have the pixel art ability to do all of that, but they could have asked the Headcannon + others team to do that work, and they chose not to. It'll just end up falling on modders, if it isn't something they try to add in a patch or DLC.

 

Hum.... Re-using Knuckles chaotix sprites?


Ok... it's anyway needs a editing :\

 

Very sad state of affairs that our reasoning for Sega not including a feature or extra stuff is "well, that would require a bit of work".