I'm kind of on this side of the fence too, though less for purist sake and more so there's more actual POINT to a 'classic mode' besides screen ratio and lifes, something I feel may have been more popular implemented as toggle options for Anniversary Mode. Otherwise I feel like they should have at least added more key differences between the two versions. Heck maybe they could have added that seventh emerald and Super Sonic as normal play elements of Sonic 1 for example. Anniversary Mode's meant to be upgraded after all, they don't HAVE to be accurate, that would be the whole point of having a Classic Mode. In terms of having the original ROMs, I feel the one alternative is maybe having a 'Games' section to unlock in the Museum, along with a few other games like Knuckles Chaotix and 3D Blast perhaps. As unlockables in the Museum, it would be made apparent they're not getting the same gloss as the main four.
I would love a mod or a hack that does this, personally. A no-frills playthrough of all the Good Future or Past stages sounds dreamy- oh the mods I would make myself if I had infinite time- or game projects of smaller scopes. Thank you for going into more detail about it! It's always nice to know when there is a better way to do something. After all these years of editing/making animated GIFs, which has options to use full frames or combine frames, this explanation makes a lot of sense to me. While I don't record games often, I do work on trailers for my own projects, so looking into these codecs could make editing them so much faster. (By proxy of OpenShot not occasionally crashing on files recorded with h264 codecs ) I'm still the thick of it with finishing my half-decade long game project, but I do appreciate the offer. I'll keep you in mind if I run into problems with these codecs later. ❤ A year is a long time for an active open-source project to improve, I'd say, but it's alright if you're already using something else! I tried to use Kdenlive years ago, but it wouldn't launch for me. (Likely some dependencies I should have hunted down, that's how it always is on Linux.) That's how I ended up on the OpenShot side of things. When I can finally set aside some time to reinstall Kubuntu, to upgrade to a newer version, I'll try Kdenlive again. I've always liked having options.
I absolutely agree with this. I think Anniversary Mode should have done as much as possible to freshen up the experience, with new characters, new abilities, level design tweaks, and additional polish. Classic mode should have been the original games preserved as exactly as possible.
What they should have done is have Classic Mode be the original roms in 4:3 with no enhancements. Then have Anniversary Mode be the Retro-Engine remakes with the option to switch between coins/infinite lives or the normal finite lives system and the option to play in either 16:9 or 4:3. Also, playing the Retro-Engine versions in 4:3 should include the drop-dash, and allow you to play with all character options (Tails, Knuckles, Sonic & Tails AI) in Sonic 1 etc without the need to use level-select to activate them.
I just noticed that the first post on this topic says 'ATTN: SEGA WILL DELIST NON-ORIGIN COPIES OF THE GAMES ON MAY 20th, 2022. BUY YOUR COPY OF SONIC CD STEAM AND S3&K STEAM BEFORE THEN IF YOU STILL WANT CD MOD AND S3 A.I.R. SUPPORT FOR THOSE VERSIONS!' I feel like that bit should be updated.
I wonder if anyone tried to mod the beta tapes into Sonic1&2. Too bad until this day we never got to hear S3K's beta tapes...
Yup those mods currently exist Sonic 1 HQ OST: https://gamebanana.com/sounds/62189 Sonic 2 HQ OST: https://gamebanana.com/sounds/62321 Both mods include the Masa tracks, the original tracks, and the mobile remaster tracks
By the way does the Time Attack mode data for S1 and S2 still exist in here? I find it a shame those modes didn't make the cut either. Could have added a ton more longevity.
They do, and they're actually a little more flexible. It's not obvious, but that's what "My Data and Ranking" is about. The only issue is that it takes your best time selected either from that menu or within a game save, which in the latter case means that best times using Super/Hyper forms in Sonic 2 and 3 can be recorded. This wouldn't be an issue if the clear mode in Sonic 2 let you replay stages... Oh yeah, and Sonic CD's special stages launch in the normal mode rather than time attack mode, so you have the 100 second countdown timer, though if you're actually getting competitive times I don't think that should matter. It is however the only way to time attack the special stages with a continue option in the pause menu.
This is probably wishful thinking but: Maybe there’s a reason the Headcanon team has gathered… and maybe it’s connected to Katie’s tweet.
The kicker is that it technically is all at their disposal. The options to re-enable the air/speed caps are all there in the level select secrets, to have 6 emeralds or 7, and so forth. In a smart scenario, Sega would've bothered turning on the old caps and rules for Classic, and put all 7 emeralds on for Anniversary in S1. They just didn't bother. It baffles my mind that a marketed feature in an official trailer of Super Sonic in Sonic 1 is locked behind a no-saves cheat code. So you're either stuck getting all the Chaos Emeralds the hard way just for such a run and don't get any opportunity to walk away from it without losing all that progress, or you just enter the Emeralds cheat to have all of them anyway and abuse Super.
Ya what the hell was that Sega sanctioned gameplay b-roll btw? Implying Super is in Sonic 1 but then only if you use cheats is real scummy. And really Anniversary mode should have enabled all the extras and disabled the roll lock and Classic mode should have reverted all those changes back (for Story mode I'm kinda ok with Sonic 1 having 6 emeralds, but that should have been the exception not the rule). Because as it is now the differences are miniscule, and now that a code enables lives in Anniversary and mirror mode I really don't see myself playing through classic mode ever. Might as well have just called Anniversary mode Drop Dash mode
It's a code available in HedgeModManager, so unfortunately its a PC only mod, sorry should have phrased that better.
Ah fair enough. I agree on everything else though. Really Anniversary/Classic Mode would have been the perfect excuse to allow more liberties, especially if they had let the original remake team work on the whole thing. Imagine MORE beta levels, or Desert Dazzle/Final Fever realised at last. You have the alleged original version here, what's blocking it now? Especially since as RikohZX stated, you actually have a fair amount of stuff via cheat codes anyway. Ah right. Still though I think using the more standard Time Attack mode as a basis for the online rankings might have been a cleaner way about it, especially due to said issues with Super and other story mode interventions making ranks murky. Not to mention I just like selecting levels at whim from a menu and speedrunning them like how CD and Mania done it. Feels more professional and competitive.
I love how, even though it's been made clear there was a massive time crunch for Headcanon to work on just one game (let alone the whole collection), there's still a weird amount of pie-in-the-sky "they clearly should have done X or at least Y wouldn't have taken any effort but lol Sega" daydreaming. If it were that easy, it would have been done. I mean, do I really have to point out that using the original ROMs would've undermined the actual effort that went into these remasters in the first place. If you can just use the ROMs again for the upteenth time, why go through the extra effort of using the remasters at all? Remember? The remasters released on mobile to replace emulated ROMs? Remasters that the community has been harping on about wanting on non-mobile platforms for a long time now? That said, I totally get the weirdness of how Sega wrapped 'em up together and… made them all worse by missing all sorts of little things here and there. It frickin' sucks that there's no uniformity to them.
Headcanon only worked on S3&K. Everything else was done by Sega/Sonic Team. ROMs would have been nice for the sake of completion. The remasters are the main draw. But the ROMs could have been added so people could see how the originals were (which is what Classic mode does, it's just not very accurate. So Origins is already offering a version of the orignal experience without undermining the Remasters). It's like how the museum has animatics of the cut scenes. Why do you need these unfinished animations when you have the final product? Because it's just a nice little bonus. Including ROMs probably wouldn't have been any trouble, because Sega already has an emulator for all platforms (via Mega Drive Collection). (Granted, they don’t have a Mega CD emulator (although one is coming with Mini 2), but given how inconsistent this package is, not having emulated Sonic CD probably wouldn't be a big deal). If they included ROMs, they could also include the prototypes as unlockables in the museum (and you could use the in-game coins to purchase save states that take you directly to the interesting parts of the prototypes). One of the Disney collections included prototypes and it was a nice way to pad out the collection.
That's fair, but then they should have just not bothered pretending to also include "the original experience too" under the guise of a "classic mode" for these, which are more or less just gimped versions of the remasters. What's even the point?
