While the replacement tracks in Origins Sonic 3 & Knuckles are inferior to the Sonic 3 prototype tracks, I still enjoy them. The only ones that turned out bad IMO was Carnival Night Zone, and its not that much of a loss because I didn't even like the original Carnival Night Zone theme.
The kiss scene in Sonic 06 isn't as bad as everyone makes it out to be. The way I understood it Princess Elise secretly got a fascination for fairytales, and that's A-OK. I found it kinda cute to be honest. There I said it.
Also, this is an Earth with sentient species outside of Humanity. Of course there's going to be interspecies relations like what happened with Sonic and Elise, they've had 200,000 years where the anthropomorphic apes have interacted with the anthropomorphic hedgehogs, foxs and echidna, albeit in more limited quantities due to the latter being on the islands. Let's not forget, Madonna was intended to be a thing at one point: Humans can have their hots for hedgehogs in this world.
The issue with 06's romance between Sonic and Elise isn't even the fact that they're a human and a hedgehog tbh, that doesn't really matter. What bothers me about it is that it's just so out of character for Sonic to act the way he does around Elise. All of the romance scenes just come off as stiff and awkward because it's just so out of character for Sonic to act all lovestruck. Up to that point, Sonic was just supposed to be "too cool for romance", exemplified with how he acts around Amy in CD. He saves Amy not because he wants a kiss on the nose, or wants a girlfriend, but because he doesn't want to see Amy get hurt. The kiss creepy to me not because it's a cartoon animal and a strangely realistic human, it's creepy to me because it completely betrays what Sonic had been all about up to that point. It's the culmination of a huge pile of strange, absurd decisions in writing and tone that had been made up to that point.
The way I took it, he just wanted to be nice, but ended up being overwhelmed by the presence of a real princess. He took on the role of the knight in shining armour because he didn't know better. He was improvising.
One of the things that makes Amy unique as a character is her ability to throw Sonic off his game and chip away at his "too cool, for school" attitude. Sonic is in his element when he's admired by others or locking horns with his enemies and rivals since all of that feeds his ego. Amy however has nothing but pure, unfiltered love for who Sonic is and his way of life. And Sonic has no idea how to deal with someone who loves him so unconditionally, and it makes for some really funny scenes and justifies Amy's presence imo. Characters who can elicit different reactions from your protagonist are good. So I don't consider it inherently a bad thing for Sonic to be kind of awkward about his feelings. Hell, it let's him feel like an actual character as opposed to a one note vehicle for coolness. Criticize the execution sure, but the idea is there.
Having listened to the Japanese CD ost a bit recently, I've come to the opinion that CD was when Sonic music went from "good video game music" to distinctly "Sonic music". I'm not saying 1 and 2 have a bad OST by any means, but CD is just so unmistakably Sonic in the way those two aren't quite exactly. Yes, GHZ is iconic, but divorced from that legacy I don't think it quite hits the highs of CD's JP ost. That soundtrack is just so deliciously groovy and funky in that unmistakably Sonic way, and really marks the first time Sonic music had the hardware to truly emulate the groovy pop music it was always inspired by. There's not a single other platformer stuff like Stardust Speedway Past or Metallic Madness Bad Future would fit into. 3&K leans a bit in that direction with songs like Hydrocity act 2 and Launch Base act 1, but I think the genesis sound hardware still kinda limited them in that regard. People love CD's soundtrack, yeah, but I don't think it gets the credit it deserves for really setting the standard for Sonic music to be delicious video-game-ified riffs on popular music of the time (a thing that would continue into Adventure 1 and especially 2). The CD Past songs really exemplify this because they are using the genesis hardware like the main trilogy but they sound so dramatically different still.
unpopular? really? i mean during the beginning of 2022, sonic frontiers looked kinda like shit. but now midway through the year, the reveals have gotten WAYYY better. actually showing promising footage.
Minor nitpick: the past tracks actually use the Sega CD's own PCM chip, separate from the FM chip used by the main Genesis.
I think Team Hooligan is a really weird move to tie together a bunch of obscure, unrelated characters. I much prefer the Babylon Rogues.
I don't see any mention of Rider's here. Honestly, even I don't know if what I just said was a joke or not. Or to what degree. I think anyone who disliked Adventure's alternate playstyles should perhaps try some of the missions like B and A if they haven't already. I got them all except Big's A missions, because forget that. I wouldn't say it exactly made me love them. I still don't think it's a great game. But it did make me mind them significantly less than I did beforehand. (And on a somewhat unrelated note, hunting for the emblems hidden in the world, as few as there were, made me soften to the concept of hubs a little as well, because of what I realized it COULD be.) And upon playing SA2 which I felt them did them better in a number of areas I found the previous game lacking, I actually even came to kind of like them.
Unpopular opinion: Sonic Heroes was great, and it's the closest 3D game with classic feel we've ever got. Character swapping in fast paced platformer is unique, and I have yet to see something resembling Heroes methods. Also characters talking with each other in levels isn't annoying. It's fun.
Counterpoint: that's revisionism, because the perception of what is distinctly Sonic music was deliberately construed as such over the years. Sonic CD music was mystified as the epitome of Sonic music when it was "rediscovered" in the mid-2000s, and then many installments used that and sort of fulfilled that prophecy they created themselves. But otherwise, Sonic 1 was already arranged very differently from other Mega Drive games (Sonic 2, not as much); Sonic 3&K is very different from 1, 2 and CD. 3D Blast is also different, and only maybe Chaotix sounds like CD a bit, which may have been apparent for the like 10 people who played it at the time. Point in case, there were many distinctly Sonic styles before people, and most notably Tee Lopes, decided new jack swing was more Sonic-y than anything else. And when they (we) did that, the association started getting stronger. But there was an ancient time when there was a strong association between Sonic music and Eurobeat of all things.
I don't think Heroes is a bad game. I played through quite a bit of it somewhat recently and uh... Well, in keeping with the theme of the thread, I will say I actually didn't mind Chaotix's levels anywhere near as much as I thought I would, though I hadn't played the alternative missions nor seriously went for a ranks yet. There were a few annoying things, (like for example, I am 76% convinced that in the hang castle/mystic mansion level where you blow out torches there were torches I had blown out that didn't register for some reason) but I found all the stuff really did was provide incentive to actually pay attention to the level design so you don't miss crap.
If we're talking Heroes, Chaotix have the best gameplay because it involves exploring. In fact, it goes like this: 1) Team Chaotix: Provides exploration and funny moments. 2) Team Rose: Closest to "standard" Sonic gameplay, since it's easy mode and thus have short fights. 3) Team Dark: If we're gonna fight, let's at least give it some thrill, since it's hard mode. 4) Team Sonic: Nothing unique, quick, or challenging enough.
I don't usually like exploration in 3D, but I will agree that if I'm *gonna* play Sonic Heroes, Team Rose's stages are the best way to do it. They don't overstay their welcome or pad themselves out with the same setpieces over and over again. Actually, I swapped files around in the PC version to just replace Team Sonic's stages with Team Rose's, haha. It works well on most levels!
It's kinda funny how the same people who cry "cringe bestiality" at the 06 kiss are the same ones going on Twitter and Youtube listing which Pokemon they would smash or pass. It would only be bestiality if Sonic didn't have human intelligence, sapience, or sentience. Obviously he does, so he passes the Harkness test. I've never understood the issue people have with it (anyone who says it's just due to it being bad romance is lying, since that's not what made it controversial).
