Sky Chase isn't a bad level, you just have no patience. I don't care if it's a Sonic game, teach your hyperactive brain to wait a little.
As someone who loves Marble and Labyrinth, but hates Sky Chase, I like to think I have plenty of patience.
Sky Chase is like being stuck in a traffic jam. The only thing worse than doing nothing is doing almost nothing.
Yeaaaaah there's a huge difference between being patient and just watching the game waiting for something to finally happen
I rather enjoy traffic jams if I'm listening to good music, if I'm being driven rather than driving and if it means I'm justifiably late to something much worse, like work or Wing Fortress. So I love Sky Chase.
I just remember that Sky Chase was a breath of fresh air after going through hell in Metropolis and before the gauntlet of Wing Fortress and Death Egg. Hoping that if there's another Tornado section in the future then that they'll take more inspiration from After Burner.
yeah if there's something Frontiers has me missing, it's the SA1-esque big/droopy spine look when you view him from the front. the only problem I have with Sky Chase is that, like MSZ later, I always have this anxious feeling about how precarious the platforming is. It always feels like one wrong move and Tails will definitely miss me, and I'm not sure that's the vibe they were going for with that stage hahahahah
It’d completely move Sky Chase away from its intention as a pace breaker but I always thought it’d make for a nice horizontal shooter. I love shooters and the Sonic aesthetic would make it unique and very pleasing to look at. Doing that for Mirage Saloon Act 1 would have worked particularly well. That modern pixel art with the sunrise… damn. I’m actually surprised the Mania team went straight Sky Chase there considering they’d know more than anyone that the general fan consensus is that it’s a bit of a slog (I don’t really mind it, but it’s definitely not a highlight). Though considering the reaction to Frontiers’ final boss, there don’t seem to be a lot of STG players in the community…
Mania has a bit of an issue with embracing literally everything the Classics did, warts and all. There's plenty of shit no one asked for in the game, Sky Chase, the Sandopolis ring drain gimmick, and annoying and slow bosses (looking at you FBZ spider boss). It's still a great game despite these hiccups, but it strikes me as odd that decisions like these were made even though there's no chance that the dev team wasn't aware that these things were unpopular.
Mania's Mirage Saloon 1 gets off a somewhat better than Sky Cheese because its a bit shorter, I think. Plus it has the brief train section. But then it also has that boss fight, which is easily one of the most visually confusing parts of any of the Classic games. As excellent as Mania is, the roit of most of its problems is that a lot of its features are just "because S3K (/S2) did it". S3K had a boss fight in very act, therefore Mania did as well. But whilst most of the S3K bosses were over pretty fast even without cheesing invincibility frames, Mania's bosses regularly involve a lot of waiting out attack cycles. S3K had 12 zones, therefore Mania did as well. 12 stages is a a lot though, and the can get really long later in the game. S3K had bonus stages in checkpoints, therefore Mania does it too. But it uses Blue Sphere and they outstay their welcome very quickly. S3K has Sonic, Tails and Knuckles as playable characters. But Mania fumbles a bit because there's less variation in the routes and bosses depending on the character chosen, unlike S3K. Mania can get a bit long in the tooth because of this and the above points. Sky Chase was an iconic moment of the Classics, therefore Makes has to lift it almost verbatim. Fortunately though it doesn't take the slot of a regular level if you're playing as Knuckles. I think that the development team probably just wanted to go big and do nothing by halves. And props to them, cause the game they created is sublime. But they bit off just a little bit more than they could chew. This was their first original (official) Sonic game and a bigger project than the games that came before, and they tried to go at least toe-to-toe with the biggest 2D game in the series history. Heck, S3K is still arguably one of the biggest games in the series. The end result is that Mania feels unrefined at times.
I await the day a platformer genre shifts into an actual STG for a stage. Kirby's been doing it since Dream Land and it still hasn't quite gotten there (though I guess it's closer than most). Even Konami, back in the 90s when they were doing both couldn't seem to marry them right, and in every case, the shooting stage is always so... I dunno. Barren. Lifeless. By the numbers. There's no crossover because if all I had to go on was how bare-minimum the genre shift feels when introduced in a platformer, I'd be unimpressed/bored, too. It's not even that they're easy, it's that they seem like an obligation from all parties involved. Well, I have a theory that that's a reason out of many, but that's not what this thread is about. I had the thought as well with what Mirage Saloon could have tried instead if they were dead set on a desert chase setpiece. They already put in Puyo Puyo, and SEGA now owns the Thunder Force IP, right? Even Fantasy Zone (which would've probably been more relevant). They couldn't have...? Well, anyway. It still remains one of my favorite acts regardless, not because I particularly like Sky Chase. I don't, really. However, in terms of cinematic presentation, I feel like MSZ1 did what Sky Chase was trying to do but better. Unfortunately chasing a goofy train isn't quite as awe-inspiring as the Wing Fortress (and neither of these compare to the Tornado trying to catch up to the Egg Carrier anyway), but in spite of that, I like the train section.The constant motion of the stage feels like something big or important is happening, which is not really a pace you can set with a player lollygagging around on their own time (unless there's a timer, like in Egg Rocket Zone). It's dramatic, and the BGM matches. And it might be my favorite original tune in that game. In order to really sell the chase, though, they should have let you reach and confront Eggman even if it was just wallop him for a few hits while he's defenseless, perhaps before something disorients or knocks you off (perhaps Heavy Magician), which then leads back to Tails (or Sonic) flying in to catch you. As it stands, the train is kind of pointless outside of next-zone foreshadowing. What's the point of the chase if an absurd, oversized glove with a gun — that you volunteered to enter, I might add — is just going to fire you back in the air to deal with the boss from Sonic Chaos for no reason? I would have storyboarded this sequence better, personally. Hindsight, though. If nothing else, I would say this and a lack of cohesion (as well as some repeating level tropes) are the things that set Mania under Sonic 3 for me. The Knuckles (or Mighty, the one or two he has) routes are entirely pointless. They have a bit more utility in Encore mode in that they sometimes hide Special Stage Rings, but other than that... All you get for your trouble is a different Mirage Saloon 1st Act and a different Lava Reef Boss. I played Sonic 3 again as Knuckles recently and I honestly forgot how varied the experience is from beginning to end. True, but from what I remember, a lot of the levels they ended up with weren't even first choices. In fact, I think a good portion of them are actually Sonic Team choices (or illusion of choices). It's possible they did the best that they could do with what they had more-or-less forced upon them. I get the feeling that, even with the returning stages stipulation being an unavoidable constant, if the Mania team had full reign/say on WHICH levels, we'd be playing a different game than what we got. I believe it was Taxman that mentioned this in one of the earlier post-release interviews, and he may have said he'd like to talk about it someday. However, with NDAs and contracts being what they are, I wouldn't be surprised if we don't get any insight on what they thought should have been the full Zone list. That said I do think they chose Oil Ocean (which is the only other Zone in Sonic 2 I like anyway. Wait what thread is this again?), I remember either in the same interview or in another, he mentioned the team intentionally choosing an unpopular stage. You know what? While I'm in the thread I'm in, Aquatic Ruin Zone is terrible.
Idk what they even look like. I just play the games. I hope I won’t have to read the comics to understand the full plot of future games.
No. Good pacing is a thing. Period's of "rest and down time" are a part of that, but these are to punctuate times of genuine intensity and challenge. Like for example, I don't mind a platformer like Celeste less intense segments throughout it's initial campaign... ...because it is a break from the much more intense normal gameplay. And it doesn't drag on forever. And because it still makes use of Celeste mechanics that are actually fun. "Good music," may not necessarily make up for a lack of these things. I come back to see this after a while, and almost said nothing because of the theme of the thread, but man. Sky Chase is one of my least favorite levels of any 2D Sonic game. i kid you not when I say I actually enjoyed Sonic 4 Episode 2's rendition of it more last time I played that game.
Yeah, for the most part in Unleashed and Gens they're there for a change in pace, Colors 2D in what used to be the original levels is fine too (if only Sonic Team didn't decide to turn all the gimmick challenges into main acts...), and in Forces the levels are just too short for them to be offensive imo
I think "fine" is a great way to describe the 2D sections of the Boost games. I can't really fault them from a design standpoint on their own terms, but they're entirely unremarkable to me as far as 2D platforming gameplay goes. Sonic already had way more interesting 2D platforming gameplay decades ago, so this stuff is superfluous at best. And since ostensibly 3D games can't seem to get by without filling it with 2D sections, they're a design crutch at worst. Real "we have Sonic the Hedgehog at home" vibes. If the 3D stages didn't force me into them, I'd never re-play them. This is at least less egregious than it otherwise would have been if we couldn't put in a code to replace it with the pinball bonus stage.
