Just remembered why Sonic 1 is my least favorite of the Genesis Four

Sonic 2's Special Stages are far more annoying. While they looked really cool back then (and still kinda look cool now), I still have a hard time getting the chaos emeralds in one run or just enjoying them in general. It doesn't feel well balanced and the difficulty seemed really cheap.
Sonic 1's are better in my opinion. They feel a bit more consistent and are easier to memorize, which is one reason why I get all the emeralds on almost all my runs of that game.
Sonic 3&K's Special stages are the arguably the best of the bunch. They're tad easy to follow, and they start slow enough for you to get a better glimpse at the pattern of the stage before shit starts going down. They looked good and felt good to beat... Though I have to say, the second half of the special stages (that is S&K's) is alot more intense than those of the first half.

 

Agreed, and with Tails enabled you *NEED* a second player to help you co-op through the stages, otherwise he's distracting and keeps losing all his rings.

 

THIS. People complain about Tails losing rings, and fucking you over in the Special Stage... What those people don't realize is that Tails only gets rings that you miss... and he only appears in front if you fuck up and fall behind. His "detriment" is simply due to the player's inability or mishap.

 

Well for me, lately I've found that Sonic 3+K has been my least favourite. I'm not sure what it was, it might be perhaps the fact that I've overplayed it or something. I didn't enjoy the music as much as Sonic 1 or 2 and I found that the special stages start off really easy, but suddenly there's a spike of difficulty and I find them kinda frustrating.

And why does nobody like Laybrinth zone? that's probably my favourite one, the music is just so good.

 

Nice game design, punish the player for fucking up once by making it nearly impossible to succeed unless they fuck up again to make Tails fuck off.

 

This concept needs to somehow be implemented into regular Zone gameplay... in a hack. THAT could possibly rival Sonic 1 Omochao Edition in sheer annoyance and hilarity. Perhaps you can't walk past Tails... maybe instead of overlapping him, you just push into him unless he moves... OR everytime he jumps into you, you enter the hurt routine (minus losing rings... OR losing rings/sheilds, etc. if you want some real fun.) I'm sure some better devious ideas could be cooked up for the furry little nuisance.

 

No, they up the requirement for rings with Tails. So you'll have to collect more to make up for his fuck ups - and he fucks up a lot. I find that it's practically impossible to beat some of the later special stages with both Sonic and Tails if you're not playing co-op.

It's slow, you really have to take your time or you'll get fucked up. Also when I was a kid I had a difficult time with water stages for some reason, I drowned a lot. I couldn't make it through Chemical Plant or Labyrinth Zone for years...especially Labyrinth Zone because at the boss fight there is a lot of things out to kill you, its easy to drown, AND if you die there you start back with no rings.

 

I've got a laundry list of reasons why Sonic 1 is my least favorite of the main series Genesis games.

• Bland music
• Bland level art (SBZ is awful)
• Special stages blew
• GHZ and SLZ were the only stages you could really experience Sonic's speed
• Unmemorable boss fights
• The entirety of Labyrinth Zone, literally just everything about it
• No Super Sonic means the only incentive to collect the emeralds is so Robotnik doesn't laugh at you after you beat the game

 

Objection! Guards! Seize this traitor. Nakamura did brilliant work on this game. Some of the tracks are short-ish, but I'd be hard-pressed to find many other games whose OSTs can burn themselves indelibly onto my brain like this game has.

SBZ is the worst out of them, and Act 3 is a recolour on top of that, but that's just one Zone. And I don't think it's bad, anyway. What's wrong with the others?

Everyone is saying this. Posting in a casual thread.

Objection. Sure, Final Zone is distinctly underwhelming, and Labyrinth could have done with having an actual fight after the chase, but what's wrong with the others? What makes them any less memorable than the ones in Sonic 2, for instance? I'll leave S3&K out of this as we all know it's on another level in terms of bosses, both main ones and the new sub-bosses. But I don't see what's wrong with the first game's bosses.

I can go with this, but I guess that happens sometimes when things are being developed. Maybe they meant to have some other reward but didn't have time. Or maybe they just hadn't heard of Super Saiyans by that point. :v:

 

How someone can complain about the boss fights in Sonic 1 but praise them in any other Sonic game is beyond me (Even S3&K has absolutely pitiful boss fights if you have even a modicum of skill).

Boss fights in Sonic games have always been lame, even in the best games.

 

Oh... come on. It's only, usually about 10 rings more, most of the time. I think only a couple of them are larger increases. Matter of fact, one of the checkpoints is LARGER for Sonic/Tails alone. Its not THAT much of a stretch. And AGAIN. Tails can fuck up all he wants. As long as YOU are not fucking up, all is ok. I've gotten all emeralds with both plenty of times. (albeit not always on the first try, but its not THAT hard). Actually I recall Sonic Classic Heroes having all 3 characters in the Special Stage. Got the emeralds with all 3 of them too. Not too hard.
One thing to keep in mind with Tails, is he jumps AFTER you, on a delay. So, just simply move and jump a little earlier than you normally would and he should be fine. OR just don't miss many rings.

So, anyway... back to Sonic 1. Howabout hacking time limits into those Special Stages??? Mercury did it in ReadySonic and I loved it. Also fixed the physics and handling though too.

 

Sonic the Hedgehog is a masterpiece. A triumph of game design. Let me elaborate exactly why:

GRAPHICS
Ripped directly from an alternate dimension where videogames are cartoons, Sonic the Hedgehog's look encapsulates the very best that artists for the Megadrive could achieve without much trickery like overly-obnoxious dithering or importing from a photographic/pre-rendered source -- liberal use of repetitive patterns in the level art is smart and efficiently-offset by strong geometric shapes to produce a very singular look that not only defined the genre, but would define an aesthetic for a generation of gamers to use as a descriptive term; Sonic-esque.

Sprites had a cartoon-goofy charm about them, consisting of dope-eyed evil robots, a bumbling fatty with a penchant for theatric machines and machinations, plus the coolest Felix the Cat knockoff this side of the animation industry; of course animation itself was a little economic and sparse, but at the same time effective and full of character -- had it lacked character, the character itself would have made not a scratch on the gaming public's psyche, but it was and is a classic and timeless design. Faultless.

SOUND
A heavenly chorus of "SEGAAAAA!" is the prelude to an opening set of high-pitch snare drums that indelibly fixes itself in the mind before spawning the infectious ear-worm that is the all-too-familiar theme tune. Music in general takes the form of light-hearted synth-pop with the occasional blues accent, each one perfectly complementing the atmosphere of its corresponding level. Green Hill is wondrous and optimistic. Marble Zone is plodding and curious. Spring Yard is bouncy and slightly-awkward. Labyrinth has hidden depth. Star Light is a relaxing lounge-jazz romp through the stars, and Scrap Brain echoes the future-noir of Vangelis' iconic theme to Blade Runner. Catchy and as perfect fit for the aesthetic as Sonic as one's own skin is on the body.

The counterpart to this amazing soundtrack is a set of sonic iconography that is as descriptive as it is aurally-pleasurable. Everything sounds right. Rings ring, springs BWANNG! with enough force to propel a character skyward from sound alone, smashed objects produce a non-threatening sound that is as cartoony as the cloud-explosion that accompanies. Sounds are so correct they go unnoticed, as waterfalls fizz and floors rumble and switches squeak. It is a world that, thanks to the effects, sounds as it should.

GAMEPLAY
Quasi-Newtonian physics appear to be perfect for the base of gameplay based on speedily navigating uneven terrain. Who'd have thought? Combine this with levels that enable such behaviour, and you've got a great match. But they don't just place you in a situation where you start the ride and watch; you speedily navigate the environs with a stunning lack of the non-participation of later games. Clever play will see Sonic maintain momentum for longer stretches, and this does necessitate some creative and occasionally-complex manoeuvres that offer more scope for strategy than initially presented. Great stuff when combined with a control system that is completely without clutter (four directions and one button -- your grandmother could remember this).

The levels themselves are beautifully laid-out, too. Green Hill introduces the concepts of speed and uneven terrain, but conveniently place obstacles before troublesome sections (to wit; purple rocks to stop a running Sonic in his tracks before potentially-fatal jumping sections that require a more considered approach) and offers a myriad of alternate and interlocking paths to give players plenty of alternatives. Marble Zone increases the obstacles but throws out the non-linearity and speed -- so players will have to learn how to platform with at least a portion of Sonic's speed. Spring Yard is a total physics playground, offering an orchestra comprising topsy-turvy navigations of bouncy obstacles and crushing blocks that crescendos to a gauntlet-leap over a death pit and a sadistic (to the uninitiated) boss; the game begins to show that it means some business. Following this, Labyrinth Zone not only deprives the player of their speed as Marble Zone did, but also increases the tension with an imposing and fatal time limit via the threat of drowning. Star Light is a relative calm-before-the-storm, but offers a taster of the more complex and involved platforming that is Scrap Brain Zone; a veritable factory of death with more ways to kill the player than help them.

Bosses are a simple affair with clear methodologies for defeat, that simply serve as punctuation to the action until the final threatening encounter.

SEQUELS
The sequels to Sonic didn't improve much on the formula. Sonic 2 offered the easy get-out that was the Spin Dash; as a replacement for the idea of working to build up speed, it was entirely optional -- but the attitude of 'easy speed' pervaded the entire layout design ethos, seeing many more horizontal springs which usually precede barely-interactive rollercoaster sections which take up large portions of the level space. Much more than the first, in any case. Levels also became more generic on the whole and having weaker individual identities, the majority of them offering speed sections in some way without much of the welcome pace-changing from the first Sonic. The addition of Tails was a superfluous one with no real gameplay merit until Sonic 3 and its sparse offering of gameplay changes for the character, and although Sonic & Knuckles offered an interesting change of dynamic with Knuckles' gliding and climbing (and exclusive stage routes), this came at the cost of a seemingly less-full game experience with shorter levels; or them missing entirely.

Sonic 1 may be the least-favourite of some people here, but I argue that their tastes and expectations were swayed by subsequent games -- expecting longer levels as in Sonic 3 & Knuckles comes at the cost of general interactivity being thrown aside in lieu of largely non-participatory speedway sections; expecting more numerous levels as in Sonic 2 is an unfair trade for levels becoming more similar to one another and offering less of their own individual merits.

And the special stages in Sonic 1 don't suck either. So you can't handle the challenge of a rotating maze puzzle that temporarily swaps out speedy flow-based gameplay for wrestling with jaunty angles in a perpetually-spinning labyrinth? Suck it in, if they were like the rest of the game they wouldn't be very 'special'.

Happy now, D.A. Garden?

 

Sonic 2's special stages -- except for, I think, the 6th stage -- are not hard even with a CPU Tails. The ring requirements are quite feasible even as Sonic on his own, and the most it costs is having a bit more of each stage's setpieces memorized. Many of them are quite distinctive so it shouldn't be too hard.

The biggest thing to keep in mind is that in Sonic 2, rings will always show up on the OUTSIDE of curves. It's pretty easy to predict where rings will show up based on the direction the stage is going, and most patterns tend to repeat themselves well -- indeed, there's still not a lot of memorization required because the patterns are pretty consistent throughout each sub-section. Usually the nature of the pattern that comes in the next subsection is hinted at with the last obstacle in the current subsection.

They kinda threw this out when they reused the formula in Pocket Adventure, and as a result the special stages in Pocket Adventure aren't as good. In addition the ring requirements are a lot stricter compared to the number of rings you get.

 

Could've sworn there's 1 stage with rings on the inside of a curve, there's at least 1 with rings in the middle too.

 

I would also like to add that the 'speed cap' is one of the reasons I find Sonic 1 such a joy to play -- it means there's no autopilot "hold right to win" sections if you want speed. Whereas the Megadrive sequels engender an attitude of "derp, I'll stop and spindash", Sonic 1 forces a deeper knowledge of how the movement works to circumvent that speed cap. Things like clever use of rolling, tiny jumps for acceleration, and 'free-wheeling' (that is, letting Sonic's momentum carry him because pressing the direction of the run activates the capped speed) are key to maintaining a decent speed -- as I said, a player has to get creative.

I'm not sure any of subsequent games 'fixes' really improved the game, quite the opposite in my eyes.

Sonic 2 special stages? Stick the game on 'Sonic only' (or 'Tails only' if you accept that you're a filthy enabler for Sega adding crappy new characters with every iteration of the damn series) and they're a piece of cake. Learn them (as muteKi points out, they have patterns) and then 'Sonic and Tails' mode is a breeze as well. Rote-learning will be effective, pattern-recognition more so.

 

Rolling is a very important part of 2D Sonic, but I don't think a speed cap for running is the best way to enforce rolling. A better solution would be to make rolling accelerate faster than running. Both running and rolling would have no limit to their top speed, but rolling would build up that speed faster than running would. Rolling already has the added benefit of invulnerability to enemies, so faster acceleration would be another incentive to roll instead of run.

 

I'm pretty sure rolling actually was faster than normal running in Sonic 1.

 

I used to really hate Labyrinth Zone. But for some reason, it really grew on me the last few years, It's like my 2nd-3rd (Up there with Starlight Zone) favorite stage in the game now. Going through a whole water section without picking up a single bubble and not getting by those moving spike balls always feels very satisfying and it's something I got gradually good at.
The music is very good in my opinion, I like that feeling of puzzling in it of some reason. And it's much better than the somewhat overrated Starlight Zone music.
All n' all, I feel like Labyrinth Zone is way too underrated for it's own good.

 

Yes, because there was a speed cap for running. As Jayextee pointed out, rolling was the only way to circumvent the speed cap in Sonic 1. The Genesis sequels removed the speed cap for running, making it so that both running and rolling had the same speed.