Sonic 1 and 2 getting the Sonic CD treatment by Taxman and Stealth

Totally agree with Dark Sonic on this one.
It was what is and should be left that way.

Personally, I thought it was good level design. Yes, it's a trap but it's a clever trap to prove that from this point on, you will have to be careful with speed.

Wing Fortress. If you're not careful enough with Super Sonic and fall to your doom should you complain about that? It's all a part of a difficulty curve.

Spoiler

God, do I drivel some bollocks.

 

When your ring count reaches zero.. then you have my permission to die.

 

I thought it was obvious that the spike pit in Mystic Cave was basically the developers telling you "Just because you unlocked Super Sonic doesn't mean you get to put it into auto pilot. You still have to actually play the game. Now think about that for a minute or so until you die." But the thing is, it doesn't really occur to you right away. No, afterword you grumble about it and then it leaves your mind for another Zone. You shrug it off as a random dick move, or maybe even an oversight. Oh well. ...but then suddenly Metropolis comes around to cock slap you in the face with precise platforming and no more 'hold right to win' level design. Well, shit. Then it all clicks, about what the spike pit really meant, and you realize what diabolical geniuses the developers were all along. What's even more evil here, though? Is that if you want to actually do some precise platforming, you have to actively avoid rings, because even just jumping once when you have fifty and...well, yeah. Though that strikes me more as of an oversight than intentional dickery for some reason. At any rate I think it's a rather clever way to keep players on their toes.


Then of course Sonic 3 and Knuckles rolled around and they kinda threw that design philosophy out the window, because you actually CAN just coast through the rest of the game with Super/Hyper modes. Shame about that, really. Kinda makes the game boring for me, because at that point it basically turns into an early version of 'boost2win' at it's worst. You know, being an unstoppable juggernaut and only having to hold one direction to beat the stage and all. Gets a tad old if you ask me.

 

It's obvious developers rethought this after the game was released as Sonic 3K required double jump to activate Super or Hyper transformations. So transforming by merely jumping seems more a design flaw than a trick to make you get less rings. So Taxman and Stealth should really considere requiring double or triple jumps to transform when 2, 3K and Lockon come along.

 

The widescreen in the Taxman version of Sonic 2 should make it easier to avoid the spike pit in Mystic Cave Zone anyway. If not, maybe they can just go the Sonic Jam route, create an easy mode and just put a red spring in there. I also agree that Super Sonic should be activated in Sonic 2 using Sonic 3's method of pushing the jump button while in midair. While we're at it, use Sonic 3 Complete's ability to revert back to normal Sonic using the same method in case you're running low on rings. If that takes away too much challenge from those that miss the old way Super Sonic is activated, make Super Sonic activation a customizable feature so you can pick either the Sonic 2 way or the Sonic 3 way.

 

Personally I think the auto-transform crap is there so people actually stumble upon the feature. You never had a reason for double tapping the button until then, so why would you try it now? Come Sonic 3, and the game was much designed around each character's double jump ability that the new activation method makes sense -- though it still is mighty annoying when you didn't actually WANT to transform.

 

So you want to avoid good game design just to teach a "lesson"?
There is no point in the spikes.
If they need to learn precise plataform, they learn playing the game after losing a life, not in waiting games.
This is a problem for the series, we need to drop bad luggage, even if it's "classic".

 

Another alternative is to make that pit lead into a lower, more perilous path. If Knuckles-exclusive paths were added to Marble Zone in the Taxman port of Sonic 1, I don't see why we should stop there.

 

I mean, maybe it'd be cool to see the other bottom pits around there to lead to a path of sorts, but I feel like that pit was always supposed to be death. Although I do find it odd that only one pit leads to definite death and the others have escapes. Either it was meant to kill you or it was an oversight and they forgot to add a spring or something. But it was death in the original, it should stay as death.

 

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xw_AULavpQU[/youtube]

 

This portion of Super Metroid teaches you that wall jumps are possible, and shows it being done. It's not great at explaining how, but it does show a new move. The spike pit in Sonic 2 teaches no such valuable lesson, instead just being annoying until you eventually die... unless Sonic 2 had a wall-jump that I didn't know about.

 

Just saying, it would also solve the problem - add a wall jump.

 

It doesn't have a spring because you lower a bridge on top of it -- you wouldn't be able to get out anyway. It's meant to kill you.

 

Oh, I didn't realize those pits didn't have bridges (I rarely take that route).

So, yup, pretty much sure then that it was meant to kill you.

 

I'm wondering if anything will done about 2 player VS mode. If it's kept I'd love to see it get upgraded with more levels or even allow Knuckles.

 

I don't like it when I'm running up the corkscrews in Metropolis Zone, and one of those star fish explode and knock me off. Then I have to run that corkscrew all the way up again. All it does is waste time!

It is an oversight, and outright terrible level design. To resolve such a horrific game flaw, they had better give Sonic a safety harness to wear during the corkscrew segments to prevent him from falling... or they won't be seeing MY hard earned 99 cents.

 

I'd say those spikes in Mystic Cave might have been put in there while their behavior was still like in Sonic 1 (and Super Sonic didn't exist yet), in which case their purpose would have been to insta-kill just like a bottomless pit (but more cave-themed and with a funny sound =P).

...So in my oppinion they should be removed, like should have been done ever since Sonic earned his temporal invulnerability against them.

 

Probably not, because then you probably wouldn't be able to make much use of the springs in the other pits, unless you already knew where they were or got lucky.

His was the only smart post so far.