Pinobee is the closest Sonic CD ever had to a successor -- meandering level design with timestream-altering objectives hidden somewhere in each level. Time travel is implemented very differently, more like a Darius-style branching paths where you can revisit junction points that hint at what and where objectives are. Said objectives are more varied than SCD as well, but still occasionally having a specific breakable object to track down similar to badnik generators. Pinobee himself looks very much like Sonic, though doesn't at all handle like him. (Also the Blue Fairy is just NiGHTS with boobs)
The only thing I don't like about Pinobee is the fact that if you get the best journal entry in a stage and revisit that stage and horrible the journal is now horrible as well instead of just sticking to the best ending. You can lock yourself out of the best ending that way. Anyway, Pinobee is great. I first played the PSX version then the GBA version. Don't think the second game ever got a translation patch since it never left Japan.
I've grown less confident in my dim foggy memories of Pinobee since watching what scant footage there is on youtube, particularly how levels relate to each other. Otherwise, I'm still confident in saying Pinobee is the most Sonic CD-like experience out there. There's also this. He may be a little bit of Charmy, but mostly a whole lot of Sonic.
My own view of Sonic CD has changed over the years - partly I think due to the hardware I was playing on and also partly due to how my way of playing the classic games has evolved over time. I first played the game on PC round a friend's house and later on my own computer with the same copy. While I enjoyed the game, I think the main reason I kept playing it at all over Sonic 2 or 3 was the novelty of it being content I hadn't seen yet. The next time I actually got to try the game properly was Gems Collection and I don't think my opinion changed at all - if anything, it just cemented in my own mind how average I felt the game was. Fast forward to the time of the Taxman version hitting Android, I grabbed it and immediately started to appreciate things more. I'm not sure if it was the better performance that did it or more that I'd since started approaching the games differently. This is all very subjective but my enjoyment of the games became about trying to learn to exploit the physics more and more and just finding the best route I could and keep improving. Previously I'd been trying to play the games fast but not really putting in the effort to work out the levels. CD is absolutely brilliant if you like this sort of thing, as the levels are so dense with paths and choices to make, it can be really fun trying to unpick that haystack of routes and come up with something optimal, helped by the fact that every level feels really, really unique among the others. That aside, I guess I also appreciate the art style and JP soundtrack as a sort of 'what if' - the series' visual style could have been quite drastically different if CD and 2 were swapped around in my opinion, and it's interesting to see how the CD team tried to evolve Sonic 1's style, in contrast to Sonic 2's. It's become increasingly tough to place the games in order in my mind as I've gotten older. 3K > 2 > CD > 1. I feel bad ranking them this way as I think they're all great in their own ways, but CD has definitely grown on me over the years.
Sonic CD is great. It doesn't quite follow the same rules of level design as 1, 2 and 3K but at the same time I never felt like it needed to. I probably rank it above 1 and 2, but below 3&Knuckles. The Soundtrack of course is a big reason for loving it so. I actually prefer the US soundtrack (not by a large margin. They're both great and, don't @ me :v: ), as I kinda love everything Spencer Nilsen composed, especially Ecco the Dolphin.
Completely agree. In fact CD and probably SA1 to a degree would be my primary inspiration in designing a 3D sonic game. 3D sonic needs big open environments to explore, to take full advantage of the 3rd dimension. Sonic 3K is my favorite game of all time but porting that 2D gameplay directly to 3D was never going to work, it has to be adjusted based on several factors. CD is the best way to handle it because it takes advantage of things that 2D sonic cant do quite as well, which is mostly the visual aspect of exploring and traversing the landscape. A gameplay that is much more like a giant playground with things for sonic to accomplish in it, would be ideal rather than exactly mimicking his 2D style...which leads to overly linear games like basically every modern sonic title from SA2 to Generations. (Overly linear in the sense that they don't really take full advantage of 3D and rather just constrain sonic to one narrow path surrounded by bottomless pits, to keep the gameplay moving....and then you end up with a 2 hour game that requires alternative gameplay padding) That said, while this style I'd argue is an important part of that blueprint in 3D, I think it clearly isnt the best for 2D sonic. Still good and the style of the game pops with life and vibrancy but S3K is definitely the mastery of that formula by comparison. Sonic's flow is better compensated for with 3K.
