Art Chrome Gadget's Background

I appreciate Lost World's return to geometric designs but I do not think it nailed the style. It's too devoid of detail, things look more like plastic toys than they do robots, and it has that weird lighting style that I feel has plagued the series for a while. The color palette's too saturated, as well. It didn't feel faithful to 1 or even 2 (a much more colorful game) beyond the surface level.

 

I think one problem with the graphic style in Lost World was that they made Sonic look kind of tiny for some reason.

This is how I think would have looked better:


This is how it actually looks:

 

I had the same problem with Generations, funnily enough. Classic or Modern, Sonic felt super tiny in a lot of stages, especially Chemical Plant.

 

I’ll add to your point and note in addition to the more simple textures and saturated color palette, Lost World is also very reliant on primary/singular color schemes; and very bright color schemes at that. Most if not all of the zones shy away from using dark/muted color tones, and almost rarely utilizes a strong variance of the colors they have. Zones in the Genesis games also try to preserve some semblance of reality in the locations, no matter how surreal or fantastic they got (with Chaotix, and to a lesser extent CD, proving the exceptions). Lost World has hardly any of that, especially so with the gimmick levels like the candy and beehive auto-runner stages.

In theory, Lost World is supposed to be a throwback to the Genesis aesthetics; but in practice, it plays out more like a New Super Mario Bros.-esque stereotype, especially with how Lost World liberally borrows its level themes and color schemes (bright yellow desert, sandy beach with palm trees/waterfalls, red/dark brown lava world with dungeons, etc.). Which is ironic, considering that by the time Lost World came out, Nintendo had updated the NSMB art style the recent NSMB game with the Super Mario World-styled NSMBU; which sported a wider range of color schemes and details than the preceding NSMB entries.

 

The first time I saw Ice Cap background (the outside part towards the mini boss) was breath taking and the palettes usage were amazing. I always perfer that than the other zones from 3.

 

Glad to see Chrome Gadget getting more love. Music and Visuals wise, it beat out Endless Mine as my favourite of the 2P Zones, and would love to play a full stage of it someday (as actual Chrome Gadget obvs, not reworked as something like Titanic Monarch ).

I really want to find a piece of music that's similar to Chrome Gadget's BGM but I can never find something that captures that perfect mood and style. Any ideas anyone?

 

Pretty much. The problem with SLW's visuals was that they were trying to ape the look of recent Mario games, rather than staying true to the Sonic series. Said problem extended beyond the graphics, unfortunately.

 

My heart's in Sonic 1's design, especially the Labyrinth Zone. The twangy music and the aesthetics of that level sells it for me so much that nothing TO THIS DAY compares IMO.

Just Sonic 1's design in general. It has that faux 80's-esq art direction, just seems so surreal and somewhat alien and I love it. The only games I felt that rivals this is probably Sonic CD or Nights into Dreams.

 

I love the color palettes and feelings of the first two games. There really hasn't been anything in this series that has felt like them.
I really don't like how 3 looks and I always thought CD, like Chaotix, looked kinda garish and gross.

 

Whereas I feel that like Sonic 1, CD is one of the classic games whose visuals aged the best due to the vibrant and surreal graphics, with Sonic 2's aging the worst, mainly due to its inconsistent art and graphics. Its graphical quality was all over the place; some stages looked great (ARZ, OOZ), while others looked bland (WFZ, CPZ) IMO. Sometimes the quality even seemed to vary within the same zone, like MCZ (nice background, bland foreground), or EHZ, whose level art looked pretty for the most part, but it also had the ugly cave sections, and the bland-looking bridges, waterfalls and badniks (buzzers and mashers felt like a visual downgrade compared to buzz bombers and choppers).

Even leaving aside subjective matters like the quality of the graphics, the art style was wildly inconsistent as a result of the different artists that worked on it. It couldn't decide what clouds, rocks and lava were supposed to look like, and it's hard to believe that the mountains from the ARZ and HTZ backgrounds came from the same game.

 

Yeah, I agree with the sentiment that Hill Top is a little bland. I began to appreciate it considerably more though after the revelation that it was initially meant to be Emerald Hill in the past. Overall Sonic 2 had great themes, but the art direction was too inconsistent. 3K will likely always be the art direction I revere most.

 

In an interview, Yasuhara singled out Labyrinth Zone as a showpiece for the game's graphics.

 

The thing I definitely most adore about classic Sonic's art direction, once it was pointed out by one of the devs in an interview, was the pseudo early CG polygonal look. The leaves of Green Hill's palm trees being polygons except drawn in pixel graphics. I adore that kind of thing so much and in terms of translating to 3D, only Mania's special stage levels have come close to nailing that colorful surrealism.

I agree with this, though I don't think CPZ looks bland. that's for Metropolis Zone

The "lava"/fire?? in Hill Top Zone has always bugged me, forever. It's too feathery-looking to be a liquid but moves too coherently to be fire. I hate everything about that level's aesthetic - including the faux harmonica in the stage music, which I find extremely grating.

Aquatic Ruin Zone has always struck me as oddly inconsistent too for reasons I can't put my finger on still. Something about it is just massively off to me. Edit: come to think of it, it could be that unlike other ruins levels, the "ruins" don't have any kind of real art direction or purpose. It's stone blocks that don't really form anything or make up anything, and the pillars don't fit with them at all. With Hydrocity there is a clear aesthetic, with Marble Zone there is a clear aesthetic, and I just don't see it with Aquatic at all.

Of all the zones in Sonic 2, I think CPZ, OOZ, and MCZ are the most consistent and pretty of all of them. Especially MCZ.

I can't really name any similar problems I have with consistency in S1 or S3&K, come to think of it. Looking back I think Sonic 2 really shows the scars of its very tumultuous dev process.

 

When it comes to Sonic 1 art versus Sonic 2 art, (Specifically the in-game graphics.) I could rant and ramble on for too many hours and who-knows how many paragraphs about my perspectives on their differences. (And perhaps one day I will, haha.)

For this post, however, I'll keep it fairly short and sweet and say this:


Sonic 1 has less Zones than Sonic 2, and Sonic 1 uses less colour variety than Sonic 2... But, in my opinion, Sonic 1 executes what (comparably) little art, colour and Zones it does have, with better refinement and far more consistent execution across the game, compared to Sonic 2.

Sure, Sonic 2 will always objectively have a larger quantity of graphics and content variety, but subjectively I'd argue the execution isn't nearly as consistent across the game. The way I see it, Sonic 1 is like a small yet neatly arranged set of carefully selected colouring pencils on a small table, while Sonic 2 is like an art studio with several mediums comprising of expansive palettes, scattered all over the room with uneven organisation.

In a nutshell, I quite strongly feel that Sonic 1 does better with less, to a certain degree.

I found this on YouTube by Rexeljet quite a long time ago, and personally, I think it would fit like a glove for a theoretical Chrome Gadget Zone Act 2.