Sonic Colo(u)rs Ultimate released for Switch, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Epic Games Store

I actually managed to locate the source for the Tails artwork. Likely placeholder, since the article mentions the texture's named as if it was for an object. it's probably something they placed on the old life icon. Also likely not sourced from this exact page, but one of the gross image mirror websites that pop up on Google all the time.

 

It's been quite an eventful night with Sonic Colours Ultimate glitches, that's for sure. Fuck.

I saw quite a number of people on Twitter in disbelief that such drastic, seizure-inducing visual glitches could possibly get past SEGA, and I want to throw out there as a reminder (As well as to notify those unaware.) that not too dissimilar severe graphical issues have occurred in a previous Sonic game: Sonic Lost World. See this pre-patch video, as well as this video.

It's sad that at least one of the Sonic Colours Ultimate videos turned out to be via emulation, as it muddies the water and leads to questioning everything's legitimacy. However, at the same time, based on past Sonic Lost World occurrences, I would definitely not put it past SEGA to time-crunch developers and rush Q.A. processes to the point where at least some of the extreme Sonic Colours Ultimate visual bug videos may in fact be real.

 

So I've been watching this whole thing quite closely.

The first of the big seizure glitches came to light yesterday, only it was 1 person reporting it and offering no explanation how you trigger it.

Since then nobody has been able to re-create it.

Then someone else managed to trigger it, again no explanation as to how they did it.

So even yesterday conversation was circling along the lines of "Yeah these are serious, but how easy are they to trigger if literally only 2 people have publically posted them?"

Well about 9 hours ago, someone was practically blasting the Switch version for a T-pose glitch, and as you say, turns out they were emulating the game and manipulating their tweets to make it seem like it was actual Switch hardware.

So instantly the conversation is "Well nobody on PC/PS4/Xbox has recreated this? Are we sure the other glitches are not caused by emulation?"

Well as of half an hour ago... someone has FINALLY shown how to make the seizure glitch.

And boy does it fall into VERY specific requirements territory.

At the hub world menu, select a planet, back out to hub menu. Select a planet, back out to hub menu.

Repeat the above very very quickly, like don't even give the game time to display the planet world map. And repeat it multiple times with different planets.

Then select a stage and enter the Matrix.

So far it's confirmed on Switch to work. And yes it's serious and yes it absolutely needs patching but... my God... those are some very specific things you have to do.

 

I hope the day 1 patch fixes everything.

 

I would hope the "day 1" patch fixes everything, but the real day 1 was when the general consumer can play it (so Sep 3rd), and so it shouldn't have launched anywhere near this state.

 

I feel like the digital deluxe early access idea was the most absolute terrible thing a Sega executive probably thought up for this release. Still several days to go before the big release for all normal paying customers and all this utter blitz of bugginess, negative word of mouth and general bad PR while Sega tries to remain tightlipped on the whole affair is ample time for people to refund their stuff. And meanwhile every person that paid that little extra gets to be an unnoted and unpaid Q&A tester if there is a day 1 or later sort of patch for a number of these issues.

Even if one person was just running the game emulated to be a shitposter and stir up hell, the damage is already done. Many people are already classifying this as the worst official Switch release period, and major "influencer" reviewers rather than the big sites that get boggled by the terrible presentation and onslaught of bugs are basically throwing this thing in the dumpster bin and comparing it to Dolphin at every other corner. Even SADX didn't fundamentally mess up the game in numerous ways like this did, never mind arbitrary choices and design elements to try to make it feel like a remaster that no one asked for and don't benefit the game at all.

Sega blew their feet off and will probably do their best to brush this under the rug to never be mentioned again, just like Sonic Boom.

 

I can confirm, I've been able to replicate it with this method. Posted a video and an explanation here: https://twitter.com/TGCritique/status/1434444033938518017?s=20

I hate to say it, but I'm kind of suspicious about the people who were sharing this stuff, now. As in, I wonder if they KNEW what they were doing, but were acting like they didn't. Of course, good faith and all, it may still trigger in other circumstances. For instance, it looks like some kind of memory overflow error, where textures aren't streaming in correctly... so maybe that could also happen because of a particularly long play session? But it's odd that you can replicate the effects exactly with this method.

Also, I just read the past few pages, and JESUS CHRIST, you guys are doomers. :P

 

EDIT: Ninja'd by Josh. I'll add in that I'm also able to confirm.

You might be on to something here. I didn't quite get "seizure-inducing" bugs when I tried this (did this on an unmodded, undocked Switch), but I did get a very re-producible significant uptick in graphical glitches:







I would like to note I never experienced any of these bugs above during normal playthrough, I've only experienced these when I followed the steps above to enter the planet hub worlds, exit to the top-level hub world, then exit and repeat, multiple times. Very specific as you noted.

Not to say there hasn't been graphical glitches in general though, like the texture flicker/pop-ins in the distance in Planet Wisp Act 1 & Aquarium Park Act 1 beginnings (you can see both these in Sam's Procrastination Station playthrough on PS4 for example).

I had this occur in Terminal Velocity Act 2 during my first playthrough, completely unprovoked (I think there was videos on this before, it basically flickers a ton and the purple black hole is just a black void like it failed to render the model or texture):



But this was the worst one. I did post a picture of how Spikes during the Egg Nega Wisp fight also had insane bloom. Besides these two I haven't really noticed anything too major during a normal playthrough on Switch. Performance loves to hitch & stutter at some points though, ugh.

Hopefully a "formal day 1" patch roots all of this out. But it does look like at least some visual glitches can be specifically triggered/provoked to occur on a larger scale/frequency.

 

The source of that garbled Terminal Velocity clip mentioned what they were up to before it occurred. [0]

A fairly humane reason for hopping planets quickly. Popping into the world, glancing at the red ring counter, then backpedaling to do so elsewhere.

Someone else commented that Aquarium Park's hub specifically causes issues. [1] Can anyone else who owns the game verify this in anyway?

 

I've been in this YouTube live stream (Seizure warning!) of the Switch version for the past hour or so and honestly, we've been having a total blast seeing all the different wacky graphical shit that's been happening.

What's so interesting to see is that each Terminal Velocity death has resulted in different graphical oddities upon every level restart, haha.

To clarify, we had to go out of our way to deliberately trigger the graphical oddities, via multiple rapid map enter and exit actions, before entering levels. Streamer stated that he was running a modded Switch.

 

I really wanted the Switch version just for portability but after seeing all of this and the reviews there's no way I'm going to buy this until they fix it. I'll continue to play it on Dolphin.

I really hope they don't find a way to butcher the genesis releases next year.....

 

It's not so much they know how to break it. As much as they know how it could break.

For example. Anyone remember the PS3 game Warhawk? That game had a notoriously hard platinum trophy... Until someone figured out you could trick the game to give you trophy progress in solo lobbies.

Trick involved pressing 2 buttons at the same time in multilayer which "Quit" the multiplayer lobby, but selected the multiplayer options... so it carried over into single player.

So double pressing buttons is a common trick to try and fool games. A similar bug occurred in Alien Vs Predators multiplayer mode (ironically a Sega published game).

With this bug. The rapidly entering and exiting menus would potentially result in assets being stored or removed from memory, depending how good or bad the OS is or game code itself is at helping to manage this.

However, if its not working correctly you could result in some funky results, like we're seeing here.

I know I've seen this open and close menu bug in other games in the past, don't ask me to name them they're long forgotten. Usually it just results in lag or some minor errors. So it is a potential bug to try and trigger in a game.

But if it actually would trigger is another question until you try it.

 

Knowing Sega, it might be "no more ports/remasters of old 3D Sonic games".

 

It sort of baffles me that one person went so far as to post their Switch serial number online as a misguided part of an effort to prove that a glitch they've encountered is not only legit but actually reproduceable, and people in this thread went from defensive about the clips' legitimacy to getting defensive about their intentions?

 

So after listening to the new OST, I was not really feeling most of the remixes, but I will echo the praise for Terminal Velocity. I do look forward to the inevitable music selector mod for Colors. Either replace the soundtrack wholesale, or give the option to allow the remixed tracks to play when a song is reused like in later acts or boss fights. I wonder if Colors Wii will start getting more attention with this release, and hopefully more mods too. I heard that Ultimate has Denuvo, but I don't know what that will mean for the mod scene until when/if it is removed.

 

Well that was fast. Here's a playable Metal Sonic mod

 

I hope that's a good sign considering the "don't expect mods" sentiments coming from some in the modding scene.

 

With how quickly this happened it makes me feel like they should have just made him a bonus unlockable a la SADX. I really haven't heard many good things about the Rival Rush mode- people mostly seem to be finding it cheaply-implemented and frustrating.