Sonic 1 spikes

I personally think they did it on purpose. Many other games of that time (Megamans, Castlevanias, etc) used to have the spikes as your typical "instant-death hazard", so it didn't surprise me a bit when I saw they did the same in Sonic 1.

Also, the enemies or lava don't kill you instantly right after getting hit, so I guess it must be intentional that the spikes behave in a different way.

 

Megaman games are full of instant death hazards and the cause of many broken NES d-pads in this home.

I too thought the 'bug' was placed there on purpose. I like it personally, it breaks the 'get hit, grab one ring, get hit again, grab ring again' method you can use to get out of most situations.

 

I kinda liked it, since it makes levels like Green Hill that aren't that hard a little harder (Not much but a little).

 

If it was intentional, why did they fix it in Sonic 2, and later in Mega Collection?

 

And in the spindash enabled version in Sonic Jam.

 

Part of me says it was intentional, but then again, drx raises a good question. Regardless, I like the challenge it presents. One of the things I love about editing S1 layouts is the spike bug. Go figure. =O

 

Maybe it was intentional at first, but they replaced it since people kept on thinking that it was a bug.

 

MegaMan 2 is the reason why I own 3 control pads, and the Advantage.



And my opinion on the "bug?" Like the others said, it made it more of a challenge. They probably implemented the "spike fix" for the americans that found the game too hard.

Seriously though, if you were fall on some sharp spikes, would your money go flying into the air, and you start disappearing and reappearing rapidly for a few seconds? =P

 

Megaman 2 is one of my favs! I've beaten it a million times by now and it still never gets old.

I have all my NES games backed-up these days and mostly play them on the dreamcast via emulation. I love having nearly my entire collection on one CD-r, and the dreamcast controller is not that bad for playing NES games. I find myself cheating a lot in megaman though (if you consider using the 'turbo' buttons (X and Y) cheating).

I wish SNES emulation on the dreamcast was better...I'd kill to have Megaman X and X2 running at fullspeed on my DC. I recently picked up an Xbox and I'm going to give emulation a go on it next, just need to buy a big HDD to cram in it first.

 

It had to have been intentional. You think they wouldn't find something obvious like that with all the testing? They could have easily corrected this.

Also, the fix wasn't made till 92 (or was it 93?), when S2 was out. So they probably just wanted to make the games more similar or something.

 

I was just going to say that. They probably "fixed" it to regulate it more. Make the games more alike. Which is why they also added spindash in Jam...

 

That might have been one of those last minute suggestions made by the betatesters to make the game easier. Somebody should mod Sonic 2 to re-include this feature and see if there are notable differences in the game's difficulty (I'm sure that at least Mystic Caves and Metropolis will become much more challenging).


By the way, remember that annoying pit in Mystic Caves, where you must avoid getting your rings so you'll be able to die and restart? It certainly looks like it was designed with the spike "bug" in mind.

Also, there's those new platforms with spikes in one side from MCZ, which were originally given the "spike" properties. I mean, if it was a bug, why to add that same behavior to a new object?

 

True, but do you know how simple it'd be to make a second set of spikes for all directions, in the same object, that carry the "spike bug" properties? It doesn't make sense... arguing either side results in "why they didn't do this" being "too easy to miss" or something similar. It's not a simple argument, for sure...

I remember talking to Stealth once about fixing the "spike bug"... apperantly it was little more than switching the order that a few routines are called in, then adding a compare to check if Sonic was "flashing" (after getting hit). If he was, then the spikes wouldn't do damage until he stopped flashing. It's a simple fix, that's for sure... but easy to miss? I'm not so sure of that either.

Keep in mind that the Sonic 2 Beta spikes also had this "spike bug"... so either that was a leftover, or the "spike bug" may not have been considered much of a bug at that point... I'm betting that they changed the spike properties due to the use of spikes in the Sonic 2 level designs making the game a lot harder to play... I know I got annoyed with that many times while playing the beta, especially in EHZ.

 

I always thought that they did it on purpose to make one more reason why I hate the spikes with an unyeilding passion. I always seem to run into them when I am rolling super fast. Fucks up my coin count. When I get hit and fall back onto them is the worst though. The programers did it on purpose to mess with the players >_>

 

It was a bug I think, the flashing invincibility code obviously wasn't enabled fast enough so you basically landed on another set of spikes and it registered you as having no rings and not invincible so Dead!

DJ

 

That doesn't happen with the lava or enemies.

 

You don't know what your talking about do you?

 

So what actually causes it then?