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Bashing Sonic 1

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by The Joebro64, Jul 16, 2020.

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  1. Aesculapius Piranha

    Aesculapius Piranha

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    Hard to criticize Sonic 1 since behind CD it is my fav Sonic. And yes I am definitely in the momentum manipulation > endless speed camp. Marble Zone was fucking art.
    Things I can think of off the top of my head:
    • Slowdown is horrendous in places on the original hardware. Green Hill Act 3 under the Waterfall for example.
    • Scrap Brain feels disjointed despite being the only level with a kind-of story progression.
    • Despite being my most aesthetically favorite, Star Light could have used more bad guys and less pits, though I am fine with using pits.
    • Labyrinth's pacing was too slow despite being the riskiest feeling of them. Music loop is also the only one that grates on me after a bit too.
    • Too easy: Sonic games aren't hard, and this started the trend. Rings as a mechanic are fucking broken.
    These are the main ones.
     
  2. Bryn2k

    Bryn2k

    Still a thing. Oldbie
    PAL version. PAL VERSION. PAL FUUUUUUUU!!!!!!! Now I've played it on emulators since my youth... I don't know how we coped with the damn thing in 1991 here.

    The spikes thing never really caught me, I never once died to the spike "bug" as a kid, first I knew it was a problem was reading about it online as the Wai proto still had it. It's not great fun in debug mode though, because *you cannot die* and are therefore stuck in a forever collision injury loop.

    Scrap Brain Act 3 being a recoloured Labyrinth is referenced in the later map from 8-bit Sonic 1, which had Labyrinth Zone underneath Scrap Brain. I never had a problem with Scrap Brain Act 3, the shortcut makes it a breeze. Going the long way is just for masochists.

    Labyrinth was very difficult to young me, the boss being the worst bit because if you take the lamp post before the boss, you're likely doing this ring less if you die. In fact, nearly all the lamp posts before bosses mean you're facing Eggman ring-less. Star Light is the absolute worst offender for this because the screen lock engages just as you sail through it from the loop if you've gone through the top path. Does anyone willingly take the lower paths of Star Light with all the death pits?

    Spring Yard's momentum killing elevator sections, those are a pain but not a game breaker. Of course you can get easily crushed, but this is what prepped me for Mania's insta-deaths from crushing. I already knew it happened.

    Marble is easy if you take your time. Yes, Sonic is not always "gotta go fast". That's boring. Some platform challenges are welcome, and given I first had this on a PAL cart, speed wasn't really its selling point was it.
     
  3. Xiao Hayes

    Xiao Hayes

    Classic Eggman art Member
    I still don't know what's the deal with PAL vs NTSC. When I've played in emulators the games I have on console, I haven't noticed a real difference in gameplay.
     
  4. SuperSnoopy

    SuperSnoopy

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    The difference is pretty damn noticeable actually, all games ran slower in Europe until around the late PS2 era.

    Funny someone from Spain wouldn't know about this, you guys had 50hz consoles too right?
     
  5. Xiao Hayes

    Xiao Hayes

    Classic Eggman art Member
    Not saying I don't know, I say I don't notice when playing, which is why I don't get the reason people has to complain about.

    Edit: OK, music. I noticed that with Sonic 1 on the Master System, when I downloaded its music on MP3 I noticed it played faster than I remembered, and I didn't like the change in tempo. I have better things to whine about.
     
    Last edited: Aug 24, 2020
  6. SuperSnoopy

    SuperSnoopy

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    Slice of life visual novel, coming soon...?
    Well speed is kinda Sonicˋs thing, so playing a constantly slowed down version of the games (including the music in Sonic 1’s case) is less than ideal for a lot of people. But you do you.
     
  7. Dek Rollins

    Dek Rollins

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    Sonic 1 is the only one that wasn't optimized for PAL to my knowledge, so playing Sonic 1 and Sonic 2 back to back in PAL should be a night and day difference in speed.
     
  8. I thought that only the music was fixed in later Sonic games, not the gameplay. Very few games during the 8 and 16-bit eras had their gameplay adjusted for PAL, and the few ones that did ended up with discrepancies in the physics, due to precision errors in the fixed-point variables controlling positions and velocities.
     
  9. Dek Rollins

    Dek Rollins

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    It looks like you're right. I recall seeing comparisons a long time ago showing that 2 was adjusted for PAL, but I must've been mixing that up with just the music speed being corrected. I honestly feel bad for European gamers that had to deal with that.
     
  10. DigitalDuck

    DigitalDuck

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    On the other hand, the PAL version runs more smoothly because it has more time to process each frame. There are plenty of spots in Labyrinth Zone (and Hill Top and Mystic Cave in S2) where losing rings makes the 60Hz version slow to a crawl. I didn't remember this happening as a kid, and when I played it back in 50Hz mode I realised it doesn't slow down there. So it's not all bad.

    50Hz optimisation was only really a thing once framerate-independent engines became the norm, and that wasn't until the 360 era. Shenmue is optimised for 50Hz, but not 100% correctly - there are physics differences (if you leave Asia Travel Company and hold run and left, you'll hit the corner of Aida Florist; at 50Hz, it'll bounce you left towards Tomato Mart, but at 60Hz it'll bounce you right towards Lapis) and the game still runs a tiny bit slower. Most fighting games (even recent ones) will still run slower at 50Hz because hit detection etc. is frame-based.

    None of this is relevant though, because from the Dreamcast onwards all consoles support PAL60, as long as your TV also supports it (and every TV made in the last 20 years does).
     
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  11. Xiao Hayes

    Xiao Hayes

    Classic Eggman art Member
    And here we go again with speed, and in no game other than the one people complain about because it's too slow. Seriously, speed is what you get when you master the game, not when you master an NTSC TV. It's about skill when traversing the level, not about boosting to win. But, welcome, 50Hz slowdown, probably you helped me beating special stages in Sonic 2.

    As a side note, there's been games with modern consoles which could run on 60Hz with no issues, yet I chose to run them on 50Hz because I tried both options and I liked that more. Again, there's stuff to worry more about than this one.
     
  12. SuperSnoopy

    SuperSnoopy

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    Slice of life visual novel, coming soon...?
    Meh, I probably won't change your mind about that.
    Still, I'm sure you have a good idea now why people aren't too happy with a slow version of a game that's supposed to be fast.
    No amount of mastery can fix regional differences, after all :P and it's even worse with Sonic 2, since this game is by far the most speed-focused of the Megadrive trilogy.
     
  13. Koutoni

    Koutoni

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    Sonic 1’s US box art basically turned him orange. I genuinely have no idea who went for that, but for some reason it reminds me of the excessive redding of NTSC displays compared to PAL ones.

    On a related note, it’s funny that I couldn’t care less about the music being unoptimised in PAL regions. This is probably down to the fact the levels are slower paced than later instalments anyway. On a side note, the special stages are far more bearable on my eyes than 2 or 3’s.

    In the PAL argument, anything text-heavy on console or considered too Japanese (with more of a strict basis than Americans have on this, given the attitudes now) for some reason would miss the region entirely. People saying “how did Europeans deal with it” - well, most console players at the time weren’t adults unlike in the US and Japan: home PCs were far more the norm until the full-3D/CD-ROM era in the UK at least, though the Mega Drive and Master System thrashed Nintendo due to the latter’s nonexistent coherence with EU developers, etc. - and genres that were popular elsewhere in the world were much less popular here, hence the lack of interest; therefore a lack of will to actually bother dealing with the region properly until the Internet boom of the mid-2000s.
     
    Last edited: Sep 1, 2020
  14. Koutoni

    Koutoni

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    I also always run on 576i, 50Hz too. 480i, 60Hz looks weird especially over an NTSC signal with most LCDs, which is what the PS2 and Xbox do (the GC and Dreamcast on the other hand actually transmit over PAL, which is nowhere near as horrible looking as NTSC, but still suffers from the lower resolution on some LCDs - though the Black Borders are gone).

    Unless you’re really really bothered by the borders and can’t be bothered to change the display settings on your TV, it really doesn’t make much odds whatsoever to be honest as I personally can’t see the difference (25fps and 29.966fps both give fluid motion to the untrained eye, you’d have to be a TAS person or something to genuinely care). As @DigitalDuck hinted there’s more time for games to process each frame too, resulting in less erratic lag. I’d rather a game that plays consistently than one that’s reminiscent of maybe Sonic 1 for GBA, lol.

    (Oh, I expected my posts to merge due to the double post and the fact this is XenForo. Oh well.)
     
  15. TheInvisibleSun

    TheInvisibleSun

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    Relevant:
     
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