OK, cool. I'll go through all the demos I have, and try to get them uploaded to Retro CDN, as well as any notes regarding where I originally found them if possible. All of the ones I have are under 500 MB, except for this demo for Sega Rally Revo, which is 957 MB.
It's on Netflix and I tried to watch it this summer; I had to quit before the first episode ended. Had I watched when it was new, I'm not sure if I'd have liked it; probably I would have watched the whole thing if it aired at the same time AoStH and SatAM did, but I don't think it would have worked for me when I was already 18, and it's evident it doesn't do now. I'm genuinely curious, what made you be a fan of it? There were salvageable elements on its premise, but there's only so much that could help against its terrible writing.
I ... I think I watched the episodes with Knuckles in. I think I pretty much ignored the show until those episodes and then filled in after those ones had hooked me. And they were enough of a step up I quality I went back and watched other episodes to catch up. Seriously.- the show has an awful opening couple of episodes but I recall it getting 'slightly' better. Maybe that is a nostalgic half memory though... Yeah, I would rate it as the second weakest of the Sonic cartoon versions though. (Boom and SaTam have an equal place in my heart but for very different reasons; AoSTH was my first, then underground was just there then... Seriously - I just don't see the point in Sonic X)
I remember excitingly setting a tape recording for Sonic Underground when I first saw it scheduled on ITV, watching the episode, then taping over it later that night with an episode of Catchphrase or something like that Still haven't watched the series all the way through.
Sonic Rivals 2 proto supposedly dumped by Obscure Gamers as part of the Christmas terarelease. No other sonic protos afaik, but this one says it's version 0.03 with a build date of October 22, 2007 Can someone who's actually played the game (not me lol) check this out?
A brazilian game channel called Voxel made a list of the best and worst Sonic main titles, based on the scores on Metacritic and GameRankings. Here's what they got: 12- Sonic 06 - 44,5 11- Sonic Forces - 58 10- Sonic Unleashed - 60 09- Sonic Heroes - 68,75 08- Sonic Generations - 76,6 07- Sonic Colors - 78 06- Sonic and Knuckles - 81,75 05- Sonic Mania - 84,75 04- Sonic 1 - 86 03- Sonic Adventure - 87 02- Sonic 2 - 88 01- Sonic 3 / Sonic Adventure 2 - 89
I'd hesitate to use Metacritic/GameRankings because they often include prosumer rankings of items after the fact (e.g., Sega-16)--while that's interesting, I don't know if I'd include those numbers in calculating true ranking averages. For contrast, here's what we have for at the time of publishing rankings: Sonic the Hedgehog (16-bit): 91 Sonic the Hedgehog (GG): 90 Sonic the Hedgehog (MS): 88 Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (16-bit): 92 Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (GG): 86 Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (MS): 92 Sonic 3: 91 Sonic & Knuckles: 86 Sonic Adventure: 92 Sonic Adventure 2: 83 Sonic Heroes: 77 (Xbox), 80 (PS2), 74 (GameCube) ...and honestly, we haven't done a great job of rounding up post-Dreamcast review numbers yet, sooo.
Those Sonic Heroes scores are criminal. How did the worst version of the game end up with the highest score???
Heroes got wayyy better scores than it deserved, but Sonic hadn't fallen to disgrace yet they were willing to cut it slack. Then Unleashed got extremely unfair scores because it came right after 06
I just completed a completed playthrough of the ps3 version. It's biggest fault is it's laggy, but heroes is just as, if not more broken than Unleashed. I guess tbf i realllllyyy don't like Heroes. 2001-2006 was my least favorite era of 3d Sonic (2 DC ports of varying quality, Heroes, Shadow, Riders, and 06 is not a great couple of years. Least the 2d games of that era were ok on the gba/ds). I think I recall Unleashed getting like a 2.5/10 from GameSpot. It's absolutely not that bad. It shouldn't of reviewed like, well, it's not a masterpiece. But it's a 6/10 maybe, 5 at worst if you're super harsh to it. It wasn't optimized for it's generation, it says a lot that it only can finally run at a solid frame rate on the most recent Xbox, a console released 12 years after Unleashed came out (shame the Playstation 3 version will likely never receive such an upgrade due to reasons)
Unleashed was about only half bad, obviously because of the werehog stages. And even then, two thirds of SA2 were bad and it still got positive reviews. I agree Unleashed didn't deserve such a low score.
I don't even think the werehog's gameplay was that bad. The battle music was the dumbest choice ever made (want to enjoy this beautiful soundtrack? Too bad, HAVE SOME MORE OF THAT WACKY SAX) and the character as a character is dumb as hell. But give the gameplay to like Knuckles and modify it slightly and I think it'd be fine. But I get that, after 06, people were wary of stupid ideas from Sega and then here comes a "werehog." Oh and the daytime stages are not without their faults. Savanah Citadel Act 2 (the one where you drift around corners which admittedly would probably work fine with Generations' physics) and Rooftop Run Act 2 (complete 3 laps of the course). Holy shit Rooftop Run Act 2. Worst fucking stage ever due to A. How laggy it is and B. It's a glitchy broken mess. I almost appreciate how difficult Eggmanland was though. They haven't given us that kinda challenge since.
Unleashed's problems aren't just the Werehog, though. The controls aren't good. (E.g., why on Earth is the homing attack mapped to the boost button?) The frame rate is terrible. And oh goodness, the progression is just plain awful. I still like Unleashed and have fun with it from time to time, but I refuse to call it a good game, especially when Colors and Generations exist.
And I'm the only person on earth who can sit down and have a good time with any sonic game (except sonic labyrinth, I still haven't beaten that one to this day) :/
Eh. Homing Attack was just one button change, you can get quickly used to it; Sonic Rush did something similar. The framerate issues are most prominent in the hubs and werehog levels; the daytime levels are pretty playable, except maybe for Eggmanland. Dunno what you mean about the progression, but I loved that it was more open than in previous games. If you're talking about the mandatory medal collecting, then I can see why you would dislike that, but I honestly didn't even know that was a thing until I read it on the internet. I just grabbed nearly every medal I saw during my first playthrough and had enough to beat the story, didn't even have to replay the levels IIRC.
The progression isn't perfect I'll give you that. But idk, it's the last Sonic game where it felt like the plot mattered to the game. Forces tried and... well failed.
Even if we consider that only half of Unleashed was bad (and, you know, half is a lot), the nighttime stages last way longer than the daytime stages. It is more than half if you think about it.