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

In before the the cutscenes get re-rendered and dialogue is recorded from the new voice cast.

I mean, SEGA are going to the effort to include new languages dubs here. It's literally the only thing we know about this game so far and... I dunno, it's a long shot, but it's possible. They'll have to do something about the fact that Colours cutscenes are all 480p pre-rendered videos. They could upscale and filter them (always a sloppy solution), use the master videos (if they still exist and are of a higher quality) or remake the cutscenes entirely. I just find it rather surprising that they are bothering at all to add in other language dubs for this title.

 

Additional dubbing doesn't really equate to rerecording the game with the new cast. This is a budget release for Sega, they're adding in additional dubbing to make it more appealing internationally, but ultimately they're probably going to reuse the same recordings from before since it's cheaper. As soon as you rerecord dialogue for cutscenes, you have to rerecord and reprogram voices for the entire rest of the game. That's additional money that unlike money put into stuff like the German dub, isn't going to return their investment or earn them profit.

 

I think a lot of it was timing for both the past adoration and current growing disdain for the game.

Back in 2010 a decent Sonic game was enough. Unleashed was considered mediocre by many at the time, and 06 still lingered on the franchise. A game that was worth beating at least ONCE was all we needed and we got that with Colors. Colors is the reason I started caring about Sonic again and beat a lot of the older games again and became an engrossed stan once again.

I started falling out of love with the franchise again after years and years of mediocrity following Generations (I stand by Lost World being underappreciated though) except for Mania which I still replayed constantly. There was nothing tying me to the franchise anymore and I moved on with my feelings at the time for anything I played being my current ones.

2020 was the release of the Sonic movie and it was just like Colors...okay enough that I was interested in Sonic again. I feel a lot of fans came back after the movie, and because Covid gave them nothing better to do, they went back and replayed the games with an older new mindset.

I gained new appreciation for Sonic Adventure 2 and what it was trying to accomplish. I got really good at Riders 1 which I feel deserved better than the sequels it ended up getting. Finally got to play Rivals 2 and see how underappreciated it was. There were a lot of opinions I had that switched in a good way, and I appreciated Sonic's ability to take risks more than ever before.


I also got old enough to know filler is NOT a necessary evil and realized Colors was full of it and didn't need to be. It also didn't help that the good levels still felt empty and corridor filled. I then remembered I felt all this at the time, I just figured Colors would be a new Sonic 1. Not great anymore but if not for it we wouldn't have all the future classics we do. Only to have Generations really take what it did and better it.

If Forces had been a 10/10 experience and improved on everything Generations did, I still feel Colors reception wouldn't be as high as it used to be merely because it felt like a stepping stone and is now seen as a pinnacle of the boost format. Which hurts both it and the boost style's reputation in the long run more than it ever should.

 

I agree with some here that Colors was definitely a right place, right time thing. Even I remember thinking it was really solid 10 years ago. Now I don't feel that way anymore. However, I did think the people who said Colors was better than Generations were always nuts. However, the things I do like about Colors are the environments in the game and seeing those with higher quality textures and in HD would be a nice treat. I always wondered if it's reliance on 2D was both Sonic Team trying to capitalize on that trend at the time but also adhering to the limitations of the Wii in some sense. I could be wrong, but sometimes it felt like it was a little bit of both.

 

Hey, remember when you said this before, and I said "that's a stupid argument there's only like half an hour of 2D gameplay in S3K and that was two games" and you were like "nuh-uh there's no way there's less than an hour" and I was like "no way" and you were like "prove it" and I was like "okay I did it it's actually 42 minutes I was close that's only 21 minutes per game" and you were like "er... well Colours is stupid shut up"?

Yeah, let's not do this every time.

EDIT: that's the wrong link, fixed

 

I disagree with Mana that Sonic is running through empty hallways now, but this video is hilariously unfair. Do bosses not count as '2D gameplay'? They're in 2D, and you're playing the game. You're also obviously skilled at the games and so can do them a lot quicker than most people probably could. That factors in too. Also, I shouldn't need to say this but there is no dominant alternative to the 2D gameplay in the classics. That obviously re-contextualizes Mana's statement, as you could remark that, by comparison, the 3D sections do feel relatively few and far between in comparison to the other.

 

I enjoyed colours, it has a few rough moments and I could never get the feel down for platforming with such strong air friction but the game is great and deserves a HD release. I'd be happy with just an up res and some texture improvements so that's all I am going to expect until it's shown off officially.

 

If there's any additional content here thar has dialogue from Sonic, it won't be from Smith.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not expecting them to re-do all the voice work for absolutely no reason. It's just that, depending on what this remaster entails, it's not exactly beyond the realm of possibility. And I'm especially interested to see how SEGA handle the cutscenes. If the cutscenes could be in real-time and in-engine, that would be great. As I said before, the Wii cutscenes are 480p 30fps pre-rendered videos. Maybe the original masters exist at a higher resolution, like 720p or 1080p and at 60fps, but I doubt that they'd be higher resolution than that for a game made in 2010. Upscaling the original video files is always a possibility, though. The cutscenes in recent Sonic games have all been pre-rendered anyway, excluding those with the Avatar in Forces.

 

You were bringing up Sonic 3's special stages and mentioning how that game only had a few minutes of 3D, like it mattered, and the only reason I stopped arguing with you about it is because it was tiring trying to make you realize that nobody considers Sonic 3 to be a 3D game and it was expected to be primarily be in 2D and was. That's called false equivalency.

I will do it every time because we're talking about Sonic Colors and not Sonic 3 and K. I am judging Sonic Colors on it's own merits. I do not think a game that sells itself as a 3D platformer should be 2 hours long and have only 22 minutes of 3D. I still do not.

Edit : I didn't even watch the video in full until now. You're good at the game and obviously know the stages. That factors in to how fast you beat the game as well. You also used Super. Several times. Come on bro.

 

My reasonable wish for this rerelease: Super Sonic is fully functioning
My "not expecting this of SEGA" wish: Classic mode that lets you skip the cutscenes and maps and recombines the separated levels where appropriate
My "not in million years" wish: Episode Knuckles where you play as Knuckles and the rerelease is called Sonic Colors & Knuckles

I don't think this is gonna be much more than a Dolphin port. They probably will put slightly more effort into it than Nintendo did into 3D All-Stars though.

 

I'm not a fan of Colors myself, but how exactly does a game "sell itself" as one thing or another? The game is predominantly 2D. That doesn't strike me as a game that's saying "look at me, I'm a 3D platformer". Unless we're talking about how the game was marketed and advertised (I don't remember if it was marketed as one or the other), which is fair, but that's no longer judging the game squarely on its own merits. Unless I'm misreading your point, I'm reminded of people berating Sonic 1 because "it sold itself as a game about going fast, and there are slower platforming sections"; which is a fair knock against the marketing, but it's divorced from what merits the game itself has (or lacks).

I think it was a mistake to lean more onto the 2D sections of Unleashed's Daytime gameplay rather than the behind-the-back, Boosting and Drifting, racing component of it. But even setting my fandom baggage aside, Colors is just a mediocre 2D platformer to me. If it didn't feature a cartoon character I've been a fan of since before I can remember, it would just blend in with the rest of the sea of mediocre 2.5D platformers made in the last roughly ten years.

At least that's my current take on the existing memories I have of playing the game. I'd need to replay it again to have a more confident assessment of it. Which works because I'm thinking of doing a long replay of the series anyway. But as it stands right now, I'd rather see Unleashed, Generations, and Forces packaged together in a trilogy.

 

This is from SEGA themselves calling it the game that finally had Sonic find his 3D footings. It was considered to be a 3D platformer, despite the huge amount of 2D. I don't think the advertising had to mention it that when the 3D was supposed to be the main draw as well, too?

I also agree with you that if you call Colors a 2D game as it's mostly played in 2D, it's still mediocre from that standpoint as well. I think Forces is a far superior game than Colors as well and that says a lot.

 

You know, guys, I'm starting to think Mana's not all that fond of Colors...

Or, since sarcasm in text is hard: WE FUCKING GET IT DUDE. YOU DON'T LIKE COLORS.

 

Someone asked for clarification on my meaning and mentioned their own thoughts on the game that I agreed with.

It's not like I just keep coming in here to hate on the game. I've given it plenty of praise for its importance to the franchise as well.

 

This is unlikely, but merging the original acts 1 and 2 as originally planned and making the filler acts optional would make the game flow a lot better. That doesn’t solve gameplay problems, but it reduces a lot of what felt terrible/bland in the level design.

I think given the new consoles being powerful enough, I would’ve preferred an Unleashed port though, assuming the 4k craze didn’t go to Sega’s head and lead them to release a port with framerate issues...due to the higher resolution.

 

That video comparison is actually hilariously irrelevant and ignores the person's point altogether, which is that most of a 3D Sonic game (Colors) is 2D. That's not necessarily a bad thing, so I don't see why we need to wave a shiny object around to distract from the fact that it's true. The Sonic 3K argument is literally devoid of any value because you are talking about the length of the actual full game, not the % of the game that is 2D.

Colors is mostly 2D and advertised as a 3D game. Sonic 3K is mostly 2D and advertised as a 2D game. The 3D Blue Sphere stages do not even come close to making up the majority of the game, nor are they even the main campaign.

Someone said "this bag of chips is mostly air!" and you effectively posted a video of a balloon and said "well this one is mostly air too!".


FWIW, I actually really liked that a lot of the game was 2D as a kid because I loved the Rush games and wanted to play more of that. It doesn't have to be a bad thing.

 

FWIW this is how Sega actually describes the game:

I imagine you would probably take umbrage with the "perfect blend" portion of that, but Sega hardly pulled a fast one on anybody. In fact, every mainline Sonic game since Unleashed (so Colors, Generations, Lost World and Forces) features the same 2D/3D hybrid kind of gameplay. At this point I'm going to assume that's just what the next "3D Sonic" will be as well. It seems to me like Sega views the "classic" gameplay as strictly 2D, but the "modern" gameplay as hybrid (arguably mostly 2D with some 3D spectacle).

 

I think there is an interesting point to make that Colors and Generations being so short is not incomparable with Sonic games often being short outside of a few exceptions.

But yeah, the central point is that Colors has a significant amount of 2D in it. The ratio of 2D to 3D isn't comparable to the length of Sonic 3. Unless we are going to add Blue Spheres into the mix, but they are special stages and don't necessarily have to be done. I would agree though that Mania using Blue Spheres was a mistake precisely because of how much it disrupted the game. So if we are using that as a parallel, I'd say that yeah, I don't think it's any better when Classic style games do it either lol.

 

The length I think is mixed up with how much effort/energy is put into it.

The amount of effort it takes to run through Sonic 3K is pretty intensive; you'll be spending most of it quickly deciding to roll down hills, rev up a Spin Dash, attack enemies (or phase through them with the insta-shield), learning how to navigate through things bouncing you every which way, and mashing up bosses. The only downtime is the signpost, and that's only a few seconds each. It's pretty jam-packed.

Colors meanwhile spends a lot of those minutes in downtime, either through cutscenes or menu navigation. If you cut those out of the game (particularly by playing Egg Shuttle), you get something you can get through in a little over an hour. Cut out the filler acts (everything but Acts 1 & 2 for each stage, basically) and you have a game that reaches sub-30. And even then, a lot of gameplay is spent in downtime itself. Many stages have long areas where the only objective is to do a single thing (run forward, dodge things, drift, platform up these blocks) without much else to do.

In other words, S3K is engaging for all 1.5 hours you spend with it, making it a hefty game to get through. Colors is engaging with maybe 30 of those minutes, or 15 when streamlined to just Acts 1 & 2.