Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board: Robjoe - Viewing Profile - Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board

Am I going to have to start checking the Sonic 3 codes on a daily basis?

... or how about Sonic Spinball's?

I'm echoing the "filler" explanation. Little Planet's design might have been sketched out at the start of planning phase when the team was still deciding on level themes, so the presence of features like cacti, mountains, and volcanoes doesn't immediately signify deleted levels.

KingofHarts, on 18 June 2012 - 12:40 AM, said:

I don't see how an entirely fan-imagined version of the level is going to make anyone "shut up". It would be interesting to see, but it'd never be authentic, and would put us no closer to seeing what the developers had in mind for the level. But I'm not convinced that they ever made nearly enough content for a fully fleshed-out Zone anyway, and what they did design was likely not of the highest quality. I recall hearing at one point—on this forum, in fact—that Sonic CD's early development was split up between small pieces of the team, each responsible for planning and drafting a single Zone, and that R2's team was behind schedule, not meeting quality standards, or something to that effect, and the level was cut during the planning phase. I think the only thing we know for sure was that they had decided on a ruins theme for the level, as seen in the credits' infamous deleted scene.

Sure, we all want closure on the R2 debacle, but "Desert Dazzle" would have just felt random and out of place with the rest of the levels appearing just as they did in the original game. If I were Taxman, I'd have dropped it too once Sega professionally green-lit the project. As for adding a level via modding, I still don't think it'd be worth it. Sonic CD is in many ways very distinctive, and such a level would be far better off in an original project. We have no way of knowing what the original team would have done for the level, and we may never even see the scraps that remain, if they've even survived to this day.

As for Final Fever, I'm fairly sure it was meant to be a single-act Zone directly following Metallic Madness act 3 where you would fight the final boss. Sonic CD re-imagines all of Sonic 1's level tropes (Marble excluded, but that's likely where R2 was to come in) and Final Fever would have been the parallel to Final Zone.

The redone art and music is pretty nice—though many songs feel like they lack a bit of the "punch" behind the originals—and I really like the Wily Tower concept, but the engine is an absolute mess. I've been told that the game's code is an total nightmare, looking like it was written by an ASM-illiterate team, and boy does it show. The game struggles to maintain a respectable FPS even in the simplest of scenes. Single projectiles are sometimes enough to make it dip. I recommend giving the original NES version a look. They're far smoother and are a lot more satisfying to play as a result.

As for the difficulty, yeah, I had trouble when I first got into the series years ago too. The trick to defeating the bosses is that they all follow some sort of pattern, or have obvious reactions to what you do (such as Fire Man generally walking when you walk and shooting when you shoot). Once you beat one of them, you'll steal their power, and then it's a matter of finding which boss it's strong against. If you want an easy starting point in Megaman 1, I recommend Bomb Man. His level isn't too hard, and his attacks are easily dodged.

Rika Chou, on 31 March 2012 - 01:26 AM, said:

No it's not.

LOst managed to take Sonic 2—a game that initially fit comfortably within the Mega Drive's 64KB of RAM—and make it hog upwards of 1GB. There is no excuse for this. Seriously, how does it make any amount of sense for a port of Sonic 2 running at 4x its original resolution to be this demanding?

LOst doesn't deserve anyone's respect. He's always been incompetent, and manages to obfuscate that fact by talking with an (artificial) air of secrecy, as if he's up to something legendarily marvelous, when in actuality he just has his head up his ass. The man is as arrogant as he is clueless.

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But it's not about being faithful. The reason it looks like this is because the designers have very limited imaginations. Everything is upscaled by hand, with small amounts of additional detail thrown in at the most random and obscure points.

Tell me, Team S2HD, is adding emeralds to the tree trunks the limit of your artistic imagination? Because that's the vibe I'm getting from this project.