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

I'm curious how up-to-date (or not) other people on this forum are on the franchise. I kinda get the feeling that most active posters have most likely played at least up to Generations. Personally, I've never played anything newer than Shadow, haven't played anything newer than SA1 since 2007 and tend to stick to the 91-94 games.

I recently went back and played Sonic Adventure 1. It amazes me how shitty the game feels, having not touched it for years. The controls feel really clunky, Sonic just goes all over the place. The physics feel like shit, the character will spazz out when stepping onto the street from the sidewalk. You can jump into the ceiling and stay stuck there for a brief moment if you continue holding the button.

Then there's the object pop-in, my god it's bad. I've really become accustomed to full view distance in games, I cannot go back. I also cannot accept how horrid the camera is, it is very difficult to control. When I need it to move the most is when it is the least cooperative (like stuck in a tight space).

Some of the level transitions are jarring, especially between sections of Sky Deck. Like, I'll clear the goal of one section, only to be plopped in a completely unrelated place a split-second later. There's also quite a few issues with music cues, sometimes a song will start over midway through a cutscene just because it loaded a new section to show. Other times, when changing songs, it feels jarring because they didn't bother to fade the previous song.

The voice acting and dialog is horrendous. I just use the Japanese voice track, the performances are slightly less shit and I can't cringe as hard when I don't know what they're saying. I like the music though, that part has aged well.

I can't help but feel that the game seriously needed a few more months to be worked on. I have a very hard time enjoying it in its released state. The game also felt much shorter than I remember it. Like, a lot shorter. I finished Sonic's campaign in a couple of hours, and even then I wasn't playing very well. If I actually put effort into it I could probably complete it in an hour or less.

I suppose Aspect's Sonic 2 should probably be disregarded as non-canon, but I do wonder where it fits in if it is canon. The Japanese manual for STI's Sonic 2 states that game is when Sonic and Tails first met. I always thought of Aspect's S2 more fitting as a direct prequel to STI's S2, since Tails should be able to hold his own without getting kidnapped by the time he's able to engage in combat like in STI's game. Of course, it could just as easily take place after STI's game.

If not for potential conflicts in the manual backstories, this is how I'd order the games chronologically. Does anyone else think this is a fitting timeline or do you disagree?

Sonic 1 (hybrid of the Ancient and Sonic Team versions)
Sonic CD
Sonic 2 (Aspect)
Sonic 2 (STI)
Sonic & Tails 1
Sonic & Tails 2
Sonic 3
Sonic & Knuckles
Chaotix

The reason I place the two S&T games before S3K is because Knuckles appears as an antagonist in S&T2 and it wouldn't make sense for him to remain one after the events late in S3K.

This is something I've been thinking about as of late, and I wanted to hear your thoughts on it.

The Aspect engine allowed Sonic to run at 4 pixels per frame and jump roughly 96 pixels tall, just barely able to make it over 3 blocks high. The Ancient engine allowed Sonic to run at 3 pixels per frame and jump roughly 80 pixels tall, but was still able to make it over 3 blocks by "stepping up" by about 16. Despite these differences, it would seem that the physics could be roughly interchangeable without too much negative impact on gameplay (though Aspect's physics may allow Sonic to clear wider gaps). Sonic does accelerate far more quickly than in the MD games, however. He does accelerate at the same speed between Ancient and Aspect physics, just takes longer in the latter due to the higher max speed.

Because of this, I think it'd be best to leave the levels at 1.0x scale vertically. Horizontally, however, I'm not sure what the best solution would be. Rings are often just 16 pixels apart, which is only really seen in SCD (and only on occasion) in the 16-bit line, most of the time it's 24 pixels apart leaving an 8 pixel gap between the far edges. One could leave it horizontally 1.0x scale and allow the acceleration to remain roughly the same, but the 6 pixel max speed would allow him to clear wider gaps, finish levels quicker and as a result make the levels feel too small.

Therefore I thought that maybe 1.5x could be appropriate for maintaining the 48 pixel gap between rings and making the 4 pixel SMS max speed match up with the 6 pixel MD max speed. However, this would result in less view than the SMS games (though still more than the GG view size) and would make the proportions different than as viewed in the SMS games. Another solution could be to do a 1.33x horizontal scale so that it results in the same physical/graphical proportion as viewed in the SMS games, and make for a balance between the discrepancies in max speed vs. acceleration rate. Not sure what it would mean for ring placement, however (though it'd all need to be tweaked by hand anyway given that it's somewhat messy in placement, especially in S2 SMS).

Good approach? Or am I going about it all wrong?

I bought a JVC X'Eye a few years ago on Ebay, listing was roughly $70 said it was refurbished. It's never given me trouble until a bit more recently. The cartridge slot seems faulty, it can't read carts most of the time. I took a microfiber cloth, dampened it with rubbing alcohol* and wrapped it around an old plastic library card I don't use anymore and tried to clean it out that way. It seemed more responsive but still frequently failed, now it's back to working about 8% of the time.

I figured I should do a general internal cleaning for the hell of it. I opened it up and disposed of the flimsy RF shielding** cleaned out a lot of dust and cat hair. To get at everything, I physically took both the MD and MCD boards out as carefully as I could, trying not to disfigure the (rather shitty looking) connecting ribbon cable between the two. Debris-free, I reassembled it. Cartridge slot still working like shit, have to blow to get games to work. I know this causes corrosion, but I figure it's fucked anyway and I wanna play some games on it regardless.

Here's the weird part. The MCD part of the system was working fine for a week or so after that cleaning, but now it either won't start, or will start and run in the background of an MD cart game! The connector piece doesn't look jolted out of place. Given the "refurbished" line in the listing, was it likely that this already had issues merely temporarily fixed? I only got it for $70, and they appear to usually go for much, much more. While certainly a possibility, I hope that my attempted maintenance didn't make anything worse.

Am I likely fucked?

*Isopropyl 70%, did I use the wrong kind?
**perhaps a bad idea, but it was annoying, got in the way, and works just fine without it. Wasn't it just because the FCC is really uptight about that kind of stuff, no matter how unrealistic that it could interfere with other equipment?