Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board: Sonic 65 - Viewing Profile - Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board

Whoa, that looks awesome, ArtmeierCompanies! Seems ridiculously ambitious, too. And you're only 14? Reminds me of myself when I was your age. :D

How complete and polished do you plan on making each of the respective "engines"? It'd be amazing if you could actually go inside buildings, talk to the cashier, etc. in the Pokemon part, for example.

My friend just linked this to me, it's cool that he managed to finish what he started but goddamn I've seen better compositing in old B-movies. One of the biggest problems even other than the awful CGI is how tonally jarring the entire thing is; the music and the intro make it out to be some sort of extremely serious situation with five news reports in a row (aren't there any better ways to deliver exposition?), but then Jaleel White starts talking, and then cheesy awful CGI Sonic appears and starts going "WAY PAST COOL", "SEE SUMTHIN YA LIKE" etc. And what the hell was up with the acting? All of it was awful except for Robotnik himself, and even he was ruined by his awful outfit.

Anyway, the best part of the movie was when the girl yelled "BUZZ BOMBERS!" and the camera zoomed in on her shocked face.

ICEknight, on 03 April 2012 - 07:42 AM, said:

Doesn't seem so. Building a complex 3D model with 3DS Max is probably just as or more challenging than playing through Kirby's Dreamland, for example, but the latter is considered a videogame and the former just a program. Even under the other definitions people provided, both are "pursuits or activities with rules," "structured play," etc. (since both are computer programs.) You could even think of many computer programs as sandbox games, like Minecraft's Creative Mode except with a larger range of possibilities. Ultimately I haven't seen an adequate definition anywhere that separates videogames from other types of computer programs without any major inconsistencies, it just seems to be a difference in degree that everyone gets instinctually without being able to put it in words. The difference between a game and a toy is easier to talk about; a game is an activity governed by collection of rules, a toy is just an object.

Volpino said:

C'mon, when was the last time you saw a high-profile game released under the "indie" marketing label get a Metacritic rating below 80%? I can't think of one off the top of my head.

As it stands it's a pretty useless and dumb design decision, but I think it'd be more justifiable if the games had fairly strict level-specific time limits. Something like two to four minutes, varying depending on the level. Could make planning and exploring multiple routes matter a lot more during regular playthroughs, as opposed to just score/time/ring attack (exploration for the sake of exploration isn't very fun.) If linearity becomes a problem then you could balance the routes so that there are many near-optimal routes to take through each level instead of just one (easier said than done, but hey), and you could just have a separate "exploration mode" or whatever if people complained. As it stands the argument claiming the limit is supposed to make the game more "arcade style" doesn't work very well either; it's rare that you'll actually die because of the time limit unless you're going out of your way to cover the entire level (score/ring attack, etc.) An arcade game would have far more strict limits (if it chose to have them) as well as far higher difficulty, and the ring mechanic would probably be axed in that setting as well.

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That'd be because most game journalists/critics will slap a 10/10 score on anything with the word "indie" attached to it. I don't think any of these are very good videogames (though all of them are videogames, without any doubt -- don't know how there's even any debate on that.) The point of games aren't to be challenging, and the challenge argument doesn't even work very well in this context (since the time limit doesn't add much of it if you aren't playing for rings/score), but challenge is a major part of what makes games engaging in the first place (it draws us into the world the game creates, which isn't only done with things like art and sound but also with things like level design, enemy design, etc. that demand the player directs his full attention to the game and what's going on inside it), especially with older 2D titles. This doesn't factor in too much to the Sonic series, but it's a general undercurrent in this thread so I figured I'd say something about it.

This is some awesome stuff, man. It's probably the best "bite-sized challenge" type game I've played, actually (including commercial titles like Super Meat Boy). I love the use of level gimmicks, how manipulating the physics is integrated into level design, how the game turns things that you would just casually dismiss in a regular Sonic game (like Buzz Bombers) into legitimate threats...it's just really clever overall. The Anamanaguchi music is a cool touch too but Helix Nebula should have been last instead of first. =P

I still can't figure out that god damn High Jump, though. It's that and the last level left.