Bashing Sonic 1

The Bomb enemies in Star Light Zone should never have been made invincible. They're the only "badnik" like that in the game, and their use in the zone is done almost solely to slow the player down in awkward ways during faster setpieces of platforming near or over bottomless pits. They're the poster children for some of the weakest design in Sonic 1, the worst-case scenario for the game's usually-sporadic bad enemy placement made commonplace. The only reason I could see anyone liking them is because they were the basis for Bomb in Chaotix. Which, to be fair, Bomb's design is pretty simple and charming.

Rest of the game's alright.

 

Sonic 1 for the Master System is FAR better. This is especially obvious in the stages that appear in both games.

Well, it may be due to limitations, but Sonic 1 (MS) is much better staged. There are clear but natural decisions it forces the player to make, and is much more straightforward in its challenges. It makes more out of what it has. Every single act in every single zone is remarkable, whereas it's hard to tell acts apart in the Mega Drive version. The feeling of progression in Sonic 1 (MD) is solid in terms of how you play the stages, but a bit loose thematically, when compared to Sonic 1 (MS).

 

What is this "Sonic 1" you talking about? some prototype thing ? everyone knows that the Sonic series actually started with Sonic 2.

 

I'd like to preface by saying I like Sonic 1 way more than most people, I'd say it's as good as Sonic 2 (for different reasons of course).
The only thing that bothers me is the stage order, you have a weird ping pong of difficulty where Marble is harder than Spring Yard, and Starlight is way easier than Labyrinth.

Talking about Labyrinth...it's kind of a shit stage. So I guess there's two things that bother me about this game.
Still an excellent time imo, and it's absolutely possible to blaze through the levels fairly quickly. I don't agree with the "Sonic 1 isn't fast" mentality I see a lot online.

 

I love the concept. I think the progression in Sonic 1 is rock solid. The fast/slow stage ping pong exacerbates the feeling of being in each one of them. Star Light feels so much more liberating after Labyrinth, but it's also harder than Spring Yard. Which means, amongst fast stages, Star Light is the most dangerous one. This kind of approaach makes Scrap Brain feel like an absolute showdown. Changing the stage order would lessen the impact, because you'd group all fast/curvy/flow stages together and completely separate them from the slow/blocky stages.

 

What annoys me most in this game is its enemy usage. Orbinauts take up a lot of space and they're pretty frequent throughout the game. Caterkillers have buggy hitboxes that constantly lead to mutual damage. Those bombs have no business being invincible or having such a huge explosion radius—I was shocked that Mania not only kept their dumb invincibility but made them take up way more space.

The level design can get a bit repetitive and zones can usually overstay their welcome. It's definitely not as breezy as the 8-bit game, which has a lot of the rough edges sanded off.
I don't mind the difficulty curve that much. I think it's fine to have spikes as long as the overall difficulty level trends upwards. The difficulty curve of this game leads to moments of challenge and relief, which I find interesting.
I wouldn't like Star Light nearly as much if it weren't the penultimate zone. It's a really nice "calm before the storm" level that does still have quite a few dangerous obstacles despite its laid-back nature. Sky Chase gets a lot of hate but I absolutely love it for helping contribute to how Sonic 2's climax is epic in its own little way.

I actually do like this game quite a bit. I can play through most of the tough levels without even getting hit. The art and music have been growing on me. The strangeness in some of the level design can be quite endearing.

 

Had they not made the decision to move Labyrinth from level 2 to level 4, the progression would have felt much more natural (green area to cave ruins to outdoor ruins to city outskirts to city highway to Eggman base). But due to Sonic 1s weird difficulty curve Labyrinth would not have made a good 2nd level. That being said the classic game with the worst sense of progression was Sonic 2.

Sonic 1 is... fine. It's in a similar category to me that like, the Beatles are in. Not my favorite but I respect it for what it was/did.

Boy do I hate Sonic 1s Sonic sprites though, ekkkk. And it loses points for it's badnik reuse. But again it was the 1st game so fair enough.

 

I love his look. I like that it lacks the gross shine that the later sprites would have.

 

Ok I don't care for the shine but I hate the eye shape, the palette, and the walk cycle.

Sonic 2's sprites are my favorite

 

I think the main problem with Sonic 1 is that it's so painfully obvious they spent most of their development time polishing up Green Hill Zone, with the rest of the stages being rushed for release. I mean, it is important that you make sure to leave a good impact with the first stage, but it's clear Sonic Team probably spent a little too much time focusing on that.

I played through Sonic 1 recently, and I found some of the level design after Green Hill to be either boring and generic, or downright unfair even. Labyrinth, Star Light, and ESPECIALLY Scrap Brain suffer from bad object placement. Scrap Brain Act 2 in particular just plasters a bunch of shit in tight corridors pretty often, sometimes over platforms that open and close, and it's so annoying. Star Light's bomb enemies are a pain, along side the fans which are pretty much bugged (i.e. one fan may be facing one way, but it blows in the other direction).

Regarding the slower stages, I don't wouldn't mind them being slower if they weren't so repetitive and have moments where you have to wait for something to happen. Adding something like a spindash would not solve the problem either, like I've heard some people claim, because the stages were not designed around that move (since it didn't exist at the time).

The palettes in the stages after Marble Zone are also pretty drab, especially Labyrinth's (doesn't help that Labyrinth's background is basically almost the same color as the foreground. The prototype background definitely looked better, IMO).

The special stages can lick my ass clean for all I care. Getting to them is bad enough. Bosses are pretty lame (Star Light's was a bit interesting, though). Soundtrack's cool, though.

Regarding Sonic's sprite set, I like it, but they could use some polish and a better palette (I don't really like the prototype palette all that much, though it's definitely better than Sonic 2's palette). I don't really care for the shiny, sometimes inconsistent, and often messy Sonic 2 sprites (though, looking at the development cycle for Sonic 2, I get why they are the way they are), or the goofy looking Sonic 3 sprites with the large ass clown shoes, gloves, and punchable face.

 

all these posts and no one has mentioned the spike feature

 

i hate sonic the only good game was sonic cd for the japanese mega cd but they havent made a single good game since and people continue to support this triple a company when they consistently produce mediocre titles

mario 64 is a good video game

 

I actually played TaxStealth Sonic 1 some time ago on PC, and Labyrinth Zone aside, I actually had a great time! I even got all the emeralds, which I never managed to do earlier.
Now, if only the No Save options were available in a saved game...

 

How the flip did you get past the vetting process? All of your posts are just spam trash...

Anyway, on to the topic.

Sonic 1 is my favourite Sonic game. People bash it for enemy placement but completely forget about the stupid flashing enemies in Mystic Cave Zone, the badly placed seahorses in Oil Ocean, the crab and the mantis enemies in Metropolis Zone. Each game has it’s share of annoying enemies; a good enemy in Sonic is one that slows you down and makes you change your strategy to avoid or destroy it. If you play the game assuming you’ve got a free path ahead of you then you’re going to be in for a bad time.

A bad enemy is one that is largely unavoidable even on repeated playthroughs once level layouts are committed to memory. The caterkiller does sometimes glitch and hurt the player, and I find the bombs in Starlight Zone too liberally and widely placed to be good obstacles.

Those enemies aside, I love Sonic 1: The style, the music, the level tropes, the wackiness of it - the entire aesthetic.

 

No clue what you're talking about. That's the only good post in this thread so far.

I mean, I don't think people forget about those at all, especially all the atrocious examples in Metropolis Zone. Poor enemy placement is probably the most common criticism of the game that I see. Just wait around for the Bashing Sonic 2 thread.

 

You know, once I learned to roll into Caterkillers rather than trying to jump on them, I've never had trouble with them.

That's all I can think to say right now. Maybe I'll add more later.

 

Rolling into them only helps me if I do it slowly. The segments' hitboxes remain active for a fraction of a second (one frame?) after I attack the head and you won't believe how much this has messed me up when I'm going fast.
Thanks to this quirk, those things fill me with more dread than any random enemy ever should.

 

I prefer Sonic 1 (both versions) to Sonic 2 (both versions). At least the level design is interesting.

It does seem to be a victim of a lot of chopping and changing, though, as a result of trying lots of different things and seeing what sticks. I'd like to see a Sonic 1 as originally intended, with all the wacky ideas in.