At this point I would prefer a fan remake using the Retro SDK than anything official. The more official you make it, the more it will likely stick to the original's blueprint. Give me the option to play the levels sequently and in order, ending with boss before proceeding to the next, but still giving the player an Origins like classic mode to have the random selector. Same with the combi-catcher. Then it is what most others have said. Adjust the level layout to not be overly samey, add objects and badniks to the levels, and find a way to evolve the gimmicks already present. The lights in Amazing Arena being a prime example. Maybe I'm just insane, but the mention of adding metroidvania elements to the game has got me thinking. What if the character capsules were rewards for beating each boss, in a similar manner to Sonic Advance 3. You start the game with Knuckles, who has gone looking for Sonic and Tails, and comes across Espio. Then you have bomb and heavy as options in the catcher, with empty spots for those not unlocked. Then as you play, you unlock Mighty, Vector, Charmy, Tails and Sonic as you play across the 5 zones. Maybe even throw Ray and Amy in as bonus characters in random zones like they were the Black and White Yoshi's from Yoshi's Story?
Knuckles Chaotix is a game that is really an addition to the existing games, rather than an excellent stand-out experience. It’s more like “oh, you love Sonic? Here’s one to keep you going”. There’s really not much that can be done with the game without completely rehauling it. However, some small quality of life changes can make it feel much nicer overall, such as… 1) Having heavy and bomb less likely to appear. 2) Some weather effects depending on level or time of day. 3) Adding a 7th Chaos Ring (both for longevity and for it to actually make sense plot-wise). 4) Adding final cutscenes to round out the game. 5) Having Sonic and Tails unlocked once the game has been completed along with a cutscene of Sonic and Tails arriving on the biplane, with default Super Sonic if playing directly as Sonic - this could provide a harder difficulty as it would be harder to control whilst still making it fun to breeze through invincible and super. 6) Adding Time Attack mode with unlockable Amy and Ray if certain times are achieved. 7) Unlocking normal play (not tethered). I think this would make the game far more palatable.
I'd also add "having a decent physics engine that resembles the one in the main classic Sonic games" to that list too - even the basic movements of the characters in Chaotix always feel really off to me whenever I give it a try.
I think Heavy and Bomb could be at least a secret / "easter egg" characters in the remake. Oh, also, the remake would be a PERFECT excuse to restore the unused badniks. Seriously, Knuckles' Chaotix has the best badniks design in the Classic / 2D games.
I feel like having more hidden monitors that let you select characters manually would encourage more exploration of the levels. And yeah the badniks are quite creative, just their plotting in the game doesn't nearly make proper use of them. Like there's a cool one (Blitz) that shoots a bunch of homing missiles at you or another (Spiketower) that clings itself to a ceiling and swings around. They're great obstacles, but since there's nothing blocking you and making dealing with them, they're a total non-threat to all the characters being able to dash around the open level.
I already enjoy chaotix as a game but if they ever do port it please fix the damn spin dash. Also I’d prefer either a port or M2 emulation as slowdown is horrendous on original hardware, like getting hit in labyrinth zone underwater bad but it’s every time you get hit. Lastly I think a few more ceilings or spikes to keep you from catapulting yourself into the stratosphere to the exit. Once you learn how the tether works the game becomes piss easy because of that.
https://tcrf.net/Knuckles'_Chaotix/Unused_Sprites For those who haven't seen it, there's a lot of unused animations for this game, including possible sprites for Super Sonic and the Tornado from some (probably) cut ending cutscene. (Also, there's a weird skull sprite there... could that be related to the "skull" mystery we were discussing in the GCZ thread?)
I forgot how awesome these Super Sonic sprites were. Man, visually, I think Knuckles' Chaotix were kinda ahead of its time, gooddamn it. I still can't get enough how good this game looks.
I think there’s absolutely zero chance that we get a full on revamp of the game, but a Retro Engine version with maybe, like, a proper ending instead of the congratulations screen or additional characters would be possible. The most likely way we’ll get Chaotix though is as part of a collection, probably emulated.
Only if it keeps the combi-ring and the level layouts are designed around using it. It can stay in my closet as a paperweight unti- Spoiler What the fuck?!
I get the whole point of game collections and I'm well aware of the current state of the retro gaming market but I would have serious buyer's remorse if I paid more than $20 for Chaotix to be honest.
I kind of like the idea of removing the ring-tether system and just adding a couple springs to spots that you'd get stuck without it. Replace the ring-tether with being able to pick a character that follows you the same way Tails does in Sonic 2 and 3, and have either a button to swap characters, or a single special action you can trigger similar to how you can get Tails to carry Sonic in flight in S3. Throw in the other idea of each boss you defeat unlocking one of the characters, and it would probably turn out pretty well. I think the one major design change I would make that would change up the entire game beyond that, would be to come up with a set of mid-bosses or something. Imagine if each Zone had "Act 1, Act 2, Act 3 & Mid-Boss (unlocks Zone's character), Act 4, Act 5 & Eggman Boss". This would let you keep the level-roulette feature without essentially loading all of the extra characters at the end of the game when you start hitting all of the Act 5 areas. Honestly, for now, I'd just love to see the stages ported to a normal Sonic engine, either modding one of the main Classic games or shoving them into a fan-game engine, and see how things function without the ring-tether mechanic entirely. It would be easier to see what further improvements to make from there if we had that as a starting point.
Who didn't want a game about Knuckles? But Knuckles, just like Shadow, suffers rival syndrome. You can't put him in the same spot as Sonic, because red echidna didn't get the same mascot treatment like blue hedgehog.* Is that what we secretly wanted? Sega switching to a red logo and Knuckles replacing Sonic as the mascot? Because we did get the Knuckles game, and we weren't happy with it. Anyone remember the year of Luigi? I guess that's how it would have went. So would I go for a remake of Chaotix? No, don't think so. Again, Origins DLC should be the way to go. "Games starring Sonic's friends". You could even throw in the Advance games for good measure. *That's why the Knuckles series seems like such a crazy idea to me btw, but anyway!
...I mean, I'd be inclined to say folks weren't happy with it because the end product wasn't that good, rather than because Knuckles as a character somehow doesn't work in the protagonist role. And even ignoring any perceptions of the game's overall quality, it being stuck on an expensive console add-on that most folks didn't have probably didn't help it either...!
My point is: I'm not sure if it was ever meant to be a good game to begin with. You either get Sonic games that look and sound as good as Knuckles Chaotix, or you get Knuckles Chaotix that plays more like the Sonic games: Which would you choose? How would you combine the best of both worlds? Over the course of the years, the Ring gameplay from Chaotix got replaced by treasure hunting as Knuckles' thing. So maybe Mania 2, but choose between different storylines Sonic Adventure style: Choose Knuckles' story and it's basically Chaotix 2. The trick this time is: Characters aren't exclusive to their storylines. So you could play as Knuckles in Sonic and Tails' storyline (S3&K style), but also as Sonic and Tails in Knuckles' storyline (Crackers style).
The ring tether is something I'm really divided on for a Chaotix remake, and deciding what to do about it is maybe the biggest hurdle anyone has to leap over before starting on one. On one hand, it's both the game's main mechanic and, in marketing, the entire gimmick of the game. It's what everyone knows it for (besides it's characters), and anyone who's ever played it is going to remember that if nothing else. On the other, it's a well disliked game for a reason. I like the way the push and pull of winding up a tightened string and launching off feels, and I like picking up your partner and tossing them either to hit stuff or help slingshot you to higher places. Those ideas are neat, and they play into Sonic's core mechanics. It makes sense why it was pitched. But I think Chaotix falls apart with how unruly the partner character is. There's a lot of cumbersome slowing down and aligning their position to utilize any if all of the game's "puzzles". It also doesn't help that their physics are just as influential on movement as yours are, so you yourself spend a lot of time being yanked around, mostly in places you don't want to be. It's just not easy trying to control the positioning of two characters at once like this. Springs don't even work right! That's how busted it is! With that in mind, it's not hard to see why Chaotix is the way it is. There's very few hazards or enemies because it's already frustrating enough to get around them with the tether. The levels don't do much more than quarterpipes-onto-ceilings because (as Crackers, Sonic Classic Heroes and the rare Chaotix romhack prove) you get stuck in loops pretty easily and get flung around if your characters are doing two different things. Chaotix feels like it's left "unfinished" by choice, because there's not much you can do with these limitations put on the player. And that's why I really don't believe the ring tether mechanic should be in a remake. ..UNLESS. Two ideas: 1. The partner character's physics were made more passive. Maybe the ring tether isn't in effect unless pressing the "Hold" button, and otherwise they're following you detached akin to Sonic/Tails in any other classic Sonic game. The only problem I see with this is that it could potentially break the game further if your partner character, now unbound to you, gets in a place it shouldn't be able to reach. Maybe if the partner character reacted as if they were attached to you, but not you to them? You control just fine but they are pulled around. That may make the mechanics feel inconsistent, though. Would need testing.. 2. It were specifically for co-op. While these issues are a frustrating thing for one player on their own to have to haggle with for the entire duration of a game, it's much more entertaining when two people have to learn to cooperate and play similarly to each other in order to complete a stage. And if they don't? They get to flail around and bicker and fumble til they work it out. It's a much more fun, erm, "chaotic" idea for a co-op game. Let me know what you guys think. Because otherwise, I'd suggest a partner system similar to the Triple Trouble 16-bit remake, or the Mania Encore Mode gameplay. That'd far more suit making a proper Sonic game anyways. But I digress.
Loop-de-loops didn't make the cut because of time constraints and difficulty getting them to work. And we could go into all the technical details of that, but the main point is they wanted them. The lack of object placement in levels I think is due to the game being rushed. They didn't even have time to differentiate the maps from one stage to the next. If they intended to revise those maps to make them more unique, they wouldn't want to place too many objects, because that'd just be creating more work for them later. I think the real answer is to actually make the stages more different, add more objects, and maybe cut the stage count down to four (which is still a lot, but I think works for the way the levels are played in varying sequences). Otherwise, as I said earlier, I love Chaotix. The rubber-band mechanics are my favorite part about it and would gladly accept a sequel done the same way.
I mean "difficulty getting them to work" ties into what I was saying. The physics of two separate characters getting caught in different ends of it (something that happens a lot in Crackers and any hack that implements the tether) makes navigating them way too cumbersome. It's an inherent flaw with the way the ring tether works, and part of why it needs to either be axed or redesigned. And I doubt it was rushed to the extent that it couldn't get level design at all. Didn't we get an interview from Tom Kalinske that the game had a long, messy production that ran overtime and overbudget? I mean granted, it's hard to trust anything Kalinske says, but still. I think it's easy to see why the game is so sparse and focused on barreling forward; it's when the game is it's least frustrating to control.
