M2 putting out a Sonic Advance collection with good emulation (they did well with Wii U GBA VC) would be a good next step. They're well-regarded, despite flaws, and haven't been ported, except for Advance 1 briefly. It's time for 2000s kids to get their due.
So here's my problem with all this Chaotix talk... I still want the original game officially and legally emulated, and all of your remake ideas, while interesting, deviate so much from the original that they still don't solve the problem of Sonic Team making this title inaccessible. Yes, the Taxman remasters changed some things, especially with the stuff I've pointed out in S3, but while a Chaotix remake would be fun and interesting... what about those like me who actually did hunt down a 32X and a cart and enjoyed it on original hardware? Some of us just want to give more people a chance to play the original. This isn't like the OG trilogy being ported in emulation 50 times (and now almost all of those being removed, ironically). Granted, I'd be more supportive of Advanced ports with widescreen and higher resolution assets, personally. The GBA really, really hurts and holds back those games in retrospect, and we could do other fun little bonuses like give them super forms for the stages after beating the finale. Also, as one final point... a lot of this talk of a remake ignores the fact that the Sonic Community itself often inspired what SEGA did with the actual 2D remkaes, and yet almost no decent fan hack of chaotix has ever been made, with the closest being Sonic in Chaotix. I think the community here needs to put a lot more effort into reverse engineering the game itself first in order to give it the kind of revived attention needed to get an actual remake done, not to mention we'd always have the satisfaction of doing it ourselves if SEGA never does. A "Chaotix C.I.R (Carnival Island Remastered)" project of sorts would be amazing in its own rights. Iizuka and the others also seem to wholly disregard the game, even with emulation, much to my frustration. Perhaps they can't properly reverse engineer/document 32x emulation on their own? Helping them with that could also make a difference.
My problem with Chaotix is much like everyone elses problem with it. Too many acts, that all feel way too samey, and levels that are way too big and empty. They wanted to justify the combi ring mechanic and nerfed so many other moves. I've legitimately never had any fun playing Chaotix. Even with 2 players. The music is great, and I am actually quite fond of the special stages, but that's about it. Knuckles looks really weird in the game as well, the rest of the characters have good sprite work. I understand Chaotix seems appealing and it looks good. Realistically there's no reason to not play as Charmy and just fly through all the levels. There's just a lot of flaws. That's why I'd prefer a reimagining over as close a 1:1 remake as possible. A fan made thing like Sonic 3 A.I.R. would probably be the best bet for a more vanilla experience with QOL adjustments and other stuff, but I don't know anyone who is all that passionate about Chaotix. 32X hardware is still not really all that well documented, is it? Isn't it also a pain to work with? If anything I'm more fascinated by the prototypes and development of the game than the game itself.
FWIW I wouldn't mind just a way to play Chaotix on modern consoles as-is. I don't even hate the game, shit, I've 100%ed it twice lol. But I just decided to join in on the discussion on a total re-imagining since it seems that's the path everyone went with in this discussion. I think the REAL reason it hasn't been remade yet by fans btw is because most Sonic fan game devs wouldn't want to go through the hassle of trying to code Chaotix's tether mechanics. Many frameworks exist but a lot of them don't even feature Tails-follow AI, so I wouldn't wish that on anyone unless they were truly dedicated. This is kinda part of why I pushed for a rework of the entire game in the first place; to save the headache and do something simpler. On another note, there'd also have to be a decent amount of building new chunks to use because you can't completely rely on the tiles they made for the original game. Believe me, I've tried using the chunks given in sprite-sheets; you'd have to get to work makeshifting or drawing new sprites for a lot of things to make the level design do much besides quarter-pipes and walls.
Honestly they just need to do the bare minimum and throw them at modern consoles and PC. Not everything's has to get the S1-3K treatment or remake. And for them to go back to fix some of the stuff on Steam. Can't believe you can have a NASA supercomputer and SA2 is still going to be unplayable for you without having to change a million settings and installing mods.
Sonic 1-3k are games that are already great and sega could barely handle keeping them at the baseline quality they released in. I can't imagine what they'd do to one of the less stable entries. I played the Adventure games today and while they're still fun in a vacuum, for such a critical part of Sonic's history they get harder to revisit by the day. I'm not sure what can realistically be done about that though, besides just giving us a port on par with the fan mods that are out there and calling it a day. Remaking them is a project I'm not convinced Sonic Team is ready for. IMO feature creep brought those games down hard, and recreating all of those features from scratch, while improving them and bringing them up to modern standards is a huge task. They may very well end up making a worse game than what we have already. Adding to that, I, personally, cannot get excited about the idea of revisiting more old stories, mechanics and music. New Sonic games need to come out more frequently before they even think about that again. I'm not even sure why the Chaotix is such a huge part of the discussion. The game was a huge commercial failure and honestly the playing experience is so bad that I'm not even sure how you would sell it to somebody outside of packing it in behind a bunch of good games. If what you're seriously suggesting is to salvage the music and the assets and throw out everything else, you might as well just ask for a new game instead. We all want a 'Sonic the Hedgehog 5' so just make the chaotix playable in that alongside the Mania roster and call it a day. That's another thing about video game remakes. Any time one with substantial changes/improvements came along I just ended up wishing those ideas were in a new game instead.
Sega doesn't seem committed to creating entirely new Sonic games. All of their recent titles have recycled and repurposed pre-existing levels. Team Sonic Racing had 21 tracks (7 themes), 9 of them (3 themes) were recycled from the All-Stars Racing games, and 2 of the new themes (Rooftop Run and Planet Wisp) were levels in Sonic Generations. Sonic Mania had 12 Zones, 8 of them were enhanced versions of 16-bit levels. Sonic Forces repurposed Green Hill and Chemical Plant from Sonic Generations. Sonic Frontiers is apparently repurposing even more Sonic Generations and Unleashed levels. If their MO is to repurpose level graphics whenever possible, then they may as well recycle levels from a game with great sprite art that hasn't been revisited before.
The new Sonic Triple Trouble 16-BIT remake looks amazing. I wish Sega would hire its creators and give it an official release.
Oh good god no. After Sonic Origins, as well as their track record with Sonic Adventure and Sonic Colours, I don't want modern SEGA anywhere near the old games. The only game that's come out relatively unscathed from SEGA is Sonic Adventure 2 with Sonic Adventure 2 Battle, and even then the lighting and various effects took a hit. And those are ports. I dread to think what would happen if they actually tried to remake them.
I think Knuckles Chaotix is a game broken at the conceptual level, so a remake would either require to be essentially a new game with reused sprites or just more smooth port. However, I think it deserves to be more accessible, so I would be happy with just emulated port. I think the game that is the most fit for a remake is Sonic Heroes. It's a good game that still looks nice, it doesn't need any big changes aside from Special Stage physics and team battles. However, it needs to be more accessible, it's too good game to be hidden like that. The reason why I think a remake would fit here more than a port is Renderware - it's likely a reason why Sega doesn't bother with new versions of SH that much. It would be also relatively easy to change graphics to modern because Seaside Hill, Ocean Palace, Bingo Highway and Final Fortress have been remade in racing games, Grand Metropolis could be a recolor from Forces and all characters appeared in Generations and Forces. That would mean that only Rail Canyon (which is mostly rails anyway), Frog Forest and Hang Castle would require new assets. Team mechanic could be borrowed from Sonic Forces. If the game was built on top of Forces/Frontiers, then it would also make creation of a team of custom avatars a nice selling point.
You've talked about Sonic 3D but no one has said the most obvious thing: what about a remake of that game in actual 3D? And I don't mean a 1:1 translations of the maps, we had fangames for that and that was lacking. The worst thing of that game weren't the flickies (well, some of them were), but the limited tech the MD had for its concept. Having 3D exploration areas that aren't huge but have enough room to look around for badniks and the birds inside would be a more grounded take (incoming pun not intended but welcome) on Knuckles' adventure playstyle, and it was a game with Sonic as the only playable character, so not unlike most 3D games. They could add some (but not a lot of) stuff so the areas don't feel empty or uninteresting, and, since the original game had these pre-rendered graphics, they could replicate them to get the classic style on real 3D without thinking too much about it.
