Sonic 1 and 2 getting the Sonic CD treatment by Taxman and Stealth

So this has been posted on the official Sega Blog:

Anyone think this may have an affect the existing classic Sonic remasters? Or the Sonic 4 episodes, due to the games being broken for months and nobody doing anything to fix them up until recently?

 

I don't like to speculate, but part of me wonders whether this is related to the reason that the Sonic 3 Remastered campaign was put on hold. Besides that, it was certainly be a pity if these remakes were taken down, considering they are by far the best versions of the games we have. I doubt SEGA would take them down, though. From the post I get the feeling that they are only taking down some out-of-date games, so I would imagine Sonic 4 is a likely candidate.

 

But the remasters aren't being taken down right?

I can see Sonic 4 being taken down but the remasters work and just got an update, they have no reason to be on the list.

 

That's a relief.
Thinking about it further, I applaud SEGA for finally trimming some of the poorer quality games from their collection (at least on mobile). At least, I hope that this is what they are doing, but I guess its more likely they are trying to save money on updating games... sigh.

 

I don't see how it could have anything to do with Sonic 3. Stealth and Taxman have both said it's a no go. There's no reason why other mobile SEGA games would effect Sonic 3.

I can see no reason why SEGA would take down the Sonic 1&2 remasters. Those versions are far and above SEGA's best mobile games at the moment. It would be madness to remove them.

I'm not even convinced Sonic 4 will be removed. I'm thinking of some of their earlier shitty releases, like Sonic Spinball on the App store.

 

Basically, they killed Sonic 4 entirely. You can no longer buy it on iOS and Android stores.

 

Darn it scaremongers of Retro, don't suggest they'd take down a high-quality Sonic game that works, gets updates, and doesn't hurt their brand. I'd never buy another app from them again if they pulled a stunt like that.

I just bought Sonic 2 Remastered a while ago, got me all worked up for nothing.

 

Maybe Sonic 4 got taken down for Taxman's Sonic 4 Remastered.

</Completely wishful thinking>

 

Completely stupid question but could a theoretical Sonic 4 remastered be done on the Retro Engine?

 

It depends on what you want out of a "Sonic 4 Remastered" really. The Retro Engine is designed for pixel art games (so anything from 8 - 32bit really) so a Sonic 4 "demake" with Chaotix quality art would be no probs. If you just wanted the same 2.5D Sonic 4 but with better everything, I'd either use my own 3D engine (used on my yet to be announce new game), or any of the other industry standard engines like UE4, Unity etc (more likely since there's no way I'd want to do something of that scope with just myself :v:/> )

Getting the Classic-Style gameplay mechanics doesn't need a specific engine, just the right know-how. And of course, that's completely underplaying the importance of level design, which also makes and breaks a Sonic game!

EDIT:
I should say that I personally feel Sonic 4 is a chapter best left closed. There's much more exciting stuff you could do with Classic Sonic not being tied down to it's story or naming expectations.

 

All I'd want is for Egg Station to be a proper level instead of a boss rush. And for White Park 3 to be overhauled.

Music, of course...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSWaK5l3T70

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coT90KVK1gc

...well, I can at least help with the mastering/looping so we don't have a Sonic CD incident again. :specialed:

 

You've mentioned in the past that the Retro Engine is capable of Saturn-esque polygonal visuals. Is your new 3D engine going to be aiming for more recent visual capabilities? Also, upon reading you're working on something new, be aware I will now be watching your Twitter like a hawk :specialed:

 

Yeah, the 3D stuff in the Retro Engine is all done in software, so it intentionally looks primitive. For example, I was going for a "Model 1" look with the Sonic 2 Remastered Special Stages, imagining they'd done some super arcade version of Sonic 2 in an alternate universe :P

The new game I'm working on has high res cartoony graphics. I'd call it Dreamcast+ as far as aesthetic goes. I ended up creating my own 3D engine because UE4 has high system requirements and royalties to pay, and I wanted to continue coding gameplay in the same style I'm used to in C/C++, which Unity doesn't use. I'm still months away from having enough content done to show anything yet, but rest assured I'm eager to reveal it!

 

So I guess we should expect the graphics engine to be akin to the UbiArt Framework engine? Because that would be glorious.

As for Sonic 4 getting delisted on mobile, eh. Not gonna lose sleep over it as those games were far from good (sequels), but it's not like this gesture means anything about what to expect in the future.

 

I wish! heh. Less UbiArt, more Kingdom Hearts, Jet Set Radio. Just some nice colourful diffuse texturing on 3D models. It's a fully 3D game, gameplay wise, so the 2D popup look Rayman has would be difficult for me to do anyway. If Yooka-Laylee is the revival of collectathon 3D platformers. Consider my game to be the antithesis repping the PS1/Dreamcast side.

 

I always love Sega's double standard sometimes. They spew this crap about delisting shit games for the purposes of high quality standards, and then they make more shit games (Sonic Boom, Lost World 3DS). If they did some quality control and didn't rush things, they wouldn't have to delist anything.

This whole thing makes me a bit bummed, As Sonic 4 Ep 2 wasn't that bad. Not perfect, but if Sonic 4 Ep 1 was more like 2 in terms of design and the game was an all in one thing I think Sonic 4 would have been fun. The whole episodic nature was a terrible idea though, and they should be ashamed of that.

 

Their death blow to Sonic 4 came the second they decided to repurpose a 2D Mobile Only game and actually rename it Sonic 4.

 

I agree that Sega are unlikely to take down the remasters, I think they were a success and work perfectly on modern devices as far as I am aware. When it comes to Sonic 4 however, there was over a year when Episode 2 refused to launch on the iOS versions of the time and it is only the most recent iOS update that got it working again. (It is still possible to make it crash if you try to skip a cutscene though.) Episode 1 on iOS on the other hand has always worked perfectly but is extremely low resolution and has very low polygon models unlike in the Android version. The Android version of Episode 2 works fine as far as I am aware, but the most recent version of Android I have is Jellybean, so I can't say for sure if it is compatible with modern versions of Android. Based on quality of gameplay alone however, I don't really think Sonic 4 is so bad that Sega should feel the need to erase it from history.

On the other hand, the mobile version of All Stars Racing Transformed is in a terrible state. The iOS version, although it didn't originally, now regularly force closes on the latest version of iOS (At least on the iPod Touch 5th Generation) and the Android version barely works (and has always been that way) on the majority of devices from what I gather based on reviews. (Neither of my devices can run it properly either) I suspect that it is a very likely candidate for removal. If so, I hope a working version comes out eventually to replace it.

 

The delist here isn't because of the games themselves, though. They're shit in the sense they'll become outdated as the phones update. It's delisting Sonic Adventure from Steam because it's taken from DX, not because it's Sonic Adventure.