Have you tried the suggestion of early Tails, adapted to orange colours, but with white fur on the mouth and belly? At the end of the day, it's your project, though. Do what you like.
This! You’ve got a nice thing going, rather than a big change to what you got, just some minor adjustments.
I got sick and consequently did have a chance to play through this. I had a really good time generally; playing a slightly "off" Sonic 2 with historical basis gave me nostalgia for growing up playing around with the Simon Wai beta (first thing I ever emulated) and it was a lot of fun. There's some things with the art that need tuning up (Wood Zone buzzbombers for one example, but I'm sure you generally know what I'm getting at). I very much enjoyed the new bosses in Sand Shower and whatever Wood is called now, they're not the most extravagant but they do a better job aping the boss design of those first 2 games a lot better than most other attempts (looking at you, Egg Trombone). The new art for those zones looked really really good too and I enjoyed the new art for Emerald Hill and Metropolis. The art for Sand Shower was from Pink Edition, right? It might even look a little "too good" in terms of detail, it looks a lot grittier than other Sonic 2 levels. Looking forward to further updates!
Thank you everybody for responses and experience! And well... it was interesting experience Thank you all for good words about project. We are still work to make a better experience. We did not pursue the goal of getting any prize, but rather to declare ourselves to the world (funny enough that on shc server I was banned after this words), and there were pretty a lot of reviews. It was different, from "OMG best thing in my life" to "authors are morrons, hack is crap, fans of it are crap eaters". Pretty lolz. Also our composer left project recently. We had some creative differences with him, so, he is no longer with us. Also, it means that vacancy is currently open, so, if you'll want.. you know. Also it was a 31 year of S2 last week. Happy bday, I guess. Also we are reimagening some zones, I hope we'll have something to show you later in December, when it will be one year for project. (CNZ currently is in prototype source code, so hud and Tails is different)
Sup y'all, I wanted to write it at same time as previous year, but seems like I will be a bit busy. This is a year since we exist! It was a long way from ideas for S2 Director's cut to my own hack and big team, and even shc. I want to say, that we like Sonic 2 beta, but we want to make our hack a little more fresh and interesting. Making new art, a little bit rebuilding story, and ofcourse references to old times of Sonic 2 beta page, when was a legend about "Pyramid boss in Dust Hill", Spooky GCZ, and master emerald in HPZ Somebody will count it as pros, somebody as cons, idk. I hope you will like it. Also we've got the Sonic Save the moon and Sonic CD DD mod creators as artists, I guess they're making the good job (: Here is also some screenshots to y'all! WZ 2 bg art: Super Sonic 321 and Extra Badnik RWZ, and EHZ act 2 graphics by Extra Badnik Island map graphics by Toxic Foxtrot and Extra Badnik OWZ by Pacca The Satyr, me and foreground by - SyntaxTsundere - Spoiler: Images I wanna thank everyone who ever worked on this. It was a good year for project. In conclusion, I want to wish you a happy new year, a let the life will give you more positive and health, and love, and anything you wish. P.S.: Tails redesign is in progress.
I preferred the brown Tails myself, made it more unique IMO but I guess I was in the minority. Anyways I look forward to more updates on this hack, it's my favorite Sonic 2 hack that adds alpha/beta elements to the final game. Winter Zone looks fantastic and it looks more original and completed than past attempts of the zone in other hacks.
I had a couple of suggestions for this mod that I mentioned in my latest video ( @1:03:46) I don't know if it's within the scope of this hack, but I think it would be best to allow players to choose between the 2 Tails sprites. But if that would be too difficult for a rom hack, I completely understand.
Brown Tails is dead. Yup, officially. We've got so much responses, that we choose to revert it to orange. Also early scan wasn't that brown as I thought, so it's not even canon, lol. Anyway, I came here o say, that most likely, we WILL be on SHC this year. I hope this time we will present you something new. Also, project a bit..changed. If the last time we met here- we were saying that it will be usual S2 beta hack with some improvements, today I'm gonna tell ya that now archives is also about big polishing of original game. We will redraw some graphics, fix some bugs (as well as making some new, AHAHAHAH!!!). Also we called interesting composer to make make some new music for some new zones! I'm not sure if we will show the past timeline to you, but Ocean Wind with boss will be done. However, if we will think that we have not enough content to show- we won't be on this SHC. Screenshots:
I'm a bit worried that this is taking on more than you can chew. I'd recommend to leave this for last.
Greetings, ladies and gentlemen! Today I wanna present you a trailer of the Sonic 2: Archives. You could see it at SHC spotlight presentation. Wait for this September, to play new revision of our romhack!
I was just replaying this earlier this week, was really happy to see that new trailer. I really love this take on Sonic 2. The original was the first game I ever played but these days I never want to play it over the other classic games. This version makes it more appealing to me somehow. Gonna keep cheering y'all over the finish line, keep up the great work!
Oh wow, this looks incredible! The reimagined graphics for both final and cut stages look absolutely gorgeous, and is that a completely original take on Warp Point I'm seeing at 0:57? And while you've showed that world map previously, I just can't get over how beautiful it looks. I especially love how it implements the background graphics of each zone, such as the island from Emerald Hill and the mesas of Sand Shower.
Heya people! I cane here to remind, that during this SHC we are LIVE THAN EVER! In few hours the link on image will be working
Just wanted to let you know that I've played through this twice and am fairly impressed by what you have so far. Ocean Wind and Tropical Sun are both quite beautiful and well built. And I'm impressed with the Warp Zone concept, even if I'm not yet fully sold on what it was meant to be in the original. Little things like the way you choose to use the infamous track 10 are simple but effective. This all feels reasonably accurate to everything we know about the original Sonic 2 outline so far. Wood and Sand Shower are great as well, though I've now played so many versions of them over the years it's hard to not let all the versions blur together and know what to critique, or pick a favorite interpretation. What I will say is that this hack overall seems to be a strong representation of what the original Sonic 2 concept could have been. I look forward to seeing how you guys eventually handle Cyber City/Rock Zone/Blue Lake/Mountain Madness, given what we know. My only regret is that I can't play a version of this hack in the retro engine currently or get more modern sonic abilities as an option, but outside of that, this is great.
Played through it, here's my impressions: I think this is the closest any fan project has gotten to realizing what Yasuhara and Yamaguchi's earlier vision of the game could've panned out, warts and all. I still think that 3 tropical Zones is overkill and that the wall recoil mechanic is incredibly stupid, but I respect the faithfulness. S3&K-style Act 2 backgrounds is already a cool idea, but the time of day changing as you progress is a genuinely brilliant addition. The day/night cycle was such a cool albeit underutilized part of Chaotix, and I love seeing a similar concept here. The music is largely a mixed bag, mainly due to ill-fitting instrumentation conflicting with brilliantly composed tracks. I absolutely love Tropical Sun's music, but the percussion makes it sound like it's being recorded on an early 2000s Nokia phone underwater. And while I respect faithfulness to Masa's demo in Metropolis Act 1, it sounds a bit too Spinball-y to me. Ocean Wind's track just sucks in general, I'm sorry. The level design is pretty good in general, but Sand Shower especially is excellent and really feels like an actual Sonic 2 level. That being said, there's a glitch where the sand "conveyor belts" pushing you into a corner can make you unable to jump out. While the spritework is excellent in general, some Zones could use with more color variety. For instance, the foreground of Ocean Wind is way too brown while the background of Tropical Sun is way too green. And this might be something that's planned already, but the backgrounds of Warp Point and Aquatic Ruin Act 2 could do with some parallax layers. So you can't go back to the island map once you've picked a level, right? Because I was wondering if the Past had a map screen too, but I couldn't find one. That about does it. Really looking forward to later demos and the eventual full release!
I think Tropical Sun's concept art would work better in regards to color contrast. It would be cool IMO if the 1st act was on the shores like the concept, then act 2 transitions deeper into the forest. Also have to agree with the Ocean Wind track. I really like Tropical Sun and (Jungle) Wood's tracks but Ocean Wind is just not very good. However I really do like the repurposing of Oil Ocean's scaffolding in Ocean Wind to be made of wood, it really fits the level and gives a more clear connection to the aforementioned level.
Damn, I thought Ocean Wind's music was okay. It's not the hottest track in the world but it's catchy enough that it was stuck in my head a few days after playing through, and in a game already full of stupid penis music like Hill Top and Emerald Hill 2P it fits just fine. I really enjoyed the new demo, I need to play it again and try some different paths and write down more of my specific thoughts but generally I had a fabulous time and I'm really impressed with the work the team is putting in to make this the ideal Sonic 2 and the improvement shown over last year. It really does feel like the Sonic 2 we might have gotten if they had an extra year of dev time without the Japanese devs pulling rank on STI over everything. The intention of everything feels correct and soulful. And the new level layouts are just fantastic, natural and fluid and fun, very official feeling. Itching for another go sometime this week and I'll be back with more thoughts.
Thank you for all your support, guys! We sure will be back, and next time we will be even better! P.S.: Ocean Wind will get new music
