Sonic Before the Sequel'12 - Released with OST

The "U" button does skip the stage, but it carries over the XY coordinates, which is probably even worse since using it will have you in an area when the goalpost in inaccessible and on a 3rd act will usually end in death upon loading the boss stage.

 

Hey big shoutout to the folks who created the AMAZING soundtrack (seriously, Sonic CD style greatness), and of course the game itself, best fangame ever in my opinion, and one of my favorite sonic games period.

 

Can I request standalone downloads of the Lost Levels Act 3, Fire and Ice versions? I'm unsure if there's a way to extract them from the EXE.

Also the soundtrack is awesome, great work to everyone involved, I've listened to it countless times.

 

I've been listening to the OST obsessively for weeks now... Falk and the other musicians, I love you. <3

 

Well, this may be a month late, but the level is actually beatable legitimately, you just have to be really really quick. I can't remember exactly how I did it, but I think I just didn't wait at all on that level and went up to the next one above it to get the bubble there.

One way or another, I was able to beat it legitimately, and I'm not that good of a player :P

 

I'd be able to do it too, but for some reason it doesn't always register me touching the air bubble, so I still drown even when I shouldn't. I already beat the game, except for that one level, so it's not that big of a deal anymore. (at least for me, I don't tend to replay these all too much. Though I do listen to the soundtrack) It would still be nice if it was fixed, though. It really sucks that such a good game has such a horrible glitch left in.

 

Man, I love this game's OST! I especially love Unstoppable, Flying High and the main theme in general!
As for the game, I didn't like Perilous Paradise too much. The bubble spawning times (much less frequent than, say, Sonic 2), drowning timer (10 seconds, if I recall. Sonic 2's should be about 30 secs.) and bugs in collision with bubbles (I swear I died despite touching the bubble. Loads of times.) just can't be made up for by the upbeat, Kirby-like BGM and the scariest rendition of the drowning theme. I hope you'll fix them in After the Sequel. I liked Fortress Flow, thugh. The double jump is cool, even though its range is a bit too low, in my opinion.
I also didn't really like Arcane Altitude, though that's probably due to my laggy computer.
Other than that, the game's amazing! Definitely feels like a SEGA game back in the Genesis era, and I loved how the levels were designed around the slightly different physics, instead of trying to hide the differences and obviously failing.
Keep the great work up, LakeFeperd, Falk, Ristar and the rest of the music crew!

 

As a game music aficionado, the release of the soundtrack drew me in to this thread, and I was not disappointed at all. The music is very well written and produced, and I love the way various classic Sonic themes have been subtly incorporated. Getting praise from Jun Senoue is an amazing accolade and you absolutely deserve it. I can only hope to get that good some day.

With that, I'm off to try the game itself.

 

You've done great work on this fangame! The gameplay is not perfect-let's get that out of the way first. Sometimes, the level design can feel bland and the physics and controls feel a bit.....off for lack of a better world (though you may be able to blame that on the Sonic Worlds engine itself). But I think that everything else about the game makes up for it. The story, while simple, does a good job adding fanon in between Sonic 1 and 2, and I love the flash-animated cutscenes. The graphics feel Sonic-y as well. And the music.....oh god the music...It's just great. A awesome blending of Sonic CD and SA1-style music comes together in this amazing OST. All in all, awesome fangame and can't wait for ATS!

 

So... I finally got around to playing this, having kinda spoiled the good ending.

First off, the soundtrack is AMAZING, as is the programming related to it. I was just dumbstruck when I hit the fuzzies (who doesn't), and head the music go nuts right along with the Mushroom Samba on screen. And then, in Lost Levels 2, when the music changed seamlessly... I knew the game was a pure winner in this department. If I had to find one thing to suggest here, it would be to redo the cutscenes with the original soundtrack instead of the previous version's ripped music.

Gameplay, even with the known limitations of the program used for it, could stand to be better, though. Sonic felt... rather 'fat', as he felt as if he had more inertia than normal.

I also felt a bit cheated at times, as I'd drop an item box to where I know ground would be under it (though off-screen), and when I went back to get it, the object would be deleted instead of being there waiting for me. Conversely, enemy projectiles would seem to pause when going off the screen, even if their spawner was destroyed (enemies in the 'star collection' area come to mind right off the bat here). In an 'official' Sonic game, this would be reversed.

In general, the challenge was fair, but a few areas stick out as being horrendously dickish. First off, Perilous Paradise. Those cannons hidden in the walls. Bad move. Getting hit by an enemy you can barely see, let alone get to is the definition of cheap. Don't do that. Titanic Tower 3 has you jumping from small platform to small platform, with some having spikes, and if you fall, you're all the way back to the start of the section, and likely without any rings. Also bad layout. You also want to find some way to allow the player to get out of being iced, or just stop their horizontal movement entirely. Being forced to 'let go', and likely falling down before getting 'hurt' is also unfair. You don't even really get an opportunity to know you did anything wrong until you're out of range of those freezers. Batbrains were already used as regular enemies already. Don't change the rules on people and make them indestructible bombs. Those hits are uncalled for. Finally, there should be more rings available in Arcane Altitude. It got to the point where you only rarely saw groups, and some sections felt like lame endurance tests, making those difficulty spikes feel unnatural and lazy.

Boss difficulty was also mostly fair, except for having 'Advance 2 Syndrome' (all bosses being fought while running). That's okay if it's done sparingly (Mushroom Hill's boss was unique in that aspect, but when it happened in Advance 2 for every last boss, it got tiring), and ironically, Tails's first two bosses, and Sonic's final boss stood out for being in stationary fields.


Graphics... well, it's a mixed bag. Anyone who's played the 16-bit titles enough can recognize all recycled elements, and all of the original enemies clashed with the Genesis art style, some more so than others (the water guns). I'm not a fan of the Advance-style sprite rotation, but I'm not enough of an asshole to count that against anything either. I did like some of the smaller touches, such as the 'MagiMantis' sweating bullets when you get behind it, and transitions between major areas, like seen in Hilltop Heights or Lost Levels 3 are handled very well.

New background art, on the other hand, worked very well. Whoever did the new BG art, keep them around for future games.


Bugs, however, are more frequent than they should be. I had my own brush with unbreatheable bubbles in Perilous Paradise (a generator in the pipe with a hole in the corner. Tried to swim into it, and nothing), and managed to glitch the True Final Boss twice after defeat, the first time sticking the game on a white screen and causing me to die (results never came up), and then right after, I got stuck in a 'hurt' loop when defeating it, though this time, the results screen did appear, just causing the 'pierce' sound effect to play repeatedly. The other major bug was that invincibility refused to play by established rules, leaving me to wonder why it's even in there.


Lastly, maybe this 'Time Points' stat at the end needs explained. Whatever they were, my playthough had 214 at the end. If that's really good, I don't know.


And of course, since it's almost expected.. the X-of-10 rating...

Graphics: 7/10
Sound: 9/10
Controls: 7/10
Challenge: 8/10

Overall: 8/10

 

@Tiberious

thanks for the feedback =)
the time points thing is juat a leftover from the 2011 release and an excuse to show the world map. but as far as I remember, you start with about 3000 and 1 is subtracted from the counter after each 2 seconds.
it was the way to get the good ending in the 2011 release, but I thought it was a bit too stupid.

 

I really think most of the negatives I pointed out are caused by the engine being pushed to its limits. That said, if I had to suggest an alternative engine, I'd recommend E02, as it has Sonic physics nailed (just careful with the Tails player object. There's an oversight in the Mettrix one that lets him get insane air with flight; the only departure from the Sonic physics I've noticed, and if I knew how to fix it, I would). Not only that, but it could then even be loaded on consoles (E02 has a Wii port, for sure), meaning you could actually play it like it was intended, with a gamepad and on the TV.


I know my review sounded harsh, emphasizing the negatives, but my intention is to call those out so that they can be learned from and avoided in future endeavors.


I do like how when a new element was introduced, the 'tutorial' showed up as a holographic illustration in the background. That was pretty clever, as they got their point across instantly and without getting in the way.

 

@Tiberious
well... when it comes to engines, it's a very complicated thing.
the reason why I use MMF2 and sonic worlds is because they both are really easy to use and don't require any knowladge of scripting, just basic programing. that sometimes limits what you can do with it, but to me, it's better than not doing it at all. (you can still do quite a lot though.)
while E02 looks really good an plays really well, I'll be more limited using it because I don't know how, and learning it would take a few months.

 

By the way, I've tracked down the cause of the TFB bug that cost me a life before. It's the same thing that plagues the Final Zone boss in Sonic 1, oddly enough. You trigger it by being super-aggressive against the boss. Getting an extra hit before the results halts the fade-to-white, but not the timer or ring countdown. You can keep grabbing rings (and getting to 100 does not grant an extra life), or even keep hitting the now-defenseless boss, but it seems there's no actual defeating him. Even a Time Over won't help (the clock rolls after 9:59).

Best way to fix that is have the boss go completely invulnerable as soon as the final hit is landed (like they do on the Genesis).

 

Since I've started making MIDIs as a way to practice my ability to transcribe, I decided to tribute one of my favorite tracks from SBtS's OST, Rolling Out, in Genesis form.


I think it came out well, for a first attempt. I don't know if I'll be trying any other SBtS or SAtS tracks anytime soon, but if I do it probably won't be a Falk track; 2 complex 4 me. @_@

 

I like this game a lot, especially the soundtrack, but the last two bosses are starting to make me hold nothing but contempt for it. (SPOILERS BELOW)

I just spent around several hours trying and failing to beat the both of the Death Egg bosses for it.
The first boss annoys me because the first boss holds a load of hitpoints that make it seem forever to hit, especially when after the Death Egg flies away you only have so many chances to beat him. But that's nothing compared to the Super Sonic boss. Super Sonic takes a load of seconds to kick up speed when flying and everytime you hit something that isn't the rings you get punished for it. Also the ring count seems to deplete quite fast, especially when the game's lagging (this also made getting through Perilous Paradise Zone a pain since the countdown timer goes fast, and sometimes either because of lag or coding the air bubbles don't register at times, leaving you to drown)-as a result, you'd need to collect 6-9 rings at the same time if you want to stay within the ring count. There's also the fact that the last "savepoint zone" is Death Egg Zone Act 1, so even if you were at the last two bosses and you had to quit the game you had to start all over from there again. This especially hurts at times when the game won't unpause if you minimize it (by mistake) and then maximize it.But I think the worst part of all is that there were multiple times when I defeated the boss and the game fades to white, but the ring count doesn't stop and because I usually have less than 7 rings at that point I end up dying and having to start the boss all over again. Rant over.

 

I have two other questions, both related to the soundtrack release:

Why are the tracks for Cloudy Crowd Act 3, Cloudy Crowd Boss Act, and the Ending Credits medley not included?

Could the 'in-game' versions of those (with the looping when applicable) be made available?

 

The last two Cloudy Crowd pieces were from Kajinka's Breathtaking Vision, a Sky Sanctuary arrangement featured in OverClocked Remix's album for Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles called Project Chaos.

As for the Ending Credits (haven't touched the game in a bit), I think it was that vocal version of Sunset Star, right? Well, it's actually a piece by Yuri Matsuura called Departure, which Falk based Sunset Star off of. Unfortunately, no downloads at the mo'.

 

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Just leaving this here.