I would say yes. I think the artists did a good job giving everything a "second pass" to keep things cohesive. Angel Island makes a good point of comparison - little details like the striped grass make a big difference.
I'm ngl I didnt even notice the striped grass in Angel Island Zone. They really did a much better job giving the game it's own visual identity that my memory did not credit them enough for! I kinda wanna comb thru it and all the games on Origins to make comparisons between the two of em lmao. Honestly Taxman and his team really did work when it came to doing justice and preserving the original Sonic games. It's a shame Origins is just ever so slightly unpolished and with weird decisions, because the ports themselves are really good.
Just tried it out on my iPhone 14 Pro today! Something isn’t right with the sound though. There’s some soft popping.
While on this topic, Superstars made me realize how important having an arranger like Falk for the music. Sonic 1 and 2, CD, and 3nK all have distinct feelings soundtracks from each other. But Falk was able to take Tee Lopes remixes and new tracks and choose the best instruments and overall style that they felt like one complete soundtrack with nothing ever really feeling out of place from the other. Superstars didn't put in the effort to achieve this same audio cohesion and it's probably why a lot of the songs just don't feel like they're from the same soundtrack. We heard the original version of Bridge Island with the Sonic 4 sounding instrumentals at the end of Superstars and got to see all it took was Tee Lopes choosing better sounds for the song to make it a masterpiece. Think about how many other songs probably just needed something like that to shine? I just hope they don't forget the importance of having someone with a good ear for these things next time.
Just tried this out for myself, and while I can excuse the extremely minor performance issues, all the sound effects playing at a delay of half a second drove me insane. Also, this game might just have the ugliest touch control buttons I have ever seen. They look like they were taken from a 2012 Play Store shovelware game titled something along the lines of "Classic 8-bit Retro Platformer".
A I'm surprised SEGA didn't not call Fak or Sonic After the Sequel / No Straight Roads yet to do other songs in Sonic games. Falk was the exception in Mania Plus. but still.
Ah, so that's what the unused "TIME TO ESCAPE!" graphic was all about, then. Interesting to finally have that cleared up after so many years. Would have loved to have seen that in action!
Also looks like in that concept the UFO was meant to drop bombs or red/blue spheres? I wonder how red spheres would've worked in this special stage.
Sounds really funny I wish they kept this in encore mode. Could've been a cool twist for the final Special Stage. They made the right decision removing it from the main game though.
Now I'm thinking about how neat it would be if a Sonic game had Special Stages where you already have the Chaos Emerald at the beginning, and need to escape from baddies trying to steal it from you. Whitehead made the right call by removing it from Mania's stages, though. It would've been pretty awkward for them to require you to clear two separate tasks back to back.
I kind of love the idea that you would have to steal the Chaos Emerald and then quickly escape. Makes it feel like you're pulling off a diamond heist or something lol.
I wonder if it was actually removed to avoid comparisons to that mask which follows you when you get the keys in Doki Doki Panic Super Mario Bros 2.
