I guess what I was trying to say is that this issue didn't effect or make the special stages harder for me. I'm pretty sure the only way I've beaten CD in the last 10 years was only The Taxman version and I was the first one calling them the easiest so that should be telling. To each their own though. Thanks for the technical lesson.
I mean, I liked them. Ice Cap Zone and Carnival Night Zone were some of my favorites from the prototype. Has it been confirmed that they were scrapped because they were bad? I can't tell if that's your own prospective or a real fact. It's possible that they were scrapped in favor of a partnership with Moonwalker Man. Also, don't forget that Jun Senoue is working on the music for Sonic Origins. He's made some great bops over the years, so we should trust that he'll continue to do so.
Not untrue. I do trust him composition-wise, but has he had any experience with making MD-style chiptune post-Sonic 4? ... Tangentially related, but apparently S4:E2 turned 10 years old about a month ago. Time continues to come for our spines.
there actually is a physical cop y, but its just an 8GB flash ddrive with some tape and "sonic origin" written in black sharpie $65 take it or leave it . ..
I personally find the Sonic 2 Death Egg bosses harder than any special stage! I so appreciated that Sonic Jam’s Normal/Easy modes added rings to that Zone and it’s a shame that those Normal/Easy modes never returned again. As for Special Stages, I find Sonic CD the hardest, just because it messes with my depth perception, so I always misjudge the distance of the UFOs. For some reason, I also found the Sonic 2 mobile special stages hard as well. I’m not sure why as they were recreated to match the originals. I was playing them on a Sony Xperia Play, which was a phone with a built in gamepad. I know the screen on that could be a bit screwy some times, so maybe it affected my judgement.
Alternatively there are the robot transporter, great for those who find Sonic CD special stages difficult.
Exploring the CD stages to get to the right time zone and then to find the bloody transporter is what makes that game so incredibly unfun. I love exploration, but the levels in CD are labyrinthine with no rhyme or reason. You just slowly poke around every crevice until you find the thing that you need (or you've already memorised the layout). Fuck that. The Special Stages are the way to go. You can play it like a normal Sonic game.
Should you though? I've always been of the mind playing CD like a normal Sonic game isn't fun in the slightest with it's level design. The rhyme and reason for it being so... like that... is to accommodate long distance backtracking in any direction, for the purpose of searching for time posts, ideal warp runways, and the generators in that order. Trying to get a full game personal best under 25 minutes in CD 2011's time attack (to unlock the Special Stage menu, I think) really exposes just how different it's structured from the other classics imo.
Wait, people actually needed this weird sprite trick to beat CDs special stages...? I don't know what it is, but literally everyone online complains about bad depth perception in Sonic special stages, and I just... never had trouble with it? Like, the only special stages in the entire franchise that actually do have bad depth perception to me are the 3d ones from Triple Trouble and Blast. I always found the 16-bit ones to handle depth perception fantastically. But apparently I'm alone in this...?
Absolutely 100% you should, if like me you found time travel and hunting down one specific object in every single act to be incredibly tedious. I really don't like playing for speed runs. I like playing to get to the goal, and one of the best things that Classic Sonic games have over other platformers is the multiple paths that all take you to the same place as long as you keep heading forwards. If you time travel and look for the generators in CD, the game slows to a crawl. The level design doesn't follow any logical order, so it's hard to get your bearings when exploring.
In regards to Sonic CD, I wonder if you get a different animation for getting all the robot generators, Metal Sonic projectors, and Time Stones in one playthrough.
I have never bothered to look for the robot generations since getting the Time Stones is less annoying.
Speaking of special stages, does anyone else vividly remember playing the Gumball Bonus Stage and emptying the entire machine and breaking all the bumpers in the hopes that something would happen? Because I do, and there was no reward
I don't think you actually can, but I would keep breaking all the bumpers and trying to empty it in the hopes that something cool would happen, and nothing ever came of it i thought this was a normal thing we all did, perhaps it is not normal
