Sonic Origins Collection - General Thread

Sonic 3 actually came out months before Donkey Kong Country was even announced. Also, Donkey Kong Country looks good still on a CRT in 240p or with a scaler that produces good scanlines, in my opinion. Check out this comparison.

 

Was hoping my experiment thread would last long enough for me to post some outside results in, d'aww
Gonna just stuff them into a spoiler, since it's kinda neat to just skim through. Art brings out some weird answers.

Spoiler: Outside Opinions

View attachment 4300
"Which set of sprites do you prefer?"​

Regarding precedence of Time Attack/speedrun modes in other modern ports:

• Sonic CD, Retro Engine 2011 allows for all individual stages* to be played as Sonic alone (spindash style carried over in options) under Time Attack.
  (*Levels 1 and 2 can only be run in the present, and 3 in the Bad Future in all areas. All seven normal Special Stages are included, extra eighth sound test one is not.)
• Sonic 1, Retro Engine 2013 allows for all individual stages to be played as Sonic alone (spindash enabled, insta+3K shields disabled) under Time Attack.
  (All six normal Special Stages are included, extra seventh sound test one is not.)
• Sonic 2, Retro Engine 2013 allows for all individual stages* to be played as Sonic alone** (insta+3K shields disabled) under Time Attack.
  (*Death Egg is only available at the end of Boss Attack. Special Stages are not included, likely due to their on-rails nature. Hidden Palace is in the menu after Boss Attack.)
  (**There are videos online that show Tails tagging along, that don't show how they set themselves up to let that happen. Can't figure out how to do so my device. Possibly dev menu?)

• Sonic 1, Sega Ages 2018 only allows Green Hill Act 1 to be run (spindash and drop dash enabled) under Time Attack.
• Sonic 2, Sega Ages 2020 only allows Emerald Hill Act 1 to be run as either Sonic alone (dropdash enabled) or Knuckles, under Challenge Mode/100-Ring Challenge Time Attack.
  (need to reach the signpost with 100 or more rings)

 

The Sonic 3 sprites look good in Sonic 3. When you look at them on a spritesheet you aren't seeing them against the backdrop of the stages. Sonic 3 has a much more pre-rendered detailed look, and the character sprites suit the stages well.

I do prefer the simpler, more cartoony look of Sonic 2. But in many ways that's the outlier. Sonic 1 and Sonic CD are both also 3D and defailed.

I like the sprites in all the games except Chaotix which just look messy. But even that has a weird charm!

 

When people say S2 sprites look angry, and S3 sprites look 3D, I wonder if they just swapped numbers. S2 looked serious to me, but Sonic got the pissed off face in S3, a game with a lot of graphics started looking cartoony flat instead of 3D-ish most of the time. I think S3 graphics fit Sonic 3 and S2 graphics fit Sonic 2, which itself sometimes improves S1 sprites and sometimes make them not look that good, but I'm not sure if I'd find either games' sprites at home in the other game. I don't know what to say about Mania; I guess those are also appropiate for the game they're in but they look so different with the new palette and so many colours around, it makes it really difficult to compare them with the classics in a fair manner.

My personal preference, if it existed, would be some new sprites halfway between the styles of S2 and S3, S3 being more accurate for proportions and most artwork, but S2 having the 3D vibes closer to the original GHZ. Any rework on the graphics would be welcome, no matter what they are or which game they belong to.

(Also, S2 Sonic looks a bit taller due to the art style and proportions; it reminds me a bit of Adventure Sonic.)

 

Yes it was. SEGA approved the project and it was a commercial success. Some fans rightfully complained but it was irrelevant in the end as they bought it anyway.

M2 even added the same exact feature for SEGA Ages Sonic 2 (just Emerald Hill for the challenge mode) and again, it was very well received.

 

Let's be real, a time attack mode that's limited to the first level (generally the easiest and shortest to breeze through) is good enough for like, 95% of people who'd even try such a feature. It's basically a Nick Arcade challenge. The local game shop in my college town had a deal where if you beat the first level in Sonic 2 in under 30 seconds, you got a 10% discount on your purchase or something like that.

 

Yeah, I remember playing Sonic Rush online, and 90% of people would button-mash to get the game started and thus constantly play the first level. Generations 3DS, too. It's practically Sonic's version of Fox-only-no-items-Final-Destination.

 

FWIW, Time Attack mode is one of those features that I'll use literally never in any game. It's a relatively simple feature to add in, but the moment that online leaderboards are included, the workload is increased significantly any the developers have to spend time managing the inevitable hackers and fixing glitches/exploits that wouldn't exist otherwise. I think that a lot of people are in the same boat as me and just don't give a shit about time attack and leaderboards. I'd much rather time and effort went into other things than managing online leaderboards that, let's face it, most people won't use.

 

I don't care if SEGA thought it was acceptable. My surprise was that anyone in the fanbase was satisfied with a mode that only has a single zone to play. It's always pretty lame when a cool idea only gets the most half-assed, minimal implementation. It's not even like Sonic 2 and Mania's split-screen multiplayer, which would have required lots of extra programming, resources, and design in order to work on every stage in the game. It's just a waste of good ideas that could have been expanded into something more substantial. It makes something feel less like an actual feature to have fun with and more like a thing hastily thrown in just so they can add it to a bullet-point list.

I don't even care if there isn't an official leaderboard. I just want something that allows me to quickly and conveniently start and restart a level so I can practice my optimization and build muscle memory. I actually got really into speedrunning Mania for a while because the mode was convenient and accessible. Being able to beat a level without playing a crappy boss fight at the end of it is a nice bonus, too.

 

On top of this, I think of them like Time Trials in Mario Kart. Racing myself is plenty fun.

 

Not a fan of time-attack modes, but if Evening Star are making the new versions for Origins (they probably aren't) then I would expect a time-attack mode to be added to S1, 2 & 3K (CD of course already has one).

The Egg Gauntlet "Boss Attack mode" was a really cool concept for the Sonic 2 remaster. It's a shame it got cut in the official mobile release for a more basic version. I would love to see a Boss Attack mode in the style of Egg Gauntlet added to S1, 3K & CD.

 

I didn't look at this topic for a couple of days, and I missed yet another discussion about sprites, don't forget that I posted a poll about sprites a year ago, you can still vote there, and perhaps a moderator can move some of the relevant posts from here to there, so there is less clutter?

 

I wouldn't count on it: there was a new poll started a few days ago that the mods threw out. We're probably better off just dropping the whole thing.

Back to boss rush and time attack: I probably wouldn't touch them much (unless there's unlockable shit), but I'd welcome them for the people who want them.

 

Oh absolutely. I'd not shoot down the ideas, especially because they're amongst the easiest and least intrusive ways too repurpose existing content in ports and remakes. But I'm pretty sure that they aren't meaningful additions to swathes of the audience, and serve little more purpose that filler text of product descriptions. I'd rather they spent resources on other features.

 

There was a quote in a recent Famitsu interview with Iizuka where he stated that Origins will be released before the second Sonic movie comes out.

https://www.thegamer.com/sonic-origins-ports-native/

(According to the interview, fans can expect Sonic Origins to launch at some point in 2022. This is the same year the upcoming Sonic sequel is set to launch, but Sonic Origins will be with us first, says Takashi Iizuka.)

If this is indeed true, then we are looking at anywhere between January and March 2022 (obviously) since the second movie comes out on April 8th.

This suggests to me that the collection was already green lit even before Sonic Central and it would coincide with the length of development time needed to remaster Sonic 3&K (which, according to Stealth, would be at least one year IF it’s under the Retro Engine)

I’m predicting that the game will be 100% complete for all platforms by late 2021 and then, after QA or whatever, I can see a February or March 2022 release date to hold people over before the second movie.

 

That WOULD make sense, but... if the game is already getting worked on they would've showed some footage of it during Sonic Central, right?
I feel like we're going in circle here.

 

Yeah I can’t speak for SEGA and why they didn’t show footage of it.. the only thing I can think of is that the announcement was rushed and therefore they went with the original Taxman remaster footage. Unless they’re planning a graphical overhaul of each game, which I strongly doubt, then yeah I would say rushed announcement.

 

To add onto this, Nomura didn't know he was the director of FF7R until the trailer launched.

Granted, exception and not the norm, but I wouldn't be surprised if they wanted to give us something.

 

Really, this is not the first, or last time, a company has used placeholder assets for something that's being revealed earlier than they have proper footage to show for it. It doesn't mean shit 99% of the time, and most likely, it's not going to mean anything this time either. While it's not quite the same, the whole Project Needlemouse thing gave a very different idea of what Sonic 4 was going to be like, but it proves my point that SEGA has done marketing misleading in the past. It's possible that the people who were asked to do the trailer were not allowed to see or use footage from the actual product due to NDAs and embargo dates, so they did the best they could.