Sonic Origins Collection - General Thread

This is an oddity, although it might be Tails at fault.



According to the style guides, Amy should be exactly in the middle of Sonic and Tails, and with the old sprites...


...she is.

In motion however, Tails has the bigger head, arms and feet. Both characters are technically off-model (though to be fair, the "model" didn't exist for either when these sprites were drawn), with limbs presumably exaggerated because there weren't many pixels to play with. Because these two never appeared on screen together, you wouldn't notice the hacks.

The mistake in Origins Plus is that Amy is designed to look like her Sonic CD sprite and/or the style guides. In reality, neither will do, because Tails is following a different set of rules. Her features need to grow a bit and her animations, have to become more exaggerated... which puts her at odds with what she looked like in Sonic CD.

In short, they followed the rules, but the rules are wrong.

 

Really I think it's the palette more than anything that makes Amy feel off, and not even the whole extra colours thing. It just seems so flourescent next to everything else in the games, making her look Photoshopped in.

 

I dunno. In that height comparison shot, she looks to me like she fits in decently well. I think it just stands out more because there's not a lot of bright pink in the Genesis games.

 

I think it's the mere flourescence of the sprites that does it, hence CD Amy not having the same issue. If the colour contrast was downplayed I think she'd look fine.

 

Spent a whole five or ten minutes attempting to prove my own point. Slightly bigger eyes, slightly bigger feet (and within colour limits). It doesn't solve the problem - you need a real artist for that, but idk, I think it's a step closer.

It's unfortunate because Amy is a more complicated character to draw, and so will always look a bit out of place at this resolution.

 

Your edit actually does a pretty decent job at improving the sprite for me at least. The only thing that really sticks out is her face, but that seems to be a reoccurring problem in all of her sprites for most people.

 

I heard that there's been some complaining about a weird "echo" effect in the Game Gear emulation audio, and I decided to take a look. All I could really find was that they implemented a cheap stereo effect by oscillating the panning on both sides(?) Making it mono makes it sound more normal.



While the Game Gear does support stereo output via the headphone jack, it should be noted that the only thing you can really seem to do with it is pan any channel left, right, or center (see this), and not what's shown here.

EDIT: Here's a close up of the 2 channels... so, I dunno lol



Also this...


Which, when combined together into one stereo track, you get

 

Oh, yes! I didn’t imagine this lol. I was going to suggest it a few pages back when we were discussing her moveset but I couldn’t remember which game it was from since I haven’t played her in Advance 2 in like a decade and a half. I ended up just thinking I was confusing her with Arale.

Anyway, it is a bit disappointing how this is shaping up but I was never keen on having a playable Amy. The Game Gear emulation being crap is a bit annoying, but I have a nice CRT and Mega Drive with a Mega SD to play the MS versions of the games that have them, and a thousand other ways to play the GG exclusives.

I already ordered a JP copy for the Switch, which I would have done without any of the DLC bonuses. I almost would have preferred Plus being limited to fixing up existing issues over adding Amy and GG games. Just ironing out the glitches, making the 3K music more inline with the beta, adding Knuckles to CD… that’s all the collection needed.

 

Looks like I expressed myself poorly earlier, so here's another attempt.

Unlike the other characters, Amy has clothes. As a result, she needs more distinct colours than other characters who don't wear any, and she'll always look a bit out of place.

Sonic is primarily blue. Tails is primarily light brown. Knuckles is primarily red. Amy is pink, green and orange.

 

I forget but does Amy use actual genesis limited colours or is she using shades imposible by the hardware? she feels off in a sense where I can't pinpoint exactly why and it could be that.

I don't mean how many shades she is using but the tones themselves

 

Pallet-wise I think your correction drastically improves her appearance in 1/2/CD. From what I’ve seen Amy’s sprite shading looks much better in 3K.

 

I haven’t checked myself, so I’m not sure, but I believe someone earlier in the thread said that was the case.

I think she looks super off in the environments as well, though it could just be the case of not being used to a different character in these games we know so well. I think whether or not it uses accurate colors, seeing Amy running around Green Hill would give off a “ROM hack” impression.

 

Since the video has survived more than a day:


Amy's using a brighter white than Tails (and everything else in the game). Obviously it's hard to tell right now, but I would guess all the other colours are brighter than they should be too.

It's very subtle... unless you're standing next to something (like Tails).

 

Jesus Christ that character select is huge lol

I think both Origins and Superstars are doing Amy wrong. I think they should've given her a insta shield + double jump combo. So like Sonia's moveset in SFactor. Superstars is close, but she shouldn't have the hammer when jumping.

 

We only have videos to go off so it's hard to pin point exactly what she's using. She also seems to switch colors between games. At least Sonic 1 Amy does.
Until we get a clean uncompressed image I can't say, but her colors don't seem to be balance appropriately with the rest of the game. She stands out pretty clearly from everything else.

 

I mean even if Tails wasn't there it's quite jarring how her character select colors are basically in line with the ones she used in Sonic CD and then actually in-game they're significantly lighter than that.

 

I think she's the "correct" colours in Sonic 3 (and CD? the footage has disappeared for that one), but brighter for some reason in Sonic 1 and 2. The actual sprite set seems to be identical across all the games.

But I hadn't noticed the discrepancy with the character selection screen, which makes me wonder if it's a genuine bug, rather than a feature.

 

I haven't seen any Amy S3K footage so I don't know what she looks like there. CD footage is in the official stream where I got most of my impressions from.

 

To be fair, Tails looks a bit weird next to anyone in general, because his shading is a bit different than the one of the rest of the group... he has that dark orange border and is less shiny.

In the character select screen, Amy looks kinda fine, it's in-game that she looks off.

What you said about the brighter white seems to be accurate.

 

Happy birthday. And yeah, special stage palette is even weirder.