I’m wondering if the goal of the article was to get engagement through hateclicks from angry sonic fans.
So I took an indepth look at Sonic CD's level layouts again. As someone who has spent a lot of time playing with the "Sonic CD & Knuckles" mods, let me first say that Knuckles already fits into the game's oddball design choices very naturally. The game emphasizes exploration more than speeds at many points, and he makes doing that much, much easier. Some physics quirks I like from that mod (the ability to glide after being bounced upward in wacky workbench), might not trasition into the final game's design, but oh well. As a whole... Knuckles is a great, great way to experience playing SCD whether there are new level changes or not. One we should've had a decade ago, honestly... This is modded gameplay, NOT from Origins: Now, where can they add new paths for him? Frankly, I'm not sure. We already have been shown an upper path near the end of CC1 (presumably with a similar variant of it existing in all 4 time zones). If you look over the Sonic 1 and 2 maps, you'll notice that Stealth cleverly added extra routes in nearly every part of the Sonic 1 or 2 maps that had large empty gaps (Hilltop 1, Chemical Plant Act 2, Marble Zone 3, ect. ect). Sonic 3K's map had far less of these areas to tweak, so not many would be added there. I recall maybe some mild tweaks to Death Egg's lower Tails route to make it more accessible. Sadly, Sonic 3 AIR seemed to handle these bits better than his origins designs did, but even in that game those tweaks were rare. These are some of my favorite changes to the 2013 versions, as they really add some unexpected surprises to the classics that many of us never thought of doing before that point. CC1's old 1993 map, with a new area being added to the far upper right in previews we've seen so far. (Not pictured here, but you can tell where it would fit) Hilltop Act 1 (1992 version): Hilltop Act 1 (2013 version): Now Sonic CD? The maps are surprisingly well filled and don't present nearly as many large empty spots to greatly alter things. In fact, the only very large open spaces I could see that present opportunities similar to Sonic 1 and 2 are in Metallic Madness (most notably the upper area near the start of Act 1). The rest of the stages are already very tightly designed. Metallic Madness 1 is the only other level in the whole game with an empty gap that large so far: That's not to say little secrets and shortcuts like breakable Knuckles Blocks couldn't be added, but rather the game as it is already is well optimized for his exploration, and at best I expect a few shortcuts to maybe exist where they currently do not in any known version (including fan mods). This isn't a criticism of Stealth or Sega here. No one in the mod scene has altered the stages in literally any meaningful way so far, so this is already more "new" content than we had before. But I also want to set expectations accordingly, as someone who has done numerous speedruns with Knuckles over the past 2 years.
I do wonder if the people who downloaded the Plus DLC even have the QoL patch as well. Has anyone checked if the Sonic CD timer bug is fixed in the leaked footage like it is on the official streams? Or how the Drop Dash feels in the games where it's currently broken? I know this is probably cope but it's possible what we're seeing in the leaks isn't the whole picture.
Kind of off topic but holy shit I never realized just how much level the remakes added. I always thought it was smaller stuff, but no they really went the extra mile to flesh out the stage. Is every act this touched up?
I think that's unlikely, the music restart bug is because of the Hedgehog Engine implementation by Sega and it's likely that Headcannon simply received instructions regarding *their part* of the deal and the bug fixes are limited to what their contract entailed, which isn't the full project. We've been over this before.
Tweet from Sonic twitter showing brief clips of Amy fighting Eggman & racing Metal in CD. Shows her idle animation at the end: https://twitter.com/sonic_hedgehog/status/1671213321880748032
The ones off the original secret path (where you go through the wall to skip the water climb)? You can get Sonic up there too with a good jump off the ramps coming down the first or second loop. The 92 release allowed you to get up there but you’d either die or get softlocked. I can’t remember what happens exactly, but either way, there was no level design.
The fact that the marketing uses bits from the Extended US CD OST, but the game itself doesn't (as far as we know) makes me sad. Otherwise, that's a cute little teaser. This is probably the most extreme example. Only a handful of acts get touched up like this because, frankly, only a few acts had these kind of gaps to add in. However, most people didn't know about this, or never bothered to explore these extra routes, so it gets missed easily and taken for granted. Marble Zone 3 (1991): 2013: Spring Yard Act 2 (1991): 2013: Star Light Act 1 (1991): 2013: Chemical Plant Act 2 (1992): 2013: These are the types of little changes people took for granted and tend to forget that Origins brings to mainline platforms for the first time. All the new routes are interesting and take advantage of either tails flight, or knuckles exploration skills. All are well designed and fit within the confines of what the old maps allow, and more carefully unify the S1-3K trilogy in a nice way. The fact that Sonic CD is getting a few of these additions is a nice touch at making it much more definitive, were it not for the audio/sound issues. We'll see how the final product turns out.
Anyone else wonders if there will be some kind of day 1 patch, Headcannon said that they were able to "supply a few additional updates and enhancements" but from what we have seen and heard the game is almost untouched aside from Amy and Knuckles wich were developed by SEGA, where are those enhancements?
Mania Plus had a patch alongside the DLC. The patch had bugfixes and level transitions (and was also accidentally available way earlier than the DLC) but you couldn't access the DLC i.e. Mighty, Ray, and Encore Mode. So a day 1 patch is likely.
Curious how this time arround its the complete opposite, but well there is still hope to get the dropdash and save select fixed, we will see on the 23rd
The build on the physical release likely has the same patch preinstalled that they’ll release soon for existing digital copies. Why they didn’t just ship the old build is unclear especially with the DLC code already working and most likely exposing that the Plus DLC code is unnecessary beyond affecting second hand sales.
I'm hoping what ever patch they push out, it's retroactive with vanilla Origins owners like they did with Mania since I'm not planning to double dip on PC. I'm getting a physical Switch copy and thats it.
I honestly think this has been an opportunity for me to reflect that I need to chill out about things and be open minded. It's possible this won't be perfect but it does look at least good and enjoyable. I'm not even that bothered by the colour pallete anymore. Lol! Useful life lesson. I'm reflecting upon this part of my character generally.
I might cut down the quoted bit later since it's so long and it's hard to do on my.phone, but I was underwhelmed by most of these. The original trick path in Spring Yard is more rewarding (more rings) and definitely faster to reach, the Marble alterations cut against most of the design rules that stage has, and Chemical Plant also is longer and more hazardous for no particular benefit. I guess if you put me to it I'd rather have the unused space used than not but I feel like in these cases the whole winds up being a bit less than the sum of their parts, sadly. The Knuckles routes in SCD I've seen continue this trend. There's only so much you can do without basically rewriting the entire stages Sonic CD style, so I don't think it makes sense to blame anyone for this fault, but these are routes I'd only start taking because I was bored, and don't matter much to me otherwise.
Could have been a straight up “achievements” page iirc Smash has something similar; a panel revealed by achieving certain things in various game modes
Those are little details why I appreciate so much the 2013 version of Sonic 1 and 2, and despite the flaws, I'm still happy those version are officialy being re-released. And that's why I still want Stealth around with Sonic games.
