Sonic Superstars Ultra Mega Spoiler Containment Thread for Spoilers [SPOILERS]

Yeah, the last bombs on the left and on the right fall the closest¹ to where it marked your position, and the rest fall progressively further to each side. It's hard to really get it because, more often than not, you're constantly moving.

Fang's true position in his kage bunshin bullshit took me a while to figure out too.

¹ ...or it's the other way around, I don't really remember. But that's the logic nevertheless.

 

Beat the main story for the first time last night - final boss does drag on a bit, but the attacks are all clearly telegraphed. I was expecting a lot worse from what people were saying! Agree that a checkpoint after the first phase would have been nice - it seems like they were going for the same structure as Sonic 3 & Knuckles' final boss, but the fact that there's a looooot more waiting around until you're able to actually hit the thing in the first phase makes it way more annoying to retread if you screw up and die.

On a related note, I also started Trip's Story, and am I right in thinking it's an epilogue set after the main game like Knuckles' story in Sonic 3 & Knuckles? The World Map has the crashed Eggmobile that returned Sonic & Co. to Earth after beating Egg Fortress, Trip is missing her armour, and the Chaos Emeralds seem to carry over from the first Story Mode as I have them all from the get-go. So is Eggman now launching another, bigger invasion of the Northstar Islands as a second attempt at... whatever his actual end goal is? If so, I feel like another animated scene showing Eggman launching this second attack would have helped communicate the story better here. Though actually, the only boss I've fought so far was piloted by an EggRobo anyway, so... is Eggman even a part of this secondary plan?

...One last note, Super Trip being able to properly grind on the vines in Speed Jungle is absolutely hilarious. I was aiming for them whenever they were near once I realised she could do it! The flight mode is quite fun but breaks a lot of the normal Sonic gameplay, which can make sections of stages uneccessarily awkward to traverse without detransforming - if she was able to switch between this flight mode and normal walking/running at the push of a button I think the Super form would feel a lot more fun overall. Some objects bizarrely seem to force you out of flight until you contact the ground, such as the springy vines in Speed Jungle - once you've sprung off it you'll keep falling until you contact the floor, which makes no sense when you can otherwise fly freely.

 

I know double-posting is generally frowned upon, but it's been days since anyone's posted in this topic and I have a few minorly spoliery observations I've been itching to get off my chest:

• Playing through Trip's Story, I've noticed the Cyber Station Zone boss isn't the only place your Metal Fighter avatar appears in the Story Mode - the capsule Eggman/EggRobo flies away with at the end of Sky Temple Zone also contains it. Wonder if there's any other parts of the story where it makes a cameo appearance?
• Also, a small observation when playing as Trip - she has two variants of her victory pose animation, one where she spins and poses, and another where she loses her balance during the spin and falls over, before getting back up and posing. I'm not sure if there's a specific trigger for the latter - the only time I've seen it so far, I was balancing on the edge of the capsule button when the results tally began.
• Finally, a random observation, but I've noticed that this game gives us high-quality classic-style models for the entire playable cast of Sonic R:
  • Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Eggman and Super Sonic are all in the Story Mode (obviously)
  • Metal Sonic and Metal Knuckles are both available to build in Battle Mode
  • Tails Doll appears instead of a Golden Badnik in Pinball Carnival Zone Act 2
  • EggRobos appear in stages throughout Trip's Story, along with replacing Eggman in the Act 2 bosses.

The latter point really makes me want them to create a Sonic R remaster-slash-sequel - give us the whole original cast and all the stages/music from the first game, then go wild adding new classic characters, and new cups with additional tracks to expand it to more of a Mario Kart sized affair. Just imagine racing on brand-new tracks as Vector, Fang, Honey, or the Heavy Rider! Go on, SEGA, you know you want to! = P

 

Good news and bad news.

Bad news: That YouTube channel, @rightangle4748, is now gone.

Good news: Sonic Sound Archive recently uploaded a ton of music from the game akin to that prior person, including early tracks and different music unused altogether...

... Speaking of, this unused Bonus Stage track catches my attention in particular.



It's very different to the Bonus Stage track used, and sounds distinctly similar to some melodies in the Special Stage music from Sonic 1. I have a couple of theories surrounding it:

#1 - This is a track which was composed based off Sonic 1's Special Stage music simply as a starting point to establish a familiar mood, before deciding on the more unique melodies and overall different composition that we got in the final game.

#2 - This was actually intended to be used as the final track in the Bonus Stage as a more direct homage to Sonic 1's Special Stage music, but was dropped after one or more developers found it tread the line too close to Masato Nakamura's composition, flagging up concerns regarding potential copyright issues. Thus, one or more people in charge made the call for a substantially different track to be composed instead, resulting in what we got in the final game.

I'm very curious about the story behind this unused track and the final track, and I wonder which person(s) composed / arranged both?

I much prefer this unused track over that strange lullaby and ice cream truck fusion track they ended up using, which sounds closer to Sonic 4 Episode I's Special Stage music. I wonder if Jun Senoue composed and arranged the final track (With someone else rearranging it?) but not the unused track? The latter sounds significantly less like his composing / arranging style to me.

 

Right, I've beaten most of the game now, and I'm... mixed. The main campaign is good. It's not $60 good, as I was hoping, but it's definitely $40 good. But I really enjoyed most of it. The CD level design and the wait-to-attack bosses didn't annoy me as much as most other people, but I love Sonic CD, so I can see why it'd be an issue for those hoping it'd take more after 3 and Mania. It certainly has Ohshima's fingerprints all over it, so I'm happy with that. However...

Trip's Story is cheap garbage. I feel like they assumed that the infinite lives and probably having all the Chaos Emerald powers, as I did, allowed them to press the "cheap" button. I went in, hoping it'd be like Knuckles' game in Sonic 3 and was dismayed to see cheap death pits, and enemies/obstacles strewn about in silly places. Completely antithetical to the main campaign. So much more would have been accomplished with Trip only areas and secrets and ramping the difficulty up slightly, but it seems they opted to make it borderline unplayable for most people.

And her final boss. Lord. Fang having a cheap insta-kill laser attack in the first phase and then a cheap "hit the screen" Smash Bros. insta-kill attack in the final phase was maddening. It literally took me hours because the fight goes on for so ruddy long. Getting back to the final phase and having the robot head butt me into a bottomless pit was so annoying. Not because "oh haha beginner's trap, get gud", but because it took a solid 10 minutes to get back to the same spot in the fight. Interminable. The game does not respect your time at this point.

I haven't played the True Final Boss yet, but it looks similarly infuriating, with a diminishing ring counter added to the turmoil.

Edit: I've now played and defeated the True Final Boss and it was a similarly aggravating affair, that wasted my time until I finally got everything down. I should not be in the boss arenas for more than 10 minutes. But here we are. Glad that it's done, won't be doing it again.

Overall, I'd score it as a "just good" game. Nowhere near the MD games and Mania, but fine on the whole, as long as you just play the main bit and skip all the post game nonsense.

 

So in the True Final Boss. I've managed to land some random hits on it when it does that slap attack in the second phase. How do you actually do this?

I've had enough issues with the boss deciding if I hit it or not in the 2D phases

 

My strategy was super unreliable but what I did was to go in a straight line for like two or three seconds, then stop. The hand would follow me in the exact direction I went and sometimes get hit as a result. But again, really unrealiable.

 

Yeah the hands have really good tracking so basically you need to get familiar with their range and then bait them into going where you want them to and hit them when they come to a stop (the timing on this is actually pretty generous - you can be hit by them, but if it’s right at the end of their movement, you’ll trade blows and that counts as a hit for you too).

 

Beat the Fang boss, and with it Trip's Story. I don't have many observations that haven't been said already, but came away feeling Trip's Story was nowhere near as good as the main Story Mode. The first half was mostly challenging but fun, but everything from Press Factory Zone onwards had increasing levels of bullshit in terms of hazard placement etc, which made things more frustrating and annoying in a lot of instances. The already dragged out bosses are now longer, with no new attack patterns to surprise players who've already beaten the main game, which coupled with the final boss sending you right back to the beginning if you slip up even once during the many instakill attacks, gives me the feeling the game's designers are literally trying to waste my time. I took just over 2 hours on that final boss alone, and was pretty consistently getting between 5-7 hits into the second phase each time before being sent right back to the start. I can only echo sentiments that there should at least be some kind of checkpoint between the first and second phases to balance out the amount of instakills the boss can get you with.

Having played both modes, in my opinion the best boss in the entire game is Press Factory Act 2, because that has a large variety of attack patterns but most of the time can be hit whenever a player can reach the vehicle's cockpit, including when it's upsude-down doing its electric attack, all of which means a skilled player can take it down quicker. Even that has a few unnecessary instances of untelegraphed invincibility though, as I recall at least one instance of bouncing on it and not scoring a hit.

I hope the Last Story boss is more akin to the main Story Mode final boss than the Trip's Story one in terms of difficulty - ran out of time to actually check it out as I already stayed up late to beat Fang's machine. Either way, I don't feel any inclination to revisit Trip's Story any time soon, especially as unlocking it also unlocks her for use in the regular versions of each Zone.

Also, "Trip's Story" feels like a misnomer, as aside from a short opening cutscene and a new animated scene at the end the new story for this mode isn't clarified at all, and even the stage transitions are nearly all removed for some reason. There are a few things that allow you to infer that it's an epilogue to the main Story Mode, but other than that - why is EggRobo here? Why is Fang aboard the Egg Fortress? Is Eggman involved? If so, why isn't he here? If not, presumably Fang is in charge of EggRobo/the badniks etc - why? Or is EggRobo working alone to achieve Eggman's goal for him? If so, why is Fang the final boss? This really feels like it should have been presented as an optional challenge mode rather than a mandatory part of the game's story.

 

It really can’t be an epilogue though because (just off the top of my head) BIZ1 hasn’t already been wrecked by the giant fish badnik at the end, Press Factory again only goes into its meltdown state at the end of Act 1, Egg Fortress is back on Earth in Frozen Base and the damage from Sonic and friends’ initial entrance is gone. Stuff like this was actually accounted for back in Knuckles’ story of Sonic 3 & Knuckles, with Carnival Night’s lights already being off and the Sandopolis ghosts already having been released during Knuckles’ visits to these zones, not to mention the end of Sonic’s story having the Egg Robo rise from the wreckage, creating a clear throughline of cause and effect for that game. I can only see Trip’s “story” as a non-canon what if scenario a la Dededetour or Meta Knightmare Returns in the 3DS Kirby games (which themselves execute the concept far better in a gameplay sense, providing actual new content rather than slapping some Egg Robos haphazardly around the levels to nail you with cheap shots).

 

I agree with all your points, yet the intention that it should be an epilogue is also plain in the following details:

• Any Chaos Emeralds the player has carry over from Story Mode, as Sonic and co. already collected them
• Trip doesn't wear her armour anymore, only her helmet in a brief scene at the start
• On the World Map, the Eggmobile everyone escapes from Egg Fortress in at the end of Story Mode can be seen crashed in Bridge Island's area
• Fang's giant mech is no longer under construction in Golden Capital Zone Act 2's boss (aside from a small oversight where you can briefly see the legs at one point!)
• Fang's giant mech is now completed and painted when you face it at the end of Egg Fortress Zone
• Trip crashes alone at the end, and Sonic and co. are already waiting for her back on solid ground

It's inconsistent, but I think these points show there's an intention to frame it as an epilogue. I see the stage-related points as the dev team not having the time/budget to further differentiate the stages from the original versions, which is definitely a shame as it does muddy the waters on what exactly the intention is story wise. Presumably we're supposed to assume the Egg Fortress crash landed right back at Frozen Base Zone after blowing up the first time, which would be awfully convenient to say the least...! Personally, I reckon giving the mode a unique final Zone in place of Egg Fortress (and removing Egg Fortress from Frozen Base) would have gone a long way to clarifying things.

In its current form I can get behind this interpretation, as even though the points I listed above suggest there's intention it should be seen as an epilogue, all the points you listed make it hard to truly see it as one in the same way as, say, Knuckles' story in Sonic 3 & Knuckles.

 

Yeah those are valid counterpoints’ even if I don’t personally think they’re airtight (for example, how did Fang’s mech get repaired? Not sure Fang himself would’ve been able to do it).

On a more gameplay-focused note, I’m surprised Trip’s mode had the emeralds carry over. That’s never really been done before and, on the face of it, it’s very convenient, but I don’t know if it was the right call? I honestly thought it was an oversight at first, but in this case I’m willing to accept I’ve just been stockholmed by past games. Either way, it beats whatever the hell was happening with Heroes.

 

Considering the difficulty spike of Trip's story, I think that letting you keep the Emeralds was the right call. Most of the Emerald abilities are totally whatever, but having access to a Super form with infinite flight made stretches of the game much more tolerable. I'm not saying it was the right call for an epilogue, but it was a fortunate circumstance considering how they chose to go about creating this epilogue story.

When I got to the boss of Trip's GCZ3, I was bored so I used her Super Form to fly above the camera during a vertical autoscrolling section. Turns out that that's an instant death for some reason, so the game respawned me at the checkpoint before the boss. I was fucking done with it at that point, so I restarted the entire level just to avoid the tedium of the damn thing.

 

I'm not trying to argue which one is better because I do think Knuckles' campaign does a better job of telling the story and showing it through some of the level design.

But it has some of the same "faults" that are being listed to say Trip's story can't be an epilogue.

Off the top of my head, why is Angel Island not burned at the beginning of Knuckles's story? How is Flying Battery functioning again and going through the same route? And the laser makes it crumble again? Sure the ghosts are out but what happened to the sand traps that Sonic and Tails activated in Sandopolis Act 2?

I'm sure some of you might be tempted to explain them away but the answer is because it's easier for the developers to just leave like that.

I doubt they added a special story for Trip that unlocks the true ending only to for some reason not make it canon.

 

The Fantasy Zone-esque shooter acts of Frozen Base Zone should have been a separate zone. Just call it Fantasy Zone. Missed opportunity.

 

Good and valid point - from the documents in Origins, it's interesting to note that the developers did originally plan to address two of these issues. The early plans show that Flying Battery was supposed to be omitted from Knuckles' story entirely (presumably explaining why it has no exclusive routes for him even in its finished form, which suggests this idea may have lasted a while), and at one point was even supposed to be replaced with a separate Knuckles-exclusive Zone in his story; the latter idea seems to have been scrapped very early on, though, as the only sketch related to that Zone was barely started before the sheet was used for character sketches instead. And in Sandopolis, the early plans show Knuckles was supposed to take an alternate route partway through the stage, bypassing the areas which would have filled with sand and leading to an alternate exit.

 

In some small fairness, the end of Sonic/Tails' story does show Angel Island is back to normal after the Master Emerald is returned to Knuckles.

But otherwise, as far as the story/canon goes, I imagine Knuckles' campaign happening after Sonic/Tails' campaign only really make sense if you presume his story only concerns the Sonic & Knuckles half of the game, and the Sonic 3 levels and bosses being included prior is just a non-canon bonus property. Elements like Knuckles being able to bypass areas "blocked off" in Sonic and Tails' campaign makes sense. Other stuff like the waves of bosses invading Angel Island like they did for Sonic and Tails, not so much.

IMO if the next 2D Sonic game wants to do stories taking place at different points of time for different characters. The least they can do is significantly change up the level order if they can't make new (or heavily modified) level layouts, bosses, and transitions/cutscenes for every stage; in order to completely spellcheck the internal continuity. Even if it's a haphazard level order like with Mania, it would make more sense than going through the (near-)exact same level order again.

On that note, I think a "Mirror Mode" campaign provides itself as a great way to offer a alternate story campaign (regardless of it taking place before or after the "main"/Sonic's story). Imagine being able to not only challenge the player with flipped level layouts (so you go right to left), but also you also play the default zone order in reverse [e.g. you start at Frozen Base and end at Bridge Island]. In other words, Egg Fortress Act 2, but as an entire campaign mode (and without the rewind time-travel stuff.)

 

I really don't like that Knuckles and Trip are presented as "stories" that are just going through the same zones again except Eggman is replaced with a robot. I get why it's done but especially as a reward for beating the game the first time it's extremely underwhelming.

 

I mean, Knuckles at least had some genuine alternate paths that only he could access, sometimes quite large - the biggest example off the top of my head is Angel Island Zone Act 2, where Knuckles' route is completely separate from Sonic's from start to finish. Also, there was a bit more effort to distinguish the bosses from the versions Sonic/Tails fought with some gaining new patterns or extra attacks, and Marble Garden Zone Act 2 and Sky Sanctuary Zone Act 2 have completely new bosses unique to his campaign. It's by no means perfect - not all the bosses are distinct from Sonic's versions, and several stages are missing main bosses entirely (Carnival Night Zone, Lava Reef Zone and Hidden Palace Zone).

Again, the Origins documents suggest there were even bigger plans at first, with early plans suggesting "Rival's" unique routes would have been more extensive than many of Knuckles' ended up, with many stages having completely different boss arenas/exits (incidentally, all of Knuckles' routes were planned to have bosses in the sketches we have, so I wonder if time crunch or a paring back of scope prevented some of them being implemented?). Launch Base Zone was also supposed to be more different in his campaign, taking place in ancient ruins situated underneath the base (probably explaining why he's in those odd underground factory type buildings for a lot of his route in the final game - I'm guessing they tried to salvage at least some of the idea without having to give his areas unique graphics). Actually, Mushroom Hill Zone Act 2 also looks like it was planned to take place in some sort of underground ruins, with a shrine depicting a dragon partway through the stage. There are also mentions of "Rival" having their own exclusive Zone 5 and Zone 10 (sadly scans of stage sketches exist for neither, so it's impossible to tell how that campaign was intended to end at that stage of planning). There's no mention of "Rival" exclusive paths on anything from Lava Reef Zone onwards, so it seems like everything from that point was originally supposed to be unique to Sonic's campaign - whether the "Rival" campaign was planned to be shorter, or whether additional exclusive stages were planned past Zone 10, we can sadly only speculate.

On a slightly unrelated note, we're also potentially missing the final sketch for Sonic's campaign, as Death Egg Zone ends with Super Sonic chasing Eggman into space (a transition which would totally fit in the final game but was never implemented for some reason - surprised Origins didn't add this if you have all the Emeralds!) and a message saying "To Be Continued...". We've seen a blurry picture of a colour concept of what looks like Super Sonic fighting some sort of dragon in space, so it'd be interesting to know whether that was the planned finale at the time these sketches were being made - though we don't have access to either the sketch or the colour concept, the presence of the dragon mural in the Mushroom Hill Zone sketches at least suggests it may well have been still planned at this point.

 

I know. I've seen the documents and I understand why it turned out the way it did. I'm not talking about a what-if.