Try and get a Water Shield before it, hit him 3 times before he brings the wrecking ball out, then when he swings it, stand underneath and just bounce. I beat it in no time at all!
Now that I think on this, my lag did seem to dry up upon using full screen. To be honest I thought it may have just been an updated version that Chimpo gave a few pages back. Hang on I'm going to try and playthrough a few levels on maximized but not full-screen and see what I get, so far on full screen I've gotten to Aqua Arena with zero lag.
As I thought, it is indeed an updated version. As soon as I tried to play on the original in full screen I got a bad case of lag immediately. Use this one for now on, seems to be a lot more stable for me lag-wise. I agree Chimpo.
I did, but I still want the ring. I know, it's pathetic. I'm close approaching the number of times it took me to beat Death Egg in Sonic 2.... and I was fucking 8 at the time!
+ - the ring is right where you begin, hidden behind the pole right in front of Sonic on that platform
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't someone supposed to make a hack version of this game? If that's the case perhaps we may one day be able to see what this game would be like without the glitchyness and odd music. Then we'll see the true potential this game has
Just finished, I WAS going to give this game a point by point glowing review. But now I find that my progress has been erazed, I'm very cunting well pissed off! Therefore the good stuff can wait till tomorrow. After all that grueling effort to smash the fucking game, all the challenges are still locked like I can't get past Hazel Hills 1. For fucks sake! Robot Rave was a great zone, and I would've been happy with that as the final (or some other surprise), but the Death Egg Zone? Really?! Fair enough if it's part of the story, but this was obviously just a case of "Final Zone - Space - Death Egg - just because", that's shitty, lazy SEGA thinking right there. Anyway, fuckbiscuits! Congrats on completing the first ever good fangame, consider yourself a pioneer. It WAS a great experience, but you shouldn't have put this out with a non-existent save feature. I will talk more about the things I liked about this game, but now you must go to your room and fix this mother fucker!
Pretty sure StephanUK was the one who said that, though he doesn't do as much hacking since he broke his hand. I would like to see a Genesis version of this myself, too. (Or CD and/or 32X, too)
Yep, you made the dire, dire error of returning to the title screen, ever. The only way to save is to quit the game before that happens. In other words, the SAVE command is quite literally Alt-F4. Any other path to the opening screen - even killing the final boss and completing the game - wipes all progress since executing the program.
REVIEW OF SONIC CLASSIC BY 360 I promised a review. Here it is. Okay I completed the game. I played through all of the levels and basically just quit at the final boss (super metal sonic). I saw how insanely large the boss was; couldn't hit it and thought "fuck it". I'll start with the positive here since Hez has obviously put in a superhuman amount of effort into this game and does genuinely deserve some praise. First impressions were extremely good. Hazel Hill was a beautiful zone to start off with. Loved the music. Loved the feel of the engine (given this was the first time I played the game) and got really excited at the prospect of playing the game I had ahead of me. I whizzed through Hazel Hill and enjoyed the entire zone. Other positives were that I discovered next to zero glitches through my entire three hour plus playthrough. The game semed pretty solid on a technical level. Nothing game-breaking encountered. In terms of specific levels the highlights included Gigapolis Zone which was the only zone (outside of Robot Rave) with a decent amount of speed sections and momentum; Crystal Caverns which was really cool to play because I loved the music and general design of the zone; and Robot Rave particularly because of Act 3 which was a well-designed and intense thrill ride and really cool way to transition to Death Egg Zone. All in all the game is one of the best fangames I have ever played. Relative at least to what I played when I was involved with the community. Some of the music choices did honestly enhance the experience. This is true of for Luster Lake (a Rister remix was it?). It was just pleasant to navigate and explore the underwater sections listening to that angelic music. The special stages too were cool. The sheer amount of them was definitely a plus (though the Gumball stage appeared way too often). I could never get past (emerald) Special Stage 2 (the difficulty spiked to high; Special Stage 1 was super easy in comparison). The Challenges and Secrets obviously create a load of potential replay value and I'm sure mant will appreciate them. The key thing that needs to be fixed here is that the Secrets refused to unlock regardless of the amount of challenges completed which torpedoes the entire point of their existence. The graphics in general were well-designed and nice to look at. Crystal Caverns; Gigapolis and Robot Rave were probably the best zones aesthetically. For the most part I did enjoy the game and there were some inspired points in the game that were generally thrilling to experience. The game does come extremely close to the classics; in terms of the engine and feel of the game; and in terms of visual design. So generally Hez you have created a good game here. Now the negative. When Tweaker raged at the level design (and said unnecessary and hurtful things; you don't call something someone has spent ten years creating words like "retarded"; words do have the ability to hurt people you know Tweaker; particularly when you're violently criticising their work) I thought it was just Tweaker being Tweaker. However I can see where he is coming from. There was a degree of truth to his statements regardless of whether I agree with the way he communicated them. The "dick moves" Tweaker and Slingerland were talking about are completely there. Constantly. Seriously it began in Crystal Caverns where I noticed that the level design was essentially slope-slope-slope-wall. Over and over again. It was like you were adamantly trying to kill any sense of momentum in the game. On purpose. There were extremely rare moments of momentum in levels like Gigapolis but overall the problems that were symptomatic in Crystal Caverns where echoed across the entire game. In no other zone was this more evident than in Aqua Arena Act 2. I spent thirty to forty minutes on that single act. You designed what was basically a giant chasm defined by those switches where you had to go left-right-left-right and then oh-shit-I'm-trapped and then I've-died and then that's-cool-the-starposts and then THERE'S ONLY ONE STARPOST BY THE BOSS and I have to be honest here Hez I was mega-pissed off playing that level. The music did not help at all. It was some crazy nightmare music that was nice to listen to at first but after forty five minutes of frustration and that music I wanted to shoot myself. I did however persevere because I wanted to play the other levels and it did improve from there but that Act pissed me off so much it dampened the rest of the experience. I think I only started enjoyed the game again around Luster Lake but then became pissed off again because the boss was near-impossible to beat. Jump-jump-bubble-hit-vulnerable-die was stuck on repeat for the ten or fifteen attempts I made at that boss. Back to the "dick moves" though since I think they deserve some elaboration. It is object placement. You have hard and precise platforming sections where you reward the player with a set of spikes of overzealous exploding/bomb-dropping badniks that created too many instances where the game became "I don't want to die" and "what dick move is next" and to be honest my enjoyment was killed so many fucking times; in too many levels; just too damn often. I really wanted to like the game; and I do to an extent; but that level design man. Intentional momentum-kills and platforming punishment is more or less your formula and it began to piss me right off. A level like Dusty Dunes for example was much nicer to play because it had a simplified layout. You've overcomplicated the maps in too many places. There are instances where it appears you have two alternate pathways for example only one leads to a dead-end and you end up backtracking back to the first pathway to progress. There's a "sense" of freedom of exploration but there really is only one true route through the level and much of the time playing the game is spent trying to decode a really complex level layout and guessing where you need to go and just hoping you can navigate your way to the end of the level. I think that's what the other guys meant when some of them stated that Sonic Classic does not live upto its name in that it looks like a Sonic game, sounds like one (most of the time) and sometimes does play like one (the speed sections in Gigapolis for example) but most of the time the game is way too focused on hardcore platforming where you're harshly punished for one mistake. When you get hit; nine times out of ten you know that it is not your fault (dangerous badniks with fucking superpowers everywhere for example). In terms of the "dick moves" specifically there were times where if you make a mistake you literally are fucked and sometimes have to kill Sonic to go back to a starpost. In Aqua Arena for example there is a part where if you miss one of those blocks that lift with the water (after hitting the switch) you fall into an enclosed trap with spikes with nowhere to go. And have to jump on the spikes. One mistake costs you a life. Sonic isn't about that. That's why Sonic Team created the ring mechanic so you had multiple chances to make mistakes. Sonic is more forgiving than that. Regardless I'm totally rambling on here now so I'll try to wrap this up. The heavily criticsed level design is not true of the entire game. There are levels and sections of levels where you've totally nailed it and the game is thrilling to play and really enjoyable. The game however is generally designed around pure platforming and because of that it feels like a hardcore Sonic CD most of the time; almost a Sonic CD hard mode where you're punished; frustrated and lost too much of the time and your patience is really tested. To be honest man if most of the game played like Hazel Hill (awesome first impression); the speed sections of Gigapolis; all of Robot Rave (especially Act 3) and even both acts of Luster Lake (before the boss at least) I would have loved the game without reservation. As it stands though the game pissed me off too many times with the design choices. If you released it with Aqua Arena Act 2 just deleted I would have liked the game more. I'll end with a positive here since I think I've focused too much on the negative; but ultimately I hope you take the feedback here on-board and improve the game with the next release. Many of the levels can be improved by just deleting the "punishment" objects around the platforming sections and vastly improved by connecting the segments of the levels to create a greater sense of momentum and flow. Overall this is a good game. It is a superhuman effort. It is designed well visually. The engine is solid. Bridge Zone (dude I totally hacked through the INI file to access it) was a really cool addition and childhood nostalgic throwback (my first ever Sonic game was Sonic 1 on the Master System). Ultimately this is a good product letdown by some level design choices. Instead of sending the game out to get beta-tested I think you should have also asked for some general reviews and impressions on the game that would have allowed you to revise the level layouts a little more. As it stands though this is one of the best games to come out of the fangaming scene when being objective about the game and taking everything into account; but to be honest I would have rather you had focused on creating bulletproof level layouts that were revised over and over again (like Hazel Hill and Gigapolis) and just ditched the Challenges, the Secrets; all of the surplus content; and just focused on the core game. It's a shame because there are moments of greatness in there; I just wished they weren't so divided. I felt the game was almost bi-polar in terms of how it went from frustrating to awesome and then back again; over and over. If you are going to continue to work on the game revise the level layouts. The weaker levels like Aqua Arena. I think there's just too much that is really good in here to make this the last release but honestly man it's upto you. My honest opinion here is that the game is good with awesome moments; but killed by the overall level design. I hope I haven't been too negative here. I tried to give you some explanation on what I feel were the most common complaints in this thread. Some people just posted with statements like "dick moves" so I thought it would be helpful to give you some constructive criticism and attempted further explanation on what they meant that would then allow you to progress from here. And that concludes the review. PS. To everyone: what's the general concensus over at Sfghq and outside of Retro out of interest?
It's funny because you say it's pretty solid on a technical level, but level design kills it. I consider the technical side of things to be this game's shining weakness, and level design to be generally not game-damaging. A few obviously bad placements and pits but they bother me much less than the glitches. I thought Luster Lake's boss was good and oldschool hard, not cheap. And I thought Crystal Caverns was the fug; puts me off playing it. Enter Special Stage 2 with a lightning shield, head left for the time extension, then upwards as you can. Easy with the double jump.
So, I just beat the final boss, (but quit during the ending out of fear of my game save being wiped) and overall I'd say it was a pleasant experience. However, there were a few technical problems that made for many frustrating points for the wrong reasons. (I.e. the large bubbles is Luster Lake many times spawn after they pass the ceiling, leaving you to die because you literally can't get the air bubble you were waiting for.) Another big issue, is most definitely the Insta-Shield; many a time I tried to accurately kill enemies (especially the fire orbinauts) with it, only for me to lose rings because it wouldn't connect. Despite these problems, I still thoroughly enjoyed myself playing this, and you have achieved much in making this. While already a good game, when the many stated (non-subjective) flaws are fixed, it will become a thing of pure greatness, Hez.
What you said here was infinitely more offensive than anything I told Hez. All I actually did within this topic (discussion in a private forum nonwithstanding) was express how I didn't like certain things he did with the game. I thought some choices he made were retarded and I absolutely stand by that. I call design choices in official games I don't like retarded and I call my own design choices retarded if the situation warrants. Not once did I personally insult him or insult anybody who expressed favorable views of the game. My views are mine alone and what I say is not representative of anybody other than myself. Making such a personal anecdote was completely unnecessary and, frankly, makes you look like a hypocrite. Hez is a friend of mine and I absolutely respect and commend the work he put into this, but that doesn't mean I have to like it in any way, shape or form. Hell, to be entirely fair I played it again recently and found it didn't annoy me anywhere near as much as my first playthrough, but I still have a hard time enjoying it and don't feel like playing after the second level. I'm not going to say I like a game unconditionally when I don't. Anyway, despite my aversion to how the levels play I pretty much like everything else, especially the art for the levels. It clearly had a lot of work put into it and I dig that. I also indirectly contributed to the project through the tracks of mine he used (thinking about fixing some of those up, too), so I can't hate it that much. Please stop exaggerating.
I haven't gotten to really play this game yet due to real life getting in the way but I am having an issue getting the music to play. I have sound effects but no music and I downloaded the music version...my friend did a test for me and downloaded it and he has music. How can I fix this? I like music playing :/ lol. Sorry if this was answered in earlier posts, I looked but didn't see any mention so I am bringing it up.
I have the same issue. I haven't seen an explanation either but if there is one I apologise. I played the game this morning for 5 mins, it's looking good. Some object placement is a bit off, but otherwise it's a brilliant effort! Can't wait to finish work because of this. I'm gonna plug in my PlaySega pad and rock so hard tonight! :v:
