Sonic Triple Trouble 16-Bit

Very sold game overall, one of the best fan games I've played in many years. Perhaps ever, even, and gives the classic GG games some much needed love.

Atomic Destroyer has a painfully sharp difficulty spike at points, but it's admittedly not so overly hard it's impossible to beat. Lost several lives here while I cruised through the rest on the first play-through... but I suppose balancing final stage difficulties is always a challenge even for the pros.

I'm also struggling to find stage rings for the emeralds, but that's probably just a me thing. I'm sure once I find a quick and easy one I can cheese the stages just like in any other title. There's a lot to explore here with the unlockable characters. I'm glad I waited until your new update today to play this, though. I would've been fairly frustrated by some of the older problems like crashes and lack of removal roll lock. Thankfully, that's been sorted and the physics feel like a nice balance between classic S3 and Mania.

Overall, I really loved the GG/MS games as kid, so seeing this re-imagined so faithfully makes me quite happy. Now only if the Sonic Chaos project was ever finished, but alas.

 

Replayed the story mode. It's still fantastic, as expected. Now that I'm out of my honeymoon phase here are some little noteworthy bits:

• The music is incredible. Not even an exaggeration, it's really really good. The fact that's it's a completely different composer makes it feel different from the other Genesis games right off the bat, and the instrumentation feels like a natural evolution of S3K. Some shared instruments that you recognize from other games, other ones that sound entirely new, and even different PCM samples for some tracks instead of just reusing the same S3K drums for all of them. Absolutely stellar work from all the musicians.
• The stage gimmicks are great. Highlights include the flower cannons from Great Turquoise, the cranes in Sunset Park, and the spinning hanging things from Tidal Plant. Unfortunately some feel a little underutilized? Things like the lava parts of Sunset Park. I could only count like one time I saw lava in that level, which is a shame. Another one that comes to mind is the arrow shooters in Meta Junglira, they're not often placed in ways where they're dangerous.
• The bosses are similarly awesome. They all had unique attack patterns and none of them felt unfair or overly punishing, minus the electric ball boss in Atomic Destroyer Act 3.
• Speaking of, Atomic Destroyer Act 2 really drags. Probably could've done without the elevator segment personally. It makes for a cool setpiece, but also makes subsequent playthroughs become a bit of a slog late-game.
• Similarly, the Sea Fox level is cool, but wears thin after your first playthrough. Some more hazards that require more brainpower would be nice - moving mines, more badniks, you know.
• The level design in general is fantastic. It mostly sticks to going right, which is good at keeping confusion to a minimum. Many of the gimmicks are movement-based, which is good at keeping the pace up, and I didn't notice many beginner's traps. In this game it feels really easy to just blitz through the level on your first run-through and have absolutely no problems. The only complaint I have with that is there's a part in Tidal Plant Act 1 where you're riding up a very narrow passage in a bubble, and a mine just fell directly on top of me with no time to react. That didn't feel fair.
• The Knuckles stuff feels a little half-baked. The intro level set high hopes for me, but I didn't notice any optional alternate pathways, just forced ones where you start in a different position. And the knuckles layouts didn't feel particularly interesting. The ending was also anticlimactic as hell.
• The ending for Sonic and Tails' story, holy cow. That entire end segment was incredible. The final boss was dope and felt challenging AND cinematic. Doomsday Zone leaned a little too much on the cinematic side, but this strikes a perfect balance.

 

I don't know if you know this or not but the developers of Sonic Chaos 16 bit worked for SEGA on Sonic Origins so that probably sucked into their free time.

Also the head developer of Chaos 16 bit, Mr. Poe, is listed in the credits of this game as one of the people who helped Noah develop this game. So there's that too.

So I think it's still happening. They're just busy.

 

So I got this bad boy running on my Fedora Linux installation via Wine. It took a bit of fucking around with Bottles, which was not as intuitive to use as I expected, but after that it was relatively smooth sailing. Switching to fullscreen seemed to make the game shit itself the first time and I had to kill the process, but it works now. Can't imagine why, but that is the sort of thing one ought to expect when running Windows games on unsupported operating systems.

I am having some controller issues which are rather irritating. With both my XBox One controller and Dualsense, jumping cancels d-pad input but not analog. No such trouble with the d-pad on my 8BitDo M30. Pause doesn't appear to be mapped to the start button on any of my controllers. It wouldn't surprise me the least bit to find these are problems with using Wine rather than with the game itself. Just putting it out there.

Otherwise, I'm having a good time! Triple Trouble 16-Bit really does make me feel like I'm playing classic Genesis Sonic. I never much cared for any of the 8-bit Sonic titles, but this remake is god damn work of art.

 

I had always assumed Sega didn't really care much about the storyline differences between the handheld line and the console line or making them fit with each other. Sonic Chaos seemed like the handheld version of Genesis Sonic 2 with Tails playable, and Sonic Blast felt more like a handheld Sonic & Knuckles given that they're the only 2 playable characters in both standalone games. I figured Triple Trouble was pretty much just meant to be the "portable version of Sonic 3" with an extra character and left it at that.

But this remake's intent seemed to be to make the story make sense if it had occurred directly after the Sonic 3 & Knuckles timeline. In this scenario, Knuckles had literally just become friends with Sonic and Tails so the fights make absolutely no sense until + - the big Metal Sonic reveal near the end. And since Mecha Sonic had just been put out of commission, Metal Sonic coming out of the woodwork made sense too. The very end is the cool part that gives Nack a chance to become an ally even if just temporarily and I'm really happy with the decision to make him and Knuckles unlockable. It's great when you can go "Had fun? Here, have a couple more reasons to play the game again and again." Lately Nack has been becoming playable in more fan games such as the Knuckles mod in Sonic 3 A.I.R. and the code to unlock him in the fan game Sonic Classic, but I've yet to see it done in a hack. And he's still on the roster for Sonic World DX (just probably not R1 but later.)  

 

Noah, your work here is nothing short of outstanding. I absolutely love the game! Can’t wait to begin my second playthrough.

 

I wish i could try this, but my cpu is 32bit, and its only for 64bit windows
edit : will there be a 32bit version?
edit 2 : i remembered my pc's cpu is 64bit, but my gpu drivers are 32bit, so if i run this game on linux it willl work

 

I'd help on this game : )

 

I just played through story as Sonic and Tails last night. That was great! I would say this is at least as good as Sonic Time Twisted and Sonic Mania.

 

I want to say, I'm completely amazed with this remake.

I was however, thinking of a storyline idea that might make more sense for V2

+ - So let's talk about Knuckles. It seems like storyline wise, his tale is before Sonic and Tales as he gets captured by Robotnik in the ending. However, that brings us to the problem of Egg Zepplin.  

+ - Egg Zepplin is boarded and destroyed in both Sonic & Tails playthrough, and also in Knuckles' campaign. This does not make any sense. Robotnik wouldn't have made two Zepplins in such short a time.  

+ - I think it would be a better story flow to substitute Purple Palace in for Knux' run instead of Egg Zepplin. EZZ should be skipped entirely. Why would this work?  

+ - Meta Jungrila is already said in literature to be based off of the real world mythical location - Shangrila. You can easily crowbar some sort of "Knux is familiar with emerald magic" crap for headcannon, and have a route for him in which he discovers some some sort of spin tunnel that will take him there, as MJZ is already a mythical location. Would make sense that there's this magical palace hiding under or within it. Maybe even give him a new route in PPZ to distinguish it from Sonic & Tails route.  

+ - At the end you can either have him discover a warping device that warps him to Robotnik Winter. Or come up with an organic means, as RWZ is still an organic location, just altered by atomic testing. The warp from PPZ to TPZ is strange anyway as TPZ is a man-made location, but we handwave it because "oooh mystery chaos emerald energy PPZ"  

+ - Now of course Sunset Park Act 3 should also be skipped for Knux as again, two trains that get destroyed in the exact same circumstance by both Sonic and Knux but they have two different timelines? But I don't have a theory on how SPZ3 should be replaced. Yet.  

 

To be completely fair, you're talking about the same guy who

Spoiler: Sonic Adventure spoilers

in Sonic Adventure, kept talking about the unbeatable power of Chaos, and how it was the only thing to compare to/thwart the power of the Egg Carrier, he had somehow found the time/energy/parts to build a second Egg Carrier [despite his unbridled confidence in both the Egg Carrier and Chaos' power] which he believed to be even better than his supposed masterpiece, and even that was just destroyed by Perfect Chaos immediately, as if it was nothing but a pile of scrap.

So yeah, this is the least glaring of your issues.

 

Man this remake is something else, never Triple Trouble was so enjoyable to me.

It's nearly perfect.

I do have some nitpicks (and they are just that, nitpicks, the game's absurdly polished)

- The soundtrack is amazing, specially the act 2 remixes, however it makes the opening stage looking like a sore thumb, you could argue it's due to the S3&K connection but + - Angel Island has it's own "Triple Trouble" like track for Knuckles opening stage, so it kinda makes the point a bit moot.  

- Some newer projects like Sonic 2 Absolute, Sonic 2 HD or Sonic Origins had the Doctor use Blue Glasses like intended (dropped in S2 due to color limitations) makes him look a bit out of the place with the Black Glasses (specially when the OG game have them in Blue, looking an bit like an downgrade)

- The Doctor naming scheme is all over the place with "Eggman" in some places, and "Robotnik" in others even (This ignoring Robotnik Winter of course, it's the zone name). An option like Nack/Fang might to pick the preferred name might be something to look into?

- + - Probably spoiled by Mania's Mirage Saloon, but i was expecting an exclusive Tidal Plant Act 2 for Knuckles, him swimming around doesn't have the same pizzaz as the Sea Fox  

- + - Beating the game as Knuckles is quite possibly the last thing someone will do in the game, ending with a recycled Fang Boss, makes it end not in a bang but in a whimper.  

Still thank you very much for the experience Noah, it was so enjoyable.

 

This game is so far, amazing!
Just a few peevs:
1. Unskippable intro - the one with the Sega Genesis plugging in. As awesome as it is, I'd like to be able to skip it with enter.
2. Unskippable prologue scene.

 

This is an awesome review for the game and its also freakin hilarious!

 

Finally got to take this for a spin yesterday and played the first half or so of the game. What a treat it is to have a great "new" complete classic Sonic game, not just for this playthrough but to come back to time and time again in the future as well. No doubt I'll be finishing it this weekend. Love the little presentational details in the menus and title cards and stuff, and rumble support was a lovely surprise as well. Thanks so much to everyone who contributed to this project for all their hard work, it certainly paid off.

 

Thanks for the heads-up! I'm happy to report that my controller woes are no more. I appreciate you putting in the work necessary to make that happen! As a Playstation controller user from way back (in the early 2000s I built my very own DirectPadPro parallel port adapter for my DualShock controller) I definitely understand the frustration and technical issues that go into PC controller support.

 

The final update has been released today, along with the long awaited Android and MAC versions of the game!

 

The Android version has been working pretty good. Worth the wait.