Sonic X Shadow Generations thread, movie level out now

Hope it’s worthwhile and that the level isn’t just one act.

 

Don't give up hope, maybe next time they'll remember that badnik bouncing is a thing.

 

Well, I found the so-called classic games a little overrated and enjoyed Sonic Rush on the DS better than any of of the MD games.

Happy with the direction of Sonic and his new games at the moment though with the mix of open and boost Sonic games , I did enjoy Superstars a bit mind

 

I don't remember if this was actually true or not but at least according to Wikipedia and what I remember of that Iizuka interview the original pitch for Sonic Mania was a small game with original zones before Sonic Team said no and changed it to an anniversary celebration game.

For better or worse it doesn't seem to be a "Sonic Team is incapable" thing it's a "whoever is in charge thinks this is what the series should be" thing. I have no doubt that if they were given the opportunity the Mania devs would have delivered an excellent fully original game, either with Mania or a sequel.

 

sonic mania is still that small game with original zones, there's just throwback zones added to make it more of a complete game. this is to say I think mania's original intended scope as implied in the interview is much smaller than iizuka requested it to be in the end

 

Game's already 25% off ($45) for the digital Deluxe edition through PlayStation.

 

If they'd wanted to expand the scope of the game why not just do that instead of pivoting into this "half remake half not" idea? I'm glad they made the game bigger than what was originally pitched but I don't think that expansion necessarily needed to be with remakes of old stages.

 

​

 

I've heard that the only way Iizuka could get the game greenlit at that time was to basically pass it off as a remake, but I'm not sure how true it is.

 

Even making 4 original zones was hard apparently and a way to speed up the development was to make other zones from old gamea so you can reuse assets easily to build levels, speed up development, even then the game was delayed and still released with missing transitions, “Plus” was a way to extend its development for another year, basically finishing up the game for real with some added content like Ray and Mighty

 

There's a SA2 style skating mod available.

It's not perfect, I think the arms need a bit tweaking in the way they move but I found it cool.

 

I think the skating animation while boosting could be faster but it's a cool effort.

One thing I always loved about the SA2 animations is how Sonic & Shadow were modelled off real world parkour free runners and roller skaters, which gave them a sense of weight and intention to their movement.

My big nitpick about how Sonic is animated nowadays is that he just defaults to running with his arms behind his back which looks so goofy when he's not even going fast. He should only throw them back when he's reaching his top speed, Advance 2 style.

 

The story as I understand it was that Mania began as a pitch for a console bundle of the Retro Engine remakes called Sonic Discovery that included a few new zones (e.g. Studiopolis) as bonus content. Iizuka liked the demonstration of Studiopolis so much that he suggested the entire thing be a new game that happened to revisit the levels from old games and then downplayed its scope to Sega higher-ups to get the green light.

 

I like this animation mod, Forceful Animations. It tries to keep the intent of the vanilla game's animations but adds... well, force, references, and a bunch of other minor things i think add a lot of character to Shadow. It even pulls off the flying Boost - he really leans into it and you can feel the speed.

https://gamebanana.com/mods/555757

 

What does "recapturing what made the classics good" even mean, when you include Mania? That game, amongst its shortcomings, certainly recaptures many, many elements of what made the original games successful, and does some of them better.

The "reuse" thing is annoyingly exaggerated. The game still had to be made, and they didn't just take all of the assets from the referenced stage one-for-one, unmodified. Most of the "remade" acts are entirely different levels with art remixed from the original, with gimmicks that were either brand new or not even present in the source zone.

At worst, there are about 8 acts in the game that take the original layouts and "just remix" things, and this is out of 24. Not wanting Green Hill Zone again is understandable, but disingenuously asserting that Green Hill Zone in Mania is a rehash of the original is obnoxious.

 

“Reuse used as a crutch to speed up development” is a matter of fact, it’s not downplaying the effort spent on actually making the game nor its a bad thing necessarily, it’s just what really happened, sure there is new layouts and some new assets but also it’s easier and faster to build on an existing something and remixing it than build entire new things, i mean like all returning zones play on existing expectations from original zones, by reusing bits from it.

Mania is great but it also took advantage of “reusing” or remixing old zones to even get made and developed, there is nothing wrong with it.

 

Sure, but it isn't as much of a crutch as some would think. They remixed zones because they were asked to, not because they needed to speed up development, right? I assume that reuse of any assets was a matter of design direction as much as it was a matter of "development efficiency and speed".

 

Zone revisits were pitched to expand the scope of the game and keep development time short. So yes, it was a way to speed up development.

 

I think this discussion has gotten kind of circular.

 

You know what is circular? A ball. Sonic should roll again. Thanks for reading.